Over recent weeks, northern and southern Nigerians have been at loggerheads over the vexed issue of resource control and how to share Nigeria's oil wealth.. At the ongoing National Conference in Abuja, northern delegates have suggested a increments in derivation for northern states, demanding that they get an automatic 5% of oil revenue, while southern delegates want to see a return to the original 1957/58 resource control agreement entered into at independence.
This disagreement has led to a series of threats being issued from both sides, with several northern groups demanding that southerners relocate back down south. On the other hand, community organisations in the oil-producing south have threatened to resume their armed struggle unless they are given 100% resource control.
Last week, the debate got uglier when the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) said that Igbo traders operating in northern Nigeria would forfeit their investments to the tune of about N45trn if northerners continued to be maltreated in the southeast. It issued this threat in response to a proposal by the Imo State government that it intends to issue identity cards to all
northerners resident in the state.
Imo State's Governor Rochas Okorocha, had reportedly directed northerners resident in the state to register to obtain residential cards so that the government could check the influx of shady
characters from troubled areas in the north and prevent insurgency in the state. Although the state government denied having such plans, the development was criticised by as capable of polarising Nigerians.
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