On July 14, 1960, the British Government introduced the “Nigeria Independence Bill” in the House of Commons. During the Bill’s second reading the next day, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Iain Macleod, hailed Nigeria’s progress towards independence as a “model” for Africa. Speaker after speaker wished Nigeria well and expressed confidence that it would succeed as an independent nation.
The excitement in Nigeria was indescribable. In his book “There was a country”, Professor Chinua Achebe said that “the general feeling in the air as independence approached was extraordinary.” He added: “We had no doubt where we were going. We were going to inherit freedom – that was all that mattered.”
The fact that two of Nigeria’s three regions, Western and Eastern regions, had successfully practised self-government for six years, since 1954, certainly created a strong sense of: “We can govern ourselves.” The British, too, believed the tradition of self-rule was an advantage.
Indeed, the title of Achebe’s book “There was a country” was intended to paint a positive picture of Nigeria before independence. “Nigeria was once a land of great hope and progress”, he said. Things worked well because “there was a very highly competent cadre of government officials imbued with a high level of knowledge of how to run a country.”
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Yet, after independence on October 1, 1960, Nigeria quickly became a cesspool of corruption and misrule. Within six years of independence, there were two military coups and then, a devastating civil war. The country is crisis-prone, always teetering on the edge of a precipice. Today, Nigeria is a fragile, if not a failed, state, with elusive unity, stability and progress. So, what happened to the hope of a great nation after independence?
Well, if you want to know what’s wrong with a country, look at its creation and evolution. Just as a child’s birth and upbringing can affect his or her future, a nation’s accidents of birth and its evolution can shape its destiny. My theory is that trapped by its birth defects. Of course, like humans, nations can escape their past, but that requires decisive actions in the right direction.
Now, there are three aspects of Nigeria’s birth and evolution that continue to hinder its unity, stability and progress. The first is nature of its creation in 1914; the second is the way Britain transferred power to the country in 1960; the third is the dismantling of the pre-independence political and constitutional settlement.
Take Nigeria’s creation. True nations emerge naturally, but Nigeria was purely a human construct. When the British came to the territories that would later become Nigeria in the late 18th century, they met ancient kingdoms that had existed for centuries. But, in 1914, the British cobbled these disparate nations together, without negotiation or agreement, to form a country called “Nigeria”
Professor Achebe said that the ancient kingdoms, which could be independent nations in themselves, were “held together by a delicate, some say, artificial lattice.” Chief Obafemi Awolowo described the political construct as a “mere geographical expression” in the sense that, as the title of a speech by Professor Wole Soyinka says, Nigeria may be a “nation space”, but lacked “nationhood”!
Throughout the colonial period, from 1914 to 1960, there was hardly any genuine effort to forge a sense of national unity. Even when the pre-independence constitutional conferences in London in 1953 and 1957 were defined by ethnic politics; everyone fighting for his ethnic group. But this is not surprising for, as Achebe put it, “The structure of the country was such that there was an inbuilt power struggle among the ethnic groups.”
So, the cobbling together of Nigeria, without engendering nationhood, created a tension-prone country, and the failure to tackle the problem head-on remains an obstacle to unity and stability.
But the inherent problems of a nation-space without nationhood was compounded by the divisive way in which the British transferred power to Nigeria. Archival evidence shows that the British deliberately manipulated the pre-independence elections to hand over power to the North. As Achebe said in his book, the governor-general, Sir James Robertson, who was brought from Sudan because of “his understanding of the Muslim way of life”, as one British MP put it, “threw his weight behind Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, who had been tapped to become Nigeria’s first prime minister.”
Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, both Western-educated, who successfully led self-government in their regions for six years before independence, were, apparently, too independent-minded for the British. Instead, Britain wanted Nigeria’s first prime minister to be a Northerner, even though the North vehemently opposed Nigeria’s independence. As Achebe noted: “The British made certain on the eve of their departure that power went to that conservative element in the country that had played no real part in the struggle for independence.”
Britain’s decision to favour one of the ethnic groups over the others deepened inter-ethnic tensions in Nigeria. In his book “Because I am involved”, Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the former Biafran leader, put it this way: “An impossible federation was created in which all cards were stacked in favour of one component of it.” That sentiment that “all cards are stacked in favour of” the North is as strong as ever, and the structural imbalance is a major obstacle to unity, stability and progress in Nigeria.
But the circumstances of Britain’s departure from Nigeria created another problem. After independence, the British expatriate officers in the civil service left Nigeria because neither the Nigerian nor the British government was willing to pay them salaries at world market rates. Of course, educated Nigerians, “the lucky generation”, occupied the positions vacated by the British, moving not only into the jobs they left behind but also into their homes!
Yet, there were not enough Nigerian expert administrators. Even worse, the politicians soon corrupted the civil service and the military later destroyed it. Thus, Nigeria’s independence became a hollow one because, as one British MP said during the “Nigeria Independence Bill” debate, “Independence in Nigeria does not mean independence in full sense if the country doesn’t have an efficient civil service.” Much of Nigeria’s governance problem has been caused by lack of a strong and effective administration and civil service.
Which brings us to the third structural problem. In his speech during debate, Britain’s Secretary of State for the colonies, Iain Macleod, said that, given Nigeria’s extraordinary diversity, “it is not the least surprising that the political development it has chosen is that of a Federation in three regions, with each region self-governing in its own concerns.”
Yet, that regional arrangement, under which each region had its own constitution, was terminated and replaced, first with a unitary system, and, then a “federal system”, where power is overcentralised and the regions are fragmented into barely viable state governments that are mere appendages of the central government.
Weakening and stripping the regions of autonomy is contrary to the logic of the independence constitution of 1960, under which each region self-governed “in its own concerns”, and the 1963 constitution, which gave the regions even greater autonomy. The dismantling of the pre-independence political and constitutional settlements remains another major obstacle to Nigeria’s unity, stability and progress.
So, Nigeria is a victim of its past. First, it was cobbled together without any attempt to forge a national identity. Second, the British favoured one ethnic group over the others, thereby entrenching a structural imbalance that deepens inter-ethnic tensions. And third, the federal constitutional arrangements that gave the regions autonomy over their affairs were terminated and replaced with what is effectively a unitary system.
Nigeria must be restructured to tackle its birth defects and remove the structural obstacles created by its flawed evolution. Without that, unity, stability and progress will, sadly, remain elusive!
