Labour Party governorship candidate in Lagos State, Rotimi Odunaike, has called for Nigeria to move beyond viewing its six geopolitical zones primarily as political or administrative groupings and begin developing them as integrated geo-economic regions capable of driving collective prosperity.
During an Independence Day appearance on MiTV’s Breakfast Express Show, Odunaike argued that the country’s development challenge requires greater economic cooperation and complementarity among states within each region.
“I personally would not look at it from a geopolitical zone perspective because by bringing politics back into it, I would have looked at it from a geo-economic zone perspective”, he explained.
According to the governorship candidate, the emphasis should be on identifying the economic strengths of states and connecting them in ways that allow their individual capabilities to reinforce one another.
He argued that rather than states pursuing development largely in isolation, neighbouring states should develop complementary economic capacities and build stronger regional value chains. “How do we deliver within the regions? So that when Oyo delivers, Ekiti delivers, Ondo delivers, Osun delivers, Ogun delivers, and Lagos delivers, we will now become an integrated regional economy”, he queried.
Odunaike said that such an approach would allow states to pool their respective advantages and create a broader economic ecosystem in which people and businesses benefit from opportunities beyond individual state boundaries.
“All of our collective potentials get realised and then all of our people prosper collectively because we’re talking about collective prosperity”, he said.
He pointed to the development of regional institutions and development companies across Nigeria’s geopolitical zones as a potentially useful foundation, but said the greater challenge was how to translate such structures into actual economic integration and delivery.
Odunaike said that his geo-economic thinking also informs his vision for Lagos State, arguing that the state’s development should not be viewed in isolation from neighbouring states and the wider Southwest economy.
He said that Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Ondo and Ekiti States could collectively unlock greater economic value if their respective strengths were connected rather than treated as separate state-level opportunities.
The approach, he argued, would help Nigeria move beyond repeatedly celebrating its economic potential towards creating the governance structures and economic linkages required to turn that potential into shared prosperity.
