By Ochereome Nnanna
TODAY I have decided to answer a question from a reader. The person who asked this question sounds like a young man.

It is important to bring our youth up to date with history. Here is the question: “I have just read your piece: “Politics of TA’s PDP return” in today’s ( Monday, August 9, 2010 ) Vanguard newspaper. Quite an interesting read.

Could you do an expose on your assertion that ‘…South-South is a creation of the Igbo intelligentsia’. I am sure not a few people are uninformed on this”.– Chijioke Ononiwu.

The questions now are: How did the Igbo elite create the idea that resulted in the birth of the South-South zone? And why?

The answer starts from the 1940s. The various minority groups in Nigeria were never happy to be lumped with their majority neighbours because they feared that they would fall into local colonisation after Nigeria gained her independence.

The creation of the regions by the British colonial masters for administrative convenience had put them under the control of the Igbo in the East, Yoruba in the West and Hausa/Fulani in the North. The uneasy cohabitation held but not for long.

The carpet crossing in the Western Regional House of Assembly forced Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe to relocate to Enugu, and the process of creating room for him to become the first Premier of the Eastern Region generated bad blood between the Igbo and the minorities.

The minorities started asking for the creation of the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers(COR) state. Majority of the leaders of the Eastern minorities started supporting rival political parties from the North and West against the Igbo. The Western minorities and their colleagues in the North were also fighting for autonomy, and the Western minorities succeeded in the getting their own region created in 1963 (Mid-Western Region).

The sad events of 1966 which saw a military coup and counter-coup being painted in ethnic and sectional colours led to an attempt by Eastern Region to pull out of Nigeria and declare an independent state of Biafra.

However, the British ex-colonialists helped the North in building a national coalition to prevent the actualisation of Biafra. The Eastern minorities pulled out of Biafra when General Gowon created the 12 states and gave them Rivers State and South Eastern State.

It became possible for the federal side to win the war with a blockade of the seaboards which were home to the minorities.

When the war ended, relations between the Igbo and those who fought them during the war remained suspicious. Particularly the West and the Eastern minorities probably felt that the recovery of the Igbo would affront the gains they made while the Igbo were absent from the system.

The minorities appeared to have discovered some gain in siding with the North or West to protect their new-found political space.

The South-South idea was, therefore, a deliberate gambit hatched by the Igbo intelligentsia to give the Southern minorities their own turf in order to reduce the national gang-up against the Igbo. With their own home zone, they would be able to project their own interests rather than being the cat’s paw of Igbo rivals from the North or West.

When the June 12 presidential election was annulled and General Sani Abacha convened a constitutional conference to seek ways of restoring confidence in Nigeria, the Igbo leadership seized the opportunity to put their ideas into action.

At the Mkpoko Igbo pre-Conference summit in Enugu in April 1994, a document that called for the creation of six geo-political zones, the zoning of top political offices (especially the presidency) and rotation of power among the six zones was fashioned out.

There would be three zones in the North, including a separate zone for Northern minorities, and three in the South, including another separate zone for the Southern minorities.

The Igbo elite mandated former Vice President, Dr Alex Ekwueme, to lead the presentation of this agenda at the Conference, with Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu and Dr Sam Mbakwe as his able lieutenants.

Ekwueme did a fantastic job, but the North, which opposed the geo-political zones and zoning of the presidency, accused him of trying to break up the North and whittle down its influence, which was not far from the truth, anyway. This was one of their reasons for dumping him for Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999.

It was also due to the efforts of another group of Igbo intelligentsia led by retired Commodore Okoh Ebitu Ukiwe that led General Sani Abacha to create Bayelsa and Ebonyi states on October 1, 1996 , while also approving the geo-political zones, even though it is not (yet) in the Constitution as the Igbo recommended.

The creation of an all-Ijaw state was meant to give the Igbo-speaking groups in Rivers their own area of influence; a struggle that the late Dr Obi Wali, a disciple of Dr Azikiwe political school, symbolised. The original script for the creation of Bayelsa State was written by Azikiwe and handed over to Ukiwe to actualise.

Today, the Igbo gambit has worked to the benefit of both the Igbo and the minorities. The minorities now have their own region, a separate identity and economic and political interests of their own to pursue.

That is why a Goodluck Jonathan presidency became possible with full support from his home zone, the South-South. Now, rather than the Minorities ganging up against the Igbo with their Northern “traditional allies” they are bidding directly for power.

The truth or otherwise of that “alliance” has been proved and both sides now know who their real enemies or opponents are.

The creation of the zones is a charter of full independence and the equitisation of relations between the minorities and their majority neighbours.

It is working, and Nigeria will be the better for it in the long run.