NUPE THE FIRST FORCE [The article below is comprised of two sections; the first section is a rather lengthy blurb on my book titled ‘Nupe the First Force’. The second section is basically a collection of excerpts from the same book ‘Nupe the First Force: How Nupe Dominates Nigeria’. That section of the book is itself a lengthy story, beginning from the colonial era to the present, of the history of Nigeria told from the perspective of a Nupe contribution to the process of nation-building. The random excerpts in the write-up below cover only the First Republic and the Second Republic eras. Time and space will not permit a lengthy and comprehensive elaboration of excerpts here. The collection of excerpts into a brief write-up below is just intended to give the uninformed reader an idea of the extensive role Nupe national leaders have played in the making of Nigeria. Please read the full book for all the entire story and all the details.] The issue of the inconsiderate division of Nigeria into three major ethnic hegemonies in line with the dissection of the Nigerian landmass into three by the Niger-Benue rivers is an issue that has not gone down well with the rest of the over three hundred major and minor ethnicities in Nigeria. The division of Nigeria into a tripartite geopolitical entity with an indiscriminately selected major tribe to dominate each of the three geopolitical zones is actually a callous invention of the colonial masters who were always employing their inglorious divide and rule tactics to foment internecine rivalries. This callous division of Nigeria along ethnic lines have, incidentally enough, become quite useful to the successive Nigerian administrators who have consequently done little to stem the tide of this undue tripartition of Nigeria. All these are just by the way. The main discussion I engaged in inside this book is that centred on the question of whether the so-called three major tribes are really majority tribes in Nigeria. Are the Hausa-Fulani, the Yoruba and the Ibo the three most populous tribes in Nigeria? This book is a scholarly and irrefutable answer of a definite, an exclamatory and a capital ‘NO!’ to the question above. A careful and detailed analysis of the question of demographic majorities in Nigeria easily refutes and explodes the oft-repeated claim that the Hausa-Fulani, the Yoruba and the Ibo are the most populous people in Nigeria. In fact this book is a careful and detailed analytical refutation of the claim that there are only three major tribes in Nigeria and over three hundred minor tribes in Nigeria. For instance it is a common knowledge among even the lay man on the street that the Hausa people do not constitute a majority ethnic group in Nigeria the moment they are separated from the Fulani and so many other Northern Nigerian peoples who because they spoke the Hausa language as a lingua franca identify themselves as the Hausa people. In fact that it has become an unwritten common practice to always refer to the Hausa people as the Hausa-Fulani instead of simply as the Hausa is a telling evidence. Without the Fulani combination the Hausa people have not the demographic might or the population numbers to constitute a majority ethnic group in Nigeria. I discussed in this book that the archetypic Hausa man does not even exist in the first place. Professor J.E.G. Sutton, and many other formidable authorities, have repeatedly demonstrated the fact that Hausa is more or less a language and not a people. The Hausa people do not exist in the anthropological sense of the word. What exists for real is a Hausa language which is a West Africa-wide lingua franca. Who are the Hausa people?... The answers is definitely not the Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara or Kaduna people. All these North-western people are not Hausa peoples. But neither are the Bauchi, Gombe, Yobe or Borno peoples Hausa. These North-eastern peoples of Nigeria also not Hausa peoples. It is only the remaining small group of the Northern states of Katsina, Kano and Jigawa that can be referred to as Hausa peoples. But in this book I proved that the Katsina, Kano and Jigawa people are not Hausa peoples. The people of Kano and Jigawa are Maguzawa. And the Maguzawa used to be an ancient Nupe people until the colonial revisionists came and branded them as Hausa. When all is said and done we are left with the harrowing thought that the archetype Hausa man does not actually exists! This same manner of the discussion I had on the Hausa people I applied also to the Yoruba and Ibo peoples who are the two other ethnic groups claiming to be majority tribes in Nigeria. In the Southwest we all know that the Kogi, Edo, Ondo, Ekiti, Kwara and Lagos people are all not Yoruba people. It is only the Oyo, Osun and Ogun state people that can claim any semblance of being Yoruba people. But careful historical analysis will actually show that even the osun and Ogun people are not true Yoruba people and that only the Oyo are actually Yoruba. Now then, assuming we have only the Oyo State people as the true Yoruba people, tell me, where is the so call Yoruba majority population