The art of throwing money away

Written by Okey Ndibe

It’s always deeply painful when Africa achieves another distinction in the wrong sector. This time, it’s in the foolish art of throwing money away!

Last month, the Global Financial Integrity, a Washington-based research group, released a sobering report on the illicit outflow of cash from African nations. The report concluded that, in the four decades between 1970 and 2008, African nations lost $854 billion through illegal transfers of funds. And GFI suggests that it’s a conservative estimate. Actual outflows, the report states, may be as high as $1.8 trillion.

In case Nigerians are wondering – yes, our country (once again) topped the list. With $240.7 billion, Nigeria clinched a claim as the outstanding star in the league of exporters of cash. Nigeria’s closest competitor, Egypt, lost $131.3 billion. The other countries in the top five are South Africa ($76.4 billion), Morocco ($41 billion), and Algeria ($35.1 billion).

There’s little surprise about Nigeria’s stellar showing in this dubious league. It’s estimated, after all, that Sani Abacha alone pocketed more than $3 billion. Last year, a Swiss judge ordered the freezing of $350 million in assets “belonging” to Abba Abacha, one of the dictator’s sons.

The picture is dismal. Much of these stolen funds end up in European, Asian, and North American banks. And then comes the paradox: the same public officials responsible for frittering away the continent’s resources are quick to haunt the capitals of Europe and North America, bowl in hand, to beg – shamelessly! – for alms.

The GFI report illustrates the anomaly: what Africa has exported in illicit cash is at least double the official development aid that’s come to the continent. That’s one way of saying – forgive the cliché – penny wise, pound-foolish. Here’s the diagram of events. First, our rulers wire good money to the so-called big donor nations. Then they travel to the Western capitals to debase themselves begging for handouts. Often, they return, like triumphant fools, clutching the pittance they received – at best, half of the loot they “donated” to Western banks. And then they promptly privatize much of the aid – and wire it back to their Western sponsors.

What’s worse, foreign aid – unlike the cool cash we idiotically transfer – comes with strings attached. Often, it’s aid only in name, but in reality part of the scheme by donors to further impoverish African peoples. All too frequently, foreign aid is abracadabra, pure and simple. It’s often packaged as “technical” assistance that destitute African nations are coaxed to pay for – often at hideously inflated prices.

It’s a financial magician’s dream trick. One day, no questions asked, African rulers enrich the banks and economies of the West with looted funds. The next day, these same rulers show up in Western capitals on perennial begging missions. They look like miscast mendicants in their designer suits and handcrafted pairs of shoes. They mope, listening – with little or no sense of shame or irony – to Western “donors” give them long, stiff and humiliating lectures on the virtues of wise investment, sound economic planning, and financial discipline.

I invoke the words of Ayi Kwei Armah: Why are we so blest?

There’s no question that many – I dare say, most – of those who answer to the name of leader in Africa are in the mold that Frantz Fanon categorizes as “contemptible fools.” But there’s also, we must not forget, the issue of the hypocrisy of the world’s economic powers – the nations whose banks facilitate the thefts in Africa, and keep the proceeds. When the right crop of African leaders reclaim their nations from the depraved hands of those who steal for a living, then the issue of the West’s role in impoverishing Africa must be raised.

It would be comforting if we could say that the GFI report focused on a habit that African leaders have since been dropped. Sadly, that’s far from being the case.

Take Nigeria. Despite some modest gains made over the last eleven years against the scourge of corruption and money laundering, the culture of stealing public funds remains alive.

Last week, the president of the Nigerian Bar Association reminded the world that his country has not lifted a finger about the Halliburton bribe scandal. This, despite the fact that there’s no doubt that officials of Halliburton handed hefty bribes to high-ranking Nigerian public officials. And despite the fact that Mr. Umaru Yar’Adua promised that he would not shield any implicated officials, and made a “show” of setting up an investigation panel. Chances are that, had Yar’Adua not been hobbled by sickness, he would have bestowed national honors on some of the Nigerian recipients of Halliburton bribes.

Nigerians pay a steep price for a culture that garlands corrupt people with pompous chieftaincy titles and hollow honors. That price is that corruption has become as familiar as staple food; the stealing of public funds is so normalized, in fact, that those who reject the temptation to steal are often viewed as fools – or worse.

Nigerian officials are specialists in squandermania, the disease of throwing money away. Nigerians throw away money on power generators, neglecting to fix their country’s power supply. Too many government officials splash huge fortunes on high-priced cars, but won’t invest in road construction and maintenance. They dole out stupendous sums to foreign hospitals and doctors, but won’t provide a healthcare system worthy of human beings for their hapless fellows who are stuck in Nigeria.

Today, Nigerians are riveted by the scandal of the N64 billion-runway at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja. How did Julius Berger win a contract to construct a runway whose price tag surpasses the cost of building an entire airport? Nigeria has a Bureau of Public Procurement whose statutory job includes the carrying out of due diligence before signing off on contracts. Did the officials of that bureau go to sleep when it came time to vet this contract? How in the world did the bureau give a thumbs-up to a project whose cost – from all appearances – is so scandalously inflated?

The aviation committee of the House of Representatives has been holding hearings, but I doubt that its members are less puzzled than the rest of us. Numerous officials have appeared before the committee in Abuja, but none has given a coherent explanation. The runway saga is, I fear, one of those bizarre narratives that point up how Nigeria’s cash takes wings and flies away to foreign vaults.

Here’s a textbook case deserving Nigerians’ attention. The bar association, labor unions, student activists, the media and other civic organizations ought to use this case to advance the cause of accountability in Nigeria. Acting President Goodluck Jonathan ought to ask for briefing on this scandal. At the very least, he should send away the leadership of the Bureau of Public Procurement and demand that Julius Berger renegotiate the contract.

GFI’s director, Raymond Baker, stated that stemming the “devastating outflow of much-needed capital is essential to achieving economic development and poverty alleviation goals in these [African] countries.” It’s questionable that Mr. Jonathan has the will to play spoiler to those who profit by throwing away Nigeria’s cash. But he has a rare opportunity to rise above the limitations of his political career, and the forces that contend for his loyalty. If he acts to freeze the runway contract until the disturbing questions are resolved, and to dismiss procurement officials who seem to doze while Nigeria is being fleeced, he’d send a signal that the era of irresponsible fiddling with public funds is nearing the end of its run. 

