Category: Banji Akintoye

Most of the fundamental mistakes that are about to destroy Nigeria have been made by Nigerian rulers as a result of their wrong perceptions of Nigeria. If we can get rid of these wrong perceptions, wrong conceptions, wrong expectations, and wrong steps, we can save Nigeria – and we can make Nigeria a stable, harmonious and prosperous country.

The most serious mistake is the belief that power (in particular, the power of the Federal Government), if used deftly, vigorously, or violently, enough, can subdue the various peoples of Nigeria and turn Nigeria into a malleable and easily directed country. It is a lie. But it is a lie that the rulers of Nigeria have generally held dear to their hearts and tried relentlessly to use since independence in 1960.

The record of the use of that lie in the ruling of Nigeria is horrible. From day one after independence, it was obvious to all observers that the Balewa federal administration (formed by an alliance of Northern NPC leaders and Eastern-controlled NCNC leaders) was seriously incensed against the Western Region’s leadership and eager to destroy it. Why? Because the Western Region’s people and their leaders were so independent-minded, so confident of their capabilities, and so achieving on their own. The federal assault, when it came in 1962, devastated the Western Region. But when the Yoruba majority of the Region arose and resisted, they quickly taught Nigeria a powerful lesson – namely, that it is foolish to underrate the toughness of any of the many nationalities of Nigeria. The Federal Government lost control, and some elements of the Nigerian army stepped in and destroyed what remained of the government.

Meanwhile, in the homeland of the Ijaw people of the Delta, petroleum exploration and mining activities were destroying the people’s livelihood and wrecking their quality of life, all with no measurable concern from the rulers of Nigeria. The Ijaw were a minority nationality, and the Federal Government was therefore not inclined to countenance their experiences or their groans. But then, suddenly, to Nigeria’s surprise, a group of Ijaw youths, led by a youth who was essentially a school boy, arose to make the Ijaw voice heard in shattering terms. The war they started has continued for over five decades. In the face of the enormous powers of Nigeria, and countless military expeditions against their homeland, the Ijaw people are still there and still fighting.

Major General Aguiyi Ironsi emerged from the first military coup as Nigeria’s first military dictator. He was sure that federal military power could solve all of Nigeria’s problems, no matter what the various peoples of Nigeria thought or desired. For a lot of Nigerians, the existing federalism was not pervasive enough. The minority peoples in the North and East wanted Regions of their own. Ironsi and his advisers, certain that the Federal Government was wiser,and that it had irresistible power to enforce its brand of wisdom, abrogated the Regions and imposed a direction towards a unitary government. His folly soon brought upon us the reward it deserved – unfortunately, taking the lives of millions of innocent citizens among us.The military dictators that followed after him, until 1999, and the so-called “elected” civilian dictators that took over from them since 1999, have taken the use of unrestrained and irresponsible power to hideous extremes. Their heritage is a general Nigerian leadership whose members appropriate all the fruits of our economic life to themselves alone, pushing the millions of the masses of Nigerians into the depths of barbaric poverty and deprivation, as well as into utter hopelessness, insecurity, and intractable conflicts. As things stand today, we do not really have a country left; all we have is a battered and incoherent entity hobbling painfully towards its demise.

And yet, even as we watch our country dying and our people perishing, the few privileged politicians and their cronies who hold all the power and wealth that belong to us all in their hands, have continued to proclaim by their actions that the government (all governments, but particularly the Federal Government) commands all knowledge and all wisdom. The apical representative of them all, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan (the President or dictator of Nigeria) exudes the know-all confidence of the position that he occupies, the position that encapsulates all the evils that Nigeria’s leaders and rulers have gradually concocted since independence.

President Jonathan is from the Delta where brave young men have sacrificed their lives for decades in the fight against excessive federal presumptuousness and insensitivity. But, surrounded by all the limitless federal money and unrestrained federal power, he does not, obviously, feel the urgency for change. He has initiated a National Conference, but there is, manifestly, no sign that he seriously intends that the conference will produce serious outcomes. His dominant preoccupation is to win re-election next year, so as to be able to continue for four more years to swim in the status quo with its limitless money and its unrestrained power. Almost certainly, he will make sure that the National Conference does not create changes that can prevent his winning, orthat can rob him of his ruling in the status quo that he has enjoyed so much for over four years. Meanwhile, it does not matter what is happening to 170 million Nigerians out there.

