BY CLIFFORD NDUJIHE, Deputy Political Editor
PIQUED by recurring acoustic remarks, especially from pro-South and southern leaders that northerners were lazy and the North had been sustained over the years by the South, northern leaders penultimate week said they could stand on their own if Nigeria broke up.

For close to two decades, there has been an intense clamour, predominantly by southerners, for restructuring of the polity into true federalism and devolution of more powers to the federating units. Protagonists of this clamour have argued that convening a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) for  the ethnic nationalities of the country to dialogue and reach agreements on burning national issues was the surest way to restructure the country and halt Nigeria’s worsening socio-economic and political decay.

Young men milking a cow at Njoboliyo village at Yola South Local Government Area of Adamawa. NAN Photo.

However, antagonists of SNC said it was a recipe for breaking up Nigeria and countered that with democracy in place, the National Assembly could and has the power to amend the nation’s code-book to spur the much needed development in the country.

Of late, the clamour assumed a higher gear following agitation by some northern leaders that the 13 per cent derivation accruing to oil producing areas should be reviewed to free more funds for the development of the North.

Fire of controversy

A host of northern groups and  leaders including Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Malam Lamido Sanusi; Niger State Governor and Chairman of the Northern Governors Forum (NGF), Dr Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu; the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and Dr. Junaid Mohammed decried the huge revenues going to the oil producing states located in the three zones of Southern Nigeria, especially South-South.

Some of them attributed the Boko Haram insurgency ravaging many northern cities, particularly North-East geo-political zone, to poverty arising from disproportionate revenue allocation to the North.

The northern demand drew the ire of some Niger Deltans, who demanded true federalism and 50 per derivation as was practiced in the First Republic. The government extended the 13 per cent derivation to cover other minerals as all states of the country have mineral resources that could be explored and exploited.

Remarkably, northern states have more mineral deposits than their southern counterparts (see table) but these resources have been grossly under-exploited or totally unexplored. Non-exploration of these resources have been partly attributed to easy and bulk money from Niger Delta oil resources (see table of revenue generation since 1970).

By projection, Nigeria  currently has a proven crude oil reserves of  about 37.2 billion barrels which at the current rate of exploitation (2.5mbpd) may be exhausted in the next 40 years unless new deposits are discovered. And 54 years of extensive oil exploitation has devastated the environment of the oil producing areas and hampered primary socio-economic and cultural activities of the inhabitants. In the last 20 years, about 2,000 persons have been killed in pipeline-related explosions and accidents in the region.

Indeed, a World Bank report warns that 40 per cent of habitable terrain in the Niger Delta area would disappear in 20 years if strong-willed re-mediation was not carried out. And the Federal Government admitted that 40,000 oil spills had occurred in the past 54 years of oil exploration.

A United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report, last August, criticised how the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) deals with the environmental damage it has caused in the Niger Delta, especially in Ogoniland. UNEP said Ogoniland needed the world’s largest ever oil clean-up, which would cost an initial $1billion or N160 billion and could take 30 years.

The scenario has left a touchy question on the lips of many observers: If now that oil revenue is available the devastated areas cannot be cleaned, is it when the revenues cease that the task will be embarked upon?

A chieftain of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Management Consultant, Chief Cliff Mbagwu, has described the 13 per cent derivation as meager and urged a raise to address the environmental challenges and needs of the oil-bearing areas.

“Derivation should be looked into. Much as I don’t believe in 50 per cent derivation, 13 per cent is too small. I think 25 per cent is ideal to enable all parts of the country to have funds to develop and the oil producing states to have enough funds to take care of the environmental problems of oil production. This is a federation; we need to be our brother’s keeper. Those who are saying that 13 percent is too high are not being realistic. They are entitled to their opinion but I think such comments are essentially driven by empathy deficit and warped thinking,” he said.

North: Parasitic arm of the country

The North has been at the receiving end of nauseating attacks from the South, especially the Niger Delta as the nation’s weakest economic link and parasitic arm. The region is accused of harbouring huge unproductive population and large track of landmass that is adding little or nothing to the distributable revenue pool of the country.

Aside being the least productive part of the country (revenue wise), critics said the region had managed to control political power for close to 40 years of the nation’s 52 years existence as an independent country to the detriment of the areas sustaining the country economically. Some southern groups at various times have dared the North to allow restructuring of the country to devolve more political and economical power to the federating units as was practiced at independence before the military unitarised Nigeria.

We are not gaining anything from Nigeria — Northern leaders

Countering, Northern leaders, penultimate Wednesday, berated their southern counterparts, saying they were not gaining anything special from the present arrangement of the country and could therefore stand on their own if the country eventually breaks up.

The Northern leaders, who met under the auspices of the Arewa Elders Forum, said that even though they could afford to survive in a divided Nigeria, they had resolved not to be the cause of the breakup of the country.

One of the leaders of the new group and former Special Adviser to ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo on Food Security, Prof .Ango Abdullahi, told the Hausa service of the British Broadcasting Corporation that the North had always been on its own and would continue to survive without oil resources from the South.

Abdullahi, who was reacting to calls from southern leaders for the convocation of a Sovereign National Conference, said that some people were hiding under the agitation to show to the world that they were tired of staying in a united Nigeria.

“We have resolved that we are not going to be the cause of Nigeria breaking up; but if others decided that the country should be divided, and they insisted that Nigeria should break up, we won’t say no because we realized there is nothing we are getting from the current arrangement that other sections of the country are not getting,” he said.

Asked if  the North could stand on its own if the country breaks up, the former Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria said that the North had always been on its own because “the poor in the North has always been on his own. He feeds himself from what he cultivates in the farms and feeds Nigeria up till tomorrow. It is possible if all Northerners would return to what their forefathers did through agriculture with which proceeds they built the North and Nigeria as a whole,” Abdullahi said.

Indeed, some northerners had always insisted that in the late 50s and early 60s, Nigeria’s oil industry was developed with funds provided by the North via proceeds from agriculture, especially groundnuts.