A good place to start a meaningful discussion on the growth and development of any African nation will be the famous Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 where leading European powers (Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Belgium) scrambled for and finalized the partition of the continent of Africa. The decisions of that conference created the foundation for many of the set-backs and institutional dysfunctions that most nations of Africa (including Nigeria) are still grappling with today.
A continent of over 10,000 distinct polities was partitioned into about 40 geographical entities without consideration of the varied ethnic nationalities, customs and cultures of the people of the continent. Homogeneous ethnic groups were split into two or more new, artificial entities while completely unrelated and sometimes rival groups of people were yoked together into a single geographical entity.
Though the partition ensured the peaceful co-habitation of the colonial powers and prospered their economic and political interests in Africa, it created a serious dislocation and truncated the smooth evolution of strong, stable and viable nation states.
Nigeria’s fate was not different from the rest of Africa when, 29 years later, Sir Lord Lugard brought together the different tribes to the North and South of the Niger River into one entity in the famous Amalgamation of 1914.
The name ‘Nigeria’ was coined by Flora Shaw who later became Lord Lugard’s wife. This leads the imagination wandering into possible permutations of the uncanny circumstances in which two supposed ‘love birds’ supervised both the birth and naming ceremony of our great country.
On the surface, the amalgamation delivered a key political and economic convenience by creating a single geographical and administrative entity for the British. Beyond that, it was an amalgamation of other very complicated and complex variables: people and tribes at different levels of economic, political and social development; tribes and nationalities with differences in cultural heritage, different judicial and educational systems, land tenure system, moral values, language, worldviews and religions; and flourishing empires and kingdoms with their own highly organized political structures, sophisticated military, advanced economies and commerce – Oyo Empire, Benin Kingdom, Nupe Kingdom, Kanem Bornu Empire, Sokoto Caliphate, etc.
Building and organizing these disparate entities and nationalities into one unified people with one heart and one purpose has been the critical challenge of the last one hundred years.
The agitation for self-government and struggle for Nigeria’s independence which started out in the early 1920s with Herbert Macaulay and other nationalists had, by the 1950s, dovetailed into an intense regional contest for superiority led by frontline nationalists who championed the interests of their respective regions more than that of the entire country.
The political platforms and parties that were created also followed a regional pattern: The Northern Region had Ahmadu Bello and Tafawa Balewa who rallied the people of the North under the Northern People’s Congress (NPC); Obafemi Awolowo and his team rallied the West under the Action Group (which was created on the ethnic and cultural root of ‘Egbe Omo Oduduwa’); Nnamdi Azikiwe started on a nationalistic note with the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) but ended up forming government in the Eastern Region; and United Middle Belt Congress was also formed by Senator Joseph Tarka to create a political platform for the various ethnic groups in central Nigeria.
What we had was a situation where heterogeneous regions with different ideologies, administrative styles, agricultural and judicial systems yoked themselves together for the purpose of securing independence, while at the same time fighting to ensure that the interests of their respective regions were well represented in the newly independent country.
There was no clearly defined national ideology or common sets of shared values subscribed to by all the nationalists in the quest for self-governance. Also, we had no central hero or national figure like a Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Gandhi. Instead, we had regional actors and tribal leaders who were sometimes at each other’s throats. They fought each other as much as they fought the British colonialists.
At independence, there was no clarity of the kind of nation we wanted to build beyond the euphoria of self-government, a geographical entity named ‘Nigeria’ and a few national institutions like the Army, Police, etc. The central government that took over from the British was a merger of two political parties, NPC from Northern Region and NCNC from Eastern Region, leaving Action Group from Western Region in opposition.
Meanwhile, each of these leading political parties still retained and held on to their regional strongholds – with the same political party in government, the same administrative and political structures it had prior to independence. The Northern Region was led by NPC under Ahmadu Bello as Premier, Western Region was led by AG with Ladoke Akintola as Premier and Eastern Region was led by NCNC with Michael Okpara as Premier. A clear reflection of how the national interest was subjugated to the regional was the fact that Ahmadu Bello preferred to remain in Kaduna as Premier of Northern Nigeria while his lieutenant, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was delegated to head the national government as Prime Minister.
Regionalism or geo-political identity, a product of colonial legacy, is still very much a strong feature of our national life and politics. It constitutes a major hurdle to building a united and progressive nation anchored on shared values, single-minded vision and clearly articulated purpose that is acceptable to all.
The doctrine of unity-in-diversity and federalism adopted by the founding fathers was hampered by the faulty political legacies inherited from the colonial powers and by the absence of commonly shared values and vision.
The consequent effect of this structure resulted in the 1964 elections crisis in the Western Region, the arrest and imprisonment of key opposition leaders, as well as the series of events that culminated in the military coup and counter-coup of 1966, and eventually the secession of the Eastern Region which resulted in a civil war.
From the time of the civil war, we have seen several programmes and initiatives aimed at building national cohesion and rallying the populace around a common cause. Unfortunately most of them have been tactical and short lived. Today, we have the National Orientation Agency (NOA) with a mission to consistently raise awareness, provide timely and credible feedback; positively change attitudes, values and behaviours; accurately and adequately inform; and sufficiently mobilize citizens to act in ways that promote peace, harmony and national development.
Whatever claims the NOA may want to make as to the success of its mandate so far, a sense of shared purpose and national consensus by Nigerians is certainly not one of them.
According to B.M. Dzukogi, “At certain times in the life of each society comes an effort to re order it, if there is a feeling of dissatisfaction and dysfunctionality with the existing condition, whether social, political, economic or communal. Such efforts, usually launched by modern governments, purportedly aimed at ethical re-orientation, social rearmament and moral rejuvenation, which the initiators or leaders intend to get the citizen to inculcate towards the functionality of the community, and to also give it a good image in the eyes of the outsider who may wish to engage in mutual and business transactions with entities in the country”. Considering the above, how do we then chart a positive way forward?
(Continued tomorrow)
Udeme Ufot
Ufot is Group Managing Director, SO&U
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