It is almost trite to say that Nigeria must learn to listen to its many peoples and its millions of citizens. But we who keep saying it must keep saying it. Nigeria can survive and thrive, but only if serious changes occur in the way Nigerian leaders and rulers perceive and conceive their country, as well as in their personal expectations, and if the horrendous mistakes of the past were eliminated.

Nigerian leaders must listen to their people, must be less arrogant of power, and must be less resentful of the voices of their people. It is not true that the political leaders know all and the people know nothing. Most Nigerians are screaming now for changes that will reduce the power and resources at the disposal of their Federal Government, and that will strengthen the agencies (the state governments and local governments) that are close to the lives of Nigeria’s common people. They are right in insisting that such changes as these will bring development closer to the people and revive their capability to bring some prosperity back into their lives. But, everywhere across Nigeria, the leaders who are preparing to go to the National Conference share the attitudes of the Federal Government. They do not want changes that can rob them of their leaders’ benefits – the benefits that they enjoy today. What they want is that the National Conference will mess around for some months and ultimately come away with nothing important.

In short, though Nigerian leaders know the consequences of their wrong perceptions of their country, of their peoples, and of their common citizens, and though they know the consequences of their warped expectations and terrible distortions of their country’s life, they are resolved to keep those wrong perceptions, expectations and mistakes going. What all this portends for the future of Nigeria, Nigeria’s leaders and Nigerian citizens, is anybody’s guess.