Okey Ndibe's email contact is:  okeyndibe@gmail.com

Is Obama romancing Babangida?

Written by Okey Ndibe

Last Wednesday, February 10, the Barack Obama administration made a move that’s likely to hurt its credibility among Nigerians. Johnnie Carson, the United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and Robin Sanders, the US Ambassador to Nigeria, traveled to Minna to confer with former Nigerian dictator, Ibrahim Babangida, at his hilltop mansion.

That visit was, I suggest, a serious diplomatic gaffe – and one unworthy of the Obama administration.

That neither the American diplomats nor Babangida disclosed the subject of the meeting compounded the gravity of the misstep. For one, it raised speculation that the US government wanted to signal its tacit support for Babangida’s run for the presidency in next year’s elections. At the very least, the parley suggested that Obama’s team regards the retired general as an instrument for solving Nigeria’s myriad, and deep, political crises.

Either goal represents a serious lapse in judgment on the part of the Obama administration.

It would appear that Babangida covets the Nigerian presidency. Four years ago, he and his cohorts orchestrated what was tagged Project 007, implying that the former military head of state considered himself a shoo-in as President Olusegun Obasanjo’s successor. Nigerians, for understandable reasons, were disquieted by the prospect of another IBB presidency. Many heaved a sigh of relief when Obasanjo, for reasons hard to fathom, foiled Babangida’s ambition.

There’s no question: Babangida is one of the most enigmatic figures to have emerged in Nigerian politics. I have always found the man intriguing, but in a sad, even tragic sort of way. In 1986, on the first anniversary of the man’s rule, I wrote a column in the (now defunct) African Guardian in which I likened Babangida’s political style to the dribbling wizardry of Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona. That name, Maradona, stuck on Babangida and has become one of his more famous monikers. Evil genius, I understand, is a tag Babangida adopted. My argument, in baptizing IBB with Maradona in 1986, was that, while the soccer player dribbles in order to create scoring opportunities, Babangida dribbled as an end in itself. There was little or no sense of purpose to his statecraft.

In 1993, Babangida lost power in one of his costly, purposeless gambles. His annulment of the June 12 election, an act of supreme perfidy, precipitated his own political downfall. In characteristic fashion, he euphemized his fall from power as a decision to “step aside.”

Babangida introduced a structural adjustment program (SAP). The economy policy, as the propaganda went, was meant to endow Nigerians with the benefits of a free market economy. When Nigerians complained that the ostensible gains were elusive, Babangida counseled patience. But he and his cohorts were far from willing to be patient. As SAP sapped Nigeria’s poor and widened the blanket of misery, Babangida and his closest friends acquired mansions, private jets, and fat bank accounts. When he was done, IBB boasted a 50-room mansion and dizzying wealth.

Such a man has no business seeking to return to his country’s seat of power. Some of his acolytes have said that Babangida’s mission is to correct the mistakes he made the first time. Remediation is a nice concept, but he need not become president to make amends.

One hopes that the Obama who went to Accra and spoke eloquently about Nigeria’s leadership crisis has not permitted himself to be led into the contradiction of prescribing IBB as the answer. Or even as a factor in finding the answer to Nigeria’s quagmire.

Obama must guard against the Bill Clinton error. Even though former President Clinton is popular in Nigeria, many Nigerians are still appalled by his bizarre statement, in the heydays of Sani Abacha’s self-succession plan, that the US was open to recognizing the bespectacled dictator if he won an election. That statement came at a time when any neophyte knew that Abacha didn’t plan to hold a credible election.

In making such a public show of coddling Babangida, the Obama administration risked being perceived as wishing to forestall the ongoing mobilization of a progressive force to serve as a viable alternative to the grubby, visionless elements who have steered Nigeria to perilous waters.

If Washington doesn’t want to see a cataclysm befall Nigeria, with horrible consequences for Nigerians and the international community, then it must rethink its seeming courtship of the Babangidas of Nigeria. 

Okey Ndibe's email contact is:  okeyndibe@gmail.com.

Now Is The Time!

Written by E.C. Ejiogu

Anyone who studied basic West African history would know how what exists today as the Nigerian supra-national state came into existence—it is an arbitrary imposition on the diverse nationalities that inhabit the parts of the Niger basin that the British called Nigeria. In the many years that I have researched and studied political evolution in and amongst these diverse nationalities, I’m yet to find or been shown a document that bears witness to a voluntary declaration made by their truly elected representatives that they surrendered their general will and allegiance to the supra-national state.

Elsewhere, including parts of Africa such as Tanzania, Botswana, and South Africa, the afore-stated scenario was the case. That, is one of the several reasons political stability prevails in them. Instead, in the case of the parts of the Niger basin in question, the archives are littered with all manner of documents under the label of “constitution” written by groups of actors who claim that they represent their distinct inhabitants. The latest of those documents was dated 1999. Its provisions proclaim the “legitimacy” that gave birth to the contraption that Mr. Umaru Yar’Ardua presided over in Abuja since 2007 until he voluntarily abdicated to an unknown destination since more than forty-five days ago.

I’m not a lawyer. But I’m sufficiently educated to infer from my research and studies to argue that there is logically no legitimate grounds for any of the nationalities that inhabit the Niger basin that finds itself capable, to waste another day before it disentangles itself from the Nigerian supra-national state. Politics is the act of the possible. Mr. Yar’Ardua’s abdication should be taken for what it truly is—a legitimate indicator of the ruse that has been used to frustrate genuine political development amongst the inhabitants of the parts of the Niger basin that were called Nigeria. If the latest inheritor of the ruse could take the liberty to violate vital
provisions of the instrument from which he claimed the “legitimacy” to wield power and authority over the nationalities, by way of abdication, it’s in deed rational and legitimate to argue that now is the time for the nationalities, any one of them that wants and is capable of to summon the nerves and walk!

●E.C. Ejiogu, PhD is a political sociologist.

(culled from www.saharareporters.com)

Nigeria, the unimagined nation-state

Written by Ogaga Ifowodo

THE current issue of the BBC's Focus on Africa magazine features the debate, "Is Nigeria well on its way to being a failed state?" When contacted to argue the "aye," my willingness to do so belied my own "prickly nationalism," a condition that afflicts almost every fellow citizen I know. But the contrary view that sees Nigeria "far from being a failed state" was argued by my far more optimistic co-debater. Events of the last few weeks, headlined by the controversy over the relocation of the proposed University of Petroleum Technology from Effurun-Warri to Kaduna and Boko Haram's bloody jihad for illiteracy have heightened the failed state debate. Concerning the former, President Yar'Adua has sought to reassure the long-suffering people of the Niger Delta and the nation as a whole that nothing is amiss.

