Southern governors demand national conference

The governors of Nigeria’s 17 southern states have demanded a conference of the country’s ethnic nationalities to renegotiate the basis of nationhood.

The governors, who ended a two-day meeting in Akure, southwestern Ondo State, on Monday, said in a joint communiqué that the current system of sharing national oil revenue was unacceptable.

Their demands once more highlight the fragile unity of Africa’s most populous country of 120 million people with over 250 ethnic groups. Nigeria has in the past three years been plagued by the worst incidents of sectarian violence seen since a three-year civil war ended in 1970.

“There is an urgent need to convene a national conference of all the constituent ethnic nationalities of this country,” the communiqué said. Such a step, the governors said, was necessary to address the grievances of various ethnic groups that have frequently found expression in ethnic and religious violence.

Equally of concern to the governors was the current system of sharing national revenue which they argued, gave the central government powers that went contrary to the country’s federal system of government.

“It is very unacceptable that after more than three years of return to democracy, we are stil saddled with a unitary revenue allocation system inherited from the military,” they said.

They alleged arbitrariness on the part of President Olusegun Obasanjo in keeping some of the country’s oil revenue in an escrow account instead of paying all into the “federation account” as the governors said was required by the constitution.

All the crude oil that is the mainstay of the Nigerian economy is produced in the country’s south. States and ethnic nationalities in the region, alleging years of neglect mainly under military rulers from the predominantly Muslim north, have demanded increased access to the oil wealth produced in their area.