By Sunday Ani
A group, Southern Solidarity Alliance (SSA), has bemoaned what it termed the unacceptable and deplorable situation of things in the southern part of Nigeria, calling for the immediate implementation of the 2014 National Confab report to address myriad of ills bedevilling the region in particular, and Nigeria as a whole.
It also called for the scrapping of the quota system and the federal character principle, which it said had undermined development in the South, and Nigeria in general. In its place, the group recommended that the system should be replaced with merit and competitiveness, arguing that merit based on competitiveness is key to development.
The SSA National Coordinator, Ndubuisi Okafor, made the demands at a press conference in Lagos yesterday.
The group condemned the deplorable condition of some federal roads in the region, and urged the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency on them.
It listed some of the roads to include Ipele-Isua, Benin-Auchi, Nsukka-Enugu, Sagamu-Ore, Ore-Benin, Benin-Asaba, Onitsha-Owerri-Aba, Onitsha-Enugu, Enugu-PortHarcourt, Umuahia-Akwa Ibom, Uyo-Calabar, Enugu-Nnokpanta, 9th Mile-Opi-Obollo Afor-Makurdi, Amich-Ezinifite-Amaruru-Ihitenasa-Orlu, Ibadan-Ifo-Ilesa Bypass, Ife-Ondo-Ore and Ughelli-Patani-PortHarcourt roads among others.
It also condemned the rising spate of insecurity in Nigeria, and urged the government to consider the use of technology in the fight against insecurity.
“Security should be technology driven, like in other countries of the world. Population data and fingerprint technology and CCTV should be deployed by all the southern states. Multilevel policing should be introduced,” the group said. The group equally demanded for the immediate release of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, stressing that such a move would guarantee peace in the South East zone of the country.
The SSA condemned the structural imbalance in the country and called for resource control and the comprehensive turnaround of the imbalance between the North and the South, as well as true federalism.
“There is an obvious skewing of the state and local government structure in disfavour of the south. This matches their logic of allocation of resources in a federal state.
“Elsewhere, states generate their resources and remit a certain percentage to the centre for the running of the common services.
“In Nigeria, the Federal Government confiscates the resources of an area and distributes them to all the states and local governments.
“Local governments have, in a way, become co-federating units with the states, all these are to pillage the resources of the South.
“Local governments cannot access federal allocations in a true federal state, and actually, there should really be nothing to share; everyone should be productive.
“Nigeria is gifted resources wise. Every federating unit should develop and tap its own resources while paying to the centre,” the group stated.
The SSA equally condemned the marginalisation of the South in ownership and control of resources, saying, “Resources even in the South are manipulated out of the control of the South. For instance, look at the petroleum and port resources, they are in the hands of non-southerners.”
It also decried the national census, saying it is unjustifiably manipulated against the south. “It is only in Nigeria that the coastal areas have become less populated than the hinterlands of the same country. This apparent manipulation has undermined the South,” the group protested.
Warning that enough was enough, it said: “The establishment elite of this country should realise that they have held the South and Nigeria to the ground for too long. The enveloping Hobbesian world must be avoided so that there could be prosperity and comprehensive development in the South and Nigeria as a whole.
“ We are impatient with the underdevelopment and wish to be at par with the rest of the world.”