Professor of Sociology, BIC Ijeoma is conversant with the plight of Niger Delta people. The septuagenarian did not mince words in his response to recent controversial calls by some leaders in the North that the 13percent derivation accruing to oil producing states of the South-South geo-political zone was too much and should be revisited. Ijeoma, a member of the Constitutional Conference Commission of 1995 told HENDRIX OLIOMOGBE that such a demand amounts to a declaration of war.On Return to the 1954 and 1960 ConstitutionsTHE Northerners wanted autonomy in order to be able to keep their resources, which were principally groundnut. The East had nothing except coal, which was not in commercial quantity then. So they agreed to keep regional autonomy, which means that the regions could keep what they had and pay something to the loose centre. In 1954, that Constitution was promulgated but the Northerners believe that they own this country and that is the crisis that we are facing.I have always quoted what the former Premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello said on October 12, 1960: 'This nation called Nigeria shall be an estate to us from our great grandfathers. We shall vigorously resist a change of power. We shall manipulate the minorities of the North. We shall regard the South as a conquered territory.' That is the philosophy of the average Hausa man; that they own this country. Sir Ahmadu Bello's speech was widely reported in the media.The late Major Isaac Boro, who started the problem in the Niger Delta, was my boy. I made him President of the Students' Union at the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN). He was always lamenting that his Ijaw kinsmen built house on top of elevated raft, they will urinate from there into the water, they will defecate from there into the water, drink the water and cook with the water.The Northerners are interested only in the oil but they do not want the Niger Delta people to live a clean life. It is oil that has been keeping Nigeria together.When we started the South-South People's Assembly, we had an interactive session with the North, the Middle Belt. They came to Port Harcourt. We told the former Bayelsa State Governor Diepriye Alameseigha to give them logistics to go to the creeks and see how our people were living. The former Minister of Defence, Gen TY Danjuma was their spokesman and when they came back, he said that the South-South people deserve to get the Presidency.MEND, A Reaction Against Northern Oligarchic RuleTHE Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) people revolted when the Northerners were taking everything. If you go to the old Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC), open their computers; you will discover that most of the contractors were Northerners. No Southerner had anything from OMPADEC. When they give out oil blocs, South-South people didn't have oil blocs. Northerners had oil blocs. They shared the most lucrative oil blocs. They devastate the environment of the people without anything for them, so if Boro, Ken Saro Wiwa and MEND started talking, they are not mad. Saro Wiwa was extra-judicially killed and Boro died in mysterious circumstances. These were the foremost agitators for the rights of the oil producing areas.It doesn't bother them that Saro Wiwa was not allowed to appeal. He was condemned and executed. In the prison there in Kaduna, Dr. King, the pastor who killed somebody and was condemned to die about three years ago, is still alive. They have not executed him, but Saro Wiwa was hurriedly executed without option of fine, because the North was bent on silencing any Southerner that challenged the status quo. If you drive a person to the wall, he must react. South-Southerners are being driven to the wall. They are only reacting.To make the matter worse, my friend, Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu, the Governor of Niger State, who was our Secretary when I was in the Presidency, is saying that the 13percent derivation should be revisited. The type of sharing formula that we all agreed on at Independence has been jettisoned. After the war, the Northerners single-handedly abrogated everything that we agreed and gave us zero from 50percent. Former President Shehu Shagari came and gratuitously gave us 1.5percent. Former Military President Ibrahim Babangida came and gratuitously gave us 5percent.We Should Go Back to 50percent Derivation; 13percent Not EnoughAT the 1995 Conference to even gain back what we had at Independence, 13percent was a compromise. What was written in the Constitution was not less than 13percent. We have not got the President with the political will to implement not less than 13percent. Not less than 13percent means that it can be 50percent but you need a person with the political will to implement it. The Northerners gave us 13percent and now turn around to say that they want to share from it.Their area has never been devastated. They have roads everywhere. There are no roads in the Niger Delta. I come from the Niger Delta, from Aboh, Delta State. There is no road to my place but we have oil and gas. They set up a Liquefied National Gas company and appointed themselves as Managing Directors and Board Members but no Aboh man has been a Managing Director or a member of the