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The north of Nigeria still rely on the South to survive |
NIGERIA: BRITAIN USED AND IS STILL USING THE RESOURCES FROM THE RICH SOUTH (Not Groundnut) TO BALANCE THE ABJECT POVERTY IN THE POOR NORTH
“Vice Chancellor Ango Abdullahi is either a History illiterate or a deceitful Elder”.
By Comr. Onuoha Endurance [B.Sc(Hons) Pol. Sc., B.Ed, UNN]
The spokesperson of the Northern Elders
Forum, NEF, and a Former Vice Chancellor Ango Abdullahi has alleged that resources from the North was used to develop other regions of Nigeria. Abdullahi made the claim while berating people of the South for saying people of the North were cheating them in the area of resource control.
Speaking in Zaria on Friday, the NEF
spokesperson said it was the money from
the North that was used to construct
Nigerian Railways, refineries and other
facilities.
With all due respect to the highest academic position you claim to have held, it is either you want to scuffle and muffle history or you are daft and ignorant of history.
You can deceive kids of nowadays because you people have finally succeeded in eliminating History from the Curriculum of our school system. But, unfortunately, we in the East and West have successfully transfered history from one generation to another through folk tales, story telling, and traditional cult system which is referred to as informal education.
Mr. Ango Abdullahi, it was not the intention of Fredick Lugard and his Mistress Flora Shaw to Amalgamate the Northern and Southern Protectorate and when they finally did so, it was not because they love you, your family or the North, rather it was for their selfish reason and economic aggrandizement having seen that all you can boast of was your groundnut, hides and skin which was a personal business and for subsistence living (feeding from hand to mouth).
Moreover, my VC Sir, your region was highly backwards and had refused to accept western education and way of life (up till this hour) while down South, we readily assimilated hook, line and sinker the way of life of the Whiteman which was why we learnt English faster and associates with the wider world more than the North (up till this day).
My VC Sir, the major source of revenue for the development of your railways was slave trade of blacks, after the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 and following the abolishing of slave trade, finances were generated mainly from Palm Oil Explored and Exported from the East and Cocoa exported by from the West.
Ango Abdullahi, if I must educate you, link roads, bridges and railways were built by various foreign companies (contractors) with resources from the South to;
1. Make for easy transportation to the shores of Spain which is the closest European country to Africa through the backyard of the North.
2. To feed and pay British personnel on ground in the North who were obviously under harsh working conditions and ravaged and killed by various diseases because your land is cursed and can barely produce green vegetation which is why you still force your thin cattle which is also supposed to be a National Resource down South to feed fat grazing in the land flowing with milk and honey before we can agree to buy it from your nomadic Fulani herdsmen.
Please it is worthy to note here that never in the history of the North have any resources from the North, be it groundnut, hide and skin or Cow and goat; has ever been a National cake but rather if this groundnut Pyramid doesn’t belong to Mallam Ango, that flock of cattle will belong to Alhaji Abdullahi.
It was not until 1907 when Nigerian Bitumen Corporation conducted exploratory work in the country by Authorization of The Royal Niger Company (Belonging to the Queen of England and Her Royal family); however, the firm left the country at the onset of World War I. Thereafter, licenses were given to D’Arcy Exploration Company and Whitehall Petroleum. However, neither company found oil of commercial value and they returned their licenses in 1923.
A new license covering 357,000 square miles (920,000 square kilometres) was given to a new firm called Shell D’arcy Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria. The new firm was a consortium of Shell and British Petroleum (then known as Anglo-Iranian). The company began exploratory work in 1937. The consortium was granted license to explore oil all over the territory of Nigeria but in 1951 and then between 1955 and 1957, the acreage allotted to the company in the original license was reduced. Drilling activities started in 1951
and the first test well was drilled in Owerri
area. Oil was discovered in non-commercial
quantities at Akata, near Eket in 1953.
Prior to the Akata find, the company had spent around 6 million pounds in exploratory activities in the country. Please I want to ask Ango Abdullahi if £6million pounds was generated in 1953 from Hides and skin and Groundnut or was it the company contractors that facilitated their Oil Adventure?
Shell-BP in the pursuit of commercially available petroleum found oil in Oloibiri, Nigeria in 1956. Other important oil wells discovered during the period were Afam
and Bomu in Ogoni territory. Production of
crude oil began in 1957 and in 1960, a total of 847,000 tonnes of crude oil was exported.
Towards the end of the 1950s, non-British
firms were granted license to explore for oil:
Mobil in 1955, Tenneco in 1960, Gulf Oil and
later Chevron in 1961, Agip in 1962, and Elf in 1962. Prior to the discovery of oil, Nigeria (like many other African countries) strongly relied on agricultural exports to other countries to supply their economy. Many Nigerians thought the developers were looking for palm oil.
But after nearly 50 years searching for oil in
the country, Shell-BP discovered the oil at
Oloibiri in the Niger Delta. The first oil field
began production in 1958.
After that, the economy of Nigeria should have seemingly have experienced a strong increase. However, competition for the profits from oil created a great level of terror and conflict for those living in the region. Many citizens of Nigeria believe that they haven’t been able to see the economic benefits of oil companies in the state.
Additionally, Nigerian government officials have remained majority shareholders in the profits created by the production of
Nigerian oil, leading to government capturing of nearly all oil production, and citizens are not seeing socioeconomic benefits, and insist that oil companies should compensate the people. Instead of compensating them, they have been termed Vandals, Oil bunkerers and thieves for taking a gallon of their God-given oil. “groundnut, hides and skin” in the North and “limes stone and cocoa” in the West; while their counterparts in the North and West can easily stockpile groundnuts, hides and skin, and limestone without Armed personnel arresting them or labelling them Cow or Groundnut Bunkerers.
“Each year, up to the time Nigeria gained its
independence, NONE of the two regions (West and East) was able to provide for itself.
“I mean none of the Western and Eastern
regions had the money to effectively run the affairs of its region until they got financial support from the Northern region.
“First oil exploration was conducted using
money from GROUNDNUT pyramid, cotton,
HIDE and SKIN among other cash crops from Northern Nigeria.
From the above lecture, it is now obvious to Ango Abdullahi that neither Groundnut, hide and skin was used to develop the South during the pre-colonial and colonial period nor are they using their cows and cattle to develop the South today.
Comr. Onuoha Endurance, [B.Sc(Hons), Pol. Sc, B.Ed, UNN] is a Civil Right Advocate, Political Scientist and a Public Speaker.
He could be reached via; enduranceebere@yahoo.com
09073378161
Editor/Publisher: Chinwe Korie