What will be sited in Kaduna is a College of Petroleum Studies to train, according to Alhaji Rilwanu Lukman, Minister of Petroleum Resources, "senior management personnel who are transiting to general management in NNPC." And it will be the exclusive privilege of the petroleum university in Warri to continue to train "middle level manpower for the oil and gas industry." These constitute "the right manpower" that our oil industry needs, according to Lukman, as opposed to the "higher level technical and senior management personnel" universities produce but whom "we don't need." President Yar'Adua himself endorsed this curious logic before hurriedly jetting off to Brazil, fleeing the burning streets and corpses that trailed Boko Haram's mayhem and the incandescent rage of the Niger Delta.

What neither Yar'Adua nor Lukman would admit is that the Kaduna college effectively supplants the Warri university, or that if we follow the logic then the college is a massive waste of scarce (oil) resources. Worse, by this display of naked power, Yar'Adua and Lukman, acting on behalf of the northern oligarchy, stick a finger in the eye of the Niger Delta. It is an act of provocation and belittlement by which power spitefully mocks the expropriated: "Amnesty, what amnesty? Do your worst! We will continue to take your oil and relocate every infrastructure save the very oil wells themselves from the Delta." Unfortunately, it is "a son of the soil" who articulated the cold calculation behind this ideology of blood-curdling dispossession. In a public lecture given twenty-nine years ago, Chief Philip Asiodu, no stranger to unaccountable power as a former super permanent secretary, paid the customary lip service to the predicament of the Niger Delta then thus: "Given, however, the small size and population of the oil-producing area, it is not cynical to observe that even if the resentments ... continue, they cannot threaten nor affect continued economic development." This view was echoed only two months ago by Bala Ibn N'Allah, honourable member of the House of Representatives, who called for the extermination of the 20 million inhabitants of the Niger Delta. There is only one snag, though.

While Asiodu, three decades ago could not foresee any threat to continued economic development, peaceful and armed insurgencies from MOSOP to MEND have since proved otherwise. What Yar'Adua, Lukman, N'Allah and their small-minded ilk of power-mongers must now devise as the final solution is the relocation of the Niger Delta land from the Atlantic shore to the edge of the Sahara, complete with the necessary population transfers. Nothing else will answer the sworn determination to set the nation ablaze in order to perpetuate the daylight robbery. It is clear to every patriotic Nigerian that the Niger Delta crisis is by now the National Question and tops the reasons why Nigeria seems set on becoming a failed state. I will conclude this piece then with my contribution to the BBC debate.

Most of the indices of failed states declare Nigeria well on its way to joining that disreputable league of nations. For a start, Nigeria boasts a government unable to deliver basic social services; is plagued by corruption so endemic and monumental it is hard to separate it from state policy; lacks the capability or discipline or both to prevent threats to public safety and national integrity; and is assailed by active challenges to its legitimacy. Besides, what passes for the Nigerian state simply cannot manage to conduct a credible election, whether into a local government seat or the presidency. The latest disaster of a gubernatorial re-run election in Ekiti state, meant to correct the errors of the first, proved an even greater show of shame. While Nigerians, notoriously prickly in their nationalism, may loudly denounce any suggestions from abroad of the imminent disintegration of their country, they nonetheless admit the unflattering truth of its possibility to themselves and each other. The inflammable Niger Delta, for long the booty of successive bands of political pirates and now also a seething swamp of untameable angst, points clearly to the dangerously frayed social fabric.

Anyone who may not have been paying attention and would need "objective" evidence might do worse than consult the Brookings Institution's Index of State Weakness in which Nigeria ranks 28 out of 141 developing countries. Co-authored by Susan Rice, Barack Obama's top diplomat at the United Nations, it places the self-styled Giant of Africa in the honoured company of Somalia, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. As if to assert her unparalleled gift of settling for the worst even when the tolerable is within grasp, Nigeria sits happily in the cut-off position for countries termed "critically weak" as opposed to the merely weak states. But if the Brookings Institution takes a kind view of Nigeria, not so the Fund for Peace in whose 2008 Index of Failed States Nigeria is only two short rungs away from where she might, at the very least, have enjoyed the consolation of dissociation from Somalia and Zimbabwe. The irony is unmistakable that Nigeria has to look up the ladder at Sierra Leone and Liberia, two countries she spared no expense of life, limb and hard currency to bring out of civil wars and restore to democracy.

Yet none of this goes to the heart of the problem. For, to speak of Nigeria as a failed state is, in a sense, to put the cart before the horse. Never having been a nation to start with, the question of a legitimate state to handle her affairs proves redundant. We must, therefore, open the dusty archives for the radical cause of Nigeria's state of distress. And there we will find that what we have grown accustomed to calling a nation deserving of a state, what we take for granted as a nation-state, is - to quote one of her founding fathers - "a mere geographical expression." Nigeria is not a nation, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, with characteristic forthrightness, declared more than a decade before nominal independence from Britain. For saying the unsayable, and for championing constitutional federalism along the lines of Nigeria's multitude of ethnic groups, Awolowo was labelled a tribalist and unjustly maligned till his death in 1987. But events have more than vindicated him since, not least the spectre of dismemberment raised by the abortive Orkar coup of 1990.

The unwillingness to grapple with the trauma of Nigeria's stillbirth as a nation is the great political unconscious, the implacable repressed, that returns at will to haunt and mock the state-of-denial. This repressed truth, being political, hides as it were in the open. It can be seen in the headlines and by-lines of the newspapers. It is volubly declaimed in bars and every public forum where two or more Nigerians are gathered. It defines the so-called "national question," so cacophonous that the prodigious expense of political and psychological energy needed by Nigeria's self-appointed rulers to repress it produces such frightful spectacles as compel the verdict of a failed or rapidly failing state.

