Elder statesman and renowned academic of Igbo extraction, Professor Benedict Imeagwu Chukwumah (BIC) Ijomah, has taken Arewa nationalist leader, Prof. Ango abdulahi, to the cleaners.
In an Open Letter dated June 21, 2017, Prof. Ijomah, the 80-year-old renowned Professor of Political Sociology, author, scholar, academician, and institutional administrator, used facts and figures to demolish claims recently made by the controversial Prof. Abdullahi while defending the quit notice served Igbos living in the North by Arewa youth leaders. Prof. Ijomah wrote thus:
OPEN LETTER TO PROF. ANGO ABDULAHI
OUR attention has been drawn to your statements in Vanguard of Saturday, June 10, 2017. You are alleged to be in support of the call on the Igbo to quit. It is unfortunate, grossly
unfortunate, that a scholar of your calibre will be so partisan as to be unable to see the wisdom in retaining Nigeria as a corporate entity. I know you have, in the past, been anti-Igbo.
One would have thought that our education exposes us to a level where we can live even with our enemies. You said in the alleged publication that, “each year up to the time Nigeria
gained its independence, none of the two regions East and West was able to produce for its self. I mean none of the Western and Eastern Regions had the money to effectively run the affairs of the region until they got financial support from the Northern Region.” It is this assumption of yours that I want to address.
First of all it is not true that the North had bailed out Eastern Region or the Western Region. But you claim that even before independence none of the regions could live without Northern
subvention. Let me draw your attention to the facts before independence. You should read W.M.M Geary’s work titled “Nigeria under the British Rule” published by the Cass and
Company Limited, London (1927).
Subsidizing the North
May I draw your attention especially to pages 124 and 125. You will see published, General Revenue for the Northern and Southern Protectorates before the
Amalgamation and the Percentage of Total Revenue originating from the North. You will see that contrary to your argument, it was indeed the South that was subsidizing the North. I am reproducing the tables here for clarity.
I also draw your attention to Abstracts of Revenue, 1809 to 1913. You will also see that the North could not have survived without the Imperial grant and the support of the South. When
you look at the third table, Northern Nigeria revenue paid by the South and the Imperial grant, it will disabuse your mind and show you that without the South and the Imperial grant,
the Northern government/states could not have existed.
Indeed, one of the reasons for the amalgamation was the fact that the British colonial government was tired of carrying the burden of the North and they thought that by merging the Southern and Northern protectorates, the country would be stable. Indeed, the circumstances that forced the
