With October 1 Independence Day, three days away, Editor, Politics/Features, EMEKA ALEX DURU, attempts a critique of the country’s journey to statehood since 1960.
A major development at the floor of the Senate late last year was the admission of collective guilt by the lawmakers in the underdevelopment of the country. The senators had particularly lamented the current state of the nation which they described as piteous, especially when compared to some other countries that became independent almost at the same time with her.
The regret on the poor state of things was sequel to a motion moved by Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba, on behalf of 12 others for a reflection on the Nigerian nation that was then marking her 53rd Independence Anniversary.
Almost a year later, the situation, curiously, has hardly changed. If anything, analysts insist that the drift has gone deeper.
Even those that had participated actively in the struggle for the nation’s independence are not left out of the lamentation. For example, Minister for Aviation in the First Republic, Mbazuluike Amaechi, who was among those that practically put their life on the line in the quest for the country’s independence, captured the mood of most Nigerians on the state of affairs in a chat with TheNiche.
Nigeria, as it is, he cried, was not what he and other statesmen fought for.
“I have found out that what people are pursuing now are not the things we fought for. These were not the programmes of things that we had in mind while fighting for independence,” he lamented.
Bob Ogbuagu, also of the old brigade, expressed similar disappointment, stressing that “nobody seems to be happy with what is going on in Nigeria”.
Dr. Tunji Abayomi, constitutional lawyer and human rights activist, though of the younger generation, was also peeved at the situation of things, adding: “I am totally embarrassed about this country.”
Three years earlier, in 2011, while bowing out of the House of Representatives, the then Speaker, Dimeji Bankole, had made similar observation.
He attributed the decay in the polity to the years of military dictatorship, adding that the era saw the virtues of truth and justice giving way to oppression and arbitrariness. Ogbuagu agreed.
But Abayomi blamed Nigeria’s woes on corruption, likening the trend to cancer, which, he said, had eaten into the fabric of the country.
There were others with different interpretations on the problem with Nigeria. All were, however, agreed that no meaningful achievement would be recorded in the attempts to reposition the country without going back to the masterplan of the facilitators of Project Nigeria.
Their argument is that refocusing the nation from its current situation would require properly identifying Nigeria’s founding fathers; examining their vision and dream for the country, locating the point at which the dream was bungled and carving out a roadmap for re-engineering the journey.
In the beginning
The current political Nigeria took bearing from 1914, when Lord Frederick Lugard, a British colonial officer, acting on the imperial orders of his principals in London, cobbled together the hitherto distinct entities of the South and North protectorates into a unified territory. The measure was actually driven by the desire of the British colonialists to attain administrative convenience and exploit the envisaged economic gains of a larger entity.
Of course, in going about the enterprise, Britain found a moral benchmark in the Berlin Conference of 1885, which incidentally laid the groundwork for the scramble and partition of Africa. At the conference, what essentially occupied the minds of the invading colonialists were the inherent economic gains in the mission to Africa.
It was in that respect that the hidden agenda behind the 1914 amalgamation would remain instructive.
Before then, the various entities that were packed into the hastily contrived project had flourished in their peculiar characters and characteristics.
In the North, for instance, the influence of the fabled Sokoto Caliphate, which had extended up to Gwandu and such distant outposts as Kano, Kebbi, Ilorin and beyond, held sway, carrying with it the twin principles of Islamic civilisation and Arabic culture.
Competing in some degrees with the Sokoto Caliphate, from the Eastern flank, were the Kanuris who held aloft the rich cultures of the old Kanem Borno Empire.
In what constitute the present geographical Middle Belt were the Kwararafa, Igala, Nupe, Wukari and other pockets of chiefdoms and kingdoms that existed on clearly defined principles.
In the West, the emerging city states had cohabited with each other essentially under the influence of the Oyo Empire, in its monarchical system of administration. The Benin Kingdom at the neighbourhood complemented the exercise of the prevailing independence among the entities at the time.
The Igbo of the South East had, of course, recorded great feats in their unique village republic arrangements. Not given to centralised monarchy, the constituting units had, riding on the principles of consultation, compromise and consensus at various tiers of leadership, successfully carried on with their individual village affairs. In similar vein, their riverine neighbours that did not have the culture of institutionalised monarchy had managed their affairs in manners that guaranteed their particular needs.
All these peculiarities were, however, abridged following the 1914 amalgamation.
