Re: Delta State Matters Arising
By
THE article, Delta State: Matters arising by Prof. Itse Sagay in NDC made a very sorry reading. The article was a response to one Clem Okonjo's contribution published in The Guardian of Monday July 8, 2002, which allegedly abandoned ideas and issues and descended on personality and character. While I do not hold forte for Mr. Okonjo, it made a sorry reading seeing Prof. Sagay pay him back in identical coins by referring to him as unknown quantity, an inferior, non entity and dragging members of the Okonjo family into the controversy. Two wrongs do not make a right and we expected the erudite professor of law to have been more charitable and magnanimous. This is beside the salient points raised in the said article anyway.
Prof Sagay jubilates in the consistency and firmness of his opposition to the siting and location of the capital of Delta State in Asaba. To him, it is a position on principle, on conviction that the Delta State Capital was immorally and shamelessly transferred outside Delta instead of remaining in Warri where it had been capital of Warri province. The Professor may be a man of principle but principles must be based on facts, reason and law, not on jaundiced or prejudiced views. Consistency and firmness in principle per se do not confer propriety. Sagay is unhappy with the siting of the state capital in Asaba because Anioma is not part of the Delta province. Hear him: Delta State is constituted by two states, Delta proper and Anioma. This argument coming from a lawyer is strange and untenable. The professor cannot cite one legal authority in support of the existence of an Anioma state. Anioma may be a linguistic, cultural or even a geographical concept, aspiration or expression but definitely not a state for now.
According to the professor, President Babangida used the Delta State capital to pay the bride price to his Anioma in-laws. Since then, the so called true or real Delta peoples have felt shortchanged. Anioma was part of the old Edo (sic: Benin) province. It was never part of Delta province. It is an unacceptable outrage for a territory transferred from Edo State to join Delta and be made the capital. Asaba belongs to the Igbo National Group and ought not to be capital of a state of the Delta peoples. The compatibility of the two entities will depend only on the fact of the true Delta producing the governorship of the state always. Alternatively, the solution lies in both entities separating into two states, with Delta state's capital at Warri and Anioma either transforming into a state with Asaba as capital or joining Anambra to become part of the South Eastern group of states. The true Delta peoples are unhappy travelling for two hours to a Delta state capital situated on a foreign territory when their real capital is right there with them in Warri. They die from accidents on these long journeys to Asaba. The configuration of the present state is a misnomer, an absurdity and a terrible scourge on the people of the real Delta.
Sagay does not tell us why he thinks that the two areas are incompatible or should not live together in peace, harmony and mutual trust. Neither did he cite any legal authority that precludes part of one province from being merged with another to form a state. His arguments do not take into cognizance the various criteria for the creation of states such as geographical contiguity or proximity, historical ties or links and cultural affinity. The Anioma or Delta North people are geographically contiguous to the Delta South peoples. Both peoples trace their origin historically to the Benin Empire or have Benin influence. Before the arrival of the Europeans, they engaged themselves in trading activities. Though each of the people has some distinct cultural features they share lots of practices in common. Linguistic ties also abound. I understand that the Urhobo and the Anioma share the same word for please or I beg you: biko.
At no time was provincial delineation a sole criterion for state creation. Provinces were colonial creations that undermined our unity, an index of the divide-and-rule policy of the British colonialists and we ought not to continue to wield this knife on the things that hold us together. Professor Sagay is so clouded with prejudice that he failed to see the error in his sweeping assertion that Anioma was not part of Delta province. Was the old Aboh Division (now Ndokwa East, Ndokwa West and Ukwuani local government areas) a veritable part of Anioma, not a part of Delta province? Is he excising them from their Anioma kith and kin?
On the eve of the creation of Delta State there was no Edo State in existence from which Anioma was allegedly transferred to Delta as Professor Sagay would have us believe. What was legally in existence was Bendel State. Warri was an option of a capital for the proposed Delta State. Some agitators proposed Abraka or Sapele while others wanted a virgin territory like the Abuja concept. The present Delta north wanted an Anioma state but the authorities thought it better to roll over the interests and demands of these two areas. Warri would have been a good capital site for this conglomeration but for the wrangling of its people. Even among the true Delta people there were powerful forces that opposed the siting of capital in Warri. That was how Warri lost out to Asaba. Sagay should be frank and bold enough to tell his audience so rather than spinning the Babangida bride price tale. He got near the truth when he said: "Location of Delta State capital in Anioma is a fallout of this dispute between the Delta south peoples, but sailed off again in the wind of imagination by adding that outside opportunists stoke the embers of the dispute and make away with the rights and interests of the quarreling sisters. Anioma people should not be made the fall guy of the dispute and clashes over the ownership of Warri by the various ethnic indigenes. When two brothers fight a stranger must necessarily reap the benefit. The mutual distrust and acrimony between the Delta south peoples opened a vista of opportunities for the comparatively peaceful and serene Anioma town of Asaba. They didn't and need not stoke the fire. It is this same distrust and acrimony among the south-south oil producing minorities that keep us disunited while strangers control and manage our resources from far away Abuja where there is hardly a drop of water, much less of oil. Isaac Boro, Ojukwu and Ken Saro Wiwa are examples of people who rose against oppression and were swallowed by distrusting saboteurs among their kin. The boiling cauldron that Warri subsequently became between 1998-2001 reveals the wisdom in denying it capital status. This may be the reason why multinational oil companies are reluctant to site their corporate headquarters in the town.
If the people of Delta South feel insulted, and strongly so, about an alien town serving as their capital, one wonders how they expect our western brothers from whose feet the capital rug was pulled and taken to Abuja to feel! Must we then insist or demand that people from the North or Middle Belt should never (aspire to) govern the country because they have the capital? Do the laws of the nation of which my learned friend is a professor allow that? Do the principles of human rights, democracy and justice for which Sagay professes to stand permit that? Is justice a one way traffic that takes cognizance of only one side of a coin? Is the scale of justice now a one sided weigh? What can be more insulting than playing second fiddle on one's soil as the Anioma do? And to think that Asaba was once the capital of colonial Nigeria! When did distance rather than carelessness, negligence or mistakes become the cause of accidents? People have been known to die by accident on their doorsteps without travelling. If Warri were made the Capital of Delta State would that have eased accidents from the state? Would the people become recluses in Delta State for fear of accidents? If Anioma belongs to the Igbo group and should not belong to Delta State, what happens to some other areas of Delta State that have historical ties with and in fact trace their roots to the East? When did tribalism or ethnicity become a criterion for state creation? It is one of the unfortunate chapters of our national existence that in the era of globalization as manifested in the European Union and African Union we still find persons with such myopic, tribalistic and divisive views as Professor Sagay's. We should be preaching unity and tolerance, not divisiveness. Every concerned Deltan must appreciate the predicament of the Warri crisis and work towards its resolution. No part of the state or country is immune from such crisis. Its resolution will benefit us all in terms of the over all peace and development of the state just as the socio economic trauma it has caused is felt by both indigenes and non indigenes across the state. If we cannot tolerate the Anioma people, there is no guarantee that we can tolerate ourselves because it is only the measure of love we have for ourselves that we can extend to others.
Nov 2002