One Nigeria my foot

One Nigeria my foot

One Nigeria my foot
Confab: North rejects creation
of additional state for South-
East
Even before the proposal for the
creation of one more state for the South-
East geo-political zone is tabled at plenary
for discussion, the North has rejected the
plan, saying the zone does not have the
required landmass and population to
warrant the new state.

The opposition of the North to the creation
of more states in the country and
particularly for the South-East, is
contained in a 46-page document,
prepared by the Arewa Consultative Forum,
ACF, for all northern delegates to the
ongoing National Conference.

The document, which is entitled “Key Issues
before the Northern Delegates to the 2014
National Conference”, also described
Northern Nigeria as the “backbone and
strength of Nigeria” and has already been
distributed to the northern delegates.

The ACF said it opposed the creation of
more states in Nigeria because too many
states have tended to convert them into
what it called “mere cost or effort centres”
at the expense of socio-economic
development.

“It is against this backdrop that the ACF
believes that the creation of any
additional state at this point in time is
counter-productive and therefore, should
be kept on hold until the need can be
justified in future.

“The argument that creation of states
should be on the basis of equality
irrespective of population and landmass is
inconsistent with the elementary concept of
justice, since injustice is not only when
equals are treated unequally but also when
unequals are treated equally”.

The northern group argued further that
going by the population average per state,
each of the 36 states of the federation
could be assumed to have an average of
3,888,987 and a landmass of 27,327
square kilometre.

Using its baseline land mass and average
population for each of the states, ACF
argued that the South-East with a total
population of 16,381, 729 and a landmass
of 33,664 square kilometres, presents each
of the five states in the zone with a
population of 3, 276,345 and a landmass of
33,664 square kilometres.

ACF, therefore, argued that the population
per state in the South-East is far less than
the national average by 612,642 while its
landmass of 33,664 square kilometres is not
up to 25 per cent of the National Average.

The group maintained that the total land
mass of the South-East is just a little
above the National Average per state.

On the other hand, the ACF boasted that
its seven states in the North-West alone,
boasts of a population of 35,786,994 and a
land mass of 222,120 square kilometres,
with an average population of 5,112,421,
which it claimed is 1,223,434 higher than
the national average.
Turning to the South-West, the northern
group pointed out that the six states in the
zone have a small population of
27,581,994, which amounts to 4,596,999
per state, which is 1,320,654 far higher
than the South-East average.

But the ACF conceded that by land mass,
the South-West with a figure of 78,774
square kilometres is 13,129 square
kilometres or twice the South-East average.

The group argued that for any state to be
created in the South-East, the South-West
must have up to nine states first, if
population were to be used as the deciding
factor and as many as 12 more states if
land mass were to be the deciding factor.

The north argued: “This proposition, which
formed the cardinal position of the South-
East since the 1994 Constitutional
Conference, has been crafted to whittle
down any political advantage the north
could exercise in Nigeria despite its huge
territorial size and large population.

“Yet, the concept of geo-political zones has
no place in our constitution and it should
remain so,” the group maintained