Former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon (retd), has disclosed his reasons for establishing 12 states in Nigeria during his regime. He ruled Nigeria from 1966 to 1975.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, he revealed his reason for the decision during a meeting a delegation of the Senator Ibrahim Shekarau-led League of Northern Democracy.<\/p>\n
He stated that his purpose was to promote national unity and peaceful co-existence among the ethnic groups in Nigeria and reduce the fear or concerns about the dominance of the northern region.<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cI firmly believe, as I have always said, that the responsibility of maintaining Nigeria\u2019s true democracy rests on the north, and Baba Tafawa Balewa embodied this ideal.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cLet me also say that I hope your visit is not just about returning to the old thinking where the north prioritises the north, the west prioritises the west, and the east prioritises the east-until, of course, the Mid-West emerged to think for itself.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMy position has always been that whatever the north does must serve the greater interest of Nigeria. From your speech, I understand that this is your intention-to ensure the north, in its current state, focuses on national unity.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt was for this reason that I supported the creation of multiple states, to prevent any one region from becoming too powerful and threatening the country\u2019s unity.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Presently, the subsequent government have created more states which made it 36 States in Nigeria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon (retd), has disclosed his reasons for establishing 12 states in Nigeria during his regime. He ruled Nigeria from 1966 to 1975. On Wednesday, he revealed his reason for the decision during a meeting a delegation of the Senator Ibrahim Shekarau-led League of Northern Democracy. He stated that his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1629,1626,1627,1628],"class_list":["post-16497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics","tag-12-states","tag-former-head-of-state","tag-general-yakubu-gowon-retd","tag-senator-ibrahim-shekarau-led-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.naijatraffic.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.naijatraffic.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.naijatraffic.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.naijatraffic.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.naijatraffic.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16497"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.naijatraffic.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16502,"href":"https:\/\/www.naijatraffic.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16497\/revisions\/16502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.naijatraffic.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.naijatraffic.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.naijatraffic.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.naijatraffic.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}