By Douglas Anele
Anytime I suggest, with good reasons, that successive federal governments have systematically marginalised south eastern Nigeria since the Biafran war ended in 1970, some critics allege that I am over flogging the marginalisation issue, that I must be a tribalist, and that my claim is tantamount to making excuses for incompetent and corrupt Igbo political leaders.
Now, it is probably true that a lot has been written on the subject of Igbo marginalisation within the Nigerian system; but according to an Igbo aphorism, if a hand does not beat a drum, the drum would not produce any sound.
As long as Nigerian government treats the Igbo or any ethnic nationality in Nigeria unfairly, it is legitimate and proper for the citizens to draw attention to it, so that corrective measures can be taken to correct the situation before it gets out of hand.
With regard to the allegation of being a tribalist for criticising continued marginalisation of Igboland by past and present federal government, my response is that those who know me well know that I am a cosmopolitan.
A cosmopolitan is someone who believes that despite our differences the human family is one and that everyone has a right to the pursuit of happiness and well-being anywhere in the world.
Therefore, anytime I write against marginalisation of Ndigbo, I am automatically arguing that it is wrong to treat any other ethnic group that way.
In otherwords, following Immanuel Kant’s moral prescription, I maintain that it is wrong for Nigerian government to implement policies and programmes which suggests that a certain part of the country is less important than others.
For national unity, peace and justice, all Nigerians, irrespective of their ethnic origin and religious affiliation, should have a sense of belonging to one nation dominated by fairness and justice.
On the issue of making excuses for incompetent political leaders, no one who has followed my modest contributions to national discourse would dream of calling me a sycophant.
Indeed, I have always maintained that, collectively, Igbo political leadership has been a colossal failure, except for a few bright spots epitomised in the administration of late Chief Samuel Mbakwe of old Imo state.
Largely, political leaders in the southeast have wasted, and are still squandering, wonderful opportunities for providing exemplary leadership for the people.
Igbo leaders owe the people a sacred duty to develop Igboland, if for no other reason than to repair the terrible devastation of eastern region during the civil war, and showcase to Nigerians the quality a president of Igbo extraction can bring into governance at the highest level.
Unfortunately, up to now, Igbo politicians and leaders of thought are yet to forge a collective strategic vision or set of interconnected visions and action plan for the future of Igboland.
Now, agbata ekee politicians motivated by bulimic desire for primitive accumulation dominate politics in the five states that constitute southeast geopolitical zone. The same is true about ministers and federal legislators from Igboland.
It not surprising, therefore, that economic and infrastructural development in the zone is sluggish due to indiscipline and corruption at the highest levels of governance.
That is a matter for serious concern, especially given the steady decline of southeast as the hub of informal economy in Nigeria. Given this scenario, I can never for whatever reason make excuses for incompetent leadership or support mediocrity in Igboland.
Recently, marginalisation of Igboland (and southern Nigeria generally) reared its ugly head, this time round in the form of allocation of new Polling Units (PUs) to the thirty-six states of the federation and Abuja by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Keep in mind that PUs, which, by determining the number of polling booths during elections, constitute the foundation of our electoral process and democratic evolution. According to media reports, INEC has approved the creation of additional 30,027 new PUs in addition to the existing 119,973 PUs, making 150,000 polling units nationwide.
Given that existing PUs were created in 1996, INEC’s move to create more in preparation for general elections next year is reasonable. After all, more Nigerians of voting age have emerged since then. Again, it is important to avoid overcrowding at the booths and ensure that prospective voters do not have to walk long distances to vote.
The main problem is serious lopsidedness in INEC’s allocation of the PUs. Of the 30,027 new units it delineated, the commission allocated over 21,000 to the north and Abuja, while the south got slightly over 8,000.
In practical terms, allocation of a PU means provision of voting facilities for 500 eligible voters. When a state gets 1,000 new PUs, for instance, it has additional facilities to accommodate half a million eligible voters.
Hence, the over 21,000 polling units given to the north, including Abuja, translates to the accommodation of more than 11,000,000 potential eligible voters, while over 8,000 allocated to the south yield 4,000,000 eligible voters, far less than half of what INEC provided for the north.
Although the nauseating imbalance in INEC’s allocations is obvious, a closer look at the details reveals that the southeast was the least favoured of all the six geopolitical zones. It is ridiculous that INEC created additional 1,200 PUs in Abuja, whereas the entire southeast comprising Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo states got only 1,167!
Now, Borno and Yobe states received 1,336 and 790 additional PUs respectively, almost two times what the entire southeast got. Yet, Borno and Yobe are the hardest hit by the Boko Haram insurgency, probably with up to 500,000 internally displaced persons that have migrated to several states in the Middle Belt and mostly to the South.
Jega’s excuse is that “everybody hopes that normalcy would be restored in those areas before the 2015 general elections”! Thus, based on mere hope, the INEC chairman did not reckon that the situation might indeed get worse as the elections approach, that the number of casualties and demographic shifts might escalate to a level that could be statistically significant, and that many of those who migrated to more peaceful states in the south might not return. It means that for Jega, the current violence in the northeast is demographically inconsequential, which is an unrealistic assumption indeed.
A panoramic view of the table for allocation of polling units gives a strong impression that INEC, led by Prof. Jega, has a hidden agenda to promote the electoral strength of northern Nigeria against the south. Naturally, Jega has tried to defend himself and INEC, but his arguments are hollow and unconvincing.
In a session with journalists penultimate Wednesday, the INEC chairman told those present that “When you get the document we have provided here, please go through it thoroughly and you will understand there is no basis at all to talk about favouring any part of the country.”
Now, if the document Jega was referring to includes the table containing a list of the thirty six states and Abuja, post-AFIS data used for creating new PUs, total number of existing PUs in all the states and the federal capital, and new ones allocated to each of these, then something is fatally wrong with his logic.
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