The politics of Delta State capital
By
IN an article in The Guardian of August 15 2002, Professor Itse Sagay addressed the thorny issue of the wrongful location of the capital of Delta State at Asaba. We salute Professor Sagay for bringing to this important matter his weight of authority and scholarship and for his analytical insight into a problem that will not disappear until it is resolved according to the wishes of the people of Delta State. We recall that this was an issue that Professor Obaro Ikime and Professor Peter Ekeh also addressed as far back as 1999 in various media. The problems created by the arbitrary location of Delta State capital at Asaba, is one of the grossest abuses in public policy making during the military era, rankle our communities. Their rejection of Asaba as Delta State's permanent capital dates back to its beginning in August 1991 when, as Professor Sagay put it, "Babangida used the Delta State Capital to pay his bride price to the Anioma in-laws." We are therefore very much pleased that Professor Sagay has kept the discussion of this important matter alive in a manner and in a venue that will bring its clear understanding to the rest of the nation.
We regret that some amongst our brethren in Asaba and its neighbourhoods have reacted with anger and insults to the views and perspectives canvassing for the relocation of the State Capital by leaders from the Old Delta Province, after which the present Delta State is named. We plead with Mr. Clement Okonjo and others in Anioma who wish to discuss this crucial issue to refrain from insulting Deltans who disagree with them on a problem that deserves public airing. We are all now in the same political arrangement, called Delta State, and we all must learn to live together. We suggest that this is a constitutional matter that should and will, be decided by the people of Delta State in a constitutional fashion. We trust that the people of Asaba and its related neighbourhoods will understand that citizens of the Old Delta Province are fully aggrieved about the reckless decision by a military dictator to violate all political realities and sensibilities in this region of Nigeria.
We all wish to welcome Asaba and its neighbourhoods to the Delta fold, but not at the unacceptable cost of losing the capital of the State to an area brought into our State as a favour by a military ruler. Indeed, we believe that Asaba and its ethnic neighbourhoods will have their just dues once the matter of the State capital is resolved. Leaders and communities in the Old Delta Province openly campaigned for Denis Osadebay's candidacy for Premier of the Midwest Region in the early 1960s. Osadebay was from Asaba. But it would be untenable and unjust to expect a candidate from Asaba and related neighbourhoods for such a position in the current Delta State to be well received by communities in the Old Delta Province, until the State capital is relocated. In other words, we believe that it is in the mutual interest of the Old Delta Province and the region now called Anioma to settle this matter of the Delta State capital as soon as possible.
Beyond our salute to Professor Itse Sagay for his affection for the Old Delta Province and his clear and important statement that the communities of the Old Delta Province have a common destiny and culture, our goal in this document is twofold. First, we want to explain, to Niger Deltans as well as to the rest of the country, why Asaba cannot be accepted as the permanent capital of Delta State. Second, we want to suggest to the Legislature of Delta State what measures it can constitutionally take to relocate the capital from Asaba to the Old Delta Province. In order to ensure that these efforts are clearly understood by the rest of the country, we want to explain as fully as possible what the labels Old Delta Province and Anioma connote in these explanations and suggestions.
Five ethnic communities constitute what we refer to as the Old Delta Province. These are, alphabetically, Ijaw (western), Isoko, Itsekiri, Ukwuani and Urhobo. Long before British colonialism, these peoples shared common cultures of inter-marriage, food, and dress. Their relationships were further strengthened when they were brought together by British colonial rule under the aegis of Niger Coast Protectorate in the early 1890s, many years before the British Protectorate of Southern Nigeria was formed in 1900. Their capital, under the Niger Coast Protectorate and Southern Nigeria" and later Nigeria" was Warri. Thus, all five communities not only enjoyed age-old common cultures, but also shared common political institutions during British colonial rule. The boundaries of Warri Province (later Delta Province) were clear. In the North are the Ukwuani (in what the British called Kuale Division). In the South and the Atlantic coast are the Ijaw and Itsekiri divisions. All five ethnic communities shared common courts, colleges, etc. in the mid-1940s, Chief Mukoro Mowoe represented the entire Warri Province in the Western House of Assembly, hence the title of Professor Obaro Ikime's biography of the premier nationalist is "The Member for Warri Province". Similarly, Chief Okotie-Eboh, as Minister of Finance in Abubakar Tafawa Balewa's Government in the 1960s, regarded the entire Delta Province as his constituency.
It was natural, therefore, that when the struggle for the creation of the Mid-West Region was waged in the late 1950s and early 1960s, these five communities were grouped together. When finally the Mid-West was realised in 1963, three cities were considered as candidates for capital. From Delta Province, both Warri - the old capital of Delta Province - and Sapele were considered along with Benin City, the capital of Benin Province. Eventually, Benin City was chosen by consensus to be the capital of Midwest Region. The affairs of the Mid-West Region of Nigeria were run on the clear understanding that it was composed of two distinct political divisions, the Old Benin Province and the Old Delta Province. When there was further agitation for the creation of Delta State in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, all these five communities worked together. Their own mantra for this effort was, aptly, "the five fingers of one hand". In canvassing for the Delta State, several suggestions were made as to the proper location of the proposed State's capital, including, always, Warri.
The name Anioma was coined during the late 1970s and early 1980s as part of the efforts of the Western Igbo to govern their own affairs in a state removed from Benin hegemony. Professor Don Ohadike, the chief historian of Anioma, put it thus: "Like many groups in Nigeria, the Western Igbo began to seek a new identity. The name they chose for themselves was ndi Anioma ... a term they coined in the 1970s when they began to agitate for their own state within the entity known as Nigeria" (Don. C. Ohadike, Anioma: A Social History of the Western Igbo People. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994, p. xvi). The core or the newly conceived Anioma was Western Igbo territory in Old Benin Province, including Agbor in its western corner and Asaba in its far eastern periphery. While the term Anioma was loosely extended as far south as the Ukwuani, it must be emphasised that the Ukwuani have always cherished their own distinct culture, which is securely located in the Old Delta Province, as one of the oldest indigenous cultures in the Niger Delta. In this document, we shall equate Anioma with Western Igbo of the old Benin Province and shall not extend that usage to the Ukwuani of the Old Delta Province.
Before the political crisis that brought military rule and civil war to Nigeria, there were four Regions in the country: Northern Nigeria, Western Nigeria, Eastern Nigeria, and Midwestern Nigeria - each with its own Constitution, in addition to the common Federal Constitution. State creation was an artifact of military rule. The country was carved into twelve states in 1967 in response to the imperatives of the secession bid by the Igbo leadership in Eastern Nigeria. Under the military rulership of General Olusegun Obasanjo, there was a further state creation exercise in 1976. It is fair to say that there was some rationale and discernible procedure in these two exercises, with a good amount of consultation and respect for the views of affected communities and their leaders. State capitals were selected largely on account of history and the centrality of the chosen city. By and large, the Abuja rationale - the doctrine that undergirded the transfer of Nigeria's capital from Lagos to Abuja on the grounds that the new capital was in a central location - was given some weight in the choice of state capitals under General Yakubu Gowon and General Olusegun Obasanjo in the 1960s and 1970s.
Nov 2002