Even the amalgamation, which, in Lugard’s expression, was principally to “cause the minimum of administrative disturbance”, turned out to be lacking in thoroughness, apparently deliberately. For instance, the colonialists, in keeping with their carefully concealed mercantilist intentions, kept the North intact and, in the process, kept the two administrations separate.
Consequently, the exercise, which should have brought the entire people closer and provided a solid platform for a more coherent emerging nation, was rather manipulated by the British authorities to advance their economic interests.
Evolution of a nation
With time, however, especially following the growing wind of awareness and wave of nationalism that trailed the first and second world wars, hitherto colonial entities began to make agitations for equality and political independence. Nigerian freedom-fighters, who played heroic role in the British campaigns in Burma, Togo and the Cameroons, were not left out in the quest for freedom. Their efforts were eloquently complemented by those of other nationalists through various methods.
Within the period, there had been several constitutional frameworks that were essentially designed to serve British interests. There was, for instance, the 1922 Constitution that was introduced by Sir Hugh Clifford. Ironically, Clifford, who introduced the constitution, expressed doubts on the ability of the Nigerian to rule his country.
By 1944, the shortcomings of the Clifford Constitution, given the increasing agitation of Nigerian nationalists led by Sir Herbert Macaulay, could no longer be swept under the carpet. In fact, on December 6, that year, Arthur Richards (Lord Milverton), the governor, put up a constitutional reform which he hoped would guarantee Nigerians greater participation in the discussion of their affairs.
On March 5, 1945, the scheme for the new constitution was laid at the legislative council. It made provisions for the establishment of consultative bodies at the regional levels.
According to Richards, the aim was “to create a political system which is itself a present advance and contains the living possibility of further orderly advance – a system within which the diverse elements may progress at varying speeds, amicably and smoothly, towards a more closely integrated economic, social and political unity, without sacrificing the principles and ideals in their divergent ways of life”.
Perceptive analysts trace the regional arrangement that existed in the country up to 1966 to the Richard Constitution. There were other constitution reforms. There was, for instance, the 1951 Macpherson Federal Constitution. The snag with it, however, was that it was later discovered that the regions, with their differences in character and development, could not effectively function in a close-knit federation. Subsequent constitutional conferences in Nigeria and London led to the 1959 Constitution that gave Nigeria independence.
Founding fathers and their dreams
While the talks on constitution reforms were going on, Nigerian nationalists, operating on different platforms and movements, made elaborate efforts at taking control of the destiny of the nation on attainment of independence. Three major leaders that represented the dominant tendencies of the period easily stood out in the process. These were Ahmadu Bello (who later yielded grounds at the centre for his lieutenant, Sir Tafawa Balewa, to consolidate the homogeneity of the North on political issues), Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo – all of blessed memory.
Balewa represented the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC), which largely espoused Northern interests. With its motto, “One North, One People Irrespective of Religion, Rank or Tribe”, the NPC made no pretensions on what its intentions and destination were.
Azikiwe stood in for the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC). The NCNC, formed in 1944, made efforts at assuming a national posture, but it was apparent that it had greater followership in the East and its neighbourhood.
Awolowo’s Action Group (AG) made no apologies in championing its Yoruba irredentist views.
Despite the obvious limitations posed by the differences in the backgrounds and convictions of these founding fathers, they strived to work towards a functional federation.
In fact, Mokwugo Okoye, a frontline nationalist and writer, shortly before his death in 1999, had presented a vivid report of the visions of the architects of modern Nigeria, he said that the forebears had envisioned a giant Nigerian enterprise that would champion and protect the cause of its citizens and, indeed, the black man in the comity of nations.
Emergence of a nation
Thus, guided by these alluring visions, the forebears, leading thousands of youths and even the elderly who provided the raw energy and verve for the nationalistic struggle, thronged the Lagos Race Course – now popular as Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS) – hours before midnight of September 30, 1960 to herald the birth of a new nation. By midnight, the lights in the arena went off. When they were turned on, a new era had dawned. Nigeria had become independent. The green and white national flag had taken the position of the British Union Jack. Those that witnessed the colourful occasion still find it difficult to explain their euphoria at the event.
The emerging administration took the form of British Westminster parliamentary pattern. In it, Balewa of the NPC became the Prime Minister (PM) while Azikiwe of the NCNC complemented him as the ceremonial president. Awolowo’s AG played the role of opposition.
Action at the regions
Even with the administration at the centre, the regions remained strong points of political and economic activities. The arrangement paid off initially, as the regions competed for meaningful development. The North concentrated largely on agriculture as the mainstay of its economy. Coal, palm oil and allied products played similar roles in the East, while cocoa provided the West with the needed revenue.
