“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
