In Nigeria, States as components of the federation are archetypal of the USA’s States in two respects. First, they were conceived and created as a destabilization mechanism of the Biafran attempt to secede from Nigeria in August 1967. In that sense, States within the framework of the Nigerian federation from its ontology has always been a political design to weaken and effectively shred the strength of traditional or ethnic nations that existed before the amalgamation of Nigeria in 1914. Secondly, States are created to serve as administrative units without any substantial political will and degree of autonomy; they are established on the basis of a political paradox that is difficult to fathom, yet it is sustained by economic trickery.

Its awkwardness not withstanding, Nigeria continues to maintain this unique political philosophy, which confers States to some as an inalienable right, and to others as political favor that comes only at the end of a usually long and tortuous road. To the minorities – especially those in the oil bearing Niger Delta – States is presented as a periodic patch to sooth the populace and calm frayed nerves. It could even be described as a timely opiate administered to make the oil producing communities slumber instead of revolting against the pseudo federation and their alliance partners.

Unlike the minorities, States for the majority tribes are a manifestation of their peculiar political arithmetic that is premised on hollow, manipulated and perfidious formula anchored on military might, which regularly smoothen the path to loot public treasuries. Under the political wand of the majority tribes, successive administrations continue to employ a very quixotic revenue allocation formula called the principle of needs, which implies that those who are numerically superior have more needs than those whose environment is being devastated. Succinctly, the environment of the minorities should be sacrificed for the prosperity of the majority. This kaleidoscopic terrain is a landmark of colonialism that has been sustained by every single Nigerian administration since the mantle of rulership was handed over to the majority groups. These custodians of power wish to carry on into eternity as slave lords over smaller groups like the Ogonis.

From the day Nigeria obtained her flag-independence on October 1, 1960, the minority ethnic groups that territorially own the black gold were doomed under the National Convention of the Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) and the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC), two tribally aligned political parties that formed a government of coalition. The leader of NCNC, Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe, became the first indigenous Governor General, a position that made him the face of the country, while his political rival, the leader of the NPC, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, was the Prime Minister with more power and loyalty to the colonial masters.

It was not long when the back of the government of coalition was forced to bend and eventually broke up because of distrust, dissentions, internal bickering and corruption over who should decide how the oil from the minorities is managed. The first indigenous government discovered even before the last ‘Whiteman’ vacated office that they were not meant to and couldn't work together because of the divergent views and loyalty to their different agendas of imperial-ethnic groups. The crisis persisted and assumed a conspicuous dimension as the various ethnic parties tried to manipulate and hijack the instruments of power to their advantage. This led to the first military intervention in 1966.
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he military took over power with the postulation that they wish to sanitize the system and purge away the corrupt politicians. The bloody coup took the lives of so many ethnic politicians, including the then Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa this made the people of the north to see the coup as an anti-north putsch. They therefore staged a counter coup that took the life of the first military head of State, Major General Ajuyi Ironsi. The military eventually became cracked along the tribal lines of the majority groups. The crisis deepened as the northern people killed thousands of the Igbos (the predominant group of the then eastern Nigeria). Col. Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu declared war after an attempt to reach peaceful settlement between the federal government and the eastern government could not work. The federal side overpowered the Biafran side and almost thirteen years of military rule (Generals Yakubu Gowon and Olusegun Obasanjo) followed with great squandering of profits from oil and a failure to rehabilitate the fragmented nation that has come from a bitter civil war.  

The Nigerian civil war and subsequent militarization of Nigerian governance structures or what Odumegwu Ojukwu – the former warlord – refers to as 'Militocracy', has several putrefying effects that continue to haunt Nigeria. One of these effects is that during the 1966 Biafran – Nigerian war, the two sides tried to annex as much resources and viable areas in Nigeria for themselves to win the war. As part of its war strategy, the federal government created 12 States, abolishing the previous regions as the main federating units of Nigeria; the minorities deserted the Biafran side as Rivers State (the highest oil producing state, which the Ogoni are part of) became one of the states created in August 1967. Since then, state creation had always been an arbitrary and an exclusive act of the military when they are in power.

On the basis of the afore-going, when analyzing states as units of the Nigerian federation, it is vital to appreciate that the first and even subsequent sets of states were created mainly as a mechanism aimed at hypnotizing the oil bearing communities. States, when “given” to the inhabitants of the Niger Delta is with the sole intention to keep them sandwiched between the power players from the majority tribes and oil magnates. The understanding that the majority groups hold the balance of power that determines who gets awarded and where such territories are delineated; usually make the small groups succumb to the whims and caprices of a criminal clique that masquerade itself as the central authority.
State creation is embarked upon as an instrument for continual expropriation of oil fields and to control the exploration of crude oil, despite the fact that by some kind of fate, oil is mainly found in the soil of the small groups. States, when “given” to the minorities also serve as a recruitment tunnel of new layers of local elites from amongst the oil communities. Once recruited, the elites collaborate with the aristocrats and moguls against their own people to ensure there is no stoppage of oil production. Nigerian authorities and companies like Shell and Elf, knows that the local elites are needed in order to prevail upon communities, from where crude oil would flow through impregnable pipes into the political and economic fibers of Nigeria.

As long as the argument for states continue to be the predominant mechanism of agitation, the oil producing peoples would always fall apart in the drive for total control over their resources. The demand that oil producing groups should have direct negotiations with multinational oil firms and consequently pay taxes or contribute to the central government would not be achieved. The clamor for the present system to be replaced with a loose federal structure that is comprised of different components held together on the basis of indigenous lines will remain illusive.

Despite this historical background and political empiricism, it would be difficult to prove that additional states for the oil producing peoples, or more specifically, a state for the Ogoni ethnic group is not progress. Ordinary people all over Ogoniland are expectant against the background that for decades they have been a people whose place was reserved in a political and economic dungeon. It is a relief to think that an Ogoni State means that there would be a revenue allocation for infrastructural development and the building of additional roads, schools and hospitals in a place where there was virtually none. For a people that have not been allowed the opportunity to occupy exalted positions such as the deputy governor and governorship of a state of which they have been an integral part of, for over 50 years; a state of their own seems plausible.

But on the flip side of the same argument in favor of an Ogoni State, its supporters have suddenly ignored the fact that within the Nigerian political circle, it is more the norm than the exception that all Nigerian public office bearers are part of a criminal web, and they are like a rotten fish that decays from the head. Starting from the different heads-of-state that have ruled the country and their ministers, to the parliamentarians in case of civilian areas, to governors of states and their commissioners, all clustered into a den of thieves that delight in sitting on luxurious mahogany desks and leather settees in palatial offices perfecting embezzlement schemes.

Even local government councils – as the realm of governance that is closest to the people – are manned by corrupt politicians. Worse for this tier of government is that has become synonymous with the dregs of Nigerian politics; saddled with incompetent and ill-educated partisan yes-men-and-women. Local government councils have for a long time served as the nursery for thugs and common criminals to learn the ropes of embezzlement while at the same time perpetrating heinous crimes, because they are “boys” of “godfathers” and political kingpins.

An Ogoni State as an appendage of Nigerian political structure will maintain this antecedence and it is illogical to fight a corrupt system in one breath and promote it in another. The Nigerian problem which the Ogoni struggle bemoans is perpetual because it is rooted in a systemic practice that has been accepted and engrained through the porous notion that oil should always confirm the regality of the politically chosen or favored. Conversely, the same factor that drops fortune in the laps of a few elites put a seal on an institutionalized enslavement of the vast majority; this is despite an estimated 2.5 million barrels of crude oil that is drained from the country on a daily basis.