Former Leader of the Nigerian Senate and National Secretary of the 2018 APC National Convention Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, SAN, has said that Nigeria’s Federal structure was no longer reliable, apparent from the fact that the centre had been overburdened and worsened by the country’s dwindling productive capacity.
Speaking in a telephone interview with several designated media outlets, Ndoma-Egba said that Nigerian states as federating units had grown dependant on federal allocation instead of internally generated revenue.
“Our situation now can be likened to a car whose engine has knocked and the owner is trying to fix brand new tyres in the car as a means of getting it to work,” said Ndoma-Egba.
“The so-called federal structure we have is no longer workable. The centre is overburdened, it has become so unwieldy that more than seventy per cent of the federal expenditure goes to recurrent expenditure while less than thirty per cent is left for capital.
“Paradoxically, it is the capital budget that delivers development. With sixty-eight items in the exclusive and twenty-nine in the concurrent lists, we have a more justifiable claim to being a unitary state than a federal one.
“The states, as federating units have become absolutely dependent on federal allocations than their own internally generated revenues, what my friend and brother, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, refers to as feeding bottle federalism.”
Ndoma-Egba further asserted that the country would soon collapse as its economy had lost its productive capacity.
