Was Nigeria designed to fail by the British?....

Sir Lewis Harcourt, then Secretary of State for the Colonies (1910-1915), declared on the eve of the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Nigerian Protectorates that the British “has released Northern Nigeria from the leading strings of the Treasury. The promising and well-conducted youth is now on allowance on his own and is about to effect an alliance with a Southern lady of means. I have issued the special licence and Sir Frederick Lugard will perform the ceremony. May the union be fruitful and the couple constant.”
And the ‘forced marriage’ was sealed.
Today, as it has been over the years, call for a national dialogue for citizens to review that relationship has become so overwhelming that those who had hitherto stiffly opposed it are beginning not only to support it, but to actually canvass it.
With the pervasive tribal and ethnic suspicions in the land, economic and political failures, unending bloodletting, real or perceived lopsided allocation of national resources precipitating anger and the near total loss of faith in the Nigerian nation, more and more people are coming to terms with the fact that what is known as the Nigeria nation today might just cease to exist very soon – unless people are allowed to discuss the basis of their co-existence.
It is instructive that in the report submitted by the then Governor, Lord Fredrick Lugard, to the then Secretary of State to the Colonies, Sir Lewis Harcourt, on the amalgamation of the governments of the Northern and Southern Nigeria into a single administration, dated May 13, 1913, he (Lugard) noted that there were “several paragraphs” that “would be inadvisable to make public.” What are in those secret paragraphs?
There are strong indications that the next two years may be very critical for Nigeria. Saturday Tribune recalls that a former Minister of National Planning, Chief Ayo Ogunlade, on July 29, 2013 in an address he delivered at the third session of the third Synod of the Diocese of Ekiti Oke (Church of Nigeria Anglican Communion), entitled ‘Whither Nigeria? The Struggles of Living Together for 100 Years and the Challenges of Surviving the Next 100 Years as a United Happy Progressing Nigeria: Lessons from Contemporary Issues of National Interest, alluded to the fact that Nigeria’s amalgamation expires on January 1, 2014, referring to certain secret documents left behind by the British government!
A former US Ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, also warned in his book, Nigeri: Dancing on the Brink, that Nigeria’s continued existence could come crashing by 2015.
Is the country finally at that critical juncture? Has President Goodluck Jonathan also seen the need for this dialogue or is he, as many of his predecessors in office did, using this as a red herring to distract the people’s attention from the many pressures plaguing his administration and party?
National dialogue: When Jonathan bows to pressure
The idea of national dialogue as proposed by President Goodluck Jonathan came as a surprise package to Nigerians who celebrated the country’s 53rd independence last Tuesday. IDOWU SAMUEL examines the issues that propelled the need for such a dialogue.
AGITATIONS for dialogue among the component units of Nigeria (often tagged National Conference) have been on since the country attained Independence in 1960. This was based on the perception that the foundation of Nigeria had been faulty right from the start.
Controversy has trailed the resolve by the British colonialists to grant Nigeria the status of an independent nation. At the point of departure, the colonialists seemed to care a little about placing the freed country on a strong footing for future well being. Many believe that the colonialists’ granting of independence to Nigeria was a booby trap, which has made the federating units to remain ungovernable through the years. Great Britian’s ulterior motive, it is often said, was to continue to exploit Nigeria’s economy.
Nigeria, an amalgamation of nations of variegated social settings and incongruent backgrounds, has passed through 53 grueling years, still sulking today. There have been cut throat rivalries among the major ethnic groups of Hausa-Fulani, the Yoruba and the Igbo, based on their inability to come to terms with the essence of their nationhood. By way of necessity, repeated campaigns and appeals for national unity became a compelling means of patching up the union, just as successive governments have struggled to make the component units work together.
Experts on constitution matters have described the nation’s constitution as faulty, saying the authors failed to consider the country’s diversity and necessity for obtaining the collective consent of Nigerians before putting it to use. They refer to the document as a contraption, Nigerians not having had inputs in its drafting.
Therefore, agitation for National Dialogue to examine the multi-facetted problems confronting the country has become more strident than ever in the past one year. Apart from the different pressure groups making the call, political leaders at the zonal levels in the past few months have lent voices to the clamour. Hitherto, clamour for national dialogue appeared to have been more from the southern part of the country.
Kick-starting the agitation for dialogue a couple of months ago was a group known as the Southern Nigeria Peoples Assembly, with Pa Edwin Kiagbodo Clark and Bishop Bolanle Gbonigi as co-conveners. The group, which comprises leaders of thought, clerics, traditional rulers and others from the southern part of the country, held conferences, beginning from Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital; Enugu, Lagos and Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
Members reviewed the state of the nation during each conference and concluded that a national dialogue was inevitable. The group submitted the communiqué on their decisions to the Presidency and relevant agencies in Nigeria.
