By Ochereome Nnanna
THE figures published by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the “final” outcome of the recent registration exercise can at best be described as provisional. The final figures will only be known when they have been fed through the national data server to weed out the multiple and invalid registrations.

However, the figures that have been dumped into the public domain by the Commission will largely be deployed by political pundits and strategists of political parties as we engage the campaigns phase of the current transition programme.

It is already known, for instance, that the North Western Zone recorded the highest number (according to INEC) with about 18 million voters, followed by the South West with about 15 million.

These geopolitical zones thus made significant jumps from the figures used for the 2007 election in which they recorded 15 million and 12 million, respectively. North East, North Central and South-South pulled eight million each and the South East brought the rear with seven million registered voters (all of which corroborated the 2007 figures).

It is very convenient for some to say that this tells the entire story when, in fact, it is very deceptive when you look beyond the obvious.

A superficial interpretation will use them to justify the assumption that the “Hausa-Fulani” is the largest of the three majority groups, followed by the Yoruba, with the Igbo as the third. In the first place, the term, “Hausa-Fulani”, is queer and designed for an ulterior motive. It is either you are Hausa or you are Fulani.

The fact that one of your parents is Hausa and the other Fulani does not make you “Hausa-Fulani”, any more than a person who shares an Igbo and Ijaw parentage is “Igbo-Ijaw” or another person born by parents of Bini and Yoruba extractions is “Yoruba-Bini”. You are Hausa, Fulani, Igbo, Ijaw or Yoruba, depending on which of the tribes your father belongs to.

I have not come across many Fulani claiming to be Hausa/Fulani. It is only those of Hausa stock that seem eager to accept that tag, which I find very instructive. But people from these two cultural backgrounds don’t mind being referred to as Hausa-Fulani insofar as it boosts their combined political weights in the system. Even at that, there is no conclusive evidence that these two groups lumped together will surpass the number of Yorubas or Igbos in Nigeria.

All that we know is that apart from the unique case of the South West (which we will address presently) there are hints that the population of the various geopolitical zones seem to cohere with the number of states therein.

Otherwise, how does the North West with seven states always have the highest figures in censuses and voter registration? Aside South-West, how do the three zones with six states (South/South, North Central and North East) have eight million each while the South East with five states brings the rear with seven million? Does it then mean that when the South East gets its long-overdue sixth state its figure would be “upgraded” to eight million? If that is so, then the clamour for the sixth state is more than justified and a sine qua non for effective geopolitical equalisation.

As pointed out earlier, the ever rising figure for the South West is understandable, even if not excusable if indeed a fraud has been perfected over the ages in the allocation of figures. Don’t overly blame those who believe that a “fraud factor” had always underpinned the population figures, which were instituted by the British colonialists.

If democracy is a game of numbers and the majority of votes should be the basis of victory for a political party, the National Council for Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) and its allies should have won the 1959 House of Representatives election, which was the basis for the emergence of the Prime Minister of Nigeria at independence in 1960. NCNC and allies scored 2.6 million votes to win 94 seats, while the NPC scored 2.0 million votes to win a whopping 142 seats! The British colonialists had rigged the election before hand in favour of the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC).

In terms of population census, the first exercise in 1952 gave the largest population to the North even though the number could not be verified due to the fact that census officials were not allowed to enter purdahs to count Muslim women.

It was followed by the population of the East and the West brought the rear. But as soon as the civil war ended the North remained in the lead while the West overtook the East and the trend has continued well into this geopolitical zones era.

Some have termed these unusual demographic peculiarities as the “reordering” of the scale of privilege, in which after the war, the West was brought ahead of the East in the sharing of population, number of states and local government councils (and therefore federal allocation), as well as federal constituencies (and therefore more representation at the centre).

However, the apparent dwindling of the population of the South East and the steady growth of that of the South West should not confound watchers of Nigeria’s demographic trends. The South East, being the core theatre of the Nigerian civil war, which was never rehabilitated as promised after the war, has, over the years, continued to lose its indigenous population to other geopolitical zones with better economic conditions.

The South West is obviously the largest recipient of this migration. To a large extent, so does the North, especially the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, where the Igbo population is estimated to be the single largest.

We will continue this discussion on Monday, with emphasis on how a surface reading of the Jega figures may lead political pundits to miscalculate the outcome of the 2011 presidential polls.