“What we have in present day Nigeria are
two opposing forces. The first is the one which is profiting from the system
left behind by the British which arbitrarily gave the North the same number of
seats in Parliament as the South. The other contending force are (sic) the
Southerners who are aggrieved by this structure which the Northerners are
capitalizing on. This is why Nigeria is moving aimlessly in a circle.”
________Daniel
Oritseeje Agbowu in Nigeria: The Truth (Delaware:
Bajot Publishing, 2006; page 53)
Nigeria is an interesting nation inside of Africa. It
has many ethnic groups. There is no conclusive evidence yet to determine the
exact number of ethnic groups in Nigeria, but it is often asserted by
ethnographic reports that it is more than 250.
And what is ethnicity? According to Okwudiba Nnoli in
page 5 of his 1980 book entitled, “Ethnic Politics in Nigeria”, Ethnicity “is a
social phenomenon associated with interactions among members of different
ethnic groups. Ethnic groups are social formations distinguished by the communal
character of their boundaries. The relevant communal factor may be language,
culture, or both. In Africa, language has clearly been the most crucial
variable”.
And with multi-ethnicity came exclusive
multi-allegiance to different cultures. Leaders from the different ethnic
groups are wont to protect their places of origins first before thinking about
the welfare of the whole nation. We shall look at the pre-independence and
post-independence centrifugal pulls of ethnicity which hamper leadership in
Nigeria.
CENTRIFUGAL
PULLS
(a) Before
Independence:
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DRIVE THAT FUELS ETHNIC FEELINGS IS
THE DESIRE OF EACH GROUP TO ACQUIRE POLITICAL PROMINENCE, THE FEAR OF LOSING
POLITICAL PROMINENCE AND THEREBY THE GAINS OF POLITICAL POWER. Herein is the greatest
centrifugal pull and challenge from which other challenges are subsumed. This
problem, sometimes called “competitive ethnicity”, began with the amalgamation
of Nigeria by the British in 1914, with power relocated to a central authority
for the whole of the Niger area known as Nigeria.
But what are the historical roots fueling this
emotional allegiance to ethnicity? For the sake of brevity, we shall seek for
exemplary answers in just the three major ethnic groups of the many in Nigeria.
The Yoruba is seen as one ethnic group today because,
in the past, there was extensive cultural and spiritual root work championed by
the Ooni of Ife and impressive military and political work done by the Alafin
of the Oyo Empire to bring diverse groups into one fold despite internal wars.
These diverse groups include but not limited to the Egba, Ijebu, Ekiti, Ijesa,
Igbomina, Okun and Illorin peoples. Thus, when the British came, they simply
began to relate with these diverse groups as one Yoruba people, regardless of
subtle cultural differences. As with the Yoruba, so also the Hausa, which was
pulled together by Amina of Zazzau in the 16th century and
extensively again by Usuman Dan Fodio in the 19th century. The pull
by Dan Fodio extended even to Northern Cameroon which is why migrants from
Northern Cameroon have no difficulty relating with Kano or Sokoto or any other
part formerly of the historical Fulani Empire under the suzerainty of the
Sultan of Sokoto in northern Nigeria. We
should note that when it comes to national borders today, the colonialists did
not consider bringing all the settlements of an ethnic group in Africa together
as they did with those states or settlements of that same ethnic group which
lie within an already defined colonial boundary. The circumstances of creating
national boundaries had much to do with the ambition of the colonial power
involved and its treaty or understanding with other colonial powers whose
interests lay very close or overlapped its own interests.
The Igbo people never had a large political empire
covering its entire region, but there was the Nri king who advocated a
historical, religious and cultural tie through the Ala deity in much of Igbo
land. There was also the Eze Aro who advocated a later religious tie through
the Chuku deity and a much more military, political and commercial network that
helped spread communication and alliances amongst the Igbo people. The Aro
Confederacy, with its flag, was silently evolving into a slave state covering
the entire eastern region, parts of West Delta region, Southern Igala, parts of
Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, but that intrigue towards statehood was
resented by many locals and arrested by British expeditions in 1901. The subtle difference between the Igbo people
and the other two ethnic groups in terms of attachment to ethnic feelings is
historically caused by this lack of a sense of ethnic nationhood, for the
presence of a sense of ethnic nationhood today in many Nigerians is influenced
by or predicated on the pre-contact existence of an empire where those
Nigerians hail from. Because the Hausa already had the Fulani empire, they had
a strong sense of the Hausa nation, and because the Yoruba had been pulled
together by the conquests of the Oyo empire, they also had a strong sense of
the Yoruba nation. The confederate pull of the Aro was not sufficiently grown
to inspire a sense of an Igbo nation. This may explain much of the
socioeconomic and political posture and inclinations of people from the three
major ethnic groups during and after the colonial era. The Igbos were more wont
to call for a pan-Nigeria outlook than any of the other two major ethnic
groups. And to Nnoli in page 61 of his aforementioned book, the “Igbo citizen
could more easily defy his pre-colonial authority in pursuit of the new
economic activities than his Yoruba and Hausa counterparts….” He also noted
that there is “the greater tendency of the Igbo in comparison to the Yoruba and
of the Yoruba in comparison to Hausa to migrate to colonial activities,
particularly far away from their homelands”. It will be instructive to note
that some Igbo of Mbaise enclave had migrated to Gusau in northern Nigeria
about four hundred years ago, predating the advent of Usuman Dan Fodio.