that can compete with a true Nupe population? The same thing applies to the Ibo people when we immediately see that in the Southeast the Benue, Cross Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Bayelsa, and Delta peoples are not Ibo. It is only the Anmabra, Enugu, Imo and Abia people who can claim to be Ibo. But then even a casual look at the map of Nigeria will show that Nupeland is far greater than Anambra, Enugu, Imo and Abia states combined. And, don’t, listen to those stupid census figures that the politically-inclined Nigerian authorities churn out in favour of the Ibo peoples year in year out. Due to circumstantial and historical incidences during the colonial era the Ibos were unwittingly identified as the majority ethnic group in Eastern Nigeria. The greater part of this book is actually centred on my subject matter: the fact that the Nupe people are the majority ethnicity in Nigeria. I did not waste my time challenging the majority statuses wrongly claimed by the Hausa, Yoruba and Ibo hegemonists. I simply focussed my attention on demonstrating the fact that the population of the Nupe people is actually greater than that of the Hausa, Yoruba and Ibo people. I began this particular discussion by pointing out the fact that the Hausa, Yoruba and Ibo people are not the only major ethnic groups in Nigeria. I pointed out the fact that in the East the population of the Ijaw people is more than that of the Ibo people; that in the West the population of the Edo-Benin people is more than that of the true Yoruba people; and that in the north the population of the Tiv people is more than that of the Hausa people. It is really startling, and it strongly smacks of a deliberate conspiracy, that few people, if anybody at all, has ever notice the obvious fact that the Ijaw are more populous than the Ibo; that the Edo-Benin people are more populous than the Yoruba and that the Tiv are more populous than the Hausa. And this is just the beginning. There are some other similar major Nigerian ethnicities, apart from the ones mentioned above, who have been deliberately relegated to the position of ‘minority tribes’ by some mischievous power blocs. I listed and discussed all of these ‘marginalised majority’ peoples in this book. These include the Ibibio-Efik, the Idoma, the Kanuri, and some other Nigerian peoples. I pointed out that the Nupe people are more populous than any other ethnic group in Nigeria. Yet the Nupe people have consistently been referred to as a minority people by tribalist propagandists. The heinous practice of portraying the Nupe people as a minority tribe is not the invention of modern Nigerian authorities. It was the colonialists, headed by Sir Frederick Lugard ‘The Anti-Nupe’ and Sir George T. Goldie ‘The Devil’, who initiated this virulent campaign of demographic genocide against the Nupe people. I actually dedicated a detailed chapter to the anti-Nupe crimes against humanity committed by the trio of Frederick Lugard, George Goldie and the Royal Niger Company. Nupe is a nation of various sub-tribes including the Dibo, Kakanda, Gupa, Kupa, Basa Nge, and many other peoples. But mischievous census authorities always have a way of carving these Nupe peoples out of the overall Nupe population and thereby demographically reducing the Nupe Nation to just the speakers of the Bini dialect of that are found mainly in the Zone A section of Niger State. The language we speak and refer to as Nupe today is actually Bini. Yes, the ‘language’ spoken in Bida, Patigi, Agaie, Lapai, Lafiagi, Mokwa, Kutigi, Tsaragi, Tsonga, and so on and on is actually Bini and not Nupe. The Bini people are simply a subtribe – just the way the Kakanda, Dibo and others are also subtribe – of the overall Nupe tribe. My complaint is that while the different Nupe sub-tribes are been consciously separated and disunited one from the other, the reverse process is what is being carried out among the so-called three major ethnic groups of Nigeria. In this context I used the Yoruba people as a case study. Yoruba is heterogeneous collection of different ethnicities and tribes that historically have no ethnic or tribal affiliations whatsoever. Until the imperial conquests of Obalokun at the height of the glory of the Oyo empire, the Ekiti, Ijesha, Ondo, and many other non-Yoruba peoples who are claiming to be Yoruba today had no any ethnic or tribal affiliations with Yoruba whatsoever. Only the Oyo people are truly a Yoruba people. Even the people of Ile Ife, who are blatantly claiming to be the aboriginal Yoruba people today, were originally not a Yoruba people! But then all these historical and sociocultural facts are deftly overlooked by Yoruba propagandists in their mischievous efforts to claim that everybody in Western Nigeria is a Yoruba man. I pointed out that there is nothing wrong with claiming that the Ekiti, the Ijesha and many others are Yoruba as long as they themselves don’t object to the practise of effacing their heritages and true historical identities in favour of a fictitious Yoruba super race. But then my complaint is: if this can be vigorously pursued for the sake of boosting the image of