WHO BELIEVES THE LIE THAT THERE ARE MORE PEOPLE IN THE NORTH THAN IN THE SOUTH?

For many years now, Northerners have been using every available machinery at their disposal to convince the whole world to believe the lie that Northern Nigeria is more populated than the South. In this thought provoking article, Femi Aribisala - one of the brightest Nigerian journalist puts the record straight.

BY FEMI ARIBISALA
Everything turns upside down in Nigeria.
Logic becomes illogical. Wisdom
becomes foolishness. Two plus two
becomes seven. Hospitals become
mortuaries. Stealing is not corruption.
Education is a sin. In Nigeria, so many
things fly in the face of simple
commonsense.
One major example is the ridiculous idea
that, by some inexplicable freak of
nature, more people live in the arid less-
developed Northern part of Nigeria than
in the wet, coastal, more-developed
South.
Insult to intelligence
The larger population of the North is an
elephant in the Nigerian living-room.
According to the last disputed census of
2006, there are 75 million Nigerians
living in the North and 65 million in the
South. This is balderdash! 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.
The assertion that there are more people
in the North than in the South is an
insult to intelligence and commonsense.
All over West Africa, the coastal states
are more densely and highly populated
than the arid desert hinterlands. Nobody
has been able to come up with a
reasonable reason why Nigeria would be
the only exception to this rule. Most of
the people in Egypt live on a strip along
the Nile River. But in Nigeria, we are
meant to believe most of the people live
in the desert.
Some make the case that Northern
polygamy leads to more births. If so,
why are there only 30 million people in
Saudi Arabia, a country more than twice
the size of Nigeria? The Saudis are also
polygamous. If there are so many more
live-births in the North than in the South,
this should be reflected in children
immunization programs: but it is not.
Everything we know about demographics
contradicts the inflated population of the
North relative to the South. The
economic opportunities in the South far
outweigh those in the North. That
means economic migration is bound to
be southward and not northward. The
states with the highest internally
generated revenues all come from the
South; while eight of the last ten are
from the North. No Northern state
features in the top ten.
Mythical Kano
The North regularly trots up Kano as the
largest state of the federation, but there
is no doubt that this is also pure fiction.
There is no way that there can be more
people in Kano State than in Lagos State
or even Oyo State. Let me be even more
categorical. Kano cannot be as
populous as Ibadan. Kano cannot even
have half the population of Lagos.
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. In 1991, we were told there were
5.8 million people in Kano State, while
5.7 million were in Lagos. In 2006, Kano
was awarded a population of 9.4 million;
more than Lagos which was given 9.1
million.
In the meantime, Jigawa was awarded
4.3 million people in 2006. If this were
to be believed, it would mean Kano
(including Jigawa) had outpaced Lagos
by more than four million people by
2006. That is impossible. Moreover,
Kano was awarded 44 local government
areas; Jigawa 27 and Lagos only 20.
Why any right-thinking person would
believe Kano State has more people than
Lagos State is beyond me. For years,
the total amount of internally generated
revenue in Kano was less than 6 billion
naira a year. In the last year or so, it is
now averaging 20 billion. But get this:
the internally generated revenue in Lagos
is 219 billion naira. So why would
people be moving to Kano instead of
Lagos? Where are the jobs in Kano to
attract them relative to Lagos?
Why would more people keep moving to
Kano where there is insurgency; from
Maitasine to Boko Haram, relative to
Lagos where there is none? The answer
is simple. The large population of Kano
relative to Lagos is bogus. It is pure
fiction! If there were more people in
Kano than in Lagos, it would show up,
for example, in waste-generation. How
much waste does Kano produce relative
to Lagos? The answer is only a fraction.
How many houses and physical
structures are there in Kano relative to
Lagos? There is no comparison. Google
satellite maps show a concentration of
people and houses in Kano city centre.
Everywhere else is sparsely populated.
This is not the case with Lagos. It is
not the case with Ibadan. It is not the
case with Aba. If there are so many
people up North, where are the people?
