By Abiola Olawale
A joint National Assembly Committee on Constitution Review has approved the creation of an additional state for the South-East geopolitical zone.
This decision was reached during a two-day retreat in Lagos State. It was gathered that the development is aimed at moving the South-East region closer to achieving parity with other zones that have six or seven states.
Currently, the South-East only has five states. This recent approval aims to increase the number of states in the zone to six, bringing it in line with the minimum number held by five of the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria.
The move was championed by key figures in the National Assembly, notably the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Okezie Kalu, who has consistently advocated for the state’s creation based on principles of equity, justice, and fairness.
The committee was chaired by the Deputy Senate President, Barau Jibrin, and co-chaired by the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives.
The committee also considered a wide-ranging proposal for constitutional amendments, including 55 separate requests for new states across the federation.
Briefing journalists after the meeting, a member of the committee, Senator Osita Izunaso (APC, Imo West) described the decision as “a right step in the right direction,” noting that it would help address long-standing feelings of marginalisation in the South East.
“The most important of all the approvals that we have gotten is that we have agreed today to give an additional state to the South-East to balance its six states per geo-political zone, regardless of the North-West, which has seven states,” he stated.
“We have set up another committee to look at modalities to create more states for areas that need more states. These are the things that we have achieved today. An additional state for South-East is a major achievement of this final retreat of the National Assembly Constitution Review Committee.”