The largeness and tendency of one’s constituency to
obey an empire figure aided one’s political prominence in colonial Nigeria. The
colonial British found it convenient to work with people from such
constituencies. Because the Northerners were used to having Muslim Emirs that
had absolute control over their emirates, even to levying one form of tax or
the other on their subjects, the British found it easier to introduce the
Indirect Rule System in the North in which the status quo was not disturbed
much, only that the Emirs had to report to the Colonial district officers and
had to transfer half of the revenue from their local treasury to the colonial
treasury for colonial administration. It was a bit difficult to introduce that
type of rule to the Yoruba in which case the traditionally democratic Alafin
was to be the Head of the Native Authority. Aside the traditional democracy in
Yoruba land in which the Alafin did not have the unquestioned power of the
Emir, Christianity and Western education undermined the sacerdotal functions of
the Indirect Rule System. For the Igbo, it was a near impossibility to use that
same System in that raw Indirect form. In fact a new style called the Warrant
Chief System had to be created in which case influential people were suddenly
appointed warrant chiefs by the colonialists and were given mandates to levy
taxes on a highly critical people. These warrant chiefs were strongly resisted
by the people because many of them lacked traditional claims and some of them
were not sons of the freeborn, making the colonial residents to rule many
places more or less directly.
With the
advantage of hindsight and of observing recent happenings in Nigeria, we are of
the conviction that wide submission to a sense of ethnic nationhood and to an
emperor figure resulted to easier direction of political leadership towards one
purpose and identity of a whole group, which translated to how long people
coming from such a group stayed in the seat of the national political power of
Nigeria, especially during democratic dispensations.
Partly because of fear of being contaminated by the
critical outlook of the South, the north was largely isolated from the south by
the British style of leadership. Christian missionaries were barred in the
North and limited government efforts in education were harmonized with Islamic
institutions.
In practice, British administration maintained
constant interaction between colonial authorities and local rulers. As we have
seen, the Indirect Rule System was modified to suit the nature of each region.
In the North, legislation took the form of a decree cosigned by the governor
and the Emir, while in the South, the governor sought the approval of the
Legislative Council. Economic links amongst the regions increased, but indirect
rule discouraged political interchange. There was virtually no pressure for
greater unity among the regions until after the end of World War II.
ANOTHER CAUSE OF THE CENTRIFUGAL PULL AWAY FROM THE
CENTRE WAS THE DIFFERENT ASCENDANCY OR NOT OF ETHNIC GROUPS IN THEIR DRIVE TO
ATTAIN WESTERN EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE IN VARIOUS PARTS OF NIGERIA BEFORE
INDEPENDENCE.
To gain national prominence in colonial Nigeria, an
indigene of the country had to acquire western education and, by it, exposure
and competitive edge in this game of competitive ethnicity. There was already
developed a Yoruba elite which had acquired western education and was
concentrated in Lagos which was the seat of the colonial administration many
years before independence. To illustrate how early the Yoruba had contact with
western education, the Yoruba had its first graduate in 1875 (he was Dr.
Nathaniel King). The British were not comfortable with finding so many educated
Yoruba in Lagos. They had no sympathy for the educated criticisms of these set
of Africans. But they needed them to feel the pulse of the people. Before long,
three Yorubas were elected into the Legislative Council in Lagos Colony. The
first was Charles Joseph George, a knowledgeable trader who became a member of
the Legislative Council in 1886. Then there was the first indigenous Nigerian
lawyer, a Yoruba named Sapara Williams, who was nominated to the Legislative
Council, serving as a member from October 1901 until his death in 1915. There
was also Dr. Obadiah Johnson, who co-authored with his brother Samuel Johnson
the book, “A History of the Yorubas from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of
the British Protectorate” published in 1921. He was elected a member of the
Council in 1901. With the coming of Herbert Macaulay into the scene in 1908,
the fire of nationalism, though limited to Lagos affairs, began to burn. His
Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) was the first Nigerian political
party and it won seats in the elections of 1923, 1928 and 1933 until the coming
of the Nigerian Youth Movement in 1936. Although the British administration
depended on the elite to run the administration, it was not prepared to grant
them senior posts in the administration. Until he stepped down as
Governor-General in 1918, Lord Lugard was chiefly concerned with consolidating British
sovereignty and with assuring local administration through traditional rulers.
