North ready for break-up: Keep your oil, we’ll keep our land –Ango Abdullahi Professor Ango Abdullahi, is a leader of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and by his own reckoning was one of the 10 people that drew up the constitution and “signed it into life”. But his stay in the party is no longer rosy. He insists Jonathan has committed unpardonable sins against the North and has been up in arms against his regime.he spoke yesterday from his Maidunya farms, Samaru, Zaria, I want to talk to you about the on-going National Conference. Some documents from some groups calling for secession from Nigeria are flying around. The Yoruba want Oduduwa republic, Niger Delta wants to go. The Igbo want Biafra. Why? Nigeria was put together, not by me, not by you. It was put together by the British colonial masters. Of course, when they put Nigeria together, there was no consultation even with the local chiefs, the local chiefdoms. They carved out protectorates initially- the Lagos colony, the Southern protectorate and the Northern protectorate. And at some point Lugard decided that for administrative convenience and for effective exploitation of Nigeria’s resources, they needed to merge these protectorates together in 1914. That gave birth to Nigeria. Some people say it was God. I would rather say it was the British colonial masters that created Nigeria, maybe against the wish of the people who would not want to see this kind of arrangement. Having done so, they tried to organize the country from 1914 up to 1960 when they left us. And by the time they left us, they were able to convince us that it was going to be beneficial for the country to remain under certain constitutional mechanisms and arrangements. This is why they preferred; given the diversities of the country, its historical antecedents, a federal system of government that leaves a lot of authority and powers to sections of the country. That’s why we started with three regions – Eastern Nigeria, Western Nigeria, and Northern Nigeria in 1960. By 1963, the Midwest region was also created. Apart from the federal constitution, each region also had its own constitution. That again leaves a lot of powers devolved to these regions. That understanding we had experienced was that even the region themselves were not as homogenous as they should be. the present insurgency is only ten years old. Boko Haram is only ten years old. It is much younger than OPC, much younger than MASSOB, much younger than Niger Delta militants. It is recent; very recent. When the OPC and MASSOB were talking about their own agenda, the issue of balkanizing Nigeria was not important. Why is it that because of the insurgency here in the North, some people are saying yes; because of the insurgency by Northerners, the Nigerian state is not tenable. This is absolute nonsense. It’s not an excuse. So, for me, they must find other excuses for Nigeria to feel untenable, unsustainable. Certainly not because of Boko Haram. There had been insurgencies similar to Boko Haram before. And steps were taken to mitigate and overcome them. There is something we suggested should be done two or three years ago. I have a document that we presented to the President from the Northern Elders Forum; bringing the suggestion out that this is a localised affair. Anybody who thinks that Boko Haram insurgency is religious must be thinking upside down. Bokoharam It’s basically socio-economic and political agitation. And this is what is contained in our document. The crisis we are having is a socio-economic manifestation of failures of the Nigerian state in this part of our country, or in that location in the country, just like it was in the Niger Delta or elsewhere.If you want to take resource control, take it, if you like. For example, you want oil, we want our land. Yes! The North has 75% of the land of this country and it’s our resource. And if you want to keep your oil, we keep our land, our cattle, our agriculture. We are happy with that. We are okay with that. That’s why we are not afraid if this country balkanizes. THE SUN
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 23:14:45 +0000
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