Militants, pro-biafra not serious about breakup – Nwabueze

The resurgence of militancy in the Niger Delta region and the renewed agitation for the state of Biafra by the South-East are mere reactions to marginalization of the zones by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, the Secretary-General of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Prof Ben Nwabueze, has said.

Nwabueze said the two regions were not happy with the distribution of federal government’s appointments, saying it had not favoured them as against other regions in the country.

“I am not sure these agitators really want to secede. I think they are merely reacting to marginalization by the government, especially in the appointments,” he said.

Recalling that Buhari’s first set of appointments had completely excluded the South-East and allocated “fewer” slots to the South-South, compared to other zones, Nwabueze said: “So, naturally, the South-East people felt they didn’t belong to Nigeria.

“There is what we call the national question, which involves the ideal we all believe in – the one Nigeria project, the state of the society, state of democracy and state of our economy.

“We’ll start with the national question. I just launched a book titled, The National Question. In it I discussed quite extensively the question of national unity and one Nigeria. But the question that agitates the mind is: How close are we to the ideal of one Nigeria? Are we closer to it? Or are we nearer to what we were 40 years ago? And my answer is that we are farther away from it. Today, it doesn’t seem we are paying much attention to the important matter of national unity.”

Daily Trust, August 28

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