A couple of weeks ago, members of The Patriots, headed by Professor Ben Nwabueze, took the campaign for national dialogue to the Presidential Villa, where they impressed it on President Jonathan that Nigeria, given all the problems besetting it, would be better off with a national conference to seek practicable solutions.
The clamour, days later, reverberated on the floor of the Senate when the Senate President, Senator David Mark, in his welcome address to fellow senators, who had just resumed for a new parliamentary session, equally drummed up support for a national conference. National conference, to him, was welcome as long as it would not be ‘sovereign’. This appeared to have given the Presidency a reason to have a rethink on the issue, as President Jonathan also lately said he had never been averse to it.
In his nationwide broadcast on Tuesday, Jonathan announced the setting up of an advisory committee for a proposed national dialogue. The committee, headed by one time senator, Dr Femi Okurounmu, with Dr. Akilu Indabawa as Secretary, is expected to provide the needed design and modalities for the takeoff of the conference. The committee was given one month to present its recommendations to government.
Jonathan’s announcement has raised people’s expectation, given the seemingly intractable problems that have dogged the country in the past few years. Top on the list of the problems is insecurity, worsened by the increasing wave of terrorism – especially in the North. But the North is not alone in the travails. Every region of the country has been grappling with one problem or the other. The South-East has been beset with economic and financial crimes, armed robbery, kidnapping and illegal oil bunkering. The South-West has had its fair share of the malaise in armed robbery, while militancy and illegal bunkering have continued to thrive in the South-South.
All these have threatened Nigeria’s survival. Democracy, which came as a last minute hope of survival, has over the past 15 years undergone regrettable levels of bastardisation. The vices of candidate imposition, election rigging and lack of proper arbitration on election disputes, as well as the perceived open bias of the electoral umpire during elections have combined to give democracy a bad image in Nigeria.
Corruption is another problem that has been militating against the progress of Nigeria. The menace is threatening to obliterate the last hope of the country. Nigeria is also faced with system collapse and the whittling down of national values and components. This has crystallised in the perceived breakdown of the country’s judicial and political systems. There is general mistrust and deep-seated suspicion between the government and the governed – all casting dark shroud on the country’s future.
Not many have noted that Nigeria’s greatest problem in the past 53 years stems from poor leadership. There has been apparent lack of will power by the nation’s political leadership to take fundamental decisions to fast-track its progress. While Nigeria has never suffered from paucity of ideas and the intellectual content required to make it grow, the problem has always been the persistent failure by the authorities to make use of the blueprints that have been developed and filed over the years at different times, for the country’s progress and development.
In 1994, for instance, the military government of the late General Sani Abacha convened a constitutional conference purposely to draft a new constitution preparatory to the return of the country to democracy. The days and months consumed in the process went down the drain when it appeared that the military government preferred to use the platform to buy legitimacy. Indeed, the plan by Abacha to transform from military to a civilian leader through a ‘back door democracy’ robbed the nation of the opportunity afforded by the constitutional conference.
In 2005, the civilian government of President Olusegun Obasanjo also convened a National Political and Reform Conference. Fundamental issues were highlighted during the conference, after which a draft constitution was produced. But for the last-minute spark of third-term polemics during the event, the draft constitution, which approved the need for entrenchment of true federalism, single tenure for president and state governors as wells as devolution of power to the regions, would have come into national reckoning.
Although opinions are divided on the idea of national dialogue as proposed by President Jonathan on the basis that such dialogue has never been alien to Nigerians, there are indications that the long-awaited initiative will in the long run be embraced by more Nigerians.
The National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, was the first to hail the initiative by the president. In a chat with Saturday Tribune, Tukur said the president was only implementing an existing agenda of PDP on national reconciliation by approving the national dialogue.
In the same vein, the National Chairman of Labour Party, Dan Nwuanyawu, said the national dialogue as proposed by President Jonathan could not have come at a better time. According to him, Labour Party welcomed the idea whole-heartedly and would be prepared to make inputs aimed at making it attain a desired result.
Nwanyawu said by proposing a national dialogue as part of a resolve by his government to address some fundamental problems confronting the nation, Jonathan has demonstrated that he is a listening president with eagerness to work and solve problems, as he urged Nigerians to accord the president the full support he deserves.
TRIBUNE