He was contemptuous of the educated Nigerians found more in the South, and he
recommended transferring the capital from Lagos where their influence was most
pronounced, to Kaduna in the North! Although the capital was not moved,
Lugard’s bias in favor of the muslim north was clear at the time. When his
successor, Sir Hugh Clifford came, his ideas were opposite to Lugard’s. he
believed that educated Nigerians held the future of development and the
importation of western experiences in Nigeria. He believed that INDIRECT RULE
tended to concentrate power in a central authority within the regions and he
wanted to extend administrative practices which had been successful in the South
to the North and vice versa. The Colonial Office in London would have none of
that. They forbade alteration of procedures in the North. They did not want to
upset the applecart which was yielding revenue from the North. They readily
accepted proposals for administrative changes for the difficult South. The emergence of considerable Nigerian
nationalism in the 1920’s only increased British contempt and a desire to
exclude the disturbing elites from government administration. In fact, the
British administration did not allow any Nigerian in the executive of
government until 1943. Even then, it took people from families with two or
three generations of European education. At first, nationalism was not about
self-determination or independence; it was about greater inclusion of the
elites in administration. The call for self-determination only came after a
short spell of a call for pan-Africanism coming from newly arrived
intellectuals from America, mostly Igbo people.
The sudden accelerated rise of the Igbo in their
acquisition of western education was shuddering. Coming late to western
education (the first graduate was Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe in 1930), they soon
overtook the Ibibio and nearly the Yoruba. This baffled the Yoruba and irked
the Hausa. The Igbo people were inclined toward American horizontal education.
With scholarships won by Zik for Nwafor Orizu and other seven “Argonauts”, a
new era began. Dr. Orizu was later to win 431 scholarships which he did not
limit to his Igbo people, but brought home to any ready African student. The American type of education the Igbo was
acquiring made the Colonial British very displeased. They had to try to scuttle
it by investigating Dr. Nwafor Orizu’s educational program of the American
Council on African Education (ACAE). They went to the extent of making sure Dr.
Orizu went to jail soon after he won election as Minister of Local Government
in the Eastern Region in February 1953. He was to serve a seven year jail term
for allegedly misappropriating the funds of the ACAE. But later that 1953, Roy
Wilkins, chairman of ACAE in the USA, wrote a letter to Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe
exonerating Dr. Nwafor Orizu of any financial impropriety. He was later
released in 1957. It was a horror to the Colonial British that the purveyor of
the liberating kind of education that was not subservient to colonial mentality
was to execute policies as Minister of Local
Government! So they had succeeded in putting him out of the scene for a
while. Other people with that kind of education, especially Igbo people and
Yoruba people, were treated with a critical eye by the British. But
nevertheless, many colonial clerical positions and trades in the North were
taken up by the Igbo. Because the Emirs maintained firm control on economic and
political change, any activity in the North that might include participation by
the government and consequently by southern civil servants was regarded as a
challenge to the primacy of the Emirates. Therefore, broadening political
participation and expanding educational opportunities and other social services
were viewed as threats to the status quo.
According to Schwartz in page 67 of his 1965 book,
"Nigeria: The Tribes, The Nation or The Race: The Politics of
Independence", by the late 1930s, "there were more Ibos than Yorubas
at most of the important Nigerian schools". It followed that the Igbo people
competed for jobs that the Yorubas had held exclusively for over three decades.
The Yoruba began to express fears of Igbo domination. By 1948, the resentment
was palpable. In the words of Mariam Ikejiani-Clark in page 248 of the 1989
book, "Azikiwe and the African Revolution", "It was this
contending situation between the Yorubas and the Ibos which led to ethnic
hostility and distruct amongst them that made it very difficult eventually for
the two parties to form a coalition government at the federal level".
Although
academic environments were cosmopolitan, the academic Yoruba was still not at
ease with the newly educated Igbo. Shortly before Independence, an Igbo, Prof.
Kenneth Dike, was appointed Vice Principal of the University College, Ibadan,
then Principal of the University College, and later, after Independence, he
became the first indigenous Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan.
Another Igbo, Prof. Eni Njoku became Vice Chancellor of the University of
Lagos. The political tension in Nigeria before the Civil War brought ethnic
sentiments to the fore and some Yoruba devised an intrigue and edged out Njoku
who returned to the east to head the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Prof.
Kenneth Dike was fed up with misinterpretations of his sincere motives in his
leadership style. After a tiresome court case with the Registrar of the
University, he took an accumulated leave and by the time he was due to return,
it was no longer safe for an Igbo at Ibadan. He moved to the east with his
family.
The formation and struggles of trade unions and later
the Zikist movement began a militant angle to the nationalistic struggle. This
further alienated the British from members of the elite class, especially the
Igbo people and the southern minorities. It did not help matters that Mr.
Michael Imoudu led a demonstration and march of railway workers to the
Government House at Marina, the official residence of the British Governor in
1941. Many Zikists were beaten and imprisoned, but these did not deter them. It
is then understandable that the British and the Hausa Emirs were in agreement
to allow the North remain largely isolated from the South, for fear of
upsetting the applecart…. This deep romance lasted until the Richards
Constitution of 1947. This constitution included the north in the central
legislature. This was applaudable and would have been a contributive force for
unity. But unfortunately, this very constitution also helped fan ethnic
feelings by creating regional councils for the east, north and west. In the thinking
of Prof. Kenneth Onwuka Dike in page 43 of the 1957 book, 100 Years of British Rule in Nigeria 1851-1951, “Undoubtedly, the
Richards Constitution is a dividing line in Nigerian Constitutional
development. Before it the keynote in Nigerian politics was unification towards
a centralized state and the realization of a common nationality…. But with the
Richards Constitution this tendency towards unification was on the whole
arrested.…” It is almost needless to say that those who provided that keynote
of unification before that crucial 1947 were mostly southerners. Thus, the Richards Constitution did not end
the romance between the British and the Emirs.
