By Ochereome Nnanna
LET us address other points raised by  the Coalition of Northern Leaders. On Monday we offered our thoughts on what they saw as a perceived “third term” ambition of President Goodluck Jonathan.

The two other points they addressed included their assertion that revenue allocation to the oil-bearing Niger Delta states should be reduced to increase the amount coming to the rest of the country, particularly the North. The other was the alarm it raised over alleged marginalisation of Abuja aborigines and the implied contention that Abuja was part of the North.

They referred to the international Law of the Sea Convention, LOSC, of 1982 which provides that oil and all forms of wealth found on the continental shelf or the international seabed must belong to the countries and not just to administrative/political units (littoral states) adjoining the physical sea.

I don’t see how Nigeria is violating the LOSC through the 13 per cent derivation principle. The continental shelf belongs to Nigeria as a whole and so does the wealth found on it. The country shares 87 per cent of the derivation royalties from oil exploration while 13 per cent is returned to the oil producing states.

The reasons for the 13 per cent for the littoral states are obvious. The sea and continental shelf shape the lives as well as cultures of people of the littoral states. Igbos call them Ndi mba mmiri (people of the sea). What is an Ijaw man without the ocean, creeks and mangrove swamps? And what are those swamps and creeks without the Atlantic Ocean? The sea and the continental shelf under it are part of the geographical cosmos of the people of the littoral states. The White man acquired access to the maritime territories through treaties or conquest of the people whose lands adjoin the seas.

The sea is part of their “home town”. Without the British amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914, there was no way the North was ever going to claim the sea and its wealth. And if Nigeria should de-amalgamate, the sea and its continental shelf will once again revert exclusively to those territories they adjoin.

It smacks of sheer envy, mischief and even insult for Northern leaders to go so far as to call for the reduction of the “obnoxious and over-weighted” derivation revenue accruing to the Niger Delta states as it is “far beyond their executive capacity to manage”, and “it encourages corruption…”. Perhaps these leaders are now admitting that the high level of corruption also evident in the North is as a result of the “obnoxious and over-weighted formula” for carving up the North into numerous sparsely populated states and local governments with which they collect unjustifiably high share of revenue from the Federation account?

The military governments controlled by the North favoured the North and cheated the rest of the country in the allocation of states and local councils and federal constituencies. Perhaps, the unduly high amount the North collects from the Federation Account is responsible for the pervasive poverty and frequent outbreaks of religious riots, including Boko Haram?

The unviable states and local councils in the North must also be drastically pruned down to reduce corruption among Northern leaders since clearly they lack the executive capacity to use the money to conquer destitution and elevate the standard of living among their people.

The Northern leaders were right in calling for the revocation of the oil blocks given to generals, obnoxious businessmen and both local chiefs and distant emirs, while they should all be arrested and prosecuted for their economic crimes against Nigerians. Instructively, Samuel Diminas’ article I earlier referred to indicated that Northern generals and businessmen were behind the companies involved in the ownership of these oil blocks with very little involvement of the Niger Delta people (some of whom have resorted to its stealing and illegal bunkering).

The final topic is the issue of “the current status of Abuja as the Federal Capital Territory whereby land belonging to identifiable peoples and communities is forcibly taken away to make for  so-called federal capital development with virtually no compensation”.

“So-called federal capital territory? Why is it now “so-called”? Are Northern leaders now questioning the constitutionally settled fact that the FCT is the centre of unity? It was under Northern military rulers that the FCT was created and taken to the old Northern Region.

With the oil wealth of the Niger Delta and the Value Added Tax (more than 80 per cent of which is collected from the South) Abuja was developed with Northern generals such as Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha doing the spending.

It was Babangida that on December 12, 1992 moved the seat of the Federal Government to Abuja. Now that Nigeria has sunk more than N20 trillion into the development of Abuja and the Igbo people are by far the largest individual investors in the nation’s capital city, Northern political agitators are now calling it “so-called federal capital territory”!

Now, this is a new danger to watch! Is it true that the indigenes of Abuja were disposed of their land with virtually no compensation? Since when did Northern leaders discover this gross injustice? Since the FCT was created, the North has provided over 90 per cent of its ministers. In fact, it appears the North has the monopoly of administering the federal capital territory. In a similar vein, the North provided the only Minister of Lagos Affairs in the person of Alhaji Musa Yar’Adua, father of General Shehu Yar’ Adua and the late President Umaru Yar’ Adua.

So, who has been grabbing the lands of Abuja indigenes and refusing to pay them their due compensation? Were they Niger Delta, Igbo or Yoruba leaders? A close research will show that some of those so-called Northern leaders behind these rabble-rousing Coalition of Northern leaders were part and parcel of the marginalisation of Abuja indigenes. Because they are out of power and scheming to come back they now point accusing fingers at no one in particular!

The danger in what these people have now started is that terrorist groups could suddenly spring up from nowhere and start making demands in the name of “marginalised Abuja indigenes”. Just watch out!