WHAT DO THE IGBOS REALLY WANT?

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OPINION

Akin Omoz-Oarhe

I woke to a post by one Humphrey Achor in which my young Igbo friend Chibuzor Dunamis Obele tagged me. He must have known that there was no way I would be able to resist contributing, where numerical figures are being discussed, although these days, I am reluctant discussing the untouchable Igbo. Coming to think of it, how do you teach a group that is only marginally next to God in intelligence, at least in their reckoning. What baffles me is how a group can live a life of perpetual complains. If they are not talking about Genocide, it is Marginalization. If it is not about “Biafra”, then in recent times, it is Restructuring.

Achor Humphrey, in his post, made strenuous efforts to show how the Igbos are marginalized. Often, he tried to bundle together South-South and South East in a union that I fail to understand. At other times, the grouping was South versus the North. This does not interest me a bit. It was an irritating post to me.

Basically, Achor’s comparative study was of the geopolitical zones. He needs to know that the Federating Units in Nigeria are the States. The State Government is the middle tier in governance between the Federal Government at the Top and the Local Government at the Bottom. The Geopolitical Areas represent nothing in the governance of Nigeria. It has no Leader, It has no Capital City, It has no Financial allocations and as of fact not part of the Nigerian Constitution.

Achor should also know that there are six independent Geopolitical Areas in Nigeria. I therefore do not understand why Igbo writers often group South East and South South together. South South is in no way more related to South East than it is, to North West or South West. If the grouping is meant to take us back to the original Regional System, then why not group NE, NC and NW together? Even at that, Edo and Delta States in South South were part of Western region, and not Eastern region. At times I get a feeling that such writers still have their “Biafra” scheme in mind with an intention to colonized South-South the way Ojukwu did in 1967 just for their wealth and arable soil. If not, then they should stop grouping the two zones together.

Now, to the Issue. Politics and Governance are about people. If any meaningful comparison is to be made about representation in the legislature, we shall be taking about how many people are represented by each representative.

The population spread in Nigeria between North and South since 1952 are;
1952 Census, 54.55% North to 45.45% South
1962 Census, 56.77% North to 43.23% South
1963 Census, 53.51% North to 46.49% South
1973 Census, 64.99% North to 35.01% South
1991 Census, 51.85% North to 48.15% South
2006 Census, 53.59% North to 46.41% South

There is a striking similarity between 1963 and 2006 figures. Also fine is that the 1963 figure was conducted when Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was President of Nigeria and Nwanfor Orizu, another Igbo, President of the Senate. They could not have cheated themselves so, it’s safe to adopt the 2006 figures conducted when a Southerner was president. The 2006 Figures have this distribution:

NW with a population of 35.8m=25.6%
SW with a population of 27.6m=19.7%
SS with a population of 21.0m =15.0%
NC with a population of 20.3m=14.5%
NE with a population of 19.0m =13.6%
SE with a population of 16.4m=11.7%

TOTAL 140.1m
North 53.6%
South 46.4%

COMPLAINT 1
The first complaint Achor Humphrey is that in our House of Representatives of 360 Members of the House of Rep, South has 169 members. This represents 46.9% South and 53.1% North. Are these not the same spread as the our population distribution? What then is his problem?

COMPLAINT 2
His next complaint is about the spread across the Geopolitical zones where:

NW has 92 Reps which are 25.6%. Compared 25.6%
SW has 71Reps which are 19.7%. Compared with 19.7%
SS has 55 Reps which are 15.3%. Compared with15. 0%
NC has 49 Reps which is13. 6%. Compared with 14.5%
NE has 48 Reps which are 13.3%. Compared with 13.6%
SE has 43 Reps which are 11.9%. Compared with 11.7%
Abuja has 2 Reps which are 0.6%
TOTAL 360 Reps
Note that if the 0.6% of Abuja is added to 13.6% above, we get 14.2%

Achor, what do you have against this?

