Thoughts on a recent regional back-and-forth

Of recent, there’s been major drama centered on the INEC’s decision to allocate more Polling Units to the North against the South, an action, the Commission explained, necessitated by the North’s numerical strength evidenced by the last voters registration exercise. The seemingly endless disagreement between the two regions on numerical strength always comes to an […]

Of recent, there’s been major drama centered on the INEC’s decision to allocate more Polling Units to the North against the South, an action, the Commission explained, necessitated by the North’s numerical strength evidenced by the last voters registration exercise. The seemingly endless disagreement between the two regions on numerical strength always comes to an abrupt halt when official figures are introduced into the debate. The figures that came to be documented, mostly during the reigns of Southerners, are always in favour of the North.
Having no alternative than to discredit and reject the official figures in their flawed bid to hit the North and tilt the figures in their favour, the high and mighty amongst them, like the lowly placed, descended to the lowest ebb of dishonesty, issuing false and contradicting statements. Among the pieces written, the most bizarre I was able to read was one titled “Who believes the lie that there are more people in the North than the South?” by one Pastor Femi Aribisala.
Dismissing the official census figure of 2006, Aribisala wrote: “As long as we continue to accept such blatant lie, there can be no true democracy in Nigeria. Electoral results must continue to be falsified to conform to it. As long as we continue to entertain such outright falsehood, we shall continue to be subjected to a “born to rule” mentality on the part of some mischievous Northern politicians.”
But the writer failed to give us what to believe, instead he started giving reasons we should put aside the figures made official by no less than Obasanjo. It is common knowledge that population growth rate is influenced by the interplay of the three main demographic processes of fertility, mortality and migration, therefore when an attempt to play with peoples’ intelligence was made by simplistic assumption that the coastal states elsewhere are more populated than the hinterland and as such Nigeria’s case should not be different, it became clear that duplicity is in the making.
No less laughable is the claim that, if polygamy actually leads to more births, why is Saudi Arabia’s population only 30 million while it is twice the size of Nigeria? We are living in interesting times. Going by that laughable logic, Saudi Arabia, which ranked 41 in the list of most populous nations, should never have been far behind smaller countries like France, Burma, Iraq, Egypt, etc. And if this ludicrous assumption is based on the polygamy point of view, it exposed how unfamiliar the proponents are when it comes to the family life differences between the contemporary Arabs and other Muslim world, especially Africans.
On the other hand, Aribisala’s thesis, that there are more Northerners in the South as against Southerners in the North, is squarely countered by the large settlements of Southerners, who are in millions, across Northern states. The settlements of Northerners in the South are far smaller than that of Southerners in the North.
It is an understatement to say that nothing stands as a sore point, to the elements against the North, than Kano. Therefore, when the last census figures placed Kano above all other states, these elements’ restlessness tripled. Pastor Femi tried to give a shot to that, but he unfortunately decided to base his argument on a blatant lie. He started by saying “We were told Kano State was bigger in population than Lagos State. Then Jigawa State was carved out of Kano in 1991. But lo and behold, the remaining rump of Kano was still bigger than Lagos”.
The fallaciousness of the Southern warriors knows no boundary as amazing mutilations of figures wild and baseless allegations are freely used publicly in their always flawed bid to suppress the north. The laughable “landmass reasoning” was, yet again, introduced by Pastor Aribisala when he wondered how Sokoto and Zamfara that have borders with Niger Republic, which is 19 times bigger than the two states, yet have more than half of Niger Republic’s population. My explanation about similar absurdity about Nigeria and Saudi Arabia took care of this.
If the “landmass reasoning” above is funny, the next point is both outrageous and foolish. According to the writer, “Zamfara’s fictitious population in the 2006 census was 3.2 million. Nevertheless, INEC registered 2 million voters for Zamfara for the 2011 elections. That means 62.5% of the people in Zamfara registered to vote. (This is roughly equal to the 64% of people who registered to vote in the 2012 elections in the United States; a country of far higher voter-awareness and socialisation). This is fraud of the highest order for the simple reason that 62.5% of the population of Zamfara cannot be eligible to vote.” He clearly assumes and believes that for five years no single baby was born and not a single second ticked as such not a single boy attained puberty and not a single 17-year-old turned 18!
No time is needed to be wasted on his other preposterous statement which he based on flawed conjecture. But it was clear that at the end he failed to give one convincing reason: Why it should not be believed that Northerners outnumber Southerners.
Mahmud wrote in from Kano State ([email protected])