THIS BRINGS US TO THE MOST POWERFUL FACTORS THAT
FURTHERED THE CENTRIFUGAL PULL OF MULTI-ETHNIC ALLEGIANCE: THE BRITISH
CONDITIONAL LOVE OF THE NORTH AND FIRST MAJOR PARTY FORMATION ALONG ETHNIC
LINES.
Conditional love simply means the type of love that is
selfish. Its professor does not truly care about the welfare of the supposed
beloved. If the British truly cared about the North, there would have been an
unparalled development of the entire North in terms of infrastructure,
industry, standard of living, education, development of the large Talakawas or
Hausa peasants who were not benefiting from the romance between the Fulani
Emirs and the British, etc. The Colonial British was concerned with making sure
its source of revenue remained undisturbed. At first, it was the taxes from the
largely pacified peasants which the British got through the Emirs. A British
resident was stationed in each Emir's palace. In the beginning, after the
British hoisted their flag at Lokoja in 1900 and focused seriously on the
Sokoto Caliphate, the Emirs, who were great Fulani administrators, fiercely
resisted them. But the British had the maxim guns and after long bitter battles
involving great bloodshed, canons and shelling of cities, the Caliph of Sokoto
and Emirs bound to him by Islamic and Fulani ties wisely surrendered. The very
intelligent Fulani knew that although the British had a shoe-string army
fortunately blessed with the maxim gun, it could still draw more reserves from
Britain itself if need arose. Also, the Fulani knew that if he overstepped the
uncertain boundary of rules for good governance laid down by the British, he
could be deposed from being the Emir. His position was made more secure in that
the presence of the British reduced threats of deposition from within by
rivals. So he had to cooperate. The Emir became a salaried official of his own
Native Authority. The British was interested in using the Indirect Rule to
ensure minimum interference with native society, to create favourable
conditions for trade and to ensure what it considered the basic essentials of
human behaviour. Thus, every year, half of the revenue from tax and other
sources went from the local treasury to the colonial treasury. Lugard agreed
with the Caliph of Sokoto that he would not interfere with Muslim religion and
thus Christian missionaries were excluded from muslim areas. The Fulani Caliph
knew that the real source of his power to compel obedience and inspire awe and
respect lay in the muslim ties binding him to his people, largely Hausa
peasants. So missionaries were to back off from the romance between the north
and the British. It should be noted that it was these Christian missionaries
who gave education and technical skills to people who were regarded as
occupying the lower rung of the societies in eastern Nigeria. From these former
humble people and from freed slaves were to come offspring who became the great
elites that either gave the British sleepless nights or collaborated with the
British to institute Warrant Chief System in the east. The uneasy
administration in the South only made the British more appreciative of his
gains in the North. And because the British had in him the innate love for
royalty and administrative intelligence, it made him the more bonded to the
North. Britain's overriding interest in Nigeria was economic. Systematic
taxation gave Nigerians motives for producing more than was normally necessary
to maintain the family. Railway tracks were built across Nigeria to carry goods
off for export and to import goods. Exports consisted mainly of palm products
of the South and groundnuts from Kano. The immediate reason for amalgamation of
North and South in 1914 was economic and it was indirectly because of the love
for the North. The Northern Protectorate was running at a severe deficit and
there was need to combine the treasuries of North and South into a Central
Treasury from which the North could be maintained. Although amalgamation
occurred, bringing together a combined Treasury, Railway tracks, Survey,
Judiciary, Military etc, Lugard still isolated the North in the way it was
governed from the South. This decision to maintain the distinction between
North and South influenced the future of Nigeria and the growth of ethnic
competition. Subsequent Governor-Generals after Lugard surprisingly maintained
this distinction in various ways. The Emirs believed that the liberal ideas of
the Southerners were capable of undermining their authorities, and therefore,
destroying that romance between the Fulani ruling class and the colonial
administration which Lugard regarded as crucial for colonial exploitation.
Southerners who came to the North were forced to live in quarters away from the
indigenous population. The Colonial British carefully reinforced sectionalism
in order to ensure further exploitation of the regions and to curb nationalism
when it would arise. For example, in 1920, Sir Hugh Clifford asserted, "I
am entirely convinced of the right, for example, of the people of Egbaland...
of any of the great Emirates of the North...to maintain that each one of them
is, in a very real sense, a nation... It is the task of the Government of
Nigeria to build and fortify these national institutions".
When it became possible for indigenous people to run
for elective positions in the colonial government, the Colonial British
resorted to the manipulation of elections along communal lines and to preserve
their romance with Northern Emirs. In the 1951 elections in Kano, for example,
the colonial administration tried very hard to frustrate Northern allies of
Southerners opposed to the candidates of the Emirs but failed to succeed in the
primary elections. The NCNC-NEPU alliance swept the polls in Kano. That no
single candidate of the Emirs was successful shocked the colonial authorities.