Where do they live? Which vehicles take
them from A to B? How many of these
vehicles are in Kano relative to Lagos?
Only a fraction!
Magical Zamfara
Precisely because we have accepted the
lie of Northern population supremacy
over the South, Attahiru Jega and his
INEC cohorts decided to sneak further
falsehood past us. Having discovered far
more double-registration of voters in the
North than in the South, INEC still went
ahead to create additional polling units,
allocating a disproportionate number of
these to the North. However, the very
audacity of INEC in the attempted
perpetration of this fraud has brought to
light certain anomalies in the 2011
elections, especially as it relates to the
North-West.
INEC’s recent cleanup exercise of the
voters register is a big indictment of the
North. INEC discovered that there are
far more double-registration of voters in
the North than in the South. The
greatest fraud in this regard is
committed in the North-West, and the
most fraudulent state in the country
turns out to be Zamfara.
Sokoto and Zamfara states border the
Republic of Niger. Niger Republic is 19
times bigger than Sokoto and Zamfara
put together in land area. And yet, we
are meant to believe that in 2006, Sokoto
and Zamfara had a combined total
population of 6.9 million; more than half
of Niger Republic’s population of 12.9
million.
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.
The voting age in Nigeria is 18 years.
According to U.N. demographics, 44% of
Nigerians are below the age of 15. This
means under no circumstances can 50%
of the population anywhere in Nigeria be
said to have registered to vote in any
election. It is not surprising therefore
that although INEC registered 2 million
voters for the 2011 elections in Zamfara,
the same INEC discovered in its clean-up
exercise this year that 1.1 million of
those voters (over 50%) were fraudulent;
the result of double registration.
Voodoo results
That means only 914,886 of the names
on the Zamfara register could be verified
as not pertaining to double registration.
(This does not tell us how many of the
remaining names are fictitious). But
then get this: according to INEC records,
927,219 people voted in Zamfara in the
2011 presidential election; mostly for
Buhari. That means more votes were
cast in Zamfara than the total number of
legitimately-registered voters, according
to the revelation of INEC’s clean-up
exercise.
Let us put this in stark terms. It means,
according to INEC, over 100% of the
Zamfara electorate voted in 2011. What
malarkey! By the time we factor in the
fictitious names that must have been in
the register, we can see that the figures
coming out of Zamfara have nothing
whatsoever to do with reality. In
Zamfara, there is procedural inflation of
figures pertaining to population and
elections.
This gives us an idea of how fraudulent
the North-West of Nigeria is with regard
to population and electoral figures. This
is not to say that manipulation and
falsification of figures is not standard
operational procedure in other states of
the federation, but INEC revealed that it
is most exaggerated in the North in
general and in the North-West in
particular.
It is not surprising therefore that, in the
2011 presidential election, there were
10.6 million “voters” from the North-
West alone; twice the number of voters
from either the South-West (4.6 million)
or the South-East (5 million). This is
preposterous, and is nothing but one big
lie!
Back to Jega
It is on this fictitious super-structure of
a larger population in the North relative
to the South that Jega’s INEC based its
outrageous allocation of 21,000
additional polling booths to the North,
relative to 8,000 to the South.
In defense of this regional-chauvinism,
Hakeem Baba-Ahmad added insult to
injury by saying: “Jega admitted that
many states in the south did not even
deserve the number of units they got, but
for the inclusion of the principle of
fairness and equity. In other words, if
INEC had been strict in sharing out the
units in accordance with voting
population and geography, the north
would have received even more.” What
poppycock!
In what appears to be the triumph of
commonsense and logic, the Senate has
advised Jega to suspend the allocation
of new polling units until after the 2015
general elections. That should be the
end of the matter. People who don’t
understand how the Nigerian political
system works feel Jega can ignore this
advice. He cannot! The legislative
branch of the government has oversight
powers over the executive branch. Such
a directive from the legislature to an arm
of the government is not subject to
debate. It must be obeyed otherwise
Jega will be sanctioned.