the Yoruba people why is the reverse of this practice being imposed on the various Nupe peoples who are actually and really affiliated ethnically and tribally to one another? Why are the Kakanda, the Dibo, the Gupa, the Kupa, the Kame, the Basange and many other Nupe being deliberately separated from the Nupe nation? I pointed out, in some details, that in the hands of the Nupe people lay a potential population power that will transform the Nupe Nation into the First Force in Nigeria. Apart from the extensive discussions on the demographic and population potentials of the Nupe people I also discussed, in equally comprehensive details, the latent and potential powers that lay on the finger tips of the Nupe Nation and that can readily be channelled and harnessed by the Nupe people to transform the Nupe nation into the most powerful phenomenon in the whole of Nigeria. The other powers of the Nupe Nation that I discussed in exhaustive details include the Nupe people’s political, religious, historical, sociocultural, literacy rate, and otherwise powers. On the industrial front I demonstrated that the construction of the Baro Port and the Nupeko Bridge will certainly transform KinNupe into the industrial, commercial and transportation hubs of the whole of the African continent. The Baro Port and the Nupeko Bridge, when completed, will shift the base of Nigerian industrialisation and commercialism from Lagos to Central KinNupe and will raise the economy of the Nupe Nation to equal that of fifty, yes fifty, African countries! On the political front I pointed out that the political history of Nigeria is, surprisingly enough, dominated by the shadowy powers of eminent Nupe politicians. From the era of Alhaji Aliyu Makama, Federal Minister Ahman Patigi, Abubakar Dzukogi, through the pre- and post Second Republic era of General M.I. Wushishi, Alhaji Sulaiman Takuma, and the regimes of the General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and General Abdulsalam Abubakar to the times of Professor Jerry Gana and Mrs Sarah Jibrin, I discussed the untold political impact that Nigerian national leaders who are Nupe have exercised on the course of the political development of Nigeria. I parenthetically digressed to point out the fact that two of Nigeria’s heads of state, namely General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and General Abubakar Abdulsalam, are Nupe men. Few people today are aware of the fact that the true parental origns of both General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and General Abubakar Abdulsalam are Nupe. Something both of them cannot publicly deny. On the religious front I remonstrated that KinNupe is the home of the most religious people in Nigeria; I demonstrated the fact that the most zealous Muslims, the most passionate Christians and the most committed traditional religionists in Nigeria are to this very day be found only in KinNupe. Pastor Tunde Bakare, yes the CPC, and now APC, Bakare, pointed out long ago that he was shown a divine vision that KinNupe is going to be the religious headquarters of the world in the future. And this was despite the fact that Tunde Bakare did not even know where the city of Bida was located in in those days. In my book ‘Goldfinger Middle Belt’ we discussed in some details how Nigeria has been dominated and controlled by the Middle Belt power elite for so long. Sani Bello, T. Y. Danjuma, Yakubu Gowon, Domkat Bali, Gado Nasko, Jeremiah Useni, Abdulsalam Abubakar, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, etc, etc. These are the names that recur over and over again in the ‘Makers of Nigeria’. And all these are the names of Middle Beltan Nigerians who constitute the overwhelming majority of those who rule Nigeria. Nigeria is indeed controlled and manipulate from behind the shadows by the powers from the Middle Belt. What I didn’t discuss in that book is that the Middle Belt power elite is itself dominated and, to a great extent, manipulated by its Nupe subset of ultra-powerful elites. We can list, ad infinitum, Nupe national leaders who have played the leading and decisive roles in almost all the administrations and regimes that have ruled over Nigeria since Independence. The First Republic The immediate pre- and post-Independence Nigeria was dominated by the untold powers of the late Sardaunan Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello. But the real shadow-power behind Sir Ahmadu Bello was the shadowy Nupe man, the late Alhaji Aliyu Makama Nupe. Alhaji Aliyu Makama Nupe was the leading intellectual and one of the highly educated and most qualified Northern leaders in those days. In fact Sir Ahmadu Bello came to rely completely on Aliyu Makama because, by all standards, Aliyu Makama was the greater of the two. As the Deputy Premier of Northern Nigeria Alhaji Aliyu Makaman Nupe was officially Sardauna’s deputy. And he also officially occupied the very powerful position of the Minister of Finance. As a matter of fact the Northern Government of the First Republic of Sir Ahmadu Bello was nothing short of a ‘Government of Aliyu Makama’. Virtually everything about that government was