Is 13% to Niger Delta cause of Northern underdevelopment?

Vanguard

20 February 2012

Is 13% to Niger Delta cause of Northern underdevelopment?

GROUP  mobilisation using ethnic, religious or class sentiments is a strategy which political elites in Nigeria often use to gain the support of the dominated citizens to give them political legitimacy. They often do this to gain the support of their constructed identity group or sub-groups, irrespective of the consequences to others.

Hence, many politicians in Nigeria prefer to project themselves along ethnic, religious, or regional lines which have been reinforced by Nigeria’s colonial and post-colonial history and the failure of the national socio-political developmental strategies to make Nigerians full citizens of any part of the country in which they are resident. The reason why Mallam Sanusi Lamido, the Central Bank Governor, should regress to this strategy in his interview with the Financial Times of London requires further examination.

As the chief official at the apex of the banking industry, the only plausible reason why Mallam Sanusi Lamido may have ventured into this recursive strategy in Nigerian politics may be that, like many other politico-bureaucrats, he is posturing for the 2015 elections.

He has the right to aspire for any higher office, if he so chooses, but what is unacceptable and most undignified, is his desire to denigrate the cry of the Niger-Delta people for true federalism, by ascribing the underdevelopment of the Northern part of Nigeria to the 13 percent oil allocation, distributed from oil and gas revenue to some Niger-Delta states.