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When some highly placed government officials spoke in defence of the present Nigeria’s political structure and came up with the verdict that all the government’s appointments and recruitments into the federal establishments are based on equity and the so-called equality of geo-political zones and states, I just laugh.

I laugh not because there is logic or altruism in what they are saying. I laugh because those promoting such disjointed viewpoint are, indeed, unveiling their culpable ignorance or at best trying to shield from the rest of us the truth they knew of the political situation in Nigeria but don’t feel free to say it. And that truth is the continued marginalization of the Igbos by successive Nigerian regimes in one guise or the other since the Biafran war.

For the purpose of clarity, the present Nigeria’s political structure and by extension the socio-economic structure is never based on equity. And over the years, that inequity had been entrenched by actions and inactions of successive regimes in Nigeria since the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War and after. The only seeming equity is that the former political structure that came into existence via the Lord Lugard’s amalgamation and pacification of the people of the Lower Niger of 1914 in which the Northern and Southern protectorates became one country baptized as Nigeria, a name coined by Lugard’s wife from the River Niger, is that each of the protectorates has now three geo-political zones each.

This seeming equity was even maintained in Gen. Yakubu Gowon’s twelve-states structure of Nigeria even though the Igbos were disproportionately lumped in one state-East Central State-whereas their counterpart tribes in the tripod arrangement like the Hausa and Yorubas got more. Even the January 15, 1966 coupists recognized the need for balance hence they conceptualized the 14- states structure, seven for north and south respectively as stated in one of the coupists memoirs, The Five Majors: Why We Struck by Wale Ademoyega. That was never to be as their revolution was crushed and the rest has now become history.

But after the Gowon’s state creation exercise, subsequent states creation has utterly disregarded the equity factor. The Gen Murtala Mohammed’s states creation did not do much in the case of the Igbos. While the Hausa and Yoruba ethnic groups were getting many more states, the Igbos were again lumped in two states, Imo and Anambra, under a 19-states federal structure. As I had earlier stated in my former article on this issue, I still want to reiterate here that the injustice of states creation was so open that in the former Eastern Region, all the minorities put together had more states then than the Igbos who are the majority tribe in the area.

It was under the Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s states creation that the Igbos got two slots at a time as he splited both Imo and Anambra states and gave birth to additional two states-Abia and Enugu States in 1991, and thus brought to four the number of Igbo states.
Gen. Sani Abacha gave the Igbos one more state when he carved part of Abia and Enugu States and named it Ebonyi State, thus made it possible for Igbos to have five states in a federation where all the six geo-political zones had average of six states each. The North West is the only geo-political zone in the country with seven states. This unjustifiable arrangement, which brought us to a 36-states structure, has even widened the gulf of inequity in the polity the more.

Under the current inequitable arrangement, the North has 19 sates with far greater number of local governments than the South. The South trails behind with 17 states and less number of local governments. Equity would have meant that the North and the South gets 18 states each as well as equal number of local governments.

But the worst display of this ingrained and state imposed inequality is that the South East is the only zone with five states. This situation has persisted for years. The allocation of local governments to states across the country is so arbitrary. Some states have 40 council areas, some have 20 and some have 15. There are, indeed, no defining rules for such arbitrariness.
For years, the South East has borne the yoke of this state-imposed injustice, which it has reduced to marginalization by the government at the centre.

The zone has the least number of states, local councils, political wards and as such are not fairly represented at the federal government in terms of appointments and recruitments, the so-called federal character notwithstanding. We want this imbalance to be redressed. And the only way to redress it is by creating additional state from the South East. And that state is Njaba State.

At the National Assembly, it parades fewer senators and members of the House of Representatives. The zone has been short-changed in all the recruitments that were based on equality of states like the military, police and other para-military establishments and the Federal Civil Service foe so many years. We can go on and on and the list and the gap keep increasing and widening to no end.
It is on this premise that the clamour and desire for at least one additional state for the South East has been in the front burner of public discourse in recent times.

It got to the highest tempo during the former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s National Political Reform Conference. Though the Obasanjo regime saw the merit of the South East argument and promised to right the wrong but every thing ended up a promise.
With the advent of President Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration, the quest for the creation of additional state out of the South East gained more impetus and vive especially the quest for the creation of Njaba State out of the present Imo and Anambra States. The zones affected are Orlu and Ihiala. The quest and rationale for Njaba State has reached an advanced stage and it has the support of well-meaning people in the zone. The canvassers of the creation of Njaba State have taken its case to the Presidency as well as the National Assembly.

There is every hope that with the caliber of people sponsoring the creation of Njaba State and coupled with the fact that the proposed state will be economically viable and has basic infrastructural back-up for its take off, it will be favourably considered in the next states creation exercise.
Besides, the proposed state has population, manpower as well as mineral resources that will boost its internally generated revenue. The people that form the state have cultural affinities and kinship ties. They have a common linguistic heritage. They speak the same dialect of Igbo language. And they live within the same geographical area and had been co-existing peacefully for ages.

Giving the South East the Njaba State will assuage the long years of groaning and ill-feelings of neglect and marginalization which the people that will form the state had been consigned to for ages due to lack of adequate political representation at virtually all levels.
Creation of Njaba State will give the people of the area a sense of belonging and a sense of equity, which some government officials are daily drumming and mouthing.

The creation of Njaba State by the present administration would be one of its greatest achievements. We believe that Yar’Adua and the National Assembly will not fail us in this regard.
If the present political dispensation really wants to right the wrongs of the past, in the spirit of rule of law and equity, let it correct the imbalance in the present 36-states structure by creating Njaba State. It is its creation that will make South East have six states like the other geo-political zones in the country.