The spokesman of the Northern Elders Forum, a think-tank for the 19 Northern states, Prof. Ango Abdullahi has lent voice to some Nigerians calling for the break-up of the nation.
Notably among people calling for Nigeria's break up are Biafran agitator from the southeastern part of Nigeria
Prof Ango in an interview with Sunday Sun may have unwittingly caused the settled dust of the need for Nigeria’s breakup into smaller units to rise and swirl around.
In the interview, Ango, a politician, professor of Agronomy, one-time Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University who attended four constitutional conferences in Nigeria threw a challenge to those who think that the North is afraid of Nigeria’s disintegration into more basic constituents, saying the North was ever ready for the dissolution and that the way to go about it was through the calling of a formal meeting with complete powers to terminate the legal relationships between the constituent parts in Nigeria.
According to him, If we agree that we should live together as a people and as a country, so be it, but if the general consensus is that Nigerians want to go their separate ways either on the basis of ethnicity, culture, history or religion, why not; why not, adding, “if anybody tells you that the large informed opinion in the North is against the dissolution of Nigeria, he is telling you lies.”
Ango holds strong views when it comes to matters of regional combination of parts that works together well, but he says, “the only thing we have not done which I prefer we do is Sovereign National Conference where the decision of the people will determine whether Nigeria stays as a country or people will go in as many separate ways as they choose.” He spoke on other topical issues as well
When asked that are the northerners ready for Nigeria's break-up, here is is response:
"Absolutely, absolutely, we are. It all depends on the selfish way people want to negotiate. I am 78 now and I also went to the only university in the country at the time in Ibadan. Nobody can tell me about the history of this country. I know a lot about it because I was very much awake and a grown up person to know what happened. The people who argued for the creation of states in 1966/67 are the same people today who are asking for the restructuring of Nigeria with particular preference for regional arrangements."
"The South-west wants preferably a region, a region that was at one time under the leadership of Chief Awolowo, unless, of course, you are trying to ignore all the writings, all the things that had been written, particularly in their declaration called DAWN, Development Agenda for Western Nigeria, then you can ignore this."
"The Biafrans where you belong, for example, are saying the same thing. Chief Ekwueme is my respected leader. He was in the 1995/96 conference.
"In fact, he led the Igbo socio-cultural group to the conference and their proposal in that conference was for Nigeria to become a confederate unit. And of course, at that time, perhaps, there was still the feeling that some hopes still remain that Nigeria should paddle along and perhaps they will overcome some of these differences. His proposal for confederate arrangement was defeated in the conference. I was there. But when he got the opportunity to review the report of the conference, a committee was set up to look at the report of the conference. He was the one who really worked for these so-called geo-political areas that is totally unconstitutional. They are not part of our constitution and this is one of the mistakes that the country is going through. Geo-political zones are not units in our constitutional arrangements. They are selfish conveniences of people who are perhaps clamouring for political positions, elective or otherwise, that are operating today to the detriment of good governance in this country.
Read fuller interview from Sunday Sun
Read fuller interview from Sunday Sun