planned and masterminded by Aliyu Makama the Nupe man. That is why when rebel coupists struck on that fateful the 15th of January, 1966, the military, headed by Ironsi and Gowon, gathered around Aliyu Makama and asked him to form a new government. And Aliyu Makama will have ended up the president of Nigeria had the army officers not taken over and initiated the Aguiyi Ironsi regime. In his days Alhaji Aliyu Makama’s Nupe influence on the Nigerian government and polity ramificated itself in many other forms. Many other Nupencizhi became powerful and influential in those days due to the direct and indirect powers of Alhaji Aliyu Makama Nupe. These, among countless many others, include, most prominently, Alhaji Ahman Patigi the Galadima Patigi, Alhaji Ibrahim Tako the Galadima Nupe, Alhaji Ndagi Faruk Tafidan Nupe, and so on an don. It was under the influence of this same Aliyu Makama that Alhaji Ibrahim Tako who, in the mid 1960s and as the Federal Minister of defence, went round the provisional schools in the North encouraging Northern students to join the army. When Alhaji Ibrahim Tako Nupe arrive Bida Provisional School, today’s Government College, Bida, his lecture inspired many students to opt to join the army. Among these were Sani Sami, Aliyu Magoro, Mamman Vatsa, and Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida had dreamed all his life to become an engineer but Aliyu Makama Nupe convinced him to join the army instead. The military regimes, with their coups and counter-coups, came and did away with Aliyu Makama’s First Republic. First it was Aguiyi Ironsi, then came Yakubu Gowon, and then there was General Murtala Muhammad. The Murtala Regime It was in the days of the Murtala Muhammed regime that a crop of Nupe military officers came to gradually occupy powerful supreme council military positions. These included Muhammed Inuwa Wushishi, Mamman Vatsa, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and some other Nupe army officers. M.I. Wushishi, the highest ranking Nupe man in the army, was first appointed as the Deputy Commandant of the Army School of Infantry and then later on he was appointed the Federal Commissioner for Industries and he was a full member of the Supreme Military Council. M.I. Wushishi was to become the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) during Alhaji Shehu Shagari’s the Second Republic. In his rise from the position of the Deputy Commandant of the Army School of Infantry through the Federal Commissioner for Industries and membership of the Supreme Military Council to being the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, General M.I. Wushishi, the Nupe man, became inevitably one of the most powerful men in the history of Nigeria. M.I. Wushishi played a key and vital role in the making and building of Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s. And he was a role model for the next generation of Nupe military officers who came to dominate and reshape the history of Nigeria for better or for worse. This next generation of Nupe army officers famously included General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (also a Nupe man from Wushishi), General Mamman Vatsa (a Nupe man from Gulu Vatsa), and General Abdulsalam Abubakar (of half-Nupe bloodlines from Minna). When the Buka Suka Dimka (said to be married to a Nupe or so woman) coup against General Murtala took place on the 13th of February 1976 it was a Nupe man, in the person of the then Lt. Col. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, who was able to disarm the coupists at the Federal Radio Station at Ikeja, thereby aborting the coup despite the killing of General Murtala by the coupists. The Shagari Administration As the Chief of Army Staff, General M.I. Wushishi was arguably the most powerful man during the Second Republic of Alhaji Shehu Shagari. But Shehu Shagari’s civilian administration was also dominated and controlled by another Nupe man, namely, Alhaji Shehu Ahmadu Musa Makama Nupe who was the Secretary to the Government of the Federation and arguably the most influential man in the Shehu Shagari government. Alhaji Shehu Ahmadu Musa was the brain, and the shadow ruler, behind President Shehu Shagari. It was the Aliyu Makama-Sardauna scenario being re-enacted again to the letter – even to the Sokoto head(Sir Ahmadu Bello, Alhaji Shehu Shagari)-Nupe deputy (Aliyu Makama, Shehu Musa) point! The Shagari administration was also dominated and controlled by another Nupe man in the person of the all-too-powerful politician, namely, Alhaji Suleman Takuma. As the National Secretary of the ruling NPN party Alhaji Suleman Takuma was more or less the ruling politician of the Shagari administration. But the NPN was literarily a Aliyu Makama Nupe party for the fact that the NPN party was nothing but a new-form of the NPC party of the First Republic which was virtually the brainchild and handiwork of Alhaji Aliyu Makama. And, in fact, Alhaji Aliyu Makama was the patron-founder of the NPN party. As a matter of fact it was Alhaji Aliyu Makama who single-handedly selected and backed Alhaji Shehu Shagari for the presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The Shagari administration was, as we can see from all the above, a Nupe administration through and through. During the Shagari administration the Chief of Staff (General M.I. Wushishi) was a Nupe man; the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (Alhaji Shehu Ahmadu Musa) was a Nupe man; the National Secretary to the Ruling NPN party (Alhaji Suleman Takuma) was a Nupe man and the political and administrative patron-backbone behind the Second Republic (Aliyu Makama Nupe) was a Nupe man... The Shagari administration was a Nupe administration indeed! Why Nupe is not a national or so-call majority tribe in Nigeria today It is not the Nigerian government of today that decide not to include Nupe as one of the national or majority tribes in Nigeria. It was the White men colonial administrators who relegated Nupe to the background. Frederick Lugard, the first Governor General of Nigeria, was mortally afraid of the Nupe people because Nupe presented the greatest opposition, threat and challenge to his imperialist and colonialist schemes of exploitation. In fact it was only after defeating the Nupe kingdom, at the 1897 Battle of Bida that the White people were able to establish Nigeria in January 1st 1901 in Lokoja right here in KinNupe. Throughout his term in office Frederick Lugard did everything to destroy Nupe and relegate Nupe to the background. It was thanks to the mischievous and wicked machinations of Frederick Lugard and Taubman Goldie that Nupe was demoted from being the number one tribe and ethnicity in Nigeria to a controversial and inconclusive minority status. Then there was also the White colonialists’ obsession with the idea of classifying the tribes of Nigeria in an hierarchical fashion with one claiming racial or ethnic superiority over the other. This of course, was a spill-over of the class system and racism structure that was inherent to the English society back in England. Every country the British colonised they immediately classified the people of that country into superior and inferior classes or majority and minority statuses. In Nigeria the White colonialists decided that they have to get a majority tribe from each of the three ‘Protectorates’ of Nigeria. They were looking for just one majority tribe in each of the three ‘Protectorates’ of the North, West and East. After picking Hausa-Fulani in the Northern Protectorate there was no way they could pick Nupe as another majority tribe in the Northern Protectorate again even though they were well aware of the fact that the population of the Nupe was more than that of the Yoruba and far more than that of the Ibos. In fact, and the White colonialists were well aware that even in the Northern Protectorate the population of the Nupe people was more than that of the Hausa people. That is why they precipitously merged the Hausas together with the Fulanis to form a fictitious ‘Hausa-Fulani’ race. The point here was that the population of the Nupes was more than that of the Hausas and that of the Fulanis separately thereby making the Nupe people the most populous people in the Northern Protectorate. But Frederick Lugard will not see to it that Nupe is listed as the majority tribe in the Northern Protectorate, so they invented the Hausa-Fulani race. But, and as I have earlier on demonstrated with incontrovertible statistics in this book, the population of Nupe people is still more than that of the Hausa-Fulani people combined. In any case the White men colonialists, headed by Frederick Lugard the Anti-Nupe, relegated Nupe to a mischievous position of a minority tribe in the Northern Proctectorate – a Northern minority tribe that was evidently and glaringly larger than the so-called majority tribes of the Yoruba in the Southwest and the Ibo in the Southeast. And that was how Nupe was demoted to an undue position of a minority tribe by the same British Colonial Government that had in the days before the advent of the Royal Niger Company and the West African Frontier Force sent ambassadors to the same Nupe Nation. Before the days of the Royal Niger Company, and in the whole of ancient Nigeria it was only the Nupe Nation that the British Government saw fit to send an ambassador directly from England thereby indirectly acknowledging the fact that Nupe was a majority tribe above the Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba and Ibos. But by the time Frederick Lugard arrived Nigeria and became the most influential administrator he immediately realized that the greatest threat to the imperialist machinations was the Nupe Nation which was the unipolar superpower in the Nigeria of those days. That was why Frederick Lugard immediately launched into his viral attack on the reputation and integrity of the Nupe Nation. From lying that the Nupe emirs are slave raiders to instigating vassal states under Nupe sovereignty to rebel against their Nupe overlords, Frederick Lugard used every means to destabilize and destroy the “dangerously large” Nupe Nation as he called it. After the conquest of the Nupe Nation in the aftermath of the Battle of Bida, Frederick Lugard and his colonial