In the process, each region grew and developed at its own pace and according to its priorities and peculiarities.
A vision mismanaged
But the relative fast-paced development in the regions carried with it creeping cultures of indiscipline and corruption that gradually but steadily pervaded the major fabrics of the nation. Informed analysts identify the relative lax in the centre at the time as creating room for corrupt officials in the regions to run riot with the public till.
Pat Nwabunnia, a political scientist and public affairs analyst, argued that the processes leading to bungling the dream commenced almost immediately after Independence. He stressed that, as in contemporary Nigeria, there were no conscious efforts to ensure that the ship of the state did not capsize.
“These aspirations were bungled almost immediately, at the inception of Independence. Some of our leaders never followed these aspirations; they were selfish, while bribery and corruption became the order of the day,” he said.
Elsewhere, analysts observed that even the founding fathers, committed as they seemed, would not be excluded from the blame of the drift. They were, for instance, accused of failing to put in place measures that would check the excesses of their lieutenants. The effect of this oversight was that between 1960 and 1966, while they held sway, such vices as political violence, tribalism and nepotism had eaten deep into the beautiful economic blueprint that they had envisioned for the country.
The curtain falls
By 1966, the rot in the system had become quite overt. Consequently, cashing in on the rising discontentment in the land, some officers in the military, largely driven by idealism and fleeting conviction in their ability to halt the drift, made incursion into civil politics. Led by Majors Emmanuel Ifeajuna and Chukwuma Nzeogwu, they struck on January 15, 1966, insisting that their aim was “to bring an end to disorder, corruption and despotism”.
Their intervention resulted in loss of many lives, including the PM, Ahmadu Bello, and other key officials of the government.
Somehow, the putsch was perceived as having ethnic colouration, given that most of the actors bore Igbo names. To add it up, following the death of Balewa and the resultant confusion, General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo, who incidentally was the most senior ranking Nigerian Army officer, was invited to take over the reins of power. This added weight to the insinuations that the January coup was a careful design by the Igbo to take over the leadership of the country.
Within the six months of the Ironsi administration, his policies were largely misunderstood or misinterpreted outright. Consequently, by July of that year, a counter-coup, planned and executed by soldiers of Northern extraction, was launched.
A nation in disarray
The ensuing controversies and mutual distrust within the military and political class saw Nigeria engaging in a Civil War that lasted between 1967 and 1970. At the end of the exercise, over a million souls mainly Igbo were estimated to have been lost. At the onset of hostilities, the federal authorities, in obvious attempt to break the East, apparently to weaken the resolve of Biafra, altered the existing four-region arrangement and hastily put up a 12-state structure in lieu.
Many point at the abortion of the First Republic and alteration of the original federal structure of the country as accounting largely to the pervasive rot in the system. For example, between 1966 and 1999 when the current civilian dispensation was instituted, eight military administrations had ruled the country with iron fists. The only interlude was the President Shehu Shagari-led Second Republic of 1979 to 1983.
Some of the military administrations at various times engaged in state creation exercises that eventually gave the nation its present 36-state structure.
In search of a just federation
Even with a civilian government in place, the quest for a just and equitable nation that will reflect the dreams of the forefathers remains a dominant topic among enlightened commentators. Similar topics had been raised while the soldiers were in charge, but they were dismissed by the authorities on the excuse of preserving national unity.
In the 1980s, for instance, following the wobbly character of the General Ibrahim Babangida political transition programme, the late Alao Aka-Bashorun, the then President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), acting in league with like minds, began to canvass the convocation of a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) as a viable framework for addressing the complex tendencies of the Nigerian federation. Babangida regime, however, stood against the proposal with a claim that two sovereigns could not stand at the same setting, at the same time.
Subsequent administrations in the country had been confronted with the request. Though most had attempted some forms of conferences, none had actually tackled the burning issue of restructuring the nation. Even the latest confab of the Goodluck Jonathan administration placed a caveat on discussing the unity and dissolubility of Nigeria.
Enter Boko Haram
While the issue lingers, the country has been confronted with the monster of Boko Haram insurgency. The crisis, which actually began to take form during President Umaru Yar’Adua’s period, had seen the group sweeping across Borno, Bauchi, Kano and Yobe on occasions.
In furthering their cause, members of the sect have employed various forms of violence, including suicide bombing, abduction of school children and attacks on churches, police and military installations as well as other strategic locations in the North including Abuja.