And adequate steps were taken to curb the political sagacity of Dr. Nnamdi
Azikiwe and Mallam Aminu Kano. Their rhetoric oratory appealed to the Hausa
peasants! With the advent of electoral manipulations, Azikiwe sent a cablegram
to the British Secretary of State for the Colonies to intervene and ensure a
free and fair election in the North, but his move was highly resented in the
North.
Fortunately, one of the Colonial agents, an Irish
named Harold Smith, confessed to the manipulation of situation in Nigeria by
the British in favour of the North. Smith was a young Oxford graduate who was
employed as labour officer by the colonial office to Nigeria. He came to
Nigeria in 1955 and left in 1960. He was the officer instructed by the
Governor-General, Sir James Robertson to rig elections but he refused to carry
out the order. As reported in page 54 and 55 of Daniel Agbowu's "Nigeria:
The Truth", Smith wrote, "The British loved the largely illiterate
and backward North and had arranged for fifty percent of the votes to be
controlled by the Northern party, the NPC, which was largely a creation of the
British and hardly a normal political party in the accepted sense. It was
funded by the British controlled Native Authorities and was quite simply a tool
of the British administration. Because of this, Independence was to some extent
a sham because the results were a foregone conclusion. The North and the
British would continue to rule. However, it was still possible that the two
advanced and educated southern parties would unite against the North, so it was
necessary to keep them apart. Divide and rule, the old British device for
creating conflict, was employed in its most brazen and cynical form to keep the
Igbos and the Yorubas from working together in Nigeria". In another
section of his autobiography and as reported in page 59 of Agbowu’s book, Smith
wrote, "It seemed to many in the South that the British had constructed in
the North a magnificent game reserve, except that the game were the Northern
peasants. The Emirs were the gamekeepers".
The truth is bitter, but the British arrangement of
making sure the North (its leading oligarchy and not the vast innocent Northern
peasants) got fed by the revenue coming from the South through the positioning
of power to the Northern leaders is actually the real trouble with Nigeria....
Britain knew that if power went elsewhere, its economic and other interests in
Nigeria would become curbed.
According to Nnoli in page 123 of his aforementioned
book, "The colonial manipulation of elections poisoned relations between
the North and South with a consequent increase in the social distance between
members of their population".
In 1953, when Chief Anthony Enahoro tabled a private
member's motion in the House of Representatives calling for Independence in
1956, the Sardauna of Sokoto and leader of the NPC, Ahmadu Bello, moved an
amendment seeking to substitute the words, "as soon as practicable"
for the phrase "in 1956". A hot debate ensured. The House decided to
vote for or against the motion. Because the NPC had 50% of the total membership
of the House, it was likely they will force a defeat of the motion calling for
Independence in 1956. The House went for a short break and when it resumed, an
NPC member moved "that the House do now adjourn". This means that the
debate would be squashed if there was an adjournment, since it could not be
resumed on the next day, being a private Member's Motion. Awolowo swiftly took
the stage and spoke bitterly in condemnation of British imperialism and the
"feudal North". Thus, both the NCNC led by Azikiwe and the AG led by
Awolowo walked out of the House. They were loudly cheered. The NPC leaders were
booed as they came out of the House. Three days after this incident in Lagos,
Southerners in Kano were attacked and many Igbos were slaughtered in their
hundreds.
The National Council of Nigeria and Cameroons (NCNC)
party was formed earlier than Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) and the Action
Group (AG). At first, NCNC was seen as being nationalistic in outlook, having
members from every section of Nigeria. Its goal was largely based on the
struggle for self-government. When the other latter parties came onboard, the
NCNC, whether by commission or omission, began to be seen as an Igbo party
(because its membership had a large Igbo proportion and it was led by Dr.
Nnamdi Azikiwe, an Igbo). The NPC made it clear to all that it was strictly a
northern party. Its slogan was "One North". They said they were not
interested in the South and refused to change their name or canvass for
membership in the South! The leader of the AG, Chief Awolowo, had his own
conviction. He believed that one had to see himself first as coming from one's
region before seeing himself as a Nigerian. Thus the AG had the slogan,
"West for Westerners, East for Easterners, North for Northerners, Nigeria
for All". The slogan of the NCNC was "One Nigeria". The
different postures of these early political parties confirm our earlier
assertion that ethnic nationalism was greatly influenced by the cultural tie
groundwork enforced by the traditional setting where one was coming from.
The forces already set in motion from the background
centrifugal pulls we have outlined began to dictate the pulse of leadership in
Nigeria. The 1959 general elections were held to determine which political
party should form the government. No party was able to win a simple majority of
the 312 seats in the Federal Legislature which should have enabled it form a
government. By political manipulation, the unpopular NPC won 142 seats, the
most popular NCNC-NEPU alliance won only 90 seats and the second popular AG won
73 seats. The remaining 7 seats were shared by Independents. If the British had
succeeded in making the NPC win a simple majority of the 312 seats through
rigging, the fate of Nigeria would have been a bizarre matter for the
southerners. For about a week after the elections, the AG and NCNC contemplated
to coalesce so that Azikiwe can be Prime Minister, but they knew that if they
do so, the North would secede from Nigeria. It is to the credit of Azikiwe who
did not want Nigeria to break up that they did not form that coalition. Azikiwe
had to lead his party, NCNC to form a "strange" coalition with the
NPC, making the senior partner, NPC, to have the position of the Prime Minister
which was the most powerful executive position. Awolowo expressed strongly that
he would have preferred the nationalist, Azikiwe, as Prime Minister than the
conservative, Abubakar. But Dr. Azikiwe wanted a united Nigeria, and if
possible, a United States of Africa. The Prime Minister would have been Ahmadu
Bello, but he thought it wiser to preserve the north as the Premier and
suggested to his deputy, Abubakar, to become the Prime Minister in honour of
the NCNC-NPC coalition arrangement. Prime Minister Abubakar hinted to friends
that to some extent he was a figure head who was doing the biddings of the real
ruler of Nigeria, Ahmadu Bello! This was why the right honourable gentleman
carried out actions or inactions that were not in tandem with his inner
convictions. This state of affairs made sure Nigeria was not held with firm
hands and was drifting around with one sort of violence or the other until the
military struck. That Abubakar was killed in a coup for some of those actions
is deeply regrettable.
(b) Post-
Independence Till Today:
The pre-Independence forces are now combined into a
hydra-headed monster with one more force forming the monster's emotions. This
force was THE CENTRIFUGAL PULL OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS.
By an accident of history, the religious and ethnic
diversity in Nigeria are virtually coterminous. The North is predominantly
muslim, the West is predominantly Christian (mainly protestants) while the East
is mainly Christian and catholic. There was also a small collection of
adherents of the African Traditional Religion in both southern regions. To add
to this boiling pot, each of the north and south contains ethnic and religious
minorities who are not happy about the dominating postures of the major ethnic
groups. These religious leanings indirectly sealed the social distance between
the ethnic groups. Politicians were able to whip up religious sentiments
whenever it suits them and, many times, this action led to loss of precious
lives. Christian anxieties about Muslim domination of political power and the
fear that any Muslim ruler of Nigeria might islamize Nigeria began even from the
colonial era. The introduction of the Muslim Sharia criminal legal system in
some northern states in which a criminal is severely punished with his hands
cut off sometimes, added to the fears of Christian southerners living in the
North. These brought about clashes in which thousands of people were killed,
properties destroyed and many people displaced. The desperate employment of
religious solutions to socioeconomic and political problems had had led to
insurgencies and terrorism in Nigeria today.
The monster of centrifugal pulls ate deep into the
Nigeria body polity. It is still eating deep in many forms and many new ways.
It is often asserted in the Census figures from
Independence that the north is more populous than the south. The southerners
fear that such assertion may not be true, but a ploy that began from the
colonial times to keep the north in the position as "formulators" of
government policies, while the south took over the job of "executing"
such policies. But northerners disagree.
The foregoing realizations and realities brought about
caution in the minds of a people having the intention to migrate to other
regions in Nigeria. This hesitation resulted in labour immobility. The effect
of labour immobility was concentrated skilled labour in areas that were
educationally advantaged and scarce skilled labour in others. The overspill of
skilled labour experienced in the supposed advantaged areas and the inadequacy
of skilled labour in other areas was a source of economic depression in the
disadvantaged areas. Thus, the general state of the nation was unhealthy with
respect to this phenomenon. Before the Nigerian Civil War, there was major
"dismissal" of workers who were not from the regions in which they
were working. The war acerbated this situation. The dissolution of the old
regions into states threw up skilled workers who, in the wake of the new
states, experienced either job scarcity or saturated job offers in their home
states. People who found themselves in states other than their own had feelings
of job insecurity and promotional frustrations. Consequently, people in newly
created states began to safeguard their jobs and build up artificial job
scarcity to ward off people from their states.
Through the swift hands of Ahmadu Bello, many northerners
were recruited into the military just as many northerners were encouraged to
grasp education to be at par with the south. Thus after the first coup led by
Majors Nzeogwu and Ifeajuna, there was indignation in the north in the belief
that the coup was an Igbo action against the northern leaders (although this
remains debatable since myriads of those who joined Major Nzeogwu in the
revolution were northern soldiers). This belief led to the counter-coup and
killing of Aguiyi Ironsi, a coup clearly organized by northerners. There was
also the systematic killing of Igbo officers which offset the north-south
balance in the army in such a way that when it was all over, including after
the terrible Civil War between the north-controlled Nigeria and the Igbo-dominated
Eastern region, the chess of power was favourable to northern officers.
There is this assertion, although its authority seemed
to be based on deductions, that when Gowon took over as Head of State, he
wanted to secede from Nigeria. But the British High Commissioner rushed to him
and persuaded him not to do so since he had power in his hands, especially the
power to control the revenue coming from the south. The resulting effect, it is
so said too, was the statement from Gowon that "God has in his mercy
returned power to the hands of a northerner". So we had to "Get On
With One Nigeria" with the acronym, G.O.W.O.N.
The War decimated the Igbo population. When the Civil
War ended in January 1970, a massive and clear marginalization of the
Igbo-dominated east began. Every adult Igbo who had any money in bank or cash
had all the money declared invalid and got only the sum of twenty pounds.
According to Mbazulike Amaechi in page 13 of the 2012
booklet "This Union, Is It Working; Will it Ever Work?": "All Igbo
properties in the non-Igbo areas of the Eastern Region, mainly Rivers State,
were seized without compensation as "Abandoned Properties". The
Federal Military Government declared that there should be no Power Generating
Station in Igbo land, and while the big Oji River Power Station was shut down,
Afam Power Station in Aba Division had its location merged with Rivers State.
It was total marginalization of Igbo in the areas of public appointments to
certain key or sensitive positions, in the areas of economy, siting of
industries or government institutions, infrastructure, politics etc..... Ndigbo
had been crying and begging for the construction of a bridge across River Niger
at Onitsha to give relief to the aging Onitsha/Asaba bridge which was built in 1965".
Power remained with the northern officers for many
years, with democracy at bay. There was widespread looting of the treasury by
these leaders that defied all logic. It was in this period that there was the
constant balkanization of Nigeria into states with the motive of creating
official reason to allocate revenue from the federal pool to service each
created state, mostly in the north. But the balkanization was whittling the
authority of the emirs and, at present, there are snatches of feuds between northern
state governors and emirs in their sphere of administration. The majority of
the governors were coming from the common people or Hausa peasants. In fact,
former almajiri (or northern destitute children) have become senators in
Nigeria. Also, the balkanization is gradually creating small aggregate and
bonded groups within the once unified north. Today, many northern leaders who
are rising from the common people seem to forget where they are coming from.
Thus, even as the east is shouting that it is being marginalized, many common
northerners feel they are not getting the largesse accruing to northern
leaders! This has to a great extent weakened the unity of the north which was
more powerful when power was in the hands of the traditional emirs. With the
return of democracy in 1999, politics became polarized between the leaders and
the led. The sense of ethnicity is balkanized with the stabilizing states in
the country. Also, there are more northern people getting ready to vie for the
post of President of Nigeria than ever before, further weakening the unity. The
dissatisfaction of the common northerner is horrifyingly serving as fodder,
with purist religious sentiments thrown in, for the present insurgency in the
north which is, unfortunately, decimating members of the same common man in
such a large number that calls for serious attention.
Nevertheless, the cultural ties holding together
former regions remain strongest in the north, followed by the west. Such
bonding which was originally artificial in the east had become more weakened by
present-day realities, with the Igbo searching for unifying replacements for
Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu.
The present bombings in the north were allegedly a
creation of disaffected northern politicians who wanted power returned to the
north when Goodluck Jonathan, a Niger Deltan from the south, became President.
It would seem providential that someone from the area which had oil, the very
source of revenue which was feeding the whole country, had become president.
This is because the Niger Delta had been shortchanged over the years. Amongst
other suspicions, the northern elders suspected that this President may take
away the power which was bringing in revenue from the Niger Delta to the north
(northern elders please, and not much going to the common northerners) in
various ways. Recently, the President called for a national conference, which
should lead to the review of the 1999 constitution. The reaction of the
northern elders spoke volume.
The 1999 constitution was drafted with a desire to
curb the centrifugal pulls, but a grievous mistake was made. Hear Prof. Ben
Nwabueze in March 22, 2013 Vanguard newspapers, “....On areas that need
amendment in the 1999 constitution, quite frankly, there are many flaws and
many errors in the content of the constitution. So many errors and I as a
person was partly responsible because I was a member of the constitution
drafting committee set up by the military government in 1978. I was not only a
member but chairman of one of the sub-committees that produced Chapter 2, the
fundamental objectives and one of the cardinal flaws in the constitution is the
concentration of powers in the centre. That is why I accept that I am partly
responsible for that because at the time, late Chief Rotimi Williams, a close
friend of mine and nearly everybody in the Constitution Drafting Committee were
so overwhelmed with this feeling, this patriotic feeling that we needed unity
and the most effective way to achieve unity in the country is by having a very
strong central government. Most of us in the committee shared that idea at the
time. Chief Williams shared it because of the patriotism in us and we wanted a
united Nigeria, we feel we can achieve unity by having a strong central government.
Then what did we do to achieve our misguided objective? We took away 50 per
cent of the items on the concurrent list and gave it to the centre. We feel by
doing this, we are establishing unity. We did not stop at that. We looked at
the residual matters, these are matters exclusive to the states, we took a
large part of it, more than 30 percent and close to 50 percent; we took it away
from states and gave to the centre. And the result is the almighty Federal
Government, but what we discover was that instead of producing unity, we
produced disunity because of the intensity of the struggle to control the
centre. The intensity is so much and it is not just in the political power that
was concentrated at the centre, much of the money also went to the centre and
so by action, we destroyed what is called fiscal federalism. Too much money at
the centre increased the struggle for the control of the centre and the control
of the money itself and that has remained the feature of the Constitution up
till today."
While
asserting authoritatively that ethnic competiveness had become state
competiveness with the creation of states, we have observed also that the
dividends of the "state competitiveness" end with the leaders of the
states and hardly trickle down to the Nigerian masses who are constantly used
to whip up such competitiveness in different ways. Nigeria, as a result, has
become a country where one, there is unfair share coming from the federating
pool to the areas that are generating revenues; two, even this unfair share do
not trickle down to the masses of these neglected areas but end with leaders
from these areas; three, low revenue generating areas are getting more
allocations which discourages creation of internal revenue generation in these
areas; four, even these allocations going to such low revenue areas do not
trickle down to the common masses but end in the pockets of their leaders.
