Who Believes the Lie that There Are More People in the North Than in the South? By Femi Aribisala

Everything turns upside down in Nigeria.
Logic becomes illogical. Wisdom becomes
foolishness. Two plus two becomes seven.
Hospitals become mortuaries. Stealing is
not corruption. Education is a sin. In
Nigeria, so many things fly in the face of
simple commonsense.
One major example is the ridiculous idea
that, by some inexplicable freak of nature,
more people live in the arid less-developed
Northern part of Nigeria than in the wet,
coastal, more-developed South.
Insult to intelligence
The larger population of the North is an
elephant in the Nigerian living-room.
According to the last disputed census of
2006, there are 75 million Nigerians living in
the North and 65 million in the South. This
is balderdash! As long as we continue to
accept such blatant lie, there can be no true
democracy in Nigeria. Electoral results must
continue to be falsified to conform to it. As
long as we continue to entertain such
outright falsehood, we shall continue to be
subjected to a “born to rule” mentality on
the part of some mischievous Northern
politicians.
The assertion that there are more people in
the North than in the South is an insult to
intelligence and commonsense. All over
West Africa, the coastal states are more
densely and highly populated than the arid
desert hinterlands. Nobody has been able
to come up with a reasonable reason why
Nigeria would be the only exception to this
rule. Most of the people in Egypt live on a
strip along the Nile River. But in Nigeria, we
are meant to believe most of the people live
in the desert.
Some make the case that Northern polygamy
leads to more births. If so, why are there
only 30 million people in Saudi Arabia, a
country more than twice the size of Nigeria?
The Saudis are also polygamous. If there
are so many more live-births in the North
than in the South, this should be reflected in
children immunization programs: but it is
not.
Everything we know about demographics
contradicts the inflated population of the
North relative to the South. The economic
opportunities in the South far outweigh
those in the North. That means economic
migration is bound to be southward and not
northward. The states with the highest
internally generated revenues all come from
the South; while eight of the last ten are
from the North. No Northern state features
in the top ten.
Mythical Kano
The North regularly trots up Kano as the
largest state of the federation, but there is
no doubt that this is also pure fiction.
There is no way that there can be more
people in Kano State than in Lagos State or
even Oyo State. Let me be even more
categorical. Kano cannot be as populous as
Ibadan. Kano cannot even have half the
population of Lagos.
We were told Kano State was bigger in
population than Lagos State. Then Jigawa
State was carved out of Kano in 1991. But
lo and behold, the remaining rump of Kano
was still bigger than Lagos. In 1991, we
were told there were 5.8 million people in
Kano State, while 5.7 million were in Lagos.
In 2006, Kano was awarded a population of
9.4 million; more than Lagos which was
given 9.1 million.
In the meantime, Jigawa was awarded 4.3
million people in 2006. If this were to be
believed, it would mean Kano (including
Jigawa) had outpaced Lagos by more than
four million people by 2006. That is
impossible. Moreover, Kano was awarded
44 local government areas; Jigawa 27 and
Lagos only 20.
Why any right-thinking person would believe
Kano State has more people than Lagos
State is beyond me. For years, the total
amount of internally generated revenue in
Kano was less than 6 billion naira a year. In
the last year or so, it is now averaging 20
billion. But get this: the internally generated
revenue in Lagos is 219 billion naira. So
why would people be moving to Kano
instead of Lagos? Where are the jobs in
Kano to attract them relative to Lagos?
Why would more people keep moving to
Kano where there is insurgency; from
Maitasine to Boko Haram, relative to Lagos
where there is none? The answer is simple.
The large population of Kano relative to
Lagos is bogus. It is pure fiction! If there
were more people in Kano than in Lagos, it
would show up, for example, in waste-
generation. How much waste does Kano
produce relative to Lagos? The answer is
only a fraction.
How many houses and physical structures
are there in Kano relative to Lagos? There
is no comparison. Google satellite maps
show a concentration of people and houses
in Kano city centre. Everywhere else is
sparsely populated. This is not the case
with Lagos. It is not the case with Ibadan.
It is not the case with Aba. If there are so
many people up North, where are the
people? Where do they live? Which vehicles
take them from A to B? How many of these
vehicles are in Kano relative to Lagos? Only
a fraction!
Magical Zamfara
Precisely because we have accepted the lie
of Northern population supremacy over the
South, Attahiru Jega and his INEC cohorts
decided to sneak further falsehood past us.
