The human nature does not tolerate being marginalised or being singled out for punishment for no reason at all. The oppressed finds every means possible to react to such ill-treatment.
In the agitation against the perceived marginalisation of the South East geopolitical zone, different groups have continued to employ different approaches to convey their feelings to the Federal Government.
Whereas Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB), for instance, believes that by threatening secession, government could be moved to address the imbalance and the alleged years of neglect of the Igbo nation, on the other hand, Olisa Agbakoba, a senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN), who also is sufficiently unhappy over the treatment being meted out to his side of the country, thinks that treading the legal route would be more dignified.
At a recent meeting attended by experts and operators in various sectors of the Nigerian economy, extensive discussion centred on the two approaches and the propriety of such moves.
The polity was heated up recently when some Northern youth groups handed the people of South East living in that part of the country a quit notice, which expires on October 1, 2017. The Arewa youths said the quit notice was a direct offshoot of the May 30th sit-at-home order enforced by Kanu and his group, in all the states of the Eastern zone, which paralysed economic activities. IPOB claimed that the exercise was to remember all the Igbos who died in the struggle for self determination in the 1960s.
X-raying Kanu’s IPOB secessionist campaign, an operator in the oil industry at the meeting came to the conclusion that although the group’s method at driving home its request or conveying its anger over the state of affairs in the country as they affect the South East in Nigeria may not be salutary, it does not, however, render inconsequential the merit of the agitation.
According to the private sector operator, “It is high time Nigeria began to take that young man (Kanu) seriously. If he could successfully mobilise the youth to paralyse activities in the whole of South East, it means government will be ignoring him at its own peril.”
Stressing that there’s merit in IPOB’s agitation after all, the businessman said: “O yes, I am not from the South East; I am not an Igbo man, but I have the conscience to admit that the Igbo have not been fairly treated in Nigeria. For instance, it is the only zone with five states with the least local governments in a country where sharing formula is dependent on the number of states and local governments; it is the zone with the worst federal roads; it is the area that has the highest cutoff marks into federal colleges, federal character does not apply; one group has been favoured to the extreme while the other has also been neglected to the extreme.”
When reminded that the zone is not the poorest in the country, the expert said: “Yes, but through self efforts.”
It was also noted that the agitation was no longer the concern of the jobless youths in South East, but the highly educated and wealthy individuals, including those in the Diaspora, who sponsor the group’s activities.
A participant at the meeting, emphasizing that the agitation may be justified given the stark evidence of ill-treatment of Kanu’s part of the country, said: “To tell you that the zone is neglected, Olisa Agbakoba recently dragged the government to court on the same matter. So, it is not just about Kanu, it is a sore point that touches everyone from that part of the country.”
At a recent media event, Agbakoba, a former national president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), said of Nnamdi Kanu: “Here’s a guy who no one knew, suddenly springs up; why? It is because the politicians have created the space. Politicians are not on ground, they sit in Abuja and talk; nobody listens to them; they are detached from the people. And people can relate to their own ethnicities or sub-national groups. So, Nnamdi Kanu sees there’s an opportunity to take over the South East; he goes there, he discovers there’s marginalisation, unhappiness and there is poverty, and they join him, but the south east politicians meanwhile are in Abuja canvassing with other politicians for Abuja power and they leave their home porous; now this guy goes in there to fill the vacuum and they are complaining. I have nothing against him except that he must do what he is doing according to Nigerian law.”
Agbakoba recently filed a Fundamental Rights Class Action at the Federal High Court Enugu and is pending before Justice A.R. Mohammed, against the Federal Republic of Nigeria for himself and on behalf of the South East zone on grounds of discrimination pursuant to Section 42 of the 1999 Constitution. This action was by Originating Summons supported by an affidavit of 99 paragraphs and a statement.
Agbakoba’s application is premised on the following: Total neglect of the his geopolitical zone by the Federal Government in terms of infrastructure and general federal presence making the Applicant feel not part of the Federal Government; Abandonment of the Niger Bridge to collapse and failure to build the ‘Second Niger Bridge’ making the Applicant feel isolated from other parts of 1st Respondent and causing him apprehension about disaster on crossing the existing bridge; Abandonment of Federal Roads, which are death traps and robbery baits and occasioning and constraining on the Applicant grueling road journeys within the Geopolitical Zone. Failure to develop strategic new roads especially the Anam-Nzam Federal Road linking the South-East with the North-Central at Idah in Kogi State to give the Applicant easy access to the northern part of Nigeria; Failure to exploit the Oil/Gas Reserves in the Anambra Basin and stalling the Applicant’s legitimate expectation from employment and derivation funds for development of the Applicant’s South-East Zone, and Abandonment of the Enugu Colliery and depriving the Applicant of his legitimate expectation from employment and derivation funds for the development of the Applicant’s South-East Zone.
