A former National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Chekwas Okorie, has ruled out the possibility of the Federal Government creating more states.
He claimed that the 1999 Constitution makes it easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a new state to be created.
The elder statesman, who spoke during a meeting of the Igbo Agenda Dialogue in Abuja yesterday, said that there had never been any sincerity to amend anything that is critical to the issue of lopsidedness in this country.
He said, “After the Sani Abacha administration, there was a National Conference, and recommendations were made. The Igbo were fully represented.
“The likes of Odumegwu Ojukwu, Alex Ekwueme—name all of them, many of them have joined our ancestors now.
“The recommendations included to divide Nigeria into six geopolitical zones and that recommendation was pursued by Dr Alex Ekwueme.
“The recommendations were sent to the military government and they constituted another committee headed by one northern professor of law and they altered everything that was in the document and that recommendation of six geopolitical zones was removed from the document.
“Another conference was held. It was Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar’s government that now imposed the 1999 Constitution on Nigeria.
“As we speak today, they only use the six geopolitical zones when it is convenient for them.
“It does not exist in the Nigerian Constitution. There is nothing the Igbo people have not done. Even in that National Conference I made reference to, we had to produce an Igbo memorandum to the conference with a big compendium.
“But we now know that the issue of restructuring or amending the constitution is just meant to sedate our people. There has never been any sincerity to amend anything that is critical to the issue of lopsidedness in this country.
“And it is not far-fetched—the Abdulsalami government inserted in that constitution provisions that will make it easier for the camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a new state to be created.
“That is why no civilian government has been able to create one new state. We can’t even alter local government.
“That was why the President we have today, as the governor of Lagos State, tried to create more local governments, which eventually they call Development Centres, and that resulted in seizure of his state allocations by then President Obasanjo.
“So it’s not a question of whether the Igbo have tried. What have we not tried?” he queried.
Also, the IAD Convener said the Igbo nation must deploy its full democratic strength in the 2027 General Elections, identifying united political participation as the only viable path to reverse decades of marginalisation.
He lamented that although the Igbo remain one of Nigeria’s largest ethnic groups with unmatched geographical spread, decades of political disunity and voter apathy had left the South-East vulnerable to avoidable marginalisation and ridicule.
Okorie announced that the IAD would present a major resolution at the proposed 2026 Igbo Political Summit in Enugu, and called on all eligible Igbo people to participate actively in all democratic processes.
On the proposed summit, he added, “The Dialogue reaffirmed that the Igbo people constitute one of the largest and most widely dispersed ethnic nationalities in Nigeria.
“Participants emphasised that the Igbo have no justification for political irrelevance or acceptance of disrespect from any part of the country going forward.
“Unity of purpose and mass political participation were identified as key strategies to ‘re-draw the political map of Nigeria’ and restore dignity and equitable representation to the Igbo nation,” he said.