Having discovered far more double-
registration of voters in the North than in
the South, INEC still went ahead to create
additional polling units, allocating a
disproportionate number of these to the
North. However, the very audacity of INEC
in the attempted perpetration of this fraud
has brought to light certain anomalies in the
2011 elections, especially as it relates to the
North-West.
INEC’s recent cleanup exercise of the voters
register is a big indictment of the North.
INEC discovered that there are far more
double-registration of voters in the North
than in the South. The greatest fraud in this
regard is committed in the North-West, and
the most fraudulent state in the country
turns out to be Zamfara.
Sokoto and Zamfara states border the
Republic of Niger. Niger Republic is 19
times bigger than Sokoto and Zamfara put
together in land area. And yet, we are meant
to believe that in 2006, Sokoto and Zamfara
had a combined total population of 6.9
million; more than half of Niger Republic’s
population of 12.9 million.
Zamfara’s fictitious population in the 2006
census was 3.2 million. Nevertheless, INEC
registered 2 million voters for Zamfara for
the 2011 elections. That means 62.5% of
the people in Zamfara registered to vote.
(This is roughly equal to the 64% of people
who registered to vote in the 2012 elections
in the United States; a country of far higher
voter-awareness and socialisation). This is
fraud of the highest order for the simple
reason that 62.5% of the population of
Zamfara cannot be eligible to vote.
The voting age in Nigeria is 18 years.
According to U.N. demographics, 44% of
Nigerians are below the age of 15. This
means under no circumstances can 50% of
the population anywhere in Nigeria be said
to have registered to vote in any election. It
is not surprising therefore that although
INEC registered 2 million voters for the 2011
elections in Zamfara, the same INEC
discovered in its clean-up exercise this year
that 1.1 million of those voters (over 50%)
were fraudulent; the result of double
registration.
Voodoo results
That means only 914,886 of the names on
the Zamfara register could be verified as not
pertaining to double registration. (This does
not tell us how many of the remaining
names are fictitious). But then get this:
according to INEC records, 927,219 people
voted in Zamfara in the 2011 presidential
election; mostly for Buhari. That means
more votes were cast in Zamfara than the
total number of legitimately-registered
voters, according to the revelation of INEC’s
clean-up exercise.
Let us put this in stark terms. It means,
according to INEC, over 100% of the Zamfara
electorate voted in 2011. What malarkey!
By the time we factor in the fictitious names
that must have been in the register, we can
see that the figures coming out of Zamfara
have nothing whatsoever to do with reality.
In Zamfara, there is procedural inflation of
figures pertaining to population and
elections.
This gives us an idea of how fraudulent the
North-West of Nigeria is with regard to
population and electoral figures. This is not
to say that manipulation and falsification of
figures is not standard operational
procedure in other states of the federation,
but INEC revealed that it is most
exaggerated in the North in general and in
the North-West in particular.
It is not surprising therefore that, in the
2011 presidential election, there were 10.6
million “voters” from the North-West alone;
twice the number of voters from either the
South-West (4.6 million) or the South-East
(5 million). This is preposterous, and is
nothing but one big lie!
Back to Jega
It is on this fictitious super-structure of a
larger population in the North relative to the
South that Jega’s INEC based its outrageous
allocation of 21,000 additional polling
booths to the North, relative to 8,000 to the
South.
In defense of this regional-chauvinism,
Hakeem Baba-Ahmad added insult to injury
by saying: “Jega admitted that many states
in the south did not even deserve the
number of units they got, but for the
inclusion of the principle of fairness and
equity. In other words, if INEC had been
strict in sharing out the units in accordance
with voting population and geography, the
north would have received even more.”
What poppycock!
In what appears to be the triumph of
commonsense and logic, the Senate has
advised Jega to suspend the allocation of
new polling units until after the 2015
general elections. That should be the end of
the matter. People who don’t understand
how the Nigerian political system works feel
Jega can ignore this advice. He cannot!
The legislative branch of the government
has oversight powers over the executive
branch. Such a directive from the
legislature to an arm of the government is
not subject to debate. It must be obeyed
otherwise Jega will be sanctioned.

https://blogs.premiumtimesng.com/2014/09/30/who-believes-the-lie-that-there-are-more-people-in-the-north-than-in-the-south-by-femi-aribisala/