A mere geographical expression. Or, as another founding father from the former Northern Protectorate preferred to put it, "the mistake of 1914." That was the fateful year Lord Lugard merged by colonial fiat northern and southern protectorates and the colony of Lagos to enact Nigeria. The word, unknown to the "tribes and tongues" it purportedly described until colonialism, proclaims the malevolent mapping of imperial design. Meaning simply, people of the (lower) Niger area, it was as if the hallowed river possessed the magic to transform disparate denizens within its acceptable radius into nationhood by mere eponymous naming. This would be deemed superstition in any other context but the colonial. Unfortunately, this mistake has yet to be acknowledged despite repeated and increasingly strident calls for a sovereign national conference or some such other credible conclave of political re-engineering. For, if nations are imagined communities, as Benedict Anderson has shown in a book of the same title, Nigeria was clearly unimagined by its would-be citizens. And, perhaps, Nigeria is unimaginable for very long in her current state of existence.

(culled from the Nigerian Guardian of  Wednesday, Dec.8, 2009)

Exploring the failed state

Written by Edwin Madunagu

NIGER Delta rebellion, Boko Haram insurrection, mass poverty and alienation, armed robbery and kidnapping, state robbery and corruption, high-profile election rigging, institutionalised anarchy, industrial unrest, violent cultism, state delinquency, etc, etc. All these maladies - and many more - have led some people to suggest that Nigeria has become a "failed state", or a "failing state".

An essay I have just obtained from the internet defines a failed state as a state "that can no longer perform its basic security and development functions and that has no effective control over its territory and borders"; it is a state "that can no longer reproduce the conditions for its own existence". The essay then provides a number of explanatory notes: the opposite of a "failed state" is an "enduring state", but the absolute dividing line between these two conditions is difficult to ascertain at the margins - for "even in a failed state, some elements of the state, such as local state organisations, might continue to exist". The essay avoids defining the state - an exercise that can be very contentious. Rather, it provides some assistance to those who may be interested in the exercise. The essay's main concern is the exploration of a state that has failed, or is failing.

Still avoiding a technical definition of the state, we may however go around the problem by considering the central element of the definition of a failed state, namely, the "functions" of the state. This exercise has been performed several times in this column, but it is obligatory to repeat it here. The functions of the state can be separated into three broad groups, namely: coercive functions, ideological functions and social-economic functions. The group of coercive functions is what has been described in the essay under review as "security" functions. But we prefer to call a spade a spade: "security", as employed in the definition, is the use of force.

Let me quickly add here that we, the citizens, all need security and the state claims that it is concerned with security and is, in fact, often seen providing it, or trying to provide it. But there is an "optical illusion" here. The point I wish to make is that the security functions of the state are designed and carried out in a manner that shows very clearly that the main concern of the state is not the citizens but the social order and the classes and blocs that are ruling. The state provides security for the citizens only for the same reason that it provides means of livelihood, or permits or supports the provision of means of livelihood, for the citizens: the citizens must survive for the state to continue to exist.

Put differently, the state provides security to the social order and the ruling social classes and blocs for the status-quo to remain and be strengthened, while it provides security for the citizens at large (the "common" people) so that the latter can continue to serve the social order and the ruling classes and blocs. The former concern is maximum, while the latter is minimal. The coercive functions of the state - which the essay under review calls "security" - are primarily aimed at preventing or discouraging any threat to the social order. That is why - as some analysts have already observed - the Nigerian state confronted the Boko Haram insurrection with maximum ferocity.

We may introduce the ideological functions of the state with a passage which I took from Ernest Mandel's Late Capitalism. Here, Mandel remarks that "it was Napoleon, an expert in the matter, who coined the adage that one can do anything with bayonets except sit on them". What Napolepon, a military genius, meant here was that force could not achieve everything. Another author remarked that if the ruling classes used only coercive methods to maintain their power, then society would be perpetually in tumult. The state needs ideological weapons as well as coercive (or repressive) weapons to maintain and reproduce its power. By ideological weapons or apparatuses I mean ideas and the institutions that systematically disseminate them: schools, religious doctrines and institutions, political parties and social movements, cultural and traditional institutions and practices etc, etc.

Just as the state is not repression alone, it is also not (repression plus ideology) alone. The third group of functions (of the state) is social-economic. The state has to provide "those general conditions of production which cannot be assured by the private activities of the members of the dominant class", as Mandel put it. Even the fanatical "apostles" of privatisation in our country would agree that the ruling classes and blocs cannot privatise everything: roads, telecommunications, electricity, schools, industries, air transportations, etc., and still remain in power. The competition between the various fractions and individuals, and the extreme selfishness of most of them, will tear the state apart or grind it to a halt.

Even if you theoretically construct a state that divests itself of all social-economic undertakings you will need a state institution - a big and powerful one - to coordinate the activities of the most strategic of them or act as their "overlord" - in the interest of the ruling classes and blocs as a whole. The current global financial crisis and recession and the interventionist responses of various governments attest to this. We are then back to the starting point, namely, that the state provides those social and economic "conditions" of production that the members of the ruling classes and blocs cannot, acting as individuals, provide.

The internet essay under review recognises that if there is the concept of "failed state" and the concept of "enduring state", then there ought to be the concept of "failing state", that is, a state that is "becoming" failed, or a state that is neither a filed state nor an enduring one. This last concept, "neither failed nor enduring" state, happens to be the most important. If we dismiss tautological definitions such as "a failing state is a state that is failing", it becomes necessary to construct a scale for determining the location of any state in the advance to failure.

The internet essay does exactly this. Twelve indicators are provided to determine the location of any state. Four of the indicators are social, two economic, and six political. The social indicators are given as: demographic pressures; massive movement of refugees and internally displaced peoples; legacy of vengeance-seeking group grievance; and chronic and sustained human flight. The economic indicators are: uneven economic development along group lines; and sharp and /or severe economic decline. The six political indicators are: criminalisation and/delegitimisation of the state; progressive deterioration of public services; widespread violation of human rights; security apparatus as "state within a state"; rise of factionalised elite; and intervention of other states or external factors. The indicators are elastic enough to cover all known state maladies.

Employing these indicators, one may ask: Is Nigeria a failed state? I shall preface the answer to this question with further comments and observations on the essay under review. First, I think that "failed" is being confused with "delinquent" where "delinquency" is measured by the degree to which the state does not satisfy the ordinary (basic) existential needs of the people. When the "delinquency" element is removed from the definition of a "failed state" what we have left in that definition is a state's inability to be a de facto effective ruler of the whole polity - by coercive means, however concealed or mediated. The connection between the two categories - "delinquent" and "failed" - is that a delinquent state usually tends to a failed state because a delinquent state ultimately invites rebellions, insurrections, anarchy, "states within a state", revolutions, etc.

