Cheated: FG denied South East N640b – Annie Okonkwo
By TAIWO OLUWADRE
Saturday, April 19, 2008

“The worst injustice Nd’Igbo ever suffered in Nigeria after the civil is the fewer number os states and LGA the area has as against other geo-plolitical zones of the country. I see it as a deliberate policy of the Nigerian government since 1999 to make sure the region remains backward, under-developed and trail behind others in the affairs of the nation. This hard truth makes me feel sad”.

This was the lamentation of Senator Annie Okonkwo of the PDP representing the Anambra Central senatorial district presently.

He said this when he granted Saturday Sun audience in his home at Lagos recently and said until this is corrected in the next constitution review, there is yet to be justice in Nigeria, especially regarding the fate of Nd’Igbo.

According to him, a situation where the entire Igbo nation of five states have a total number of Local Government Areas that is less than that of the old Kano State of Jigawa and Kano is the height of injustice any people could be subjected to.

Ripping off a people
Our people are now the minority in the nation. All the talks of Igbo being a majority body is only in population. Yes, Nd’Igbo command the highest population on ethnic breakdown, but the government of Nigeria, especially since the return to democracy in 1999 regrettably reduced us to the worst of the minorities with the worst form of marginalisation as our lot.
In these years – between 1999 and 2007, the South East zone lost at least N640b in earnings from federal government revenue.

If we had six states, that is one more to the five we have now, and more LGAs as other zones, we would have earned from federal allocation at least this amount. This is just the raw figure because there is no way we can calculate the multiplier effects of this revenue in areas of human capital development, social infrastructure development and the rest. It seems all calls for the upping of the states of the South East to six like in other zones were intentionally rebuffed to hold us down.

The truth is that South East, in addition to having the least number of states also has the poorest number of local councils, and by implication public officers who should have ran the governments of these levels.

My call
My stand as a senator now is that when the time comes for deliberation on the creation of more states, we will champion a cause for the creation of one more state for the zone. And if the federal government decides to create more states in the other zones, South East should get one more than other zones, and since we would hardly recover what we lost over these years, we will at least start from that point on a new note.
Such issues or denial and neglect makes legislators at the National Assembly to meet from time to time in the South East caucus to deliberate.

Actually, we don’t meet so often, but when the need arises, we don’t fail to do that, and that forum has always served as a platform for issues like this.

And to let you actually understand the cummulative impact of this rip-off, while other zones have at least 18 senators for instance, South East has 15, and that is also the case in the House of Representatives. When it comes to voting for the interest of regions, you need not be told that we are handicapped because we lack the number to pull through a motion for the good of our people. So, South East legislators would only pull an agenda through in the NASS at the mercy of colleagues from other zones. That is not supposed to be so.

Parley with Yar’Adua
After articulating the problems of our zone, the caucus of South East NASS legislators decided to have a parley with Presidnt Umar Yar’Adua before budgetary proposals were forwarded to the NASS.
Our reason was to ask for consideration in budgetary provisions for those facilities and infrastructure located in our area.

For instance, it is only the zone that has no international airport, and we know how much that would help our people if it is there. The South South has the Port Harcourt International Airport. In the North Central, Abuja and Minna and Ilorin have international airports. In the North West, Sokoto and Kano have, while Maiduguri airport in the North East is an international airport from where pilgrims are airlifted.
We feel there is nothing we did to deserve this and we met with Mr. President to make him understand that there is every good reason to include the fund for the upgrade of the Akanu Ibiam Airport at Enugu to international standards in this budget year as he had already declared his intention to do.

The airport is already there, and what is needed is just an upgrade of the facilities and we have what we rightly deserve.

We also brought to his attention those federal roads that were neglected by the past administration and those that contracts were awarded and no money paid to make contractors commence work.
South East also deserves IPP projects sited in the zone and we want these things looked into because we have been denied for long. It is time to address these vital issues, and we promise to do our best to make sure there is going to be a difference in future.