Chief Kanu Agabi SAN speech in support of the Creation of Ogoja State at the ongoing public hearing by the House of Representatives committee on constitution Review in Calabar
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MEMORANDUM SUBMITTED TO THE COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES FOR THE CREATION OF OGOJA STATE.
Mr. chairman, and Honourable members of this Committee of the House of Representative.
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen,
I am immensely grateful to you, for the privilege of presenting this case to you for the creation of Ogoja state out of the present Cross River State.
Agitation for states in our country was initially limited to the demand for the Middle Belt State, the Midwest State and the Calabar-Ogoja – Rivers State. In answer to those demands, the nation proceeded to proliferate states so that the purpose for which minority communities made those demands was totally and completely defeated.
The condition of the minorities has worsened. Their condition never improved. We continue to suffer. We continue to suffer every calamity that can befall a people. There is not a single distress or disaster that we are exempted from.
I am seventy-nine years old and I feel sorry that in all that time the condition of my people did not improve. It went from bad to worse. We have no good roads. We do not have electricity. In all our villages, our young are compelled to go to bed as soon as the sun sets because they have no lamps. It was Seneca who said that man should extend his life by using part of the night. Here we cannot do so. We go to bed in the dark and we wake up early to go to our farms – an occupation that has been stigmatized and degraded and discouraged by every policy of government.
We have no good schools. We have never had good teachers. The education that we offer to our young does not equip them for life. It makes them proud and distant from the community. It deculturizes them. Our young have no jobs. They have no hope. The cities have distracted us from the occupation of our heritage without providing any suitable alternatives. We live in despair. The minds of our young have been brutalized. Our people live in squalor in the midst of the opulence of their leaders. And so, we agitate. We ask to be given the opportunity to take our lives into our own hands. To by ourselves by ourselves for ourselves the things that we believe in.
This agitation is not rooted in malice. It is made in good faith. Our ancestors, when they promulgated the Constitution, realized beforehand that a time like this will come. They appreciated that conditions in our country will compel communities to make demands of the type that we now make. And so, they made provisions in the Constitution which you, Honourable representatives of the people have come to implement and give effect to. This request is made in exercise of a right vested in the people by the Constitution.
Comments are sometimes made to the effect that the states are not viable. I submit that they are. The nation would never have survived but the creation of states. And if the nation is going to go on surviving, it would depend on the extent to which our leaders listen to the cries of those that are trampled upon. The exercise of states creation will forever go on until every community is able to take its own affairs into its own hands.
Our greatest resources are the people. Not oil. Not minerals. Not agricultural produce. But the people. We are an intelligent people. A resourceful people. A resilient people. A hardworking and God-fearing people. We are a humble and honest people.
It is such a people that present this memorandum to you. We are happy to present it to you who have been singled out of a competent House of Representatives to undertake the exercise. No one is more qualified than yourselves to undertake this exercise. You are patriots. You are nationalists. You have a better understanding of these issues than I do. That is why you have been chosen to undertake this exercise. We trust you to fill in the gaps for us. We appeal to you, we urge you to say for us whatever we ought to say but have failed or forgotten to say.
We trust that you will establish a criteria of general and uniform application for the creation of states. You will prescribe a criteria of general and uniform application for the creation of local government areas. You will prescribe a criteria and set standards for the location of states capitals.
And when you have done so, you will go down in history as a committee to be forgotten This is a committee that gives hope.
I pray for you that the Lord guide you. May the Lord protect you. May the Lord preserve you. With these prayers, and in all humility, I present to you the memorandum of my people for the creation of Ogoja state out of Cross River state.ttot