IF President Jonathan’s National Conference meets as planned, then some 500 selected Nigerians will soon be review the multiple issues that are wrecking the country, and to find abiding solutions. I take it, therefore, that the time for honesty and frankness has come. I take it that those who understand the hurt and anger that their people feel are now duty-bound to make it clearly known to the rest of us. I take it that those who know their peoples’ real feelings but continue to mouth Nigerian “patriotic” platitudes are betraying a trust. I can testify to my Yoruba people’s experiences in “independent” Nigeria since 1960. I was already a teenager and a high school student when Chief Obafemi Awolowo became Premier of our Western Region in 1952. I remember how, under him and our other leaders, our Western Region bounced from development to development. We widened and tarred many roads, and constructed water supply systems for many of our bigger towns. Then there were the big regional development projects – the first television establishment in all of Africa, a mighty sports stadium in Ibadan, an industrial estate in Ikeja (the first of its kind in Africa), the Western Nigeria Development Corporation with holdings in industries, banks, real estate, etc (the largest accumulation of African- owned investment capital in Africa), extensive plantations of rubber, palm trees and citrus in parts of our southern forests, farm settlements for nurturing our class of modern farmers, experimental farm centers, etc. My father owned a fairly large cocoa plantation where we his sons worked side by side with farm labourers on our weekends and school vacations. Father and other cocoa farmers were forever grateful for the different kinds of help they were receiving from our regional government – such as government subsidized pesticides for improving cocoa productivity, seedlings of new kinds of cocoa trees that were better-yielding and more disease-resistant, encouragement and help to cocoa produce unions, and efficient handling of cocoa marketing worldwide. With these, cocoa plantations expanded continually in our region. There was much order, pride and dignity in our parents’ cocoa farming and marketing enterprises. Not surprisingly, our parents became, according to the records, the most productive African farmers on the African continent. Their cocoa exports poured money into the life of our region, provided most of the money for our region’s development programmes, and supplied most of the foreign exchange for the Federal Republic of Nigeria. As peak to our development, our regional government started a programme of free education for our children – the first of its kind in Africa. This was meant to be the base for our faster progress, development, and modernization. And then we built at Ife a very special university for ourselves, a university ambitiously designed to be one of the very best in the world – in physical properties and in academic excellence. Above all, our region’s political life was stable and orderly. None of our leaders (of any party) tried to rig our lections. When elections approached, it was never certain which party would win, and even our biggest politicians (like Chief Awolowo himself, or our charismatic leader of the Opposition, Alhaji Adegoke Adelabu) were confronted by strong opponents in their constituencies. We heard news of candidates of opposition parties being molested by governments or arrested in some other parts of Nigeria, and of elections being rigged there, but we were sure that such things could never come to our region. Our region was a confident modern democracy. All in all, our region was the leader, and the pace-setter, in virtually all spheres of development and modernization in Nigeria. We the youths proudly called our region “First in Africa”. We were proudly confident that we were going to become a highly developed part of the world – and that we were contributing a lot to the over-all development and progress of Nigeria. But since independence in 1960, we Yoruba people have been losing very heavily in virtually all directions,partly because over-centralization has destroyed the capability of our state and local governments to promote development, partly because of the general socio-economic decline of Nigeria due to crookedness and corruption – but also substantially because of the hostilities specifically directed against us Yoruba from Nigeria’s federal sources. We have often had to expend much energy to fight against unwarranted federal encroachments, undercutting, and hostilities. It should not be forgotten that one of the reasons why Bola Tinubu became a hero among us in recent years is that, as governor of our Lagos State, he proved very capable at foiling attempts by the federal establishment to overrun Lagos State, to deny (or even steal) its assets, and to step down its progress. As things stand today, our schools system, most of our roads, and our urban water installations,have disintegrated. As part of expanding federal control, our cocoa economy was federalized and made to collapse. Thanks to federal control, we cannot provide efficient electricity to our towns, and therefore our educated citizenry cannot engage in technological innovations. Our regional university which we built at great expense was taken over by the federal government and, under hostile federal handling, has been made to decline abominably. An urban rail-transport system which we planned for Lagos and for which contracts were already signed was cancelled by a federal government, just to emphasize federal supremacy. For years, countless thousands of our educated youths have beenroaming our streets jobless, and countless thousands flee daily to other lands to escape from the poverty and deprivation. Our pride and morale as a nation, and our confidence in our ability to achieve and progress, is continually assaulted in Nigeria. We now live in a degree of poverty that is alien to us and that we do not deserve. That is the heritage of Nigeria in our lives. Some persons will, no doubt, respond that we have not been without some gains. Yes we have had some gains, but not nearly as much as we would have made at our known pace if we had been operating freely and without all the drags and confusion of Nigeria. Our losses are overwhelming – even alarming. Nothing can pay for them. We are resolved to stop the decline, and to propel ourselves upwards and forwards again. We ask for no favours. We want freedom to achieve progress and prosperity in our own way and at our own pace – as some of our youths like to put it these days, in Nigeria if possible, out of Nigeria if necessary. We know that other Nigerian nationalities want the same for themselves too, and we are therefore confident that there exists a good chance for our leaders to work constructively with leaders of other Nigerian nationalities for a positive Nigerian National Conference that will produce changes beneficial to all Nigerian peoples and to Nigeria.

Nigeria has come to a brutal pass. Even those Nigerians who tend traditionally to defend the status quo in Nigeria must now be admitting to themselves that things are not looking well at all for Nigeria. The probabilities are frightening. In many particulars, Nigeria’s mood is quite similar to the mood that prevailed in the months preceding the civil war of 1967-70. In some particulars, in fact, the mood is even worse. No informed Nigerian can claim not to suspect today that the political elite of some sections of Nigeria have surreptitiously stocked, and are stocking, weapons for a show-down over Nigeria – and that is something that we did not have in late 1966. If we Nigerians let our country slide into actual disorder and violence, what could happen could make the Rwandan holocaust of 1994 look like a kindergarten toy-throwing game. We are not a tiny country like Rwanda; we are a very big country, enough to unleash a tsunami of violence, death and destruction sweeping over much of Africa.

What we Nigerians can do – what we have to do – is clear. We can, and should, reorganize and re-order Nigeria, give it a chance to stay together, and build it into a prosperous and powerful country. If any Nigerians think that we should leave Nigeria in its current disorder and merely keep it together as it is, they should throw away such ugly thoughts. Most of us Nigerians will not embrace disorder and poverty just for the sake of keeping Nigeria alive. No way.

