₦airaland Forum

As for Zik with regard to state creation in the East. He actually had rather liberal views about balkanization and was willing to accept it under certain (much more difficult to achieve) conditions that made the resulting balkanization not just about an anti-Igbo agenda:

(from the same book above, p. 137)

During the general election campaign of 1957 the NCNC proposed the creation of three states in the East as part of a 14-state plan for Nigeria as a whole. The People's Mandate (NCNC Manifesto), March 1957, p.21. In a broadcast on the eve of the election, Dr. Azikiwe explained the opposition of his party to the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers State proposal and made this statement: "The right of the people of former Calabar, Ogoja, and Rivers Provinces to determine their political future is conceded. It is for them to decide whether they should form a separate state or whether they should be merged with other states; but we frown upon any idea which will lump them together so as to create minority problems where they have not previously existed. For this reason we hold that if the people of former Calabar Province desire to form a separate state we shall support them, and if the people of former Ogoja Province will prefer to form a separate state we shall support them also. The same holds in good respect of the people of former Rivers Province."

What is there (about midwest creation) for the NCNC that it cannot get any other way? 

If NPC and AG had both opposed it, or the AG opposed it and the NPC was "neutral," Midwest creation would not even have been brought up at conferences, etc. and there would have been no way the NCNC alone could have made a referendum happen.  I hope this is clear.

What is that special interest by the NCNC to split the west, when they resolutely rejected the same thing in the East, and the north rejected same in the north?

Remember that these parties understood that Nigeria should not be splitting up into states. Zik called it balkanization. NCNC, AG and NPC all hated it!

Was it just a power show? I strongly doubt that!
Never forget that NCNC was very sensitive about appearing tribalistic. That party valued its national outlook, thanks to Zik and his fierce Nigerianism.

No. This is just incorrect. AG very strongly supported balkanizing the East and North. NCNC supported balkanizing the North and West. North supported balkanizing the East and West but with less passion. Balewa realized that support for something like the Midwest set a dangerous precedent that could balkanize the united North so he didn't really like the idea. The Sardauna was more calculating however and knew they could balkanize the West while still retaining a hold on the Middle Belt. It was about splitting each section and gaining more adherents,/supporters/allies to each group's political party OR simply weakening the other group's political party and its hold on other areas OR allowing your region to be split only as long as every other region was. Otherwise you were the weaker for it (think about Awolowo losing Benin tax monies used to develop Ibadan and Ijebu or Eastern Igbos in Enugu losing Port Harcourt or Northerners losing Middle Belt agricultural lands).

Yeah. I had more responses. Also meant to say "NCNC-AG alliance rather than an NPC-NCNC alliance that the Midwestern region would not have come about" above.

This is actually kind of major. I thought this governor was supposed to be one of the good guys.

gadogado:
The revenue mobilization allocation and fiscal commission (RMAFC) determines what federal lawmakers should get and approves legislators salaries!! not the lawmakers themselves.

Then the commissioners are on the payroll of corrupt politicians (the lawmakers). This is why what the first poster said (the people determining their salary) might be a better alternative.

igbobuigbo: What does Nigeria stand to lose if the SW goes regional?

Nothing, but why would they when it would decrease their ability to hold important national positions and when Nigeria is not composed of autonomous federating regions? Nigeria cannot make them go the way of Awolowo because in fact the Yorubas themselves already learned from that mistake and went the way of Akintola, after which, they were run by the military, like everyone else. Anyways, ACN isn't trying to bring real Awoism back. Just invoking the name for political points. The key thing is that the South West would not be allowed to go regional because it would mean the other regions would resurrect, leading to the end of Nigeria.

