Regionalism Causing More Harm Than Good In Nigeria — Afenifere Chieftain

The National Publicity Secretary of Afenifere, Prince Justice Faloye, has expressed regrets over what he called physical and spiritual defects of regionalism in Nigerian governance system, noting that the regional structure has caused more harm to the once united people than bring them together.

The Afenifere scribe disclosed this in a strong worded statement to the media, stating that the original inventors of regionalism in Nigeria, the colonists, designed the regional structure as a means of divide and rule approach for their interest.

He stated: “A Structure is designed to achieve a predetermined purpose, and it will continue to produce the desired result no matter how defective or the operators, according to Social Reproduction Theories. Regionalism was not designed by the British to bring good governance and accountability closer to the people, but to divide and rule, especially to the disadvantage of indigenous African peoples of South and Middlebelt.

“This started with the skewed division of Nigeria into North and South regions which was based on Abrahamic imperialism, with European Christian colonists favoring the Northern Afro-Asiatic Islamic Caliphate. North and South regions should either be based on Geographic equidistance that justifies the regional borders at Abuja, or based on Indigenous and Afro-Arabic civilizational traditional polities that divide in Zaria, Kaduna. However, the Northern Afro-Asiatic civilization was allocated 75% of the land despite accounting for just 33% of Nigerian polities and population. The indigenous African civilization known as the Middlebelt was cut and added to the North.

“To secure this administrative territorial hijack, it was made sure that the Middlebelt’s indigenous African family to the South were divided and set against each other to prevent a focus to demand civilisational reunification with them. So, on April 1st 1939 they split the Southern region into East and West, which inspired bitter division when the Easterners were told to return to the East for representative democracy and governance. The political elites became prebendal whereby they only sought to share the Commonwealth, not develop it.

“The formation of the regions didn’t only cause problems between the two regions, but within them. In the Western region, though majorly ‘Yoruba’ speaking, it brought about schisms between indigenous Africans of former Oyo and Edo empires. Though the core of the Edo Empire pushed for a Midwest region, there remained slight schisms between Oyo Yorubas tied to the North and Yorubas tied to Edo in Ondo and Ekiti states. However, the civilizational leadership of the Ooni of Ife was able to keep both sides together.

“Eastern Region had greater schisms due to a lack of a clear civilisational leadership in a region made up of more than ten different tribes of the indigenous African civilisation. Igbos had the demographic advantage, which with a universalist leadership, couldn’t overwhelm the coastal minorities like Ijaws, Ibibios, Efik etc, despite their regional spread since slavery. Due to the translantic slave trade raids from River Niger on the Igbo heartland of Onitsha, Aguleri, Owerri, Okigwe, Igbos had spread towards the coast where they met Ijaws that had remained on the coast since evolution and Ibibios that had migrated thousands of years earlier down the Cross River, from where the Bantu languages evolved between Cross and Benue Rivers. The slave raids from River Niger into the Igbo heartland led to the great migration towards the coast where they joined and took over Ibibio Arochukwu and Ijaw slave trade.

“Following the end of slavery, instead of continuing the natural organic evolution from the Western region of social organization from theocracy to monarch, the Western region came with Samuel Ajayi Crowther to Christianize and decivilized them from the Indigenous African civilization. Armed with the imperialistic Christianity, the political leadership of the Eastern Region devoid of civilizational leadership, propagated tribal republicanism that led to tribalism disguised as universalism instead of civilisationalism.

“This was to be exploited by the British colonists when they were used to overthrow and kill the Afroasiatic civilizational leadership of Sarduana that had usurped the indigenous African civilizational leadership of Ooni of Ife, the Governor of Western Region. When the coup was reversed, the Igbo led Eastern Region attempted to secede, which was a disguised blackmail by the British of the Afroasiatic North to force the reinstatement of indirect rule.

“Ultimately, the 29-year regional experiment of East and West regions was put aside, while the North-South dichotomy continued. Economics and other social sciences study historic trends to discern behavioral patterns and development. Ancient knowledge systems discerned the trend or lifecycles of structures to be 29 years In China, Chairman Mao built a lasting structure during his 29-year reign, which has been renewed with several successive 12-year cycles of good evolutionary leadership. Unfortunately, Nigerian regionalism due to its colonial agenda, continues to breed faulty 29-year structures – 1938 to 1967 – Biafra, 1967 to 1996 (Abiola) etc.

“Ultimately regionalism divides and derails the Indigenous African civilization, whose 16 sector knowledge bank and spirituality inflicts 16 years perambulation of boom and bust. Starting from the 1952 MacPherson constitution that officially introduced regionalism, there was 16 years of doom up to 1967, followed by a 16 years of economic and political boom from 1967 to 1983, when it was overthrown by Buhari to start a 16 years of doom from 1983 to 1999. The return to democracy ushered in a new 16 yearscycle of boom from 1999 to 2015, before Buhari once again ushered in the ongoing cycle, which will only end in 2031 unless the cycle is broken for good by someone with a new 29 cycle that can bring progressive cycles of 12 years like in China.

“As stated earlier, for a Structure to be fair just and be representative, it must be designed by the people with pro-people nationalist perspectives. Afenifere pushed for the 2014 national sovereign conference which produced the 2014 Confab report, that prescribed a roadmap to true representative governance. Though Afenifere had approached the conference with a regionalist – ‘regions as federating units’ perspective, a consensual agreement was reached to go for ‘states as federating units’ due to the fact that most ethnicities couldn’t fill up regions due to their population. Especially, Middlebelt and Deltan ethnicities whose collective populations were essential for any constitutional amendment. Afenifere won a caveat that states could later unite into regions amongst themselves as they wish.

“To get regionalism right, the people must be involved from their local governments, by first expressing through votes amongst themselves whether they want to stay within a state or join a neighbouring state. This is to reverse the gerrymandering by local hegemons that cut ethnicities across states to make them minorities. Then the next stage is for the states to decide through votes to amalgamate with neighboring states for economies of scale and synergistic political power.

“Unfortunately there are those that just want to build on the faulty unjust regional lines set up by foreign and local hegemonies. Their attempt to impose a regional setting from the center is undemocratic and unrepresentative. It ignores the Middlebelt and Deltan minorities that have expressed their desire for states as federating states because they suffer exclusionary politics by local hegemons in regions.

“Following 8 years of insincerity by the Buhari APC government, the current administration has employed distracting tactics, playing to divisive tribal regionalist sentiments, and setting up regional development boards to empower prebendal interests for 2027 reelection. Some doubt that the neo-colonial political elite will ever change a system that empowers them based on tribal entitlement and not meritocracy to uplift the Masses. Without a viable free and just electoral system, a kakistocracy has evolved, rulership of the worst, which will have to self destruct enough to provoke a constitutional crisis”.

COURTESY: independent