President Jonathan has published his modalities for the National Conference. Various civil society groups, as spokespersons for the nationalities to which they belong, are welcoming the basics of those modalities – even though, in every case, these spokespersons voice disappointment with significant portions of the modalities. We all demanded a conference of the nationalities, and there was no doubt that our President understood us very clearly. Yet, what his modalities now state is that we are not going to have the kind of conference of nationalities that we were expecting – that the voices of our nationalities will be muted in the National Conference. Moreover, we did not want that the National Conference should steer clear of any “no go” areas – and very significant agencies of our federal government stated categorically that there would be no “no go” areas. Yet our President now prescribes that some subjects will in fact be “no go” areas.

In short, President Jonathan is not keeping faith with us, the peoples of Nigeria, in this matter of the national conference. His actions are strengthening the fears expressed by some of us that he is not sincere about a national conference, and that no important change will result from it. Yet, in spite of all this wobbliness of the part of the President, most of us are welcoming the National Conference and, from reports from all over the country, most nationalities are preparing for it.

Why are we behaving like this? The answer is obvious. It is in our mood as a country today. We want to try and sort out the awful situations in which we find ourselves, using a national conference as best we can. Even if our President does not understand that, or even if he has his own private motives and wants to play tricks with the idea of a national conference, we want to gather at a national conference – and then use it for our good. There are not many Nigerians who do not know why our country is almost in ruins, and why we Nigerians are suffering as we do. Enough is enough.

In this whole situation, President Jonathan is the man on trial. For the sake of our country and its 170 millions of people, for the sake of countless millions of Black folks all over the world who hang great hopes on the success of Nigeria, for the sake of a world that looks up to Nigeria to serve as a pillar of prosperity and order on the African continent, and for his own sake, President Jonathan needs to see to it that the National Conference is organized and handled very well, that it produces meaningful outcomes that will set our country on a new path of sanity, progress and prosperity, and that these outcomes are diligently implemented. Those are three challenges: first, give the National Conference all it will need to run very well; second, let it have the freedom and confidence to produce results that will give our country a new lease of life – and do not employ your immense powers and influence to meddle with, or distort, its proceedings and decisions; and third, do your duty to your country – do not hang the decisions of the National Conference in some sort of limbo, or pass the buck to some other agency that will kill the decisions.

President Jonathan has not handled challenge number one well enough. In particular, his treatment of our nationalities in his apportionment of delegates to the National Conference is a bad omen for us, the overwhelming majority of Nigerians who desire to have our federation restructured and better governed. That is something he can, and must, readjust.

I can understand it if President Jonathan does not feel the kind of passion that an older Nigerian like me can feel for Nigeria. I matured in another generation in which being a Nigerian was a huge thing. I had the unusual privilege of being sent again and again to represent my country in students’ conferences in Africa and many other places in the world. Although our Nigeria was not the first Black African country to become independent, our Nigeria was the country that most of the world was waiting to see and embrace. I remember particularly something that happened when two of us went in January 1960 to represent Nigeria in an international students’ conference in Ethiopia. I had met the Ethiopian Junior Minister of Education, Endalkatchiu Makonnen (who was later to be Prime Minister), in another conference in Europe a few months earlier. The evening when the two of us, the Nigerian delegation, arrived in Addis Ababa, he came to visit us, and he invited us to come to dinner at his house the next day, and to bring all the other West African students. We had a great evening at his house. Then, when the cars taking us back to the student dormitories were leaving, he came to the car in which I was sitting, put his big hand lovingly on my shoulder and said, “My young Nigerian brother, I just want to leave a word with you. Congratulations in advance for the approaching independence of your country. I hope you Nigerians will never forget that soon, much in Africa will depend heavily on your country, and that all of us Africans are looking up to you”.

How can any man ever forget such an occasion? I believe that Nigeria can make it. I desire that Nigeria will make it. I pray that my younger brother, President Jonathan, will share the same passion.