Others are: Failure to develop trade-friendly ports and customs policies and establish ‘ease-of-business’ platforms to assist the Applicant’s trading brothers and sisters to do better and operate on a higher and modern scale in trading, which makes the Applicant to spend money to support relatives; Failure to have an operational international cargo airport at Owerri to aid trading, which causes the Applicant to spend huge sums of money to support trading relatives to haul airborne goods by road from Lagos, , with the attendant risks; Failure to dredge the Lower Niger and establish a Port at Onitsha to aid trading which causes the Applicant to spend huge sums of money to support trading relatives to haul seaborne goods by road from Port Harcourt or Lagos, with the attendant risks; Disparity in States structure which puts the Applicant’s South-East Zone behind every other Geopolitical Zone in political and judicial appointments and representation at the National Assembly, as well as in revenue allocation; Foisting low revenue allocation status on the Applicant’s South-East Zone as a result of failure to exploit Oil/Gas and Coal and as a result of the said structural imbalance; Over-policing and police menacing of the South-East with alarming number of police ‘check-points’ at which massive extortion of billions of naira annually go on, even while violent crimes continue as if there were no police operatives, and Abandoning the South-East to be swallowed up by erosion; failing to respond to calls to check widening gullies in the South-East, especially in Agulu, Nanka and Obosi all in Anambra State, which have claimed expansive farmlands and homelands and leveled homes, displacing people.”
In the case that comes up on October 9, 2017, Agbakoba is seeking the sum of N1trillion as damages against the Federal Government to be shared among the five states of the South-East.
His main point is that citizen is entitled to equal treatment in the country.
In his published article titled, ‘The Nnamdi Kanu phenomenon’, Reuben Abati, a former presidential spokesperson, noted that “crisis management is an important part of nation-building. We have failed to manage most of the crises that have befallen our nation, on a sustainable basis, and that is why every proverbial snake that is killed suddenly resurrects.”
According to Abati, “It is the reason we have produced a country where the population of the aggrieved appears to be growing daily. It is the reason Nnamdi Kanu and his followers have become the fish-bone in the throat of government. As things stand, there is no stronger voice in Igboland today than that of Nnamdi Kanu. The Igbo elites and the self-styled political leaders of the East know that Kanu is more influential than all of them put together. How many among them can command a willing crowd of 5, 000 to their doorsteps? The politicians hire crowds, but the crowds go to Kanu and obey him.”
In a recent interview with Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa, renowned industrialist, enterprise developer, international consultant and a former president/CEO of Neimeth International Pharmaceutical Plc, he was of the opinion that there could be a deliberate policy, to keep the people of South-east down in the scheme of things in the country, which may have resulted in the agitations by certain groups.
Ohuabunwa said: “We must face the truth and speak the truth, and sometimes it may be difficult to understand people’s motivation until you are in their shoes. It is easy for you to say ‘no victor, no vanquished’ if you are the vanquished, but if you are the victor, it’s not easy to look at the vanquished and just say you’re equal. I’m giving this caveat because I’m going to be making my comments from the other side, but I’m reasonable enough to understand that I do not know whether if I’m on this other side I would be saying exactly what I’m saying. Having said so, I believe there was probably an unwritten agreement not to allow certain sections to rise again, something like, ‘This people have caused us trouble, and this is why they caused us trouble: they are hardworking, they are very educated. How do we keep them down?’ It is a natural thing that can happen and I think it happened in the Nigerian case.”
According to him, “The reason I support that theory is that in my own career, when I got to the point of being made a director in a multinational company that didn’t belong to Nigerians but was headed by Nigerians, the day I was appointed to the Board after a long argument, the chairman of my company said, ‘Well, we have no choice to admit Sam to this Board despite the fact that he was an Ojukwu soldier’. That statement had meaning. It was loaded. So if I was suspicious that there was either a policy, an understanding or a desire, that took it away. And since then, most of the things that happened bear this out.”
“Why do we have the worst roads? Why are we the area with the least number of states in our zone? Other zones have six, some seven, we have five. We have the least number of local governments. Why? Is it just an accident of history or is it a deliberate act? My thinking is that it’s a deliberate act. And again, as I said, if you are in the mind of the victor, you might justify it because if I feel you’ve caused me problem, I don’t think that I will naturally want to give you the ability to cause more problems. That’s why I’m being balanced in my view. However, if we are sincere about ‘no victor, no vanquished’, if we understand that the people of the South-east, for example, were not looking for a war to fight, were not looking for a country to go to, but that Biafra came as a result of nothing else to find… It is an established fact that the people of the South-east had no other choice,” he further explained.
Zebulon Agomuo
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