Nigeria: 1914-2014

There is no dispute about the facts of Nigeria’s progeny and birth. The country was created by Britain through Lord Frederick Lugard, and his mistress Lady Flora Shaw who christened it after River Niger. The British had secured imperial control over Northern and Southern Nigeria by a combination of force, fraud or deception-any contract entered into by parties in the manner the British obtained their colonial possessions in Nigeria would easily be nullified in any English courts for undue influence, lack of consensus ad idem, misrepresentation, fraud and/or coercion! When the British decided on the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria in 1914, they did not consult the kingdoms, tribes,empires and peoples contained therein for consent or approval-simply proclaiming it, much like a slave owner could donate, lend or otherwise deal with his human possessions. And there is no doubt that in reaching the decision, the interest of the natives was not a factor-the sole consideration was British colonial administrative and budgetary convenience. The British colonial office sought to balance the finances of the Northern Protectorate which was in debit, with the surpluses from the Southern Colony and Protectorate so that recourse to home treasury could be obviated. There was also some element of mischief, cynicism and cant-the Southern “lady of means” was being married off to the lesswell-off Northern bachelor in the hope that they would live happily ever after! It didn’t matter that the bride was unaware of the purpose and terms of the forced marriage and was allowed noopinionthereon! This is not to say that there were no relationships pre-dating colonialism or amalgamation between the peoples inhabiting the “geographical expression” called “Nigeria”-there is evidence of significant trade and cultural interaction for instance, between Yorubas and Northern Hausa, Fulani, Nupe, Kanuri and Ebira peoples. Islam, which had taken root in communities in Western and Central/Northern Nigeria was alsoa point of contact between those regions, and the advent of Christianity meant a further widening of the basis of relationships across Southern and Middle-belt/Northern Nigeria. The borders of pre-colonial empires had spread such that indigenes had encountered each other-Oyo as far as Dahomey, Benin and Ilorin; Fulani/Sokoto Caliphate as far as Northern Yorubaland, Kanuri’s to the east, and Tivs and other central Nigerian tribes had successfully resisted the Fulani Jihad; and the impact of Benin had been felt in Lagos. Yet while empires were in flux, Nigeria’s indigenous people remained independent of each other and never agreed to be joined or subjugated to any other ethnic groups. The British eventually stumbled through different constitutional arrangements into a barely tolerable option-a federal constitution comprising three regions, North, West and East, leading to another problem-the composition of the regions amounted to defacto internal colonialism of large ethnic minorities. The Western region contained Edo, Urhobo, Isoko, Ndokwa, Asaba and Itsekiri minorities later to become Mid-West with majority Yorubas; the North contained Benue-Plateau, Southern Kaduna and Kanuri ethnic minorities,religious minorities in Borno/Adamawa who were mainly Christian and animist,Yorubas in the old Ilorin and Kabba provinces; while Eastern Igbos dominated Niger-Delta and Calabar/Ogoja/Rivers minorities including large ethnicities like Ijaws/Kalabari andIbibios. The British were aware of these problems, but chose to paper over them and defer the issue till independence. The British also bestowed a defective federation in which the Northern region was credited with population figures larger than the two other regions combined, resulting in a Northern-dominated federal parliament and a presumption to domination of the emerging nation, which has remained a source of tension and instability in Nigeria till date! As a postgraduate constitutional law student in 1988, I wrote a paper on “Colonial Legacies in Commonwealth Africa” with Nigeria and Sierra-Leone as case studies-it was a shocking eye-opener of British gerrymandering designed to endow population figures, power structures, ruling political elite, regional disparities and other constitutional elements aimed at deciding the future of the new nations. Those legacies have by-and-large proved to be destabilizing to the prospects of these nations, as Nigeria so tragically illustrates. Thus Nigeria’s post-independence journey has been one of riots, crises over census figures, constitutional disagreements, coups and counter-coups, military rule, pogroms and civil disturbances, civil war, corruption, debt peonage, religious riots, post-election violence, regional, ethnic and religious politics, poverty, unemployment and now terrorism. I would argue that these can easily be traced to Nigeria’s faulty foundations! The national conference which opens this week, offers an opportunity to repair our faulty beginnings and construct a better, fairer, truer union. Only people of less-than-sound mental status will persist in the same behavior after one hundred years even though those actions have yielded only “sorrow, tears and blood”! I have no doubt that there is something fundamentally wrong with a structure and system that has produced 100 million people living in poverty; tens of millions who are unemployedand under-employed; about 50 million illiterates; massive infrastructural under-development in spite of spending (and stealing) over $600billion oil proceeds; where “Boko Haram” and “Fulani Herdsmen” kill hundreds of people, including children virtually every week; and where the nation’s immigration agency superintends the death of tens of young citizens seeking jobs due to corruption and incompetence. We can seize the opportunity of the national conference to correct Nigeria’s foundations or this article may turn out to be in remembrance of Lord Lugard’s“mistake” or unfolding monumental tragedy!!! Opeyemi Agbaje