Secondly, the state is always a class state. There is no "state of the whole people". A state that is becoming a state of the whole people would have started to transform its character as a state; it would have started shedding some features of the state. Strictly speaking, it is illogical to use such terms as "the state is expected to..." or "the state ought to...", because the state is, and has always been essentially, a class weapon. The basic function of the state is not the satisfaction of people's needs. No. The state meets the basic existential needs of the people only to the extent that this allows it to continue to rule and protect the social order and the dominant classes and blocs, or because it is compelled to do so by the dominated classes and groups - through struggle, of course.

The last point can be put differently. The "performance" of the state is a statement about the state of class and popular struggles. In all these we should remember that there are inter-class and intra-class struggles, as well as struggles within the state itself. So, is Nigeria a failed state? My answer is that, with the distinction that we have made between a failed state and a delinquent state, and if we dismiss all illusion concerning the functions of the state, then Nigeria is not a failed state - even with MEND, Boko Haram, OPC, etc. At least not yet. The Nigerian state is still in full control. But Nigerian state is a delinquent state.

(culled from www.nigerialog.com/the Nigerian Guardian, Thursday 3 September 2009)

THE ORIGIN OF NIGERIA: GOD OF JUSTICE NOT ASSOCIATED WITH AN UNJUST POLITICAL ORDER. Appeal to President Obasanjo not to rewrite Nigerian History. {PART 6}

Written by Prof. Omo Omoruyi

SOUTHERN DISUNITY NOT FACTOR OF ZIK-AWO RIFT

The southern disunity has for too long been associated for lack of rigorous scholarship with the rift between Dr. Azikiwe and Chief Awolowo. Unfortunately the followers of these two Nigerian leaders have since then attributed the southern disunity with the rift between the Igbo and the Yoruba at various stages in Nigerian history. It is deeper that these two rifts. In my view, if the two rifts were resolved at anytime in the past, the disunity in the south would still be there for obvious reasons.

SOUTH IS MORE THAN YORUBA AND IGBO

We constantly make the error as to what constitutes the south. We should appreciate that the south is not made up of the Igbo and the Yoruba alone. Even Dr. Azikiwe and Chief Awolowo in their various writing acknowledged that the regions over which they presided were not homogenous. They therefore knew that the south was more than the sum of Igbo and the Yoruba. Why did their followers make the error of believing that the south was made up of the two ethnic nationalities? The southern solidarity or unity or disunity is therefore not contingent upon the unity of the two political leaders. It could help. There are today six states with their claim to autonomy and independence of action whether the Yoruba and Igbo decide to work together.

What has not been emphasized is the colonial basis of the southern disunity that for too long gave the two majority ethnic nationalities power that they did not deserve. In fairness to the Yoruba or the Igbo, they did not lay claim to other peoples’ territories before the colonial creation of the three regions in Nigeria.

There was no reason why the Yoruba should be made to lord it over the Benin and Delta Provinces during the colonial period.

There was no reason why the Igbo should be made the overlord of the non-Igbo peoples in the old Eastern Region.

STATES IN SOUTH AS HOMES TO MINORITIES ARE FACT

In fairness to the Yoruba, they since 1964 accepted the fact that the old Bendel State was not part of the Western Region. They accepted the fact that there are two distinct entities the Yoruba States and the non-Yoruba States that could meet on the basis of progressive platform. This was why Chief Awolowo could use his Four Cardinal Program to rally the people Bendel to his party in 1979.

Unfortunately, the Igbo leaders since the end of the Civil War have not reconciled themselves with the fact that there are four states in the non-Igbo part of the old Eastern Region. Even when they accepted that fact, the Igbo leaders are still to accept that the non-Igbo States in the old Eastern Region are endowed with power to determine their future and who to work with in Nigeria.

The Igbo leaders are still unhappy that the non-Igbo people were ever excised from the old Eastern Region the way it was done in 1967.

The Igbo leaders are unhappy that the Igbo states are landlocked even though that would have been the case without colonialism.

The mistrust between the Igbo and the non-Igbo in the old Eastern region on the one hand and between the Igbo and the non-Yoruba sector of the West (Midwest) on the other is real. I experienced it during the campaign in 1979 when the former Premier of Eastern Nigeria Dr. Azikiwe became a candidate. The non-Igbo people rejected him and supported candidates from other areas.

While the Yoruba leaders are realistic enough not to promote a pan-Western Region plan in form of a return to the old Western Region, I find that Igbo leaders are unrealistic to me when they are bent on a union of Eastern and South-South, euphemism for the old Eastern Region.

IGNORANCE ABOUNDS ABOUT NIGERIA’S PAST

There is a lot of ignorance and gaps in Nigeria among the political class about the colonial aspects of Nigeria. Therefore when President Obasanjo decides to tell the cock and bull story about God and the origin of Nigeria, some members of the political class could believe him because they too have no independent source of knowledge. Let me use one case to illustrate this point.

THE CASE OF PORT HARCOURT

How many Nigerians know the origin of Port Harcourt? As a mark of gratitude to his patron, Lord Harcourt, Lord Lugard founded the Port town at the southeastern part of Nigeria and named it after his master, Lord Harcourt. That is the origin of the town named, Port Harcourt. Port Harcourt is named after Lord Harcourt, the oppressor and the creator of Nigeria.

It is sad that a Commissioner in Katsina State (Alhaji M. Shehu Maikai) like many politicians of his generation displayed his ignorance of this vital aspect of Nigerian history. I am referring to when he wanted Port Harcourt be renamed after Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe in place of the "British explorer". Lord Lewis Harcourt, a British Explorer! See Tell of June 19, 1996 p. 17. The distinguished State Commissioner genuinely thought that he was making valuable suggestions to how best to immortalize the sage, Dr. Azikiwe after his death. But he displayed his ignorance in the process.

If the Commissioner could be this ignorant, what do you expect of the school children under his charge? One wonders what is being taught in schools in Katsina State in the name of Nigerian history. Would the Nigerian schools be told to imbibe the new doctrine of the President, that God created Nigeria. Incidentally, Katsina produced one of the finest historians in Nigeria, Dr. Bala Usman. I am sure he would readily correct the Commissioner if he had consulted him before making what to him was a profound suggestion. One wonders how many mistakes are made from such ignorance? President Obasanjo is not helping the political class with his "godism".

