If you know how I can get a copy of Socrates and Òrúnmìlà by Sophie Olúwolé or you know anyone who does, kindly contact me with this number: 08108686726.

If you know how I can get a copy of Socrates and Òrúnmìlà by Sophie Olúwolé or you know anyone who does, kindly contact me with this number: 08108686726.

If you know how I can get a copy of Socrates and Òrúnmìlà by Sophie Olúwolé or you know anyone who does, kindly contact me with this number: 08108686726.

NIGERIA AS A 42 STATE COUNTRY

By Abímbólá Olúwafémi

A few days back I had a debate with a few of my colleagues here in Okopedi, Okobo, Akwa Ibom state. My colleagues are Igbo and we were debating about the current pro Biafra agitation and related national issues.
The bone of contention was the justifiability of the pro Biafra agitation as led by Nnamdi Kanu. On the whole, my colleagues sought to defend every of Kanu's actions. They sought to justify every single one of his actions on the grounds that such actions are instrumental to the actualization of Biafra.
I dissented and asked my colleagues to reason with facts. Since self determination was the aim of Kanu's struggle for Biafra, such a noble aim could be attained within the Nigeria union via restructuring, I said.
They countered that given the current arrangement of Nigeria, there's no way a politician of Igbo extraction can meritoriously become the president of Nigeria. They argued that the North enjoys undue advantage in the political mathematics of our democracy.
I conceded to their argument that the current majority vote approach gives the north an undue advantage indeed. But I suggested that we could replace it with the American style electoral college system where you win a presidential election based on the number of states you win and not just the number of votes you gather, blah, blah, blah...
They fired back by confronting me with the fact that Nigeria currently has 36 states including FCT. And 19 of those states align to the North alone. Using my logic, they said, the North will even gain more advantage than they currently have.
I saw their point but I was not ready to let the matter die just like that. I began to ask myself: How can we restore parity and banish systemic marginalization? My thoughts led me down so many roads, one of which led me to geo political zones. Yeah, Nigeria's six geo political zones! Had I found the solution? Hardly, but almost there.
Nigeria has six geo political zones which are formed on the basis of similar culture and history right? Yes. Henceforth we should simply decide the winner of our presidential elections on the basis of winning the geo political zones. You do this by calculating how many states a candidate must have won within each geo political zone. The person with the highest number of states won is declared the winner of that geo political zone. Brilliant, I thought!
Only for me to remember that the North alone has 3 of the six geo political zones. Perhaps, even more importantly, two geo political zones in the North have 7 states, while the entire South East geo political zone has 5.
Seeing this, I pressed ahead by assuming that we could restore parity by simply making the number of states under each geo political zone uniform. And my favourite number for this is 7. So seven multiplied by six, gives you 42. Brilliant. This means the South East will get two brand new states, and North East, South South and South West will all get one new state each. Fair right? Maybe. Maybe not. It probably depends on who you ask.
But one thing is sure, such an approach as the one I am advocating would indicate a clear departure from what we currently have. In the sense that it would encourage testing one's popularity across the various parts of the country. Any serious politician will know that it takes support from every Nigerian across the various ethnic and cultural divides to emerge as president.
Nevertheless I am not blind to the imperfection of my suggestions. And I am very open to changing my views in support of a stronger argument.