Does the creation of bureaucracies for the regions necessarily attract development?

After years of agitation, the Senate has once again passed the South East Development Commission Bill. It was initially passed by the Eighth Senate but former President Muhammadu Buhari declined assent. Reintroduced last year by lawmakers from the Southeast, the SEDC bill will be transmitted to President Bola Tinubu for assent. “It’s a very important bill passed by this 10th Senate,” noted Senate President Godswill Akpabio. “This bill addresses all the fears of our brothers and sisters from the Southeast.” 

When fully operational, the regional interventionist agency is expected to quicken development of infrastructure mostly crippled during the three-year civil war that ended more than 50 years ago. The commission will among other things manage funds from the Federation Account allocation to execute projects such as the construction and rehabilitation of roads. The areas of intervention will also include health, education, employment, agriculture, industrialisation, housing and urban development, water supply, electricity and telecommunications. Other functions include tackling ecological and environmental problems that arise from the extraction and mining of solid mineral, and exploration of oil mineral in the Southeast states.

 Every separatist movement in today’s Nigeria is fuelled apparently by gross inequities and brazen injustices created and sustained by the current structure. in the country. For the Igbos the ghost of the civil war seems to be still hovering all over the place. Indeed, over the years, many believe the Southeast has suffered from deliberate neglect. The situation was not helped by the disposition of the immediate past administration. It is therefore our hope that when this commission come on stream it will serve as a means of giving the Southeast people their dues by addressing their genuine grievances.

The real issue is not the establishment of the commission but the use to which it is put. Over the years so many interventionist agencies have been established across the nation with little or nothing to show for it. The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) established since 2000 to oversee the physical and socio-economic development of the region, arising from years of oil exploration and exploitation, for instance, has become a byword for corruption. After more than N15 trillion poured in, there is little to show as few persons succeeded in cornering the wealth of the region.

This is partly why we are worried that the passing of the SEDC has triggered in the National Assembly a new wave of regional demands for development commissions.  The South West Development Commission bill, came barely a week after, about the same time Senator Abba Moro proposed North Central Development Commission to address the gap in the “infrastructural development of the region and related matters.” A bill seeking the establishment of the North West Development Commission (NWDC), sponsored by the Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Barau Jibrin, has also passed first reading at the Senate. If passed and signed into law all this will bring to six the number of regional interventionist agencies, every region to its own. The sixth, North-East Development Commission (NEDC) has been operational since 2019 with responsibility to rebuild infrastructure and institutions destroyed by the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency in northeast.  

So, the questions arise: Why must we deploy the functions of government to interventionist agencies? At a time of serious economic distress, when the government is thinking of pruning down offices and personnel, why should we duplicate functions and create additional cost centres? Does the creation of bureaucracies for the regions necessarily attract development?

While we urge President Tinubu to sign the SEDC bill into law, it is important for all relevant stakeholders to understand that these commissions offer no practical solution to the challenge of national development.