Since about the 10th century AD, we Yoruba have been enjoying a high level of civilization in our towns, cities and kingdoms. By 1750, one of our kingdoms, the Oyo-Ile kingdom, had conquered a large empire comprising most of western Yorubaland and many non-Yoruba neighbours – the largest empire ever in West Africa’s forestlands. In eastern and southern Yorubaland, our other kingdoms were also thriving strongly.

But, about 1750, according to available records, we began to have a recurrence of self-serving (and therefore disruptive) leaders in our political history. It started in our great city of Oyo-Ile, specifically with a high chief named Gaha. As soon as Gaha was sworn in as Basorun in 1754, he started a headstrong war against Oyo-Ile’s monarchical system. He seized powers that did not belong to his position, and forced Alafin after Alafin to bow to his will or to commit suicide – until, at last, one intelligent Alafin managed to get him destroyed.

Gaha was probably insane. Nevertheless, he had started a plague that we have never managed to remove from our land – a tradition whereby some leaders emerge now and again who are dedicated only to their own purposes and interests. Soon after Gaha came one Alafin named Awole, whose self-centred crookedness produced a whole era of instability.

Soon after him came Afonja, the Are Ona Kakanfo of the empire. Afonja had some blood relationship with the Oyo-Ile royal family and wanted the Alafin’s throne. But since the Oyo-Ile Council of Kingmakers did not select him, he embarked on a wholesale rebellion against his kingdom, and ended up setting up the town of Ilorin as a centre of rebellion, with forces capable of destroying his country. Afonja perished disgracefully in his rebellion, but his Ilorin continued to be a powerful centre of rebellion. Attempts by the Alafins to destroy this centre of rebellion steadily sapped the energies of the kingdom and ultimately ended in one of the worst disasters in Yoruba history – namely, the decision of the citizens of the great and proud city of Oyo-Ile to abandon their city in 1835. Yoruba people often say today that Fulani jihadists destroyed Oyo-Ile, but that is not true. Ilorin and its powerful leaders after Afonja were over 95% Yoruba (mostly Oyo).

The disintegration of the Oyo Empire spilled wars into the rest of Yorubaland, wars that continued until the Europeans seized control of Yorubaland in the 1890s. Throughout the century, some leading Yoruba men tried again and again to generate agreement to stop wars – something that might have launched the collective energies of the Yoruba nation into truly revolutionary dimensions – and perhaps produced a modern Yoruba nation-state. At every crucial juncture, some leaders just would not give up their personal ambitions and interests for the national good.

As things stood in the 1890s, the Yoruba, if united, could have preserved the independent existence of the Yoruba nation in Africa – in a way similar to Ethiopia in north-eastern Africa, or Japan in Asia. The most important European attack on Yorubaland was the British invasion of Ijebu in 1892. As at that date, because we Yoruba had been fighting wars for nearly a century, Ibadan had well trained, well-armed, and seasoned forces numbering about 85,000 at Ikirun, about 30,000 at Oru in Remo, and about 40,000 near Abeokuta. The Ekitiparapo had more than 50, 000 at Imesi-Ile. Ilorin had probably 40,000; Abeokuta probably 50,000. Each of the powerful kingdoms of Owo, Ondo and Ketu had armies that numbered 30,000 or more. An Ijebu army of probably 15,000 camped near Ife; and an Ife army of probably 20,000 camped in Ifetedo and Okeigbo. The main Ijebu army itself numbered about 50,000 and was armed with sophisticated breech-loading rifles. (Unfortunately the most advanced machine gun of the time, the Maxim gun which the invading British army had a few of, was not yet widely available in West African trade)). In short, if all these forces had been re-orientated to defend their Yoruba homeland, there would have been about 400,000 troops poised to defend Yorubaland – a magnitude of forces never encountered by European invaders anywhere in Africa, and that would have discouraged any European attack on any part of Yorubaland.

Moreover, the large class of Yoruba merchants based in Lagos, consisting of many of the most informed and richest merchants in tropical Africa, easily commanded the expertise and commercial connections to keep Yoruba forces well supplied with latest weapons. And the already strong Yoruba literate elite of lawyers, doctors, engineers, pastors, teachers, writers, accountants, journalists (and newspapers), mostly in Lagos, were already good at whipping up propaganda campaigns, and could have discