The Centre for Speech Development and Learning Initiative has called on the National Assembly for a constitutional review to rename Kogi State as ‘Confluence State.’
The group’s Executive Director, Alexius Maiyanga, made this call while briefing newsmen on Thursday in Abuja.
He said the call became necessary because the present geographical and political area called ‘Kogi’ is the host of Rivers Niger and Benue, Africa’s most important rivers.
According to him, if countries could have their names changed as in the case of Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, Gold Coast to Ghana, the renaming of Kogi State is not a difficult thing to do by the National Assembly.
He emphasized the importance of names, saying they have deep personal, cultural and historical connections.
“Our names are an incredibly important part of our identity. They carry very deep personal, cultural, emotional, familiar and historical connections. Names give us a sense of who we are, the communities in which we belong and our place in the world,’’ he said.
Maiyanga said that Nigeria recognizes the English language as the official language of communication, stressing that General Ibrahim Babangida (Rtd), who created the state and the Supreme Military Council, communicated wrongly as far as the nomenclature of Kogi State was concerned.
He said, “Why did Babangida and his military associates bury one of Nigeria’s gigantic blessings of the two huge rivers; Niger and Benue with an amazing breath-taking confluence at Lokoja, the state capital?
‘’In Kogi, all the ethnic groups have a name for a river, why was none selected from amongst them?’’