Lagos is no more the capital of Nigeria so there will not be any direct threat to the seat of govt

If the Southwest went regional (that is, Yoruba only focus) , Lagos could be maximized for Yoruba benefit only but unintelligent non-Yorubas would continue to flock there, resulting in non-Yoruba people flocking there transferring some of their wealth to this regionalist Yoruba political party (which controls the region) which could channel that money to the development of other Yoruba parts of the Southwest with non-Yoruba areas of Lagos money. If they wanted to that is, not that they would necessarily just be this diabolical with no provocation though. However, prior to independence, money from what became the Midwestern region was disproportionately used on the developement of Yorubas areas, such as Ibadan and Ijebu, when the Midwestern area was under AG (Yoruba) rule at the expense of the development of Midwestern areas, one of the major complaints leading to the creation of the Midwest state.

If the ports are threatened by, say OPC, the feds will either open up the eastern ports or send the military to wipe out OPC

This makes no sense. How does it follow that if the South West went regional, OPC thugs would randomly proceed to wreak havoc on the ports? If anything, the only thing the OPC might do is openly attack more non-Yorubas in Lagos. If you mean that the OPC would take over all Southwest ports for Yoruba use only, then it should be pointed out that most of the rest of the South will find ways around this. But the North would not, so the military would bring them to order, however how would the military wipe out a group of disorganized, random, unidentifiable people who look no different from the common populace? Anyways, what are these eastern ports that are currently unopen? Or you mean that they get less attention, as they should, because they are at only regional commerce centers rather than at the major commerce center of the entire country (Lagos)?

If the international airport in Lagos is threatened, there are others in Abuja, P.H. and the new one in Enugu

Threatened by what? OPC-Yoruba takeover? You think they have that kind of sophistication? If they do somehow take it over for Yoruba how does it follow that Nigeria doesn't lose? Nigeria will lose money, period, while still having to give money to the Yorubas because they are still in the federation. Suddenly flooding the less developed, less sophisticated, less equipped airports in the other parts of the country with more passengers, more routes, and having to construct more facilities, structures, etc. while not penalizing the Southwest in anyway for conducting a Yoruba takeover of the main international airport is clearly a loss for Nigeria.

If the SW goes regional, it means more free positions for the igbos and others Grin Grin Grin Grin Grin Grin Grin

Obviously, but how is less national competition, which leads to gradual national mediocrity, not a loss?

It also means less federal govt patronage (roads, bridges, etc) for the SW

How much federal govt. patronage has there been apart from that relevant to Lagos (the commerce center of the country) in the Southwest? It might mean less patronage for the Southwest if they go regional but it doesn't necessarily mean more patronage for any other particular part of the country. For example, it doesn't follow that federal roads and bridges will now be built in Bayelsa or Ebonyi, if there is no national relevance of such structures (i.e. if there is not heavy traffic through Bayelsa to all parts of the country, why will the federal government suddenly chip in to build a major road in Bayelsa?). The ignoring of the Southwest will not result in patronage for other areas that don't necessarily merit it and won't lead to patronage of areas that do merit it without political alliances and begging. If an area, such as Bayelsa, or say Abia, is not getting roads and bridges now, why would it get such simply because the Southwest does not. Nothing being spent on the Southwest in this area will be money saved for Nigeria so I can agree with this point, with the realistic point of view that less patronage for the Southwest doesn't improve the chances of other areas.

They get only the paltry federal allocation

While your taxes and resources will contribute to that allocation. Meanwhile they have more control over their affairs and will never have say, an Obasanjo imposed on them, or have to align with a political party (PDP) filled with an enormous amount of criminals who will loot their states as your governors, legislators, etc. will loot yours.

Plus the matter of hunger they will face if they are overly antagonistic to the North which supplies 100%  of the food in the SW

Implausible really. There is just too much farmland there. It's only a matter of necessity forcing them to take recourse to it. Then there is the coast-Ogun, Ondo, and Lagos. It's only a matter of  setting up fisheries, or other means of getting seafood, or even more likely, getting food from other countries through newly constructed ports in Ondo or Ogun through private Yoruba companies. Actually, it could be argued that the necessity of Yorubas having to grow their own food or set up more businesses to import and distribute foreign food would just increase commerce in the region and create wealth while depending on Northerners for food only transfers wealth to Northerners, most of whom don't produce anything significant with the money traders of their produce provide them.

