I have no idea of his place of origin but between you and me, if your state is not a oil producing state you cannot but agree with me that more money can be made from available resources statewide than your governor gets cap in hand from Abuja in any given year. For example Singapore a tiny country in Asia ( we were on similar level of development in 1960) with about 2 million people (about same size as some of the least populated states in nigeria) made about $9 billion selling pork a few years back more than any oil producing state can hope to get even with 100% derivation formula. This tiny country makes even more from manufacturing and Singapore Airlines reportedly makes more money than we make from oil before the current boom which we all know is temporary.

Also Malaysia a larger country close to Singapore got their pilot Palm oil seedlings from Nigeria some decades back but today the production and value added by this produce to the economy is in excess of $40 billion much more than we can hope to earn from oil even at the current inflated prices. Hence our current poverty should not come as a surprise If this can be replicated in your state (which you will is not argue impossible) will anyone be able to insist you take 13% of the returns from this activity and handover the remainder to share some so called unfortunate others? will that sound fair to you? and will that be an encouragement to invest more and increase your production.

The truth of this matter is that countries that have achieved sustainable development base it not on some naturally occurring mineral deposit but rather on Human resource. Human resource is not in numbers per se but well educated and motivated populace. For example Japan has no large deposit of any meaningful natural resource but the bedrock of their prosperity is the highly trained workforce they possess.

The smart thing to do here is to ask the politicians controlling our states about the program they have for fostering economic activities our respective states. How do they intend to train our farmers in modern practices to increase output and thereby per capita income. Supposing our state invests in our farmers, train then and provide infrastructure like modern storage to a level where about a million farmers can make average of $1000 a year in revenue and government can tax 10% of this, it equal $100 million from agriculture alone for the state purse. And supposing we can implement further programs to double output say in the next 2 years, you can't possibly do that kind of projection with handouts from oil money. Supposing about 10 northern states can produce milk such that 50 million Nigerians can take at least N10 worth per day that is the equivalent of 500 million naira going to those states daily.

From your address it seems you reside in the USA, if you don't have an idea of how things are run where Paul Adujie live you can make your research, it's not significantly different from what I have tried to describe above. Each state has the freedom to develop the resources within it's confine and the national government has the freedom to tax such activities accordingly for redistribution for different federally funded activities like health , education, defense etc. The tax rate is close to what we used to operate in our first independence constitution.

You might want to argue we can not compare ourselves to all these countries, they are far advanced and all such things. But you'll agree with me that the ambitious student in a class does not console himself by comparing to the laggards at the back of the class, but you look up to the stars and the brightest ones as role models.

This brings me to the other side of the argument for derivation adjustments. With the current realities on the ground, it will not be a good measure to suddenly award to the oil producing states what rightly belongs to them. It will lead to violent economic dislocations which nobody wants to witness. Whether it's 17% or 25% that is agreed on now the bottom-line is we need to show some empathy and agree that we have collectively shortchanged these people and in the process shot ourselves in the foot. I would propose a system of gradually say over a maximum of 10 years gradually revise the derivation until it gets to 50%. Over this period non-oil producing states and even forward looking oil states need to adjust there revenue projections and take positive steps to empower their people to become the engine house of maintain the state, fiscally this will make the state more answerable to it's own people rather than some God fathers with connections to Abuja.

Then the Federal government needs to relinquish it's strangle hold on Mineral deposits and devolve this power to the federating units. This hold for over 30 years has failed to yield any positive result than the closure of once thriving Tin and Coal mines amongst others. The fact that Abuja has to sanction and process every request for mineral development makes the process too tedious and open to abuse. To achieve this it is obvious Obasanjo's baby the Land Use Decree/Act has to go as well as the Mineral Control act or whatever it's called. Any state that wants to use countries like Haiti , Chad etc as models in development to look up to will be free and those who look at USA, UK, Japan etc as models will have the chance, this arrangement will unleash that juice for development suppressed in all of us for so long. You need to come and see Nigerians working 3-4 jobs a week in America thereby contributing heavily to the economy and the governments here, they didn't wait for anyone to come and convince them before taking these jobs, the opportunity was simply present. This can be replicated at home with proper policies and purposefulness on the part of our governments.

Insisting on an unfair system which we would reject if we were to be on the other side shows a lack of empathy ( seeing things from other peoples perspective) and has not made any state witness an economic take off and it will not.