At this point he wondered “The question is, how dare you upstage these people in a vote even if Southeast, South-south and Southwest joined together cannot upstage the North. This made me laugh. When in 1959, Chief Obafemi Awolowo approached Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe for a coalition government with Zik as the Prime Minister, why did he not remember that there was Southern Nigeria? Has there been any political dispensation in this country minus the current one in which the Igbos did not go into a “Government of National Unity” with the North? My friend, we have long gone past that politics. We have also gone past North, East and West Nigeria. Ours is a New Nigeria, where the States are the Federating Units. The earlier you key into this the better.

COMPLAINT 3
The next port of call of Achor Humphrey was what he called “Injustice in allocation of Oil in Nigeria”. He presented a falsity that:
North Central receives 20% contributes nothin
North East receives 16% Contributes Nothing
North West receives 21% Contributes Nothing
South West receives 16% Contributes 3.97%.
South East receives 11.00% Contributes 25.07%
The south South receives 15.00% Contributes 70.64%

The Truth is which you may google right now is

OIL REVENUE
1st. Akwa Ibom – 504,000 barrels per day
2nd. Delta – 346,000 bpd
3rd. Rivers – 344,000 bpd
4th. Bayelsa – 290,000 bpd
5th. Ondo – 60,000 bpd
6th. Lagos – 40,000 bpd
7th. Edo – 33,000 bpd
8th. Imo – 17, 000 bpd
9th. Abia – 11,000 bpd

From the list above, West Produces 100,000 bpd
I challenge Achor to present his source of the figures. I however make bold to say that there are two oil producing States in South east. Abia currently produces 11,000bpd and Imo State produces 17,000bpd making a total of 28,000bpd where Akwa Ibom alone produces 504,000bpd in a total of 1,580,000bpd. The Igbo contribution is paltry 1.75% Even Edo state produces more that the combined SE. May I ask: Do you go out to deliberately deceive your readers or are these genuine errors? Information is so cheap these days. Afford yourself of it.

You may want to ask yourself who produces the Electricity Power in Kainji, Jebba, Egbin etc. that you consume. You think it is from Oji Coal Power Station? What about the Yams, Beans, rice meat? Maybe you should be made to import them. Yet you say, “Contribute Nothing”

INTERNAL REVENUE GENERATION
We all know that the Igbos are very enterprising and must generate much revenue internally from Taxes etc. Maybe that is the area they contribute much. Let us see what the figures from the National Bureau of Statistics has for us for the year June 2015 to May 2016.
SW generated N392.4b
SS generated N185.2b
NW generated N 72.3b
SE generated N 57.2b
NC generated N 50.7b
NE generated N 27.0b

REVENUE ALLOCATIONS
Using 2016 First Quarter Allocation to States
SS got N113.9b
NW got N67.64b
SW got N49.86b
NE got N47.02b
NC got N45.45b
SE got N40.46b

These translate to:
SS: N5, 423/capital
NE: N2, 475/capital
SE: N2, 467/capital
NC: N2, 238/ capital
NW: N1, 889/ capital
SW: N1, 806/capital

You can see that while SE is the third lowest in revenue generation it is the third highest in revenue consumption. Note that in spite of these, by their itinerant nature, they consume not less than 10% of revenues allocated to other states.

POLITICAL APPOINTEES
We all have the statistics of political appointees of the current Buhari administration.
NW has 51political appointees from 7 states
NC has 47 political appointees from 6 states
NE has 45 political appointees from 6 states
SW has 45 political appointees from 6 states
SS has 45 political appointees from 6 States
SE has 41 political appointees from 5 states

These translate to
1st. SE: 2.50 appointees in a million.
2nd. NE: 2.37 appointees in a million.
3rd. NC: 2.34 appointees in a million.
4th. SS: 2.14 appointees in a million.
5th. SW:1.63 appointees in a million.
6th. NW:1.42 appointees in a million.

SE is highest, The presidents zone is lowest and the Vice Presidents zone is second lowest

IGBO STOP MISINFORMING YOUR HIGHLY GULLIBLE MASSES SO THAT PEACE MAY RETURN TO OUR LAND