Why is Arewa Puffing?

Members of the ACF

Perspective

The National Publicity Secretary, Afenifere, Comrade YinkaOdumakin, contends that the demographical dissimilarities between the Northern part of Nigeria and other parts of the country is not as wide as often exaggerated

The attention of Afenifere has been drawn to the recent comments by the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) on the reports of the 2014 National Conference and the imperatives of reconstituting Nigeria.

We ordinarily would have ignored the statement laced with the usual feudal arrogance, outrightmisinformation;atavistic obfuscation and delusory myopia were it not that falsehood repeated time and again may start to wear the garb of truth.

Let us from the outset make it clear that the unitary order which the House of Arewa has used to limit the flourishing of the component units of Nigeria for decades has now entered a terminal crisis with shrinking receipt from oil and like a one-legged man dancing ‘skelewu’ will sure hit the ground even if he has all the stage to himself.And when the fall comes,ACF and co-travelers would wish we had done the needful .They should therefore perish the thought that Afenifere is cajoling them to allow a restructured Nigeria.

We are amused that ACF is still peddling the funny claim of the North being 80 per cent of Nigeria in land mass and with a higher population.We thought these fallacies have been laid to rest in 2014 after the Arewa insensitivity ruffled feathers with offensive propaganda to that effect and some of their delegates taunting their co-conferees from the South with map of Nigeria drawn at the back of their ‘babanriga’ showing the North as 80 per cent of Nigeria.

The following were brought to their attention then:
That the figures of all the censuses held in Nigeria till date have not been credible due to hegemonic interferences with what should have just been  an exercise to provide scientific data to aid planning and development.

That the natural boundaries of the North and the South are Rivers Niger and Benue but the British drew artificial boundaries to favor the North and punish the south for agitating for independence.And having cornered that advantage of bigger land mass, why using it to harvest revenue from the central purse instead of cultivating its land no longer an asset to our Arewa compatriots?

That even if the higher population claim were true, why would a man say his neighbors should not send their children to the best schools because they have to cater for his own children who are more than theirs?

That statistics show that between 2009 and 2012,accruals to the federation pool were made up of 68 per cent from the South-south, 23 per cent from South-west and 8 per cent from South-east.The Sharing for local governments on the contrary revealed that those who provided almost 100 per cent of the revenue share only 46 per cent while those who brought little to nothing took 54 per cent.

As per their claim of lopsidedness of representation at the conference, we wish to state that we are bewildered how some people can continue to tell such untruth about recent event.Each state of the federation was asked to nominate three delegates to the conference while the nationalities organisations in each of the six geo-political zones were asked to nominate 15 delegates each.The other categories of delegates were either professional groups, civil societies or many others who were also asked to reflect the geo-political zones. It is only those who see fairness in only their domination that could have any issue with such selection process.

All the over 600 resolutions taken at the conference were by consensus as delegates never had to vote once.The only issues that remained contentious were the percentages of increase in derivation,the minerals development fund and the disaster relief fund.The point of disagreement was when someArewa delegates insisted that they would only agree to the 5 per cent increase in derivation and same for mineral resources development all over Nigeria on the condition that the 5 per cent earmarked for disaster intervention fund should be ONLY for areas where Boko Haram are operating while other delegates frowned at making Boko Haram a derivation item .The compromise struck was to refer the items to the president for a technical committee harmonisation.

The view about the lack of capacity of the conference's decisions to be the basis of a new constitution is laughable when it emanates from those who know that the 1999 constitution is a document written by ONE unelected professor for Abacha's self-succession and yet they are defending it because of the non -sustainable advantages they think it confers.
Arewa is free to do as it pleases with the decisions of the confab but the immutable laws of social engineering do not bow to any hegemony on the long run.