By Osabenyi Onefeli
Sen Ned Nwoko is always in the news for wrong reasons. He wants to be seen in the floor of NASS as an active member, but he’s busy doing nothing, or worst still, he’s busy doing the wrong thing. Sen. Nwoko is the senator representing Delta North Senatorial District. He’s pushing tirelessly and relentlessly for the creation of Anioma State without due consultation with his constituency, which is a very bad representation.
Good representation demands that you know what your people want and you go and get it for them. As if that’s not bad enough, Sen Ned Nwoko wants Anioma State to be created out of Delta State of South-South geo-political zone and be ceded to the Southeast, not minding the original and natural boundary, the ancient landmark, right from Western Region, Midwestern Region, Bendel State, to make Southeast have six states. Haba! Sen Nwoko, who sends you? Are you representing Delta State or South-East? What interest, are you protecting, the South-South or the southeast? Why are you crying more than the bereaved? Why are you fighting to make the Southeast to have six states than the Southeast people?
Sen Nwoko has lost touch with his people. Is the creation of Anioma State the priority of the people of Delta North? The answer is no. Ukwuani with it’s three LGAs is in Delta North Senatorial District, that Sen Ned Nwoko is representing.
Ukwuani is an oil-producing community but has nothing to show for it. Ukwuani is the only ethnic nation in Delta State without any tertiary institution. Sen Ned Nwoko doesn’t deem it necessary to attract anything to Ukwuani, the only thing paramount to him is to make Ukwuani part of Anioma State for onward transfer to southeast to make it Igbo. I continue to warn my Ukwuani people to steer clear from anything Anioma, Anioma is Igbo, they belong to Ohaneze Ndigbo, Ukwuani is not Igbo, whether Anioma State is ceded to southeast or not, makes no difference, the Igbo will definitely colonize it.
They’ve almost taken over Asaba. Ukwuani is going to be the only minority group in Anioma State, as such, it’s going to be highly marginalized. Aside from that, the average Igbo man doesn’t believe in Nigeria, he believes in Biafra, so Sen Nwoko is taking us out of Nigeria to Biafra. We must resist it. It’ll never happen.
Any Ukwuani man that’s supporting the creation of Anioma State is brainwashed. Any Ukwuani man that believes that Ukwuani will fare better in Anioma is being deceived. Just ponder. How have the Anioma people been treating Ukwuani nation over the years? Very poorly. Sen Ifeanyi Okowa from Anioma extraction was a governor of Delta State for eight years. How did he treat Ukwuani nation? Very unfairly. Look round, point any good project Okowa sited in Ukwuani land.
There’s none. Above all Ukwuani will lose its ethnic identity in Anioma State. Our ethnic identity is something more than gold and silver, we must preserve it and guard it jealously.
I saw a video some days ago, on social media, where Obiaruku people were swearing Okpete Ogume against anybody who is going to collect money from herders to keep them inside their bush. I almost shed tears.
This is a sign of hopelessness and helplessness. This is what the community has resorted to do in the twenty first century because of abysmal failure of government to protect it. These people can no longer access their farms, their only source of their livelihood. This is not peculiar to only Obiaruku but all the communities in Delta State and even beyond. Criminals of all shades have taken over their bushes. Sen Nwoko can’t sponsor a bill to address insecurity in Nigeria. He can’t sponsor a bill for state police to address the issue of insecurity in the nation. What concerns him is the creation of Anioma State to make Southeast to have six states. What a bad representative.
How does creation of Anioma State translate into development? How does creation of Anioma State put food in the table of the people? How does it provide jobs for our teeming youths roaming the streets? How does creation of Anioma State address the myriads of problems confronting the people? There are certain bills that should be consigned outright to the waste bin for lack of merits. For Nigerian senators to be debating state creation on the floor of NASS at this crucial time shows they’re detached from the people they’re representing. It’s like a man his house is on fire and he has the pleasure of chasing rats.
Nigeria is in deep crises. Nigerians are dying of hunger. Nigerians are dying because they can’t afford medical bills. Nigerians have started withdrawing their pension savings. SMEs are dying. Companies are folding up. Multinationals are leaving our shore in droves. These are not cheering news.
Yet our senators deem it necessary to be debating state creation. Some countries of the world are closing their prison facilities because there are no enough criminals to put there. In Nigeria we are building more prison facilities because the existing ones are not enough to accommodate the criminals our system is breeding. UNICEF report says Nigeria is harbouring over twenty million out-of-school children, one of the highest, if not the highest in the world. You don’t need to be a criminologist before you know that over seventy percent of this children are going to end up as hardened criminals.
All these don’t bother our senators, what concerns them is state creation while the existing ones are not economically viable. Apart from Ukwuani where you have oil and gas deposits, what do you have in Anioma? We can’t continue to create states for creating sake.
The dummy they sold to us in the past that state creation would bring development to us is a ruse, a complete ruse. The population of a state like Texas in the US is more than the population of the whole of South-South, but Texas is more developed than South-south. That shows that balkanizing the country in the name of state creation doesn’t bring development, rather it brings division. What brings development is for the country to have a good structure and to have visionary and incorruptible leaders.
If Sen Nwoko is pushing a bill for restructuring, true federalism, resource control and devolution of powers, that’s Ok. If he’s pushing a bill, not for licence for everyone to own a gun, but for state police, to fight insecurity, that’s wonderful. If he’s pushing for a brand new peoples’ constitution, that’s great. We want restructuring and true federalism, not state creation.
My consolation is Anioma State is not going be created. Why? Because it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle for a state to be created in a civilian government. In a democracy someone can’t just create a state and put you in a place against your wish.
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