As to the real purpose of the Port and the building of the Eastern Railway line, it was meant to make the north less dependent on the southwestern political leaders who from beginning were distrusted by the British officials. This distrust by the British was extended to the successive northern political leaders. Did the British trust the Igbo and others in the Eastern Region? Why did the British not trust the Yoruba and the Western Region? The northern political leaders saw themselves buying the British prejudice against the Yoruba and the British indifference toward the Igbo as a basis of the coalition behavior between the Igbo-led political parties and the Hausa-led political parties in the First and Second Republic.

NORTH AND SOUTH: SUPERORDINATE-SUBORDINATE!

Lord Harcourt was so happy that he appeared at a Dinner Party and made a profound statement, which has implications for the modern Nigeria. According to Lord Harcourt,

‘We have released Northern Nigeria from the leading strings of the treasury. The ‘promising and well conducted youth’ (North) is now on an allowance on his own and is about to effect an alliance with a ‘Southern Lady of means’.

Lord Harcourt went on

I have issued the special license and Sir Frederick Lugard will perform the ‘marriage’ ceremony.

For the interest of President Obasanjo, Nigeria in the plan of the founder was to be a marriage between the north (husband) and the south (wife). This was the plan at the birth of Nigeria when there was no oil. This has been the way the north saw Nigeria since 1914. From records this was the way successive Colonial Governors General from Lord Lugard to Sir James Robertson organized Nigeria and handed over to the north on October 1, 1960. This was the intention of the departing British colonial regime in the days leading to independence and finally at independence.

"The Lady of Means", the Wife (South) since 1958 had oil to the bargain in the marriage. "The Promising Youth", the Husband (North) is poorer since then. Since then the north and Nigeria have become more dependent on the oil than what was originally anticipated at the time of amalgamation.

The next issue, which became evident in June 1993, was whether the wife and the husband could alternate position in the conjugal power structure through the fact of a ‘one man’ ‘one vote’. The north did not see the husband becoming the wife by the fiat of an election. To put it clearly is the fact of a husband and wife not permanent? This means that the north as the husband and not the south, the wife would continue to be the permanent ruler of Nigeria.

Those who would be wondering why June 12, Presidential election, which through the democratic process produced a southerner (wife) for the first time faced annulment in the hands of the husband should read The Tale of June 12. This is an aspect of the issues in the annulment of the June 12, 1993 Presidential election.

We can see the conjugal power structure manifesting itself in the call for the north to be prepared to reclaim its rightful place (the Presidency) after the one term of General Obasanjo. I can see this challenge in the outburst of Alhaji Lawal Kaita, the former Governor of Kaduna in the Vanguard of July 10, 2000. He was emphatic in the highly provocative article that President Obasanjo was made the President on the voluntary decision of the core north and not through the Constitutional means or through force. The question one would ask is whether in the next time around the core north would claim its rightful place, the President?

CHIEF SD LAR AND GENERAL TY DANJUMA TO THE RESCUE

I can also see the challenge to the myth of divine rule of kings among the northern leaders. President Obasanjo is copying this when he keeps telling people that God made him President and would rule in furtherance of God on earth. The way the President is carrying on, he would not be able to challenge the Buhari Platform of returning Nigeria to what Allah wished for the country, an Islamic State.

Does President Obasanjo appreciate one important fact of politics that his frequent use of God by him (President Obasanjo) could be used as the basis of Buhari Islamic revivalism in the North? He should heed the warning of the Chairman Council of Ullama of Kano, Dr. Datti Ahmed that it is the Christian God that Obasanjo is referring to when ever he uses the name of God. The northern leaders even accused President Obasanjo for inviting US President Clinton in order to send to the West a message that Nigeria had become a Christian sphere of influence. That would be contrary to the view held during the period of past Muslim political generals who took Nigeria to OIC and gave the impression that Nigeria is an Islamic State.

Does President Obasanjo appreciate another fact of politics that his frequent use of God’s name is not only disturbing, but it would constitute a threat to the secular status of Nigeria? Secularism does not mean a "Godless State"; it means as we conceived it in the Constituent Assembly in 1977/78 that Nigeria shall not adopt any religion as State Religion. The word State here does not mean the public administration at the federal level of government. It means the conduct of Nigerian political life at all levels, federal, state and local government. The picture painted recently by the Minister of Defense, Lt. General TY Danjuma of the administration in certain parts of the north violates the spirit of the Constitution.

Where are the retired political generals from the north? If General Shehu Yar "Adua were alive and aspiring to politics as he did in the past, he would have dissociated himself from the policies of the northern states that openly discriminate against non-Muslims. I would have expected some of the retired political generals aspiring to lead Nigeria again through the process of one person one vote would frown at the Islamization of education in the north at the public expense and to the exclusion of other religions. Why should a state Government cancel the teaching of Christian Religious Knowledge, as a discipline while making the teaching of Islamic Religious Knowledge a compulsory subject for Muslims and Non Muslims including Christians? While the Islamic students are not be exposed to the world religions because it is a sin, I have Christian friends at Ibadan who did Arabic and Islamic Studies. That is why the Bible is a prohibited commodity in some Islamic Republic. I am afraid that this is gradually being extended to some parts of the north.

I would like to appeal to the leaders of the Middle-Belt, where Christianity is on trial in the north to educate the southern Christians who are actually "Chrislam" or believers of anything goes. They are in a position to redirect the President to face Nigerian problems squarely. In this context, I hope Chief Solomon D. Lar and General TY Danjuma who led some of us to appreciate the danger in the politicization of religion. This was why some of us fought to delete the Federal Sharia in the Constitution in 1977/78. Chief SD Lar and General Danjuma I pray and hope would prevail on President Obasanjo to appreciate the danger in the politicization of religion.

AS NIGERIA WITH POLITICAL PARTIES FACES 2003

Now that the country is faced with six political parties with the possibility of having six Presidential candidates, six senators and House candidates at the Federal level and six Governors and six Assembly candidates at the State level in 2003, a new behavior is demanded of all candidates. One would expect that all candidates would face electioneering politics without invoking the name of God or Allah or the African Traditional Religion in the campaign.

