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Confederation Is It! By Babayola Toungo
One of the resolutions adopted by the Southern Leaders at their recent summit towards the tail end of last year was the adoption of Confederation, should they fail to produce the President of Nigeria come 2007. Since this thunderous pronouncement (with a soothing effect) was made, the more I reflect on it, the more I become fascinated with the idea of Confederation. I have been toying with this idea in my head since after the summit and the more I think of it, the more attractive it sounds to me. The Southern Leaders at their meeting called northerners in general names with Ambassador Matthew Mbu calling us “arrogant”. Decent people may find such insults unpalatable to the palate, while no decent politician will use under any circumstance on another. Northerners have been portrayed generally as parasites and lazy, incapable of even feeding themselves and therefore have to rely on the largesse of their southern counterparts who daily toil on their “oil farms” in order to feed their indolent northern brethren. They are now fed up with being their brothers’ keepers, and I agree with them.
The insults and tirades poured out on the north with unrestrained venom truly rankled me and made me very angry; but my anger is directed at the northern leaders. Those leaders that took over from Sardauna of Sokoto, that paragon of leadership that ensured that the old north was self sustaining and strong enough to go it alone by developing manpower, infrastructure and all other factors of development. The old north was the food basket of the country and chief foreign exchange earner through agricultural activities. In those days there used to be agricultural extension workers, farm centres, marketing boards and such other supporting agencies to assist farmers in their farming. Those were the days when groundnut pyramids dotted the northern horizon from Yola to Sokoto; the days when after agriculture, the most viable industry and biggest employer of labour was the textile industry, because of the abundance of cotton from our local farmers. Those were the days when the Northern Region had to make its resources available to enable Nigeria explore and exploit its hydrocarbon deposits. Alas the good works carried out by the late Sardauna and the northern government he headed were systematically destroyed by the same people who enjoyed his patronage – went to school because he provided free education; got employment because of his northernisation policy; and were housed because of his foresight.
While all these thoughts were going through my mind, I had the privilege of travelling with an academic friend of mine who happened to be thinking along these lines and so there we were shooting the breeze while travelling from Yola to Abuja with about ten hours of time to pass through. Travelling through the beautiful country of the sahelian and savannah regions of the country gives one a lot of ideas on how best to tap the potential resources of this vast region lying waste because of our leadership failures over time; it also saddens one on how far we lag behind in relation to other countries or regions sharing the same climatic conditions with us. The two of us therefore began thrashing around ideas on how best to propel our people into the twenty first century using what we have. In the course of our discussions, I advanced my idea of moving the nation away from the path pf perfidy that we are on and the idea is very simple and workable I believe. Break up the country into its component six zones and let every zone be on its own. The North East in my opinion has what it takes to be a very successful country with abundant resources to earn foreign exchange. Take kpomo, that delicacy that some people cannot do without, which we can easily list on the London and New York Commodity Exchanges and earn some hard dollars!
Livestock products like cows, goats, and sheep will be bought and sold in hard currency which may be used to buy petroleum products from Chad. Same goes for agricultural products. We can easily as well identify other activities to pursue to pursue and harness the abundant natural resources that God has endowed the region with abundantly. Take the endless rivers and streams we are blessed with. The North East has the least allocation of electricity. If the zone is really serious about electricity generation we could begin by generating electricity from the Dadin Kowa and Kiri dams, which is enough to electrify the whole zone in the short term. We could then turn our attention to the realisation of the much stalled Mambilla Hydro-electric project that is estimated to generate 2500MW, which on completion will not only supply power for the industrialisation of the zone but may easily be exported to Cameroun and Chad to generate foreign income.
The Mambilla Plateau itself is a treasure trough yet to be exploited, which in my opinion is deliberate. The Highland Tea produced on the plateau is preferred over Lipton Tea by all discriminating tea lovers; Coffee is in abundance. We could also revive the logging industry long since abandoned. The plateau has the largest concentration of livestock on the West African coast. The North East can emulate Australia and New Zealand by developing the sector and turn this into a money spinning, foreign income generating venture. There are at least three tomato paste and mango juice industries within the zone which can be interlinked with each other and the various farmers scattered all over the area. There would be unlimited by-products from this sector which uses cannot be quantified.
It is estimated that the amount of limestone deposits around the Guyuk area of Adamawa State can last for a minimum of sixty years and it is less than 300 kilometres from Ashaka Cement Company. Ashaka could be expanded and another Kiln added to supplement the existing one to cater for the anticipated excess to be extracted from Guyuk. Tourism is another potential gold mine that has been left to rot. With the Yankari Game Reserve and Gashaka-Gumti the opportunities are endless.
Emotions and sentiments aside just think about my thesis seriously. Is the Nigerian federation really worth it? For me, I am willing to go the confederation way. May be no illegal bunkerer will have any cause to insult my forefathers any longer.
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