Abuja has nothing to lose if the SW decides to play Awo politics of seclusion.
They can even secede if they want. The Igbo will not fight to bring them back.

Why would they secede? Has anybody done anything to them to make them secede out of a country that has more potential than whatever country they would form on their own?

The earlier the better.

Again, the question: What will Nigeria (minus the SW) lose if the SW goes regional? I ask this question because I have been reading lately where they seem to be boastful about going regional.

Most of the potential regions of Nigeria could stand by themselves, but the SW would actually gain by going regional in some areas but lose out in the many important areas controlled by national/federal structures (executive office (presidency, cabinet)- meaning they have no say in foreign policy, foreign economic cooperation etc., military- military positions, military training locations, etc, education- choice of location of new federal universities (within or outside of Yorubaland), loss of competition with students from outside Yorubaland (assuming exclusion of as many non-Yorubas as possible from schools in Yorubaland following a regional agenda) to improve the quality of universities, and many more areas). Southwest already learned not to go the way of Awolowo, but there are certain areas where they might benefit from going regional so those boasting are not ignoramuses.

I thought it was already established that Kobojunk was Igbo a while ago. Don't know why she insists on typing "Ibo" though.

Why set up a medical school if you don't know whether you can get it accredited within half a decade or keep it accredited? On the one hand I respect them for trying to have a medical school and on the other hand I'm disgusted at what these students have had to go through. The accreditation problem surely isn't one of quality because G. Igbinedion should still have enough money left to finance whatever is lacking in quality (personnel, instruments, facilities). Maybe he is reluctant to do so, however. If it is a problem of quality, then the university is being severely mismanaged.

Igbinedion's continue to disgrace their name.

Crazy.

Good move.

Freaking spambot got me. . .Meant to make two more rather long posts including an even more illuminating article.

^^^^
C'mon it was a pretty dumb and insensitive question really- exploiting the Aba kidnapping situation to rubbish an idealized republic for Igbos. And Biafra probably would have been a medium sized developed country by now. Of course the same could be said about some other parts of Nigeria. But the past is the past and what's done is done,

This Jakumo seems to know a lot of random detailed information. Curious.

Okay, I know there are Arabs in the Sudan but those aren't the ones I'm talking about really. At a certain point it seems silly to me to call a pitch black man who's profile looks more like that of an ancient Nubian king rather than like that of king so-and-so of a particular Arab country or any of the historical pictures people show of what they consider Arabs an Arab man because he has the outfit and culture right and happens to be related to actual Arabs who might have come there hundreds of years ago. For sure the rulers of Kanem-Borno at one point were of predominantly Arab descent but would a Saudi or a Yemeni agree that a Kanuri was an Arab if you claimed they were?

Are the Sudanese and Chadians Arabs?

I don't see any real difference between these Shuwas and the various Sudanese and Chadian groups. The thing is Sudanese and Chadians may dress like Arabs for obvious cultural reasons, but does that actually make them Arabs? The Sudanese were Nubians before modern times and the Chadians were also of a different culture and lifestyle, so they aren't inherently like the people whose culture they've adopted. That's why it seems like a matter of terminology to me. These "Shuwa Arabs" were something else before being Islamicized and before trade/interaction with North Africans, whatever that was. Arabs in Saudi Arabia, Omen, Yemen, U.A.E., etc. have always been Semites though, "Shuwa Arabs" are of a different stock/lineage, really,

These "Arabs" are black like many of the Arabs in the Sudan. Calling them Arabs seems morel like a matter of terminology than anything else,

sounds like tabloid junk,


yet people would actually buy it and give a peddler of fairytales their hard earned money

Daniel doesn't need to do any of that nonsense to screw up his state, he's doing just fine with only the resource of his natural incompetence.

Onlytruth:
^^^

My friend move over.

You are taking yourself too seriously. 

Your angst is that I referred to you as minority. Well, YOU ARE MINORITY. Go hang if you can't live with that.