God ordains competition among politicians with contrasting visions for our people to choose from. What is common or should be common to all Nigerians is the quest for a Just Society. Christianity, Islam and African Traditional Religion sanction this quest. It should be pursued in our own way without forcing one’s faith on the other as the President unwittingly does from time to time. I leave this to Mr. President.

July 2002

(culled from www.nigerdeltacongress.com. First published July 2002)

*Concluded

THE ORIGIN OF NIGERIA: GOD OF JUSTICE NOT ASSOCIATED WITH AN UNJUST POLITICAL ORDER. Appeal to President Obasanjo not to rewrite Nigerian History. {PART 5}

Written by Prof. Omo Omoruyi

BRITISH DESIGN AS A COMPLETE FRAUD

There is the opposite position about creation taken by Chief Richard Akinjide. According to him in the Vanguard of Sunday July 20, 2000

"the so-called Nigeria created in 1914 was a complete fraud". He continued, "It was not created in the interest of Nigeria or of Nigerians but in the interest of the British".

I was elated when Chief Akinjide confirmed the authorities I cited in my book, The Tale of June 12 to address the relationship between the annulment and the British Design for Nigeria. Chief Richard Akinjide would agree with me that Nigeria could not be the creation of God and at the same time, a fraud.

What is troubling to me is President Obasanjo’s notion of God that he parades at all public and essentially partisan political functions. God is perfect and He does not engage in anything fraudulent. Could God be the white man’s God or the white man himself? President Obasanjo seems to be equating God with the white man. With all the imperfections and injustices inflicted on many groups since the white man created Nigeria, how could President Obasanjo justify Nigeria as the work of God?

FOUNDERS OF NIGERIA

I had opportunity to examine the papers, which Chief Akinjide was referring to and more. I also examined some of the claims of the Nigerian leaders such as Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto on their notion of how Nigeria was founded. I did not see where the British or their successor Nigerian political leaders said that "God created Nigeria". I did not see where they spelled out "God’s purpose for Nigeria". Except the Sardauna who carried his Islamic religious practice to the public realm in the north with a threat of dipping the Koran to the sea, Dr. Azikiwe and Chief Awolowo, both products of Christian Missions schools saw religion differently. Their adherence to Christianity was taken as essentially personal matters that should not be at the expense of other religions. They did not engage in preaching to others in public functions. Dr. Azikiwe and Chief Awolowo were conscious of the multi-religious character of Nigeria and did not set out to offend others with their faith. On prayer, they did not want to be called hypocrites and adhered strictly to the Biblical injunction in Matthew Chapter 6 verses 5 to 7.

On the founding of Nigeria, the British and the Nigerian political leaders were all agreed on one issue that no Nigerian historically or in modern era could claim to be the founder or the creator of Nigeria. All of them are agreed that the founding fathers of Nigeria were the British. Let me use the work of the greatest exponent of them all on how Nigeria was founded. I am referring to Chief Awolowo. The apt expression of Chief Awolowo, the most versatile of the Nigerian political leaders that Nigeria is a "geographical expression" holds true for all time and was borne out of research and reflection. Was this, maybe what President was responding to? Did President Obasanjo read and understand the thesis of Awo? He should read again and again many books starting with the ground breaking one, Nigerian Path to Freedom (1947), which is still a classic on Nigeria. He will be able to understand how the revered exponent of progressive causes came to the apt expression associated with him that "Nigeria is geographical expression". Was this not what was put differently even though in a different context by Sir Ahmadu Bello that the Amalgamation was "the mistake of 1914"?

One should note that Chief Awolowo did not call himself or any of his fellow nationalists Dr. Azikiwe, Sir Ahmadu Bello and those below them as the "founding fathers" of Nigeria. Even Dr. Azikiwe hated the term, the "father of the nation". He rejected this term so strongly in 1978. He said the title came from the northern leaders who described him as such when he was the ceremonial Governor General during his official visit to the north. I still recall his response to critics of his decision to return to the "orbit of partisan politics" in December 1978. I knew this from my position as the then Protem National Secretary of the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP), when he was reacting to the accusation from some quarters in the north that as "the father of the nation", he should not have come back to partisan politics. They were unfair to the old man, as was confirmed in Shagari’s memoir, the same northern leaders wanted to recruit him to their party but lost to the NPP. Kicking him "upstairs in 1959" was seen by Dr. Azikiwe as one of the greatest fraud that was inflicted on the Nigerian political class. He did not want a repeat of what happened to him 1959 to happen in 1978 in the hand of the northern Nigerian leaders.

Chief Awolowo identified Lord Lugard as the "founding father of Nigeria" and put it succinctly in the following words:

‘To him (Lord Lugard)more than anyone else belongs the credit or discredit for settling Nigeria on a course, which Nigerian Nationalists and patriots feel obliged to pursue All be it with mixed feelings till the present day’.This is from Obafemi Awolowo The People’s Republic (Ibadan, Oxford University Press 1968) p. 17.

This is the popular story we tell our children in schools and not the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden as applicable to Nigeria. We never tell our children that Nigeria is the greatest masterpiece erected by God for the upliftment of the Black world, according to President Obasanjo. I have expressed my worry to some people who are in a position to know what I am talking about that the use of the name of God to justify many things the President is doing in the public realm is a source of disquiet in Nigerian politics. The name of God is constantly being used in vain by footballers in their communication with the President. The President invokes God’s name in his dealings with the National Assembly, even when the issue is the application of the rules governing legislation and the Executive-Legislative relation. All these are statutory matters. President Obasanjo freely uses God’s name in his dealings within the caucus of the ruling political party, the PDP when Christians and non-Christians attend it. It is sad that President Obasanjo even uses the name of God when the political will of the Nigerian people is being subverted.

Maybe Nigerian history is not a compulsory course in the Nigerian military institutions. I doubt that this is the notion of Nigerian history in the military academies. I once had opportunities to interact with many military officers in the Command and Staff College and in many settings including my stint at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS). I was not surprised that these officers happen to know the origin of Nigeria, that it is colonial and no one ever said that it was God that created Nigeria. Before now I have never read where officers of the Nigerian army ever said that Nigeria is the "creation of God"; they know that Britain created Nigeria for her purpose and not for the interest of Nigerians who inhabit the four walls of Nigeria. Certainly Britain did not create Nigeria for the Black people of the world, because that was not an issue during the colonial period. Even Sir James Robertson, the last colonial Governor General confessed 14 years after he left Nigeria that Britain underestimated the power of ethnicity. In order to support his claim, he quoted copiously from his diary of 1956. On the north and south in general, he had this to say:

The general outlook of the people (north) is so different from those in the southern Nigeria as to give them practically nothing in common. (underline is mine for emphasis)

Comparing two European countries and Nigerian ethnic nationalities, Sir James noted in his diary:

There is less difference between an Englishman and Italian, both of whom have a common civilization based on Greek and Roman foundations and on Christianity, than between a Muslim villager in Sokoto, Kano,or Katsina and an Ibo, Ijaw or Kalabari.