Board. They have developed 458 mw of electricity at Okpai, which they passed on to the national grid at Onitsha, Anambra State; but my town Okpai has no road, no light, we have no drinking water.All are telling the Northerners enough is enough. If we want Nigeria to remain as one, let's go back to what our forefathers agreed on in 1960 as a condition for remaining in one country. It is not going to be renegotiated anew. The military suspended the Constitution. They should bring back the Constitution of 1960, because that was the condition under which we all agreed to be in one Nigeria.We are asking that they should return to the status quo ante of 1960. If they want it, we go back to 1964 when they were rigging election and men were pregnant with ballot boxes. Zik called them and said that if you had decided to destroy our national unity, then call a round table conference and let us discuss how we are going to share our national assets before we destroy the country.Resource Control is The SolutionI am telling you that we have reached a situation where the centre can no longer hold anymore. We should sit down and agree how to be one nation. If you are giving the South-South their oil, we must agree on the condition. You are not going to impose it on us. The Northern military oligarchy imposed all the obnoxious things on the rest of the country because they had the guns and the bombs. That period is over. Every state has its own militia and nobody is going to organise an easy coup. If they think they can organise a coup again and take over Nigeria, it is a waste of time. The Ogoni people are ready to fight. The South-South people are ready to fight. MASSOB people are ready to fight. The OPC people are ready to fight. We are ready to fight to defend this nation.In the 1970s, the Northern mafias in Kaduna with the Emirs were dictating what was happening in the country. It is no longer so. If we must sit down and agree that we will be one nation, we must agree on the conditions as we did in 1960. In the 1930s, Southerners were slaughtered in the North for very minor provocations. In 1945, Southerners were slaughtered in Jos, nothing happened. Nobody was tried, nobody was hanged. In 1953 the Igbos and Yorubas were slaughtered. In May 1960, they slaughtered the Southerners until the pogrom, which was the Mother of Slaughters.After each slaughter, people will start talking of reconciliation. They killed one Hausa soldier in the Niger Delta, the Joint Task Force hunted everybody there until they caught one man called General Mammy Water and killed him, but all the people killing Southerners and throwing bombs in the North not one person has been executed and you are saying we are one Nigeria. Let us sit down and think: we want one Nigeria but we want Nigeria with regional autonomy as was agreed at the Aburi Conference, which Gen. Yakubu Gowon chickened out of. If Gowon had not chickened out of it, there would have been no war.The late Igbo leader, Chief Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu did not want war. In fact, he said it openly and I quote: 'We in Biafra did not want the war. We fought in self-defence.' Nigeria opened the fire and the Biafrans were not going to fold their arms and be crushed. They fought back. So our leaders should know that we are tired of gimmicks. They should sit down and bring back the conditions our fathers set down to enable us settle down as one country.Blame Gowon For the Current Centralised GovernmentTHE British in 1951 saw that we could not become one united nation with a central government; that was why they started the 1954 Constitution that enthroned regional autonomy. The Northerners came after the war and brought back the 1951 arrangement that the British had rejected and that is why we are having problems. They took everything. We own the oil but they are the ones enjoying the oil. We fought to get 13percent. I was a member of the Constitutional Conference Commission in 1995 under former Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha. We midwifed the conference. Since we got this centralised government, it's been crisis all along. The Northerners should know that it couldn't work. No centralised structure can work in this country without crisis.MEND Will Not Go Back to The TrenchesI am not sure that Boko Haram has an agenda, except that they want to Islamise the North. Nobody will deny them that. I am not going to be a Muslim. They can sit down with their Northern governors. If they want the North to be Islamised, they should make provisions for non-Muslims. The North is not all Muslim, but if you start killing innocent people, can we all fold our hands. If the government cannot protect us, they should allow us to start carrying guns, so that if they shoot you, you shoot them.If you say we have policemen, who run away when Boko Haram comes, the state should be able to defend itself. Nigeria has shown that she cannot defend herself; maybe they have their own strategy, which I don't know because I am not in government. I am not satisfied that the policemen could be doing what they do.As for MEND, I don't think they will go back to the trenches. MEND is a very minor part of the Niger Delta Frontier Force. It is only a small fraction.
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