At one of its last sittings, Imo State House of Assembly applauded the Senate for approving one more state from the South –East Geo-political zone.
However, in welcoming the positive development, Imo state legislature recommends the creation of seven states in each of the six Geo-political zones to ensure equity and justice. By implication, South-East being the only geo-political zone with five states ought to demand and get two more states and not one.
As the Imo state legislators rightly pointed out, the short-changed South-East has been on the losing end for quite a long time. Extremists deem the festering injustice as one of the surviving legacies of the Nigerian Civil War which ended tragically for the people of the geo-political zone. Others more moderate in their perception and assessment blamed it on the recycling Nigerian factor where nothing is done to specification without coercion.
All along, it has not been possible to find out the reasons why South – East was being punished with five states. The people don’t understand what indices, economic, political or historical were applied to arrive at five states for the geo-political zone or the number of states in a geo-political zone. Landmass alone is grossly inadequate because there may be hectares of arable land without people just as historical events alone could not scale the hurdles without blemish.
The South-East with its high population density should come first in the chart because good and responsive governance is all about the well being of the people not inanimate factors like land mass. Besides, three out of the five states in the South East, Abia, Imo and Anambra are among the oil producing states of the federation.
It is an irony of history that the zone which has a strong foothold in the nation’s mono economy or oil driven economy remains marginalised and denied many things accruable to it through an equitable distribution of resources.
Prior to the discovery of crude oil, the mainstay of the rural economy of these areas was fishing and agriculture. All these changed with the advent of oil exploration which came with a number of hazards polluting the rivers, ponds, streams and lakes and eroding the soil fertility as well as aquatic lives.
In extreme cases, the remaining forest areas, the habitat of rodents and other animals have conceded their animal population because of the deadly effects of oil pollution.
Their other unsolicited environmental hazard is gas flaring which according to the executive director of Environmental Rights Action; Nnimmo Bassey had been illegal inNigeriasince I984. But nothing is done to enforce it.
With this lopsidedness characterizing the Nigerian project, the South – East Geo-political zone must not be abandoned in the lurch to share the fate of the legendary Tantalus in Greek mythology who was up to the chin in water and yet thirsty.