Posing a rhetorical question on the dilemma faced by him and the future Nigerian leaders who want to build Nigerian nation, Sir James notes in his diary, How can any feeling of common purpose of nationality be built up between people whose culture, religion and mode of living is completely different? (Underline is mine for emphasis) This is from Sir James Robertson, Transition in Africa,(London, 1974) p. 223.

It was obvious from what Sir James noted in his diary in 1956 that the Nigerian project was a failed colonial experiment. What would have been done by successive Nigerian political leaders a conscious plan to evolve Nigerian nation. The mode of governing Nigeria since 1960 should have been approached differently by Nigerian political leaders. How could President Obasanjo call {God's will} what the last colonial Governor General so described as lacking anything on which to build on?

What should be noted was that Sir James never blamed God for the ills of Nigeria. He never blamed the British or her successor in Nigeria for not realizing God’s Will in Nigeria.

Maybe the white man believed that later the political crisis would be resolved for and by Nigerians. Is President Obasanjo trying to run away from the colonial basis of Nigerian problem? He would have to rewrite Nigerian political science texts in Nigeria and abroad that associate Nigerian lingering political problems with the colonial origin of Nigeria. It is colonialism and not God that is at the root of Nigerian crisis. The danger in President Obasanjo’s thesis is that Nigerians should not make any attempt to change the Nigerian state as that would violate God’s purpose for Nigeria. To change it or to agitate for its change would therefore, in the view of President Obasanjo offend God.

WHAT GOD WANTS IS JUSTICE; IT IS ABSENT TODAY

My view is that God knows of the injustice in the land today since 1914. God knows that what was left behind in 1960 would not last. It would be in furtherance of God’s work on earth, if President Obasanjo could lead Nigerians to return to the path of justice and equity. Nigeria since 1999 should have made some attempt to address the mistakes of 1814 and 1960. This was what he should have doing since 1999 instead of associating God with his failure to find solution to the lingering political problems as Nigerians move to 2003.

General Obasanjo might not have read history of Nigeria from his High School days as the History taught then was mostly Empire History and of the Age of Discovery etc. But even then, under the Empire History the colonial exploits constituted the major part of the subject and the history of the peoples in the different colonies was de-emphasized. What about the military academies in the United Kingdom? That could not be true as Empire History is a compulsory course in all institutions in the United Kingdom just as Political Science 101 dealing with the US Politics is a compulsory course in the US institutions. Empire History was clear on one fact, the British creation of many colonies including Nigeria.

A lot of the account of how Nigeria was created is declassified in the United Kingdom and they can be found in reputable Universities in the United Kingdom and in the US. Distinguished Nigerian historians of the Ibadan School have copious documents on the origin of Nigeria. Nowhere is the issue of God raised as the basis of the origin of Nigeria.

I am aware that the colonial basis of Nigeria is taught in schools and that is what it should be. Nigeria should not hang on to what the President is telling Nigerians that God created Nigeria. God does not create an unjust setting, which is Nigeria. I had the opportunity to deliver a lecture before an African-American audience in 1996 that Nigeria is "A Case of Failed Colonial Experiment in Africa". Nigerians knew the basis of Nigeria; it is only the President who wants Nigerians to believe that the British for the upliftment of the African people worldwide-created Nigeria. Nigerians expect that when the President speaks, he speaks to them the correct thing. His plan is to rally the people of Nigeria to his plan of recreating Nigeria and bring justice to all. This is what God wants for Nigeria and for Nigerians.

The President should tell Nigerians and the children the truth that the creation of Nigeria was fraudulently put together by the British colonial rulers. He should blame successive Nigerian leaders, civilian and military that did not address the injustice in Nigeria at its creation. If dealing with the imperfection and injustice in the British design is what the President wants to do under his administration, he should tell Nigerians so and he would have the support of many Nigerians including me. Nigerian leaders have since 1999 been calling on him to lead in righting the wrong and injustice from colonialism the imperfections and injustices in the land.

REAL FOUNDERS OF NIGERIA

What Chief Akinjide was referring to when he called the Nigerian enterprise a fraud, was a simple question. What did Britain have in mind when amalgamation was considered as the proper policy in the first decade of the 20th Century? Here I would want to improve on what Chief Awolowo, Chief Akinjide and the popular literature on Nigeria told us in schools.

The real founder of Nigeria was not Lord Lugard as it is generally taught in Nigerian schools and in popular discourse. Lord Lugard was the architect of one north as the employee of the Royal Niger Company in the last decade of the 19th Century. His knowledge of the south and of the various states that made up the south in the 19th century and during the first decade of the 20th century was limited to what he knew from other British traders and British foreign representatives to these states. Whatever role he played during the time of amalgamation arose from his role as the messenger of Lord Lewis Harcourt, the British Colonial Secretary.

It was Lord Harcourt who discovered Lord Lugard from his work in the Northern Nigeria and wanted him to undertake a mission on behalf of the British Government. He therefore sent Lord Lugard on the mission to inquire into the prospect of amalgamation of the north and south of Nigeria and submit report to him on how it could be effected if he found the plan feasible.

On the receipt of the Lord Lugard’s report, Lord Harcourt rushed to the House of Commons with the plan that unification of the two "Nigerias" demanded both (a) a man and (b) a method. The man was to be Lord Lugard; the method was amalgamation.

Lord Lugard was elated with the prospect of going back to the two Nigerias, where he was to incorporate the disparate south into a united North. This is a matter, which history books should tell us as the root of the confusion in the south in its dealing with the core north. Since then, the south is fighting its disparate nature that has since mid 60s been complicated by the civil war and the creation of states. The north is still trying to make the north continue as one and indivisible entity despite the creation of many states since 1967.

(culled from www.nigerdeltacongress.com. First published July 2002)