You must really be deluded to think that Igbo care about what your think. 

Yes, you are microscopic. L.O.L.

You are insignificant to whatever the Igboman would plan next in Nigeria. Gerrit? 

Did you even understand what I posted? This isn't about me being offended about being called a minority, lol @ that. I even referred to my group as a minority multiple times, which it IS, thank GOD, I don't want my group having any larger responsibility for the pathetic state of Nigeria beyond its individual state as no one in their right mind could ever point to a group of people who were natural state builders and developers and able to acquire wealth and adopt foreign knowledge to suit themselves well when left to themselves and actually assert that they are nothing without Nigeria. The statements that any particular group should be included in Biafra to prevent a "gang-up" and the statement that they are of no significance are of a contradictory nature. If they are the latter, don't be foolish enough to support their "liberation" into a common destiny and don't bother to dream of including them in your ideal republic.

The crux of it all, you dummy, is that insofar as this or that particular minority is insignificant to you it should NEVER be included in your affairs, but a certain Okonkwo and his superiors, and now you, are actually silly enough to think differently. You can not pull some nonsensical facade about how some minority must join Biafra in order to prevent a gang-up and at the same time spew rubbish about the insignificance of such groups and still be taken for anything other than a fool. If they are insignificant they are not even to be used by you unless they have any intention of joining you. The Eastern region of Nigeria was a completely artificial structure with no more inherent validity than the Nigerian state itself and yet somebody had the nerve to think that some of the  insignificant peoples therein had to be wedded to Biafra over very clear objections while claiming the Biafran area need not be wedded to Nigeria. If you think there will be a gang-up against Biafra, think logically about why this would be before you spew rubbish here. If this new Biafra were to invade an entire region of insignificants under the pretext of "liberation," in the middle belt on their way to take out the head of state in Abuja without any prior agreement with the middle belt and the north that said government should be overthrown, in these modern times-nevermind any area of the former Midwest-the same gang up would probably happen. If within the East some did not want a common destiny with Biafra, what makes you think people outside of it would feel Biafra was of any significance to them? Get it through your head you dunce that "insignificant" groups such as my own who don't ask for nor care to know what this or that major ethnic group think or feel about our indifference to Biafra need not bother to hear double-speakers yarn about how so many people in their state should join Biafra when their insignificant selves have no desire to do so.

Who says I care "what the Igboman would plan next in Nigeria"? Let the Igboman worry about what the Igboman would plan next in Nigeria. It will, after all, be his plan to worry to about. Those who are indifferent to these plans cannot possibly care, until some neo-Ojukwu makes the mistake of repeating the mistakes of 1967 and tries to tell his comrades that a group of people who are a microscopic minority to him should share a common destiny with them in order for them to achieve their goals.

In the future don't pretend that you're anybody who's thoughts are capable of extending beyond his tribe and don't throw out "offers" from one side of your mouth to other groups who you are of no more significance to than the other side of your mouth states they are to you.

I would respond to you further but you've already demonstrated that there are limits to your competence and it would be a fallacy to pretend a mere business "mogul" like yourself (as you keep alluding to in various posts) and somebody who has certainly thought about much deeper and more complex things in one hour than you will in your entire life could ever be on the same level of thought.

houvest:
It is intellectual dishonesty presenting only one side of a story without balancing it out with the other. I followed that thread you mentioned and I will like you to present here his response to you when you challenged him on the point you are here raising. That will make for balance before you can now reiterate your point. Please. You are one of the folks I respect his intellectual and unbiased approach to things not that I agree with all . Please uphold that here.

^^^^

What are you talking about? Did you in fact, follow our conversation in that thread?

