The proclamation of state of emergency in Rivers was more or less a replay of some misdeeds in the defunct Western region, contends CHIDI ANSELM ODINKALU
In Nigeria, history tends to repeat itself with unerring accuracy and in tiresome syntax. When he wrote his Report on the Amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria and Administration in 1919, Frederick Lugard described Nigeria as an “anomaly…. of a country with aggregate revenue practically equal to its needs, but divided into two by an arbitrary line of latitude.” While one portion was fiscally viable, he suggested, the other “was dependent on a grant paid by the British taxpayer.” Through the Amalgamation in 1914, Lugard created a Customs Union in which extraction could be sustained by administering mechanisms of fiscal compensation to smooth over these disparities.
From the get-go, the invention of Nigeria was about the exploitation of resources and property. Rivers State is at the centre of these resources. Towards this goal, the powers of government have historically been mobilised. More than 111 years after the Amalgamation, this raison d’être of the Nigerian estate remains resilient. It is both evident and explicit in the machinations that have now eventuated in the declaration of a state of emergency over Rivers State.