Gov Shettima and N/East devt commission agenda
In recent times one of the most popular bills before parliament is the North East Development Commission Bill. This was attested to by Governor Kashim Shettima on April 7th, 2016 in his speech at Maiduguri to members of the North East Development Commission Advocacy Team (NEDCAT) of the House of Representatives titled ‘Reasons why we […]
In recent times one of the most popular bills before parliament is the North East Development Commission Bill. This was attested to by Governor Kashim Shettima on April 7th, 2016 in his speech at Maiduguri to members of the North East Development Commission Advocacy Team (NEDCAT) of the House of Representatives titled ‘Reasons why we Deserve North East Commission’.
At the time when the Niger Delta Development Commission Bill was proposed, the South-South Governors, Legislators, and all the key stakeholders from the Niger Delta, locally and internationally, rallied tremendous support for the actualization and establishment of the Niger Delta Development Commission.
Eventually it was passed without the Presidents Imprimatur in a rare show of solidarity by the Parliament.
Nigeria is a country of about 923,000 square kilometers, with a population of over 150 million, with a lot of natural and human resources, one of which is the crude oil that has generated a lot of petrodollars for the country. This description seems apt in a peaceful and serene atmosphere but when you take away the peace everything turns awry.
In this case I want us to look at the North East: home to Adamawa, Borno, Bauchi, Gombe, Taraba and Yobe states. These states cover about 275,677 square kilometers or 30 percent of Nigeria and almost twice the size of the Southwest, Southeast and South-south of Nigeria put together. It is more than half the size of Cameroon which covers 475,442 square kilometers and larger than Great Britain which covers 244,110 square kilometers.
A region with such a size and diverse cultures cannot be overlooked in these times when the world has become a global village and by extension terrorism is now a global phenomenon. The sheer size and potential of this region has almost been brought down to its knees by the Boko Haram insurgency. The region suffered damages worth over 9 billion dollars which is almost 3 trillion naira on today’s parallel market exchange rate and many lives were lost.
Going by recent statistics, the story of the region is not a thing of joy. A 2014 World Bank report says two-thirds of the world’s poorest people live in India, China, Nigeria, Bangladesh and the Democratic Republic of Congo where the citizens live on less than one dollar a day. In Nigeria, one of the five countries listed, the Human Development Index of 2013 identifies the North East as the poorest where between 67 percent and 69 percent of the people live in abject poverty. The maternal and child mortality rate in the North East is 1,549 deaths per 100,000 live births as against a rate of 165 deaths per live births in the South West.
The situation in the North East has been really grievous and arguments for the commission and against it have dominated public space. In Governor Shettima’s speech he made it categorically clear that the commission is an idea whose time has come and whose time is now, he added that nothing stops an idea whose time has come.
The governor highlighted various Federal Government interventions like the Presidential Initiative on North East (PINE), the Victim Support Fund, the Safe School Initiative and the harmonized committee as justification and the reason why the 8th National Assembly should support and pass the Bill. He said despite the huge resources being set aside in the various interventions, we need an institution of government backed by an Act of parliament to get involved and coordinate things in a sustained manner for immediate and long term development. He opined that by the time the NEDC is in place the Bill would regulate expenditures and ensure justice and fairness to all the six states with the parliament carrying out oversight on the commission’s activities.
It is apparent that the Governor is highly committed to the actualization of the Commission and made the assertion that the Boko Haram crisis has forced the region for the first time since 1999 to set aside Political and Ethno-Religious differences to fuse into one entity for the sole purpose of pursuing a cause that is purely developmental.
In spite of all the passion demonstrated by Governor Shettima during our visit, he still needs to rally his counterparts from the North East especially and beyond to support this cause.
The principal stakeholders in the region should also put their political differences aside and bury religious and sectional dichotomy to ensure the realization of this agenda.
In the words of Edmund Burke a British Parliamentarian in 1774 to the Electors in Bristol, ‘Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintained but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.’
In the spirit of parliamentary solidarity I urge every parliamentarian and all other Nigerians to support this clarion call for a new North East Development Commission.
Yerima is a member, House of Representatives (Misau/Dambam Constituency)