We discussed the Igbos and the minorities and this clown was so extremely misinformed that he actually believed Edo state could be in Biafra, when this this same Edo state within that same Midwestern region was the place where Benin people went about pointing out Ika-Igbo collaborators with Biafra, and which viewed the declaration of a Republic of Benin by some Okonkwo while the very Oba of Benin was a mere captive as nothing more than an affront. What response to the point I am here raising by him, from that thread, is it that you want me to present? The man is a two-faced slowpoke who blindly spouts contradictory rubbish but is to stupid to realize it.
In that thread he brought up how there was no reason Biafra could not be up to Edo state proper were it to arise again and I told him the truth about what the actual perspective of minorities on this Biafra. He had built up a fanciful idea, shared by many equally deluded individuals that some of the minorities of the east were averse to Biafra, merely because they were "traitors," without bothering to employ any actual logic as to why they would even be averse to Biafra. He also extended his delusion to Edo state, but after rereading this thread the perspective of this i.diot on the minorities becomes quite clear. If the minorities are microscopic and insignificant, leave them alone and don't try to argue that it is necessary for them to be in Biafra. My actual point was that the fool asserts that they could be in Biafra while on the same time considering them insignificant because of their small population. This shows you the mentality of the kind of fool that would claim that a group of people could be in his ideal republic but then consider them of no significance.


If you had intellectual honesty you would realize that when nex made the simplistic claim he did about an "Igbo coup" the proper response of anybody with a brain would be to strike the claim down with cold logic and hard facts and sensible reasoning. What was the fool Onlytruth's response instead? He chose to attack the poster's status as a member of a "microscopic minority" as though that would somehow detract from nex's false claims. This shows the mentality that any ethnic minority finds revolting. I remember arguing that the very same coup was not an Igbo coup with Katsumoto in a thread about Fajuyi and I never once had the foolishness to claim that Katsumoto was making the insinuations or claims he was because he was a Yoruba, and a member of "rival majority" ethnicity and was trying to make the Igbos scapegoats for 1966 because of anything about his status as a Yoruba or a member of a "rival" majority group. Rather, I realized he had arrived at the conclusions he had because he was extremely interested in that period and was trying to reach his own conclusions through detective work about what really made everything go wrong, and what the origin of some peculiarities of the coup were. So I argued against the points as Katsumoto's conclusions from his study of the period, not as Yoruba/rival majority attacks on another group. Equivalently, nex's claims could have dismissed as the oversimplifications and nonfactual assertions by someone who was ignorant and had never bothered to study the period in question, not as the "microscopic minority" perspective. But Onlytruth showed his colors. You can't be a raging ethnic chauvinist and also call for the inclusion of other peoples being included in that same ideal republic of yours.

I was clearing up what the origin of the tale of the "tank" was, though you might have already known that, but your post didn't correct him or anything, that's all.

^^^^^

I think he was referring to the "Corporal Nwafor" armored car, which was actually a Federal army armored car captured by Biafran soldiers. If Biafrans had bothered to build a tank (which they didn't have the know-how to do), it would have been a huge waste of resources on their part though.

When & where? Just curious. He's not known for those kind of John McCain/Joe Biden type of statements. Seems too calculating and balanced.

It's hilarious to reread this thread only to encounter the ramblings of this worthless i.mbecile Onlytruth who is clearly prejudiced against Nigerian minorities because Ijaws (some Ijaws)-who by the way were never Igbo slaves, and had every right to choose to go their own way and not be swallowed into a Biafra that they never signed up for or agreed to en masse-fought against Biafra.

And this same mindless goon was talking in that "True extent of Alaigbo (Igboland)" thread about how Biafra should possibly include Edo state and parts of the middle belt! If Edos are a "microscopic minority" don't be silly enough to try to force them into Biafra as they will be of no benefit to that state. Despite being a "microscopic minority" they managed to achieve more in their existence prior to Nigeria than many different larger African groups.

You can find truth in the most uncommon places, but not in that clown's postings.

Kobojunkie:
Genius Grant?[size=14pt] ROFLMAO[/size]!!!

Why are you always "ROFLMAO"ing idiotically? Get up off the floor. The MacArthur Grant is informally known as the "genius grant" because every person who gets the grant is brilliant in some way or another.