administrators deliberately balkanized the Nupe Nation into puny states that cannot stand on their own. This is the research thesis upon which the late Professor Idris Abdullahi from Patigi a major part of his academic career writing on. Frederick Lugard and his team of colonial administrators immediately divided the Nupe Nation into separate provinces whereby all those people under Nupe sovereignty were removed from Nupe sovereignty and given unexpected independence from Nupe. The Gwari-Kambari Province was carved out of the Nupe Nation; the Kabba-Igbira Province was also carved out of the Nupe Nation; and so on and on. And even the remaining Nupe Nation they didn’t leave alone. They gave almost have of the Nupe Nation on the trans-Niger part away to a so-called Yourba Ilorin Province. And this despite the fact that in the past Ilorin was itself a Nupe town founded and established by the Nupe warriors. With all these cutting aways the balkanization of the Nupe Nation was perfectly effected to ensure that the Nupe people are never united again to challenge the authority of the Colonial Goverenment. That was how the Nupe people were effectively disunted against themselves. And by the time that Colonial Government handed over power to a post-Independence Nigeria the national psyche of the Nigerians have been molded into the general assumption that the Nupe Nation is a nonentity in the makeup of the overall Nigerian polity. This wrong assumption that the Nupe Nation is insignificant in Nigeria only went in to serve the interest of the emergent leaders of post-Independent Nigeria who immediately grouped themselves into the so-called majority ethnicities of the Hausa-Fulani, the Yoruba and the Ibo. We immediately saw the Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba and Ibo hegemonsists claiming superiority over the Nupe people all in the name of a majority tribe statuses that the wicked and mischievous White men had granted them. It was as if these post-Independence hegemonists were not aware of the fact that before the coming of the White man there were virtiually no Hausa, Yoruba or Ibo people in Nigeria. It was the White man who came and invented the Hausa, Yoruba and Ibo people out of nothing in order for him, the White imperialist, to subjugate and demonte the ancient Kwararaf peoples of ancient Nigeria. Almost all the tribes that are considered as minority tribes in Nigeria today were part of the Kwararafa complex of old. The Future of Nigeria Belongs to to the Nupe People The place of the Nupe Nation in Nigeria today is a very deplorable one. But that does not mean that the Nupe Nation does not have a bright future in Nigeria. As a matter of fact the future of Nigeria belongs to the Nupe Nation. The Nupe Nation has the brightest future of all the over three hundred different tribes and ethnicities of Nigeria. The Nupe Nation has the largest most educated youth force in the whole of Northern Nigeria. WAEC and JAMB statistics have shown that Nupeland alone produces more students than nine northern states combined. Also KinNupe has one of the most educationally exposed youth in the whole of Nigeria. The Nupe have the largest and most competent civil service force in Northern Nigeria. Then of course we shouldnt forget the fact that it was this same powerful Nupe civil service force that built Kaduna, Sokoto, Niger and parts of Kano, Kwara, Kogi and the FCT into what they are today. The day the road from Bida to Patigi and the Baro Port are completed will be the day KinNupe will be transformed into the industrial and economic capital of West Africa the way Lagos is today. The economy of Lagos is more than that of 35 African countries combined. But the Baro-Bida-Patigi axis of KinNupe will overshadow Lagos as the industrial and economic centre of West Africa when the Baro Inland Port and the Road from Bida to Patigi are completed. Then, and of course, we shouldnt forget the fact that KinNupe (the Nupe Nation) might as well be sitting on top of the largest oil deposit in the whole of Africa. Geologists variously call it the Bida Basin, Nupe Basin or Lokoja-Bida-Lapai Basin or ‘The Niger Trough’. (Go and Google the words yourself) The confluence of the Niger and the Benue gave rise to one of the largest oil deposits in the world and it is from this Nupe Basin that even the Niger Delta petroleum is derived. Members of the Niger State committee on the Bida Basin Petroleum Deposit have been remarking that the present Niger-Delta petroleum that Nigeria subsists on is nothing compare to the Bida Basin or Nupe Basin petroleum that KinNupe or the Nupe Nation is sitting on. The Northern oligarchy and hegemonsits have been trying to keep quite about this extraordinary petroluem deposit, to save it for the future of the North but the present GEJ administration have been making frantic efforts to explore the Bida Basin in recent times. The future of Nigeria belongs to the Nupe Nation. The future Lagos and the future Niger Delta of Nigeria are all going to be here in KinNupe in the very near future.
Posted on: Wed, 21 May 2014 07:45:08 +0000
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