FEATURE ARTICLE

Michael NnebeSaturday, September 13, 2014
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AUDACITY OF THE HAUSA/FULANI
AND THE CONTINUED MARGINALIZATION OF NDIGBO IN NIGERIA

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n 2010 INEC carried out a verification campaign of all the polling units in Nigeria that were originally created in 1996, and confirmed the existence of roughly 120,000 polling units. In the last few weeks and in line with their statutory mandate, INEC has decided to create additional 30,000 polling units in the country in anticipation of the upcoming general election in 2015. Ordinarily one should commend Prof. Jega and his men for being proactive, but a closer look at the locations of these new 30,000 polling units reveal a sinister northern agenda, which has been rather dominant in Jega's INEC from the beginning. Since these accusations and counter accusations broke, I have refrained from jumping into it until I have read enough, listened enough, and in the process educated myself sufficiently enough to be able to comment on this subject. Many opponents of this move, mostly Southerners, have spoken out against it. INEC has taken up pages of newspaper ads to rebut these accusations, and even Jega himself has held press conferences to clarify things. Jega has tried and failed to defend the indefensible, and the more I listen to him and his men the more I conclude that these Hausa/Fulani have nothing but a singular agenda in Nigeria�to dominate everything.

Under Prof. Atahiru Jega, there are roughly thirteen committees and departments in INEC. Other than ICT and Operations which are headed by Southern Directors that both report to a Northern Chairman, all the other Directors and Chairmen are all Northerners. It is incredible that this could happen even when our Constitution calls for the reflection of national character in the appointments at all federal government agencies. Jega claimed that he inherited the departments' appointments with the lopsided northern directors, but when he created the various all-important INEC committees, he made sure that every single committee has a Northerner as Chairman. For a professor of political science who should understand Nigerian politics, this is at the very least shameful. It is indeed curious that all the key decision makers in INEC are from the North, and this near total control of all the departments of INEC under Jega can also be seen in the Human Resources department, which is responsible for collation and result returning. In my opinion, it is simply unacceptable that all critical sectors of INEC should be placed in the absolute control of people from only one section of this country.

Back to my points on the new polling units. A closer examination of where these extra 30,000 polling units are located will alarm any fair-minded person. One of the key elements required from an electoral umpire like INEC is impartiality and the need for the head of such a body to be fair to all irrespective of their geopolitical zones. Unfortunately this INEC latest move have succeeded in shaking public confidence on the impartiality of Prof. Jega and his Hausa/Fulani helmsmen that run INEC. Out of 30,000 new polling units, Jega allocated 21,615 (72%) to the North and only 8,412 to the entire South. The figures seem even more appalling when you break it down to the six geopolitical zones plus the FCT. It goes as follows; North West 7,906. North East 5,291. North Central 6,318. South West 4,160. South South 3,087. South East 1,167 and FCT (Abuja) 1,200. Huh! I dey laugh o! I have tried desperately to look at these figures objectively but have failed woefully because it is impossible to see anything objective about them except a contrived and na�ve fantasy by a section of the country with dangerous consequences. Just looking at the allocation of the South West, which includes Lagos state, and comparing it to that of the North West tells the whole story about the North South divide.

The madness of this Northern audacity is very clearly demonstrated in how they have continued to treat the affairs relating to the Igbo nation. For example, the population of Anambra state alone is at least three times that of the FCT (Abuja). It also has more registered voters than the FCT. In INEC's most recent continued voter registration exercise, more than 200,000 people showed up in Anambra while only 37,000 showed up in Abuja. Even Enugu state recorded over a hundred thousand during a similar exercise a couple of months ago. Yet Jega allocated 1,200 new polling units to the FCT, and gave the entire South East a mere 1,167. This is pure madness, and all their attempts to use statistics and every other variable to justify such a blatant abuse of their statutory powers have failed because like I said before this is indefensible. In the end, they have run out of imaginary reasons, and are now inventing fantasies. I even heard one INEC official talk about population density in Abuja. Well, for the record, Lagos state is by far the most densely populated state in Nigeria, followed by Anambra state and three other states in the South East. I have used every yardstick to measure and justify such a Hausa insult on the Igbos and all my attempts failed miserably because no invented yardstick could justify such anomaly.

The irony about all this is that Jega generated a voter's register of about 73 million people after the 2011 election. This post-AFIS population of registered voters was recently put to a Business Rule test in order to produce the Permanent Voter Card (PVC). It required the verification of the picture and the fingerprint, and by the end of this process the national voter register was reduced to 57 million people. The Business Rule test revealed that many of the bogus registrations done largely in the North and elsewhere failed to materialize in actual PVCs. We also know that due to Boko Haram's activities many have relocated from the North to the South. Now, given that the voter register has dropped significantly and that the number of voters have dropped even more from the North, what then is Jega's reason for creating additional 30,000 polling units, and why is he allocating more than 72% to the North given the facts on the ground. In making his allocations, Jega used the post-AFIS register instead of the Business Rule register, which clearly is the register with the highest integrity and in line with the best practices worldwide. He has used this Business Rule register of highest integrity to conduct elections in Anambra, Edo, Ekiti and elsewhere in the South, why is he now allocating extra polling units to the vast deserts of Northern Nigeria using the post-AFIS register with much less integrity. Only Jega knows.

Many Southerners are now on TV blowing grammar everyday on this issue, but many have refrained from calling a spade a spade. Well, I have just done so in line with my resolve never to minx words on such important issues about Nigeria. The Hausa/Fulani never miss any opportunity to dominate. They have gotten away with such nonsense in Nigeria for so long under the military that they forget that we are no longer under a military dictatorship in Nigeria. Jonathan and his men are busy campaigning for his reelection under the guise of Udenta's Transformation Agenda for Nigeria (TAN) while the Northerners are plotting an easier way to rig him out of office. No wonder some people call him clueless. For me, this is not about Jonathan and his dreams, this is about Nigeria, and most especially it is about this persistent audacity by the Hausa/Fulani and their continued marginalization of Ndigbo in Nigeria. Enough should be enough, or Jega should step down if he cannot play the role of an unbiased umpire at INEC.

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