Nigeria, as a result, has become comatose and in need of new life by way of a
new and friendly Constitution and more firm and focused leaders.
CENTRALIZING PROPOSALS
We recommend that
1. Since money is the hidden strongest drive for
competitiveness which leads to ethnic violence, the states should retain about
half of their revenues and contribute the remaining balance to the federal
pool. Then, the federal government should share the allocations in an agreed
formula.
2. The low revenue generating areas should be
industrialized by their governors and made to begin producing the national cake
at par with other areas, so that their heavy reliance on (and not contribution
to) the federating pool will be curbed. In the issue of overdependence on the
revenue coming from the Niger Delta, it is important to note that while
recognizing the efforts of some governors, it is still important to suggest
that there should be more diversification of the economy from crude oil onto
other sectors in such a manner that the dependence on only oil will be
minimized. At present, some 2 million barrels are being extracted a day in the
Niger Delta. It is estimated that 38 billion barrels of crude oil still reside
under the delta as of early 2012. This means that at the rate of extraction,
the oil will be used up within 52 years. This calls for caution.
5. There should be radical devolution of powers from
the federal government to the regions after the revenue aspect cited above is
considered.
6. Secularity of the Nigerian state with regard to
religion, must be the norm. No religion should impose its beliefs on the
government and expect it to promulgate laws binding everyone else to it.
7. The accurate population of Nigeria will have to be
determined to the satisfaction of every region, if such satisfaction is hinged
on dignity and not on malicious intents.
8. It is surprising to advocate a right to secession
of any group in this proposal that is meant to promote unity, but we realized
that such a right of secession in the Constitution will not lead to anarchy or
disintegration of regions, the right will rather make the federal government
very cautious and serve as a restraining and stabilizing factor to it. There
should be no power in the federal government to stop the exercise of such right
to secede by any region. This formula is working very well today in Ethiopia
and Ethiopia has not disintegrated.
9. Leaders should realize that they are to bring home
to their people the development needed for a high standard of living.
Employment is basic for the common man. Leaders should not be concerned with
personal aggrandizement. Ethnic problems arise due to competition for scarce
resources. When the standard of living is improved and people get more
educated, the threshold of resentment will subside.
10. The various tactics towards curbing ethnic
problems will only work if the people who have the power to exercise such
tactics are sincere. For no matter what solution is giving, including the ones
we have given, the character of the person who is the executor of these
recommendations is the most deciding factor. Therefore, candidates who are
voted into government offices have to have come in through free and fair
elections. And for elections to be free and fair, a special body has to be
invoked which will control the electoral processes over and above the power of
incumbency or of the personal direction of people who are already occupying
powerful government offices. This body will have to be made up of people of
unquestionable character chosen by referendum from all over Nigeria.
11. Many talented leaders are hidden in the common
masses, the working class, the poor farmers, the unemployed, petty traders etc
who constitute the greater population of Nigeria. We propose that such talents
who are cosmopolitan and detribalized should be encouraged to vie for elections
and control the machinery of government. This will whittle down the influence
of the ethnic-conscious politicians and bourgeoisies of today. We are aware
that the employment of ethnic tactics by these politicians is not sincere even
but one of the ways to keep on looting.
12. There should be the promotion of political,
social, and economic policies that discourage ethnic bigotry but emphasize
merit.
13. The present use of geographical constituencies in
legislative representation in Nigeria will have to give way to occupational and
administrative etc constituencies. This will be a very radical means of curbing
ethnic consciousness in Nigeria. We are aware that the present legislators
debate on bills that are mostly related to occupational and administration and
other problems of the country other than bills that seek for the development of
their geographical constituencies. Therefore, we reason that it would be better
to group such other problems of Ngeria into categories and then elect
legislators to represent the eradication of such problems. For example, instead
of having a legislator who is representing Anioma constituency, we should have
a legislator representing the unemployed masses of Nigeria.
We end with this immortal observation from Okwudiba
Nnoli, an observation given in page 289 of his 1980 book:
"The peasants, workers, petty traders and
artisans, and the underemployed and unemployed are the only true and dependable
ally in the struggle against ethnic sectionalism and the inherited colonial
system. In the past, their devotion to the interests of the nation as a whole
has been unparalleled. During the pre-petroleum days they held the foreign
exchange fort. Today they hold the anti-hunger fort. And by bearing in silence
the major brunt of the consequences of the distorted taste pattern, the high prices
of goods and services, and the loss of benefits from the programmes that might
have been undertaken in a broad public interest, they hold the stability fort.
But the drums of their silence are becoming louder than ever".
Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Note: This essay was published in the 2014 book by Dr. Jaanna Nwafor-Orizu & Jeff Unaegbu entitled, "Dr. Prince Akweke Abyssinia Nwafor Orizu’s
Ninety Two Days as Acting President: A Personal History of Nigeria (October 16,
1965- January 15, 1966)". (Enugu: Timex Enterprises). Amazon Link to the book:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1079376550?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860
