The reality of South-East marginalization January 9, 2016 - Welcome to Save Our Nation's (SON) Blog

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The reality of South-East marginalization January 9, 2016

The reality of South-East marginalization
January 9, 2016

President Muhammadu Buhari’s first media chat since assumption of office on May 29, 2015, held on Wednesday, December 30 with its high and low points. The programme was well anchored and the president’s performance was somehow good. I commend the panelists for asking probing questions on security, economy and disobedience of court orders in the case of former National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd) and Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and Director of Radio Biafra as well as the South-East marginalization by past and present Federal Government.
I would have been disappointed if the session had ended without a question on Kanu and South-East marginalization, which is also regarded as Igbo marginalization. I salute the esteemed members of the team for their professionalism, especially Ibang Isine of Premium Times, for asking questions that provoked the response that led to this article.
I want to take the president on his pretence of the legendary South-East marginalization since after the Nigeria-Biafra war in January 14, 1970. Buhari wants to know who is marginalizing the South-East (Igbo) and the extent of such marginalization. He also said that his administration has not marginalized the zone in appointments by naming some of his ministers from the South-East and South-South to justify his claim. This is my humble attempt to prove to him that past administrations, including his current one, have marginalized the South-East zone.
The history of South-East marginalization started with Gen. Yakubu Gowon’s creation of 12 states to weaken Gen. Emeka Ojukwu’s resistance to his regime in 1967 before the declaration of Biafra and the commencement of the bitter Nigeria-Biafra war that lasted from 1967-1970. Though Gowon’s 12 states structure had a sense of equity between the North and South of Nigeria at six states per zone, it denied the South-East majority states in the Eastern region as was the case for Hausa and Yoruba in the Northern and Western regions respectively.
At independence in 1960, the nation stood on three regional arrangement or tripod of the North, East and West. The North has Hausa as its major tribe, the East, Igbo, and the West, Yoruba. Upon attainment of Republican status in 1963, the Midwest region was created by Act of Parliament.
Nobody complained about the regional structure in which the entire North was one region while the South was divided into three regions probably because it was an era of true federalism where each region controls its resources and pays a stated proportion of its revenue to the central government.

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