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“Justice too long is denied justice,” said Martin Luther King Jr. once. In the rolling hills and in the fertile valleys of the old NSUKKA division, this maximum is more than an aphorism: it is a living testimony of the generations that have seen their hopes for a fair development of decades of abandonment.
The request for the state of Adada is not a fleeting political move, but a crying cry deeply rooted for the fairness that began seriously with a formal proposal at the National Assembly in 1983. The moment of the triumph was almost at reach
When the old eastern central state was divided into new entities, the seven areas of the local government of what is today the proposal-NSUKKA, Udenu, Igbo-Eze North, Igbo-Eze South, Igbo-Etiti, Uzo-Uwani, ISI-UZO-ISI found for not represented.
Despite taking it into account of over half of the population of the state of Enugu, these communities have undergone an abyssal defraction of infrastructure, streets full of holes, clinics died of equipment and schools forced to operate under tin roofs or in the classrooms borrowed. Their abandonment derives from a late embrace of western education during the colonial era and the subsequent administrations that gave priority to other areas, leaving the people NSUKKA to exploit the spirit of the community if they should see even one secondary school.
From time to time, panels and commissions – in particular the Mbanefo panel in 1996 – found the case of Adada. Each time, the logic was unassailable: geographical contiguity, a shared cultural tapestry, unanimous local support. Yet the political opportunity led to the creation of the state of Ebonyi, a meeting of the northern Igbo communities whose historical discussion was based on the reunification of the old provinces of Afikpo and Abakaliki. It was a compelling narrative, but which set aside an appeal equally compelling from the NSUKKA division. The government at the time chose symmetry on equity, producing a state that served a narrative of justice leaving another to wait.
Fast ahead in March 2006, when the South-East Caucus of the National Assembly convened a committee of ten members under the Senator Ifeanyi Ararume. In a room in Owerri, surrounded by governors, traditional sovereigns, ethnic and academic leaders, four state creation proposals participated in supremacy: ABA, Adada, Njaba and Orashi. When the votes were counted, it was Adada that it emerged with a clear majority. These legislators, including the leader Achike Udenwa who hosted the gathering, recognized that the case of the division of the old NSUKKA division has transcended the parish interests and commissioned the founding principle of bringing the government closer to the people. Yet that parliamentary nod has never translated into a constitutional amendment.
Each next forum reiterated the singularity of Adada’s affirmation. The 2005 political reform conference called by President Obasanjo explicitly recommended an additional state in the South -est. The 2014 National Conference under the judge Idris Kutigi reiterated that only Adada had satisfied the rigorous criteria established in section 8 (1) of the 1999 Constitution, which requires clear geographical borders, unified local support and demonstrable profitability. But among the notes and the resolutions ink, the corridors of the power were crazy.
On a mild afternoon in Enugu, during the South Zonal public hearing -East of the Senate on the Constitutional Revision, Capo John Nnia Nwodo was in front of the senators and dignitaries, every word refined by decades of defense. In a presentation greeted as a masterful, he explained piles of sponsorships by the presidents of the local government, councilors, state legislators and federal legislators, affirming unified support for the creation of Adada. He remembered at the August rally that the people of Nsukka is not asking for charity; They ask for justice as established in the nation’s supreme law. Each section 8 clause (1) has been scratched, every protected signature, each demographic study explained.
He painted a portrait of political disenfanchisement: a lonely senator who represents a larger electoral college than those of his two combined counterparties, the LGAs divided between senatorial areas by arbitrary redistribution and a sense that does not matter how noisy the petition is, the state machinery would range without pause. He contrasted this parody with the reality that every other geopolitical area in Nigeria boasts six states, while the south -est limps behind with five. A sixth state is not a luxury: it is the missing piece of a national puzzle.
The skeptics that question Adada’s profitability have never set foot in its communities. The way the initiatives based on the community have stimulated the construction of dozens of secondary schools, clinics, rural electrification projects and water holes will be lacking. They would not have seen the potential of its rich oil and gas fields, its fertile agricultural land that extend towards the tributaries of the cross River and the international reputation of the University of Nigeria, NSUKKA, as a cradle of lighting. These are not ponds awaiting rescue but vibrant hubs ready to govern themselves effectively.
The support has co -trained through the party lines and the social strata. The governor of the state of Enugu Peter Mbah has promised unwavering support, while his predecessor and titans political Igbo such as the head James Ugwu – which traces the first formal appeal to 1970, when a youth committee presented a petition to General Gowon – he obtained the width of this research. Even the House of Assembly of the State of Enugu, in a unanimous resolution of April 2008, lent his voice to the choir. Everything that remains is for the National Assembly to take on its own constitutional duty.
The path to follow is really simple: to change the 1999 constitution to insert the state of Adada as a sixth member of the South -East. Transmitting the bill in accordance with the legislative procedure, channel it on INC for a referendum between the affected communities and, after ratification, recognize Adada as federal unity in all respects. No new legal theory is required. No new political philosophy must be invented. The Constitution provides the mechanism. People have provided political will.
The story will judge legislators who get up on this occasion. They can choose to perpetuate an unharmed status quo that has marginalized too long the heart of the land of northern Igbo, or they can grasp this moment to affirm that Nigeria’s promise lies in balanced its diversity, not in perpetuating imbalances.
The state of Adada is more than lines on a map. It is a symbol of renewed faith in democratic equity, of the government returned to the governed and a people whose only crime was an adamant request for what they deserve rightly.
While the National Assembly concludes the public hearing in progress on the amendments on the Constitution, lets the Senate and the Chamber of Representative memories that when justice is delayed beyond reason, justice is truly clear. Adada waited for her day in the sun. Today, that day he nods.
*Comrade James Ezema is a journalist, politician, social engineer, human rights activist and national president of the association of bloggers and journalists against false news (Abjfn). He writes from Abuja, in Nigeria via e -mail: jamesezema@gmail.com and can be reached via WhatsApp: +2348035823617
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