Today 15th January is a day commemorated as the Armed Forces Remembrance Day in Nigeria. It was the day the military suspended our independence constitution in 1966 and the day the Biafra secessionists surrendered in 1970 while January is a significant month because Southern and Northern Protectorates and Nigeria were all formed. It is supposedly not a date or month to remember or celebrate; baring the events that occurred rather it is a period for sober reflections and reminiscing that should be rechristened Reconciliation or Reunion day or month if we are to move forward as a nation.
The following excerpts from Richard Akinjide’s paper titled The Amalgamation Of Nigeria Was A Fraud reveals the underlying problems facing Nigeria. Where he wrote that “Nigeria is a very complex country. Our problems did not start yesterday. It started about 1884. Lord Lugard came here about 1894 and many people did not know that Major Lugard was not originally employed by the British Government. He was employed by companies. He was first employed by East Indian Company, by the Royal East African Company and then by the Royal Niger Company. It was from the Royal Niger Company that he transferred to the British government.
Unless you know this background, you will not know the root causes of our problems. The interest of the Europeans in Africa and indeed Nigeria was economic and it’s still economic. They have no permanent friends and no permanent interests. Neither their interests nor their friends are permanent. Nigeria was created as British sphere of interests for business. In 1898, Lugard formed the West African Frontier Force initially with 2,000 soldiers and that was the beginning of our problems.
Anybody who wants to know the root cause of all the coups and our present problems, and who does not know the evolution of Nigeria would just be looking at the matter superficially. Our problems started from that time. And Lugard was what they called at that time imperialist. A number of British soldiers, businessmen, politicians were very patriotic. But I must warn you; they were operating in the interest of their country. Lugard became a Lord.
Nigerians, too, should operate in the interest of their country. When Lugard formed the West African Frontier Force with 2,000 troops, about 90 percent of them were from the North mainly from the Middle belt. And his dispatches to London between that time and January 1914 are extremely interesting. Lugard came here for a purpose ant that purpose was British interest. Between 1898 and 1914, he sent a number of dispatches to London which led to the Amalgamation of 1914.
The Order – in – Council was drawn up in November 1913 signed and came into force in January 1914. In those dispatches, Lugard said a number of things, which are at the root causes of yesterday and today’s problems. The British needed the Railway from the North to the Coast in the interest of British business. Amalgamation of the South (not of the people) became of crucial importance to British business interest. He said the North and the South should be amalgamated. Southern Nigeria came into existence on January 1900. At the Centenary of the fall of Benin, I wrote a piece in a number of papers but before I published the piece, I sent a copy to the Oba of Benin. So when Benin was conquered in 1896, it made the creation of the Southern Nigerian protectorate possible on January 1, 1900.
If you remember, Sokoto was not conquered until 1903. So, there was no question of Nigeria at that time. After the conquest of Sokoto, they were able to create the northern Nigerian protectorate. Lugard went full blast and created what was to be known as the protectorate of Northern Nigeria. What is critical and important are the reasons Lugard gave in his dispatches. They are as follows: He said the North is poor and they have no resources to run the protectorate of the North. That they have no access to the sea; that the South has resources and have educated people.
The first Yoruba lawyer was called to the Bar in 1861. Therefore, because it was not the policy of the British Government to bring the taxpayers money to run the protectorate, it was in the interest of the British business and the British taxpayer that there should be Amalgamation. But what the British amalgamated was the Administration of the North and South and not the people of the North and the South, that is one of the root causes of the problems of Nigeria and the Nigerians”.
Looking at the above submissions of the former Attorney General, you will understand the problems we face as a nation. By the time Nigeria got its political independence; it was bestowed with a Federal constitution that sets the road map for nation building. It sets out basic rights, obligations and boundaries for the administration of a federal republic based on fiscal federalism.
Unfortunately, the constitution was suspended by the military (khaki boys) who consequently instituted decrees and edicts that lacks basic law making processes like negotiations, bargaining, concessions, compromises, cost benefit analysis, opportunity cost analysis and a complete understanding of the issues of sovereign importance. The introduction of these draconian laws changed and defeated the intents and purposes of our independence negotiators; it led to a break-away attempt by a section of the nation with the intention of forming an independent Biafra nation which precipitated a brutal civil war that lasted from 1967-1970. Since that unfortunate episode of our national history, Nigeria has not recovered from the fracture; we are still unable to fashion out a sustainable system that can guarantee the growth and development of the people and the society in general.
As Nigerians, we have been asking for a Sovereign National Conference, instead we are being romanced with a national dialogue, we are asking for a referendum on serious issues of national importance, we are being fed with piece meal constitutional amendments, we have asked for true federalism but instead true feudalism has been imposed on us, we have asked for good education, what we got is poor or no education for months, we have asked for good hospitals but instead got dispensaries, maternity rooms for future-less children and dying rooms for the sick, we have asked for good roads across Nigeria, they have made death traps that are impassable, we have asked for employment for conservatively 60 million people but instead got AK 47’s to work as election riggers, militants, oil thieves via private oil pipeline guards, as we earnestly yearn for working refineries, they pay cronies huge oil subsidies for importing what we naturally own, as our working class work their butts off, pension thieves are swallowing their future, as we hopelessly hope for electricity, we are importing more generators, as we long to have a national identity document and have a dependable national population register, what we got is a sacked NPC Chairman, as we demand for dividends of democracy, we get Boko-Haram and just when we asked for change, they resorted to fighting. The ongoing slide into feudalistic fascism as a system of government in Nigeria as exemplified in Rivers, Adamawa, Yobe, Borno States through the use of military force, police, secret agents and other coercing apparatuses in extracting loyalty is a destructive tendency in the annals of our existence that must be dispassionately renounced.
The absence of correctional attempts at reinstating Nigeria back to pre-1966 constitutional status has been the bane of our misunderstandings and fumbling as a people. We seem to have lost the understanding and premise on which the nation was formed. The incumbent’s precarious inability to muster enough patriotic zeal at correcting past errors is the main albatross currently plaguing us as a nation. Instead of facing the hard truths about the past commission of strategic errors in the administration of our national affairs, the incumbents are playing politics with virtually every issue of national prominence.
Having recognized where and when we faltered and if we truly wish to develop from the present stagnation as a nation, we should begin to juxtapose the cost benefit analysis of allowing this contraption called Nigeria slides into the abyss of violence that we may never recover from; Sudan and South Sudan is an example of a selfish dismembering of a State.
Finally, I humbly advise our national assembly members to go back to when we stopped living together as one people with one destiny and that is the complete reversal to the independence constitution which was suspended by the military in 1966, it would be the truest attempt at answering our sovereignty question.
Thank you and God bless.
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