TIME TO GET THINGS RIGHT WITH Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) REDISTRICTING

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

By Seyi Oduyela

Published: September 30, 2009

 

 

It is said no matter how dead a clock is, it will be right at least twice in a day. INEC for all its antecedents may have finally sounded a note of rightness by its identification of redistricting as a priority concern for Nigeria’s political reformation.

 Esteemed former diplomat Ambassador Emeka Anyaoku was one of the earliest to draw national attention to the fact that Kano has more local government councils than Lagos. It is an anomaly more recently highlighted by INEC’s head Prof Maurice Iwu.

It is anomaly because, notwithstanding the recent census which puts the population of Kano state at par with the population of Lagos, it amounts to a scientific impossibility to sustain that claim.

 The reasons are not far-fetched.

In the first place, Lagos has been the number one epicenter for rural urban population drift in Nigeria since before independence i.e over 6 decades. This means when a villager leaves for the city seeking education and fortune, consistently on the average for decades the destination of choice was Lagos.

 Kano on the other hand is the number one population displacement epicenter in Nigeria consistently for the past dozen years at least. This means that no urban city in Nigeria has lost as many people to mass exodus as Kano state.

 Thirdly, Lagos is a West African sub regional hub aviation hub. It boasts over a hundred flights a day – international and domestic whereas Kano’s sole international flight of repute is a KLM stop over from Abuja thrice a week.

 Similarly on other transportation hundreds of vehicles ferry in thousands of people into Lagos on an hourly basis from around the country, neighboring and contiguous African countries of Benin, Togo and Ghana as well as the high seas through its multiple seaports.

 The same cannot be said of Kano which at best is equal to Kaduna which is the regional hub of northern Nigeria. It has limited domestic transportation connections, is landlocked and experiences meager interactions with neighboring Niger beyond nomadic peregrinations and the like.

 With regard to non-migratory population decline, Kano has a higher infant mortality rate, higher epidemiological propensity – with polio etc, higher religious uprising and mass killings than Lagos. 

 Politically Kano has been spliced into two creating Jigawa state while Lagos has remained the same and even encroached and spread out into Lekki, Badagry etc and risks absorbing by accretion neighboring Ogun state.

 In defence of Kano it has been argued that pervasive polygamy, absence of family planning and significant illiteracy accounts for exponential population growth. Conversely, it is argued that since Lagos is made of many migrants, census figures are feasible if all the outsiders returned to their home states for the exercise.

Wherever the truth lies, the fact is that every Nigerian community has someone in Lagos but the same is not the case with Kano. Even if it cannot out rightly be asserted that the population of Lagos exceeds that of Kano by empirical data, the anecdotal evidence is enough to establish to a near scientific certainty that Kano’s population does not surpass Lagos.

 The synthesis of these thesis and anti-thesis therefore is that Lagos has greater density per square mile because of population over concentration in a small land mass, whereas Kano has a greater land mass and more dispersed population.

 Whatever the case, for the sake of argument, it can at least be assumed that they are of equal population size. What then is the justification for Kano having 40 LGs and Lagos less than two-thirds of that number?

 It is for this reason that Iwu’s call is worthy of attention. In the United States, efforts to afford fairness and parity between big states and smaller states resulted in the convoluted Electoral College system by which presidents are elected.

 While not advocating an Electoral College system to replace our current constitutional equivalent which is the two-thirds of the states requirement for presidential elections, we support the spirit of the system which is to ensure the non-oppression of minorities by the majorities. Indeed in the case of Lagos, it is the non-oppression of majorities by minorities. How can Aminu Kano airport which has less flight a month than Lagos airport had in a day be an LG when Murtala Muhammed Airport International and domestic with their array of touts and vendors are not each LGs?

 The Lagos State V. FGN litigation on withheld funds for newly created LGs was a first step but there needs to be a uniform across the board redistricting of Nigeria in a manner fair and consistent with objective criteria that is not scientifically improbable or politically reprehensible.

 Email This Post