SEDC: Bold Step Towards National Unity and Cohesion

Don Ubani writes on the bold steps being taken to ensure that the South East Development Commission Bill before the National Assembly is passed before long.

Following the end of Nigerian Civil War, otherwise known as Nigeria/Biafra War, on 15th January, 1970, the Federal Government under General Yakubu Gowon as Head of State, declared there was ‘No Victor, No Vanquished’. Sequel to the said Declaration, General Gowon announced what became known as the three Rs, Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation. As the three Rs implied, they were aimed at a seamless reintegration of the war-battered Igbo into the Nigerian State.

However, as time went on, it became obvious that apart from the only £20 each adult Igbo was given by the Federal Government, not minding how much such a person had in his or her bank account before the outbreak of the

Civil War, and the emergence of late Dr Alex Ifeanyichukwu Ekwueme as Vice President of Nigeria to late President Shehu Shagari in 1979, no other facility or opportunity was created for the Igbo for meaningful reintegration into the new Nigerian State.

Though, through exceptional entrepreneurial ingenuity, the Igbo in Nigeria live almost like a people who have never heard, much more witnessed a war, the feeling of marginalisation has been very high in them. This feeling got to its climax during the eight-year tenure of Major-General Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s President and Commanderin-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, 2015-2023. He did not, at any time, hide his hatred for the Igbo whom he publicly derogatorily described as ‘a dot in a circle’.

Due to very destructive ravages of the NorthEast Region by Islamist Boko Haram insurgents, the Federal Government under General Buhari established the North-East Development Commission in 2017 to rehabilitate the Boko Haram infested Region.

But an attempt by the South-East Caucus in the National Assembly to have what had been established for the People of North-East replicated in the South-East was frustrated and thrown out in the same 2017. The same effort was repeated in 2018 but was, again, thrown out.

It is, therefore, a very big delight and assurance that in 2024, following his strategic relentless pursuit for the overall welfare and collective interest of the people of South-East of Nigeria, the unassuming assiduously team-playing Deputy Speaker of the 10th House of Representatives, Hon. Benjamin Kalu, has, without any iota of effrontery or orchestrated publicity, systematically galvanized concerted efforts of both the House of Representatives and the Senate to pass the Bill for the establishment of the much-needed and long canvassed but earlier abandoned South-East Development Commission (SEDC).

-Sir Ubani writes from Aba, Abia state.

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