Boko Haram, National ID card, federal allocations and the National conference?

Boko Haram, National ID card,  federal allocations and the National conference?

In honesty, the threat of Boko Haram to Nigerian is greater than that posed either by Al-Qaeda or by any other terrorist organizations to any other Nation. And this threat to Nigeria is neither because of the sophistication of this terror group nor because of their uncanny abilities to cause mayhem or destructions. These ragtag terrorist primitive bastards are successful in their scourge because of institutional failures, corruption, mediocrity and gross incompetence in the Nigerian society.

For example, how can a nation fight terrorism or terrorist when it does not have even an inaccurate head counter and identities of its citizenry. In Nigeria there is neither birth, death, national, local registry of the citizenry. The result of this one out of many institutional failures is that anybody is and is not Nigerian depending on the immediate circumstances and desires of the individual. Just by mere common sense, it is impossible to stop Boko Haram if its members like many Nigerians can assume any identity at any time and place of their choosing. Boko Haram will grow and increase in straight and assume any name and coloration as long as Nigeria remains one of the few countries in the world that cannot identify its own citizens.

A terrorist who appears Middle Eastern laden with explosives and AK 47s can walk freely across the porous Nigerian borders and within the Nigerian states parading self as citizen. And I ask, can we found somebody we know not of his or her existence, identity, name, height, complexion, familial? The answers is no; but when we do, it is by sheer luck and the security of a nation and of a people cannot be entrusted to luck and randomness. So credible head count backed with biometrics is an Imperative and Odimegwu should have been encouraged and supported and Governor Kwankwaso and his likes could have gone to hell.

Like Boko Haram, it is also criminal to allocate federal common fund on the bases of permanent fixtures, like the number, size of local government, states or area of land. Since area population is dynamic and constant state and local government creation is impracticable; congressional districts and or redistricting, or representation should be used to balance, compensate and remedy population shifts. As such federal allocation should be apportioned base on congressional districts in a local government or in a state.

If due to oppositions from the status quo the National Conference fails to  restructure Nigeria to regional system,  the need for an equitable state, local government creation, equitable congressional district apportionment and equitable federal allocation, makes National ID card backed by biometrics an imperative. Until such a time we secure reliable National ID card, for equity today, each of the existing 6 geo-political zones in the country should have 7 states and equal number of local governments; I am not a fan for the creation of more states or local governments per say, but I also recognize that existing state cannot be scraped for parity among the zones hence a 7 state per zone remedy is what is achievable now for equity and fairness among the 6 zones. If the North West zone insists on having an additional state then an 8 states solution per each of the 6 zones is advised.
After a credible national ID scheme has be achieved, and or true fiscal federalism adopted, more states, local governments may or may not be necessary since federal allocation, if any, will then be based on congressional districts (which in turn are based on actual population) in the  locality or state. Because population is a dynamic phenomenon, a headcount or census every eight to ten years must be conduct so as to adjust the number of congressional districts per area or per state. The number of congressional districts per states also accords a state its corresponding fair share of federal allocation and the number of congressional delegations for the federal house.

Under the current pseudo federalism in Nigeria today, federal allocation that is given on state and local government bases means that, the more states and or local governments a zone or state has the more money it gets from the center. The current state and local government partitions in Nigeria were all executed by Northern military dictatorial regimes and were skewed; as one would imagine favored the old Northern region. What were the bases or criteria for the creation of the existing states and local governments by the military dictatorships? No criteria whatsoever, perhaps I should say that the creation of the existing states and local governments were based on arbitrary war and peace time military strategy, expediency, nepotism, tribalism and or political manipulation. If military dictatorship is an aberration so are the political structures and partitions done by the dictatorships. Once again what were the bases for the creation of the present 36 state structure and 774 local governments? What if a local government depopulates to zero population due to natural or manmade disaster, would this local government continue to receive federal allocation just by the mere fact that it already exist even when it is inhabited by wild beasts only?

With the current flawed divisionary indigenous acts in most states in Nigeria an Ibo man living in any other part of Nigeria outside Igbo land is counted as an indigene of one of the Igbo states, a stranger to his state of residency. So in states creation and or local governments creation such Ibo man should be assigned to an Igbo states and not to the state where he resides until such a time the regressive indigenous laws in the states are changed. But this was not the case when the present states and local governments were created by the Northern Military Juntas. For instance, Kano has 44 local government councils which perhaps took into account none indigenes living in Kano. However these none indigenes are not accorded ‘indigene-ship’ or security. So if there are 3000000 Ibos for example living in Kano and it becomes necessary that these Ibos move back to their states as is the case with Boko Haram attacks in the north, then Kano state would lose 3000000 residents but still keeps its 44 local governments; while the states where these Ibos relocated still maintain their twice less the number of local governments as  Kano State. This arrangement is not only unfair but also wrong and criminal. With this arrangement, Kano State has it both ways and there is sound legal ground to legally and politically challenge the current geo-political arrangement and partitions in Nigeria. This is an example of nepotism, tribalism, cronyism that the January 1966 rebels and Gideon Orkar group complained about, it still exists and in a worse form. South East zone have only five States and 98 local councils while the other zones have either 6 or 7 states and some have 188 local councils and the national cakes are given out on state and local government bases. Does anybody honestly believe that each of the three zones in the north is more populated than the Ibo population in Nigeria? This kind of injustice demands courageous leadership and unity of purpose. If civil disobedience, political, legal pressures, national conference fails to halt Igbo marginalization and disparity in federal to zone allocations, then social disengagement along with UN actions seeking Igbo autonomy should precede economic and political disengagement from the center. And this mass political movement will need courageous leadership, the type that is currently lacking in Nigeria and in Igbo land in particular.

The ongoing National Conference must recommend National Identity Card scheme backed with biometrics, an 8 to 10 year periodic national head count and a federal allocation based on congressional districts which in itself should be based on actual population of the human beings in the districts. As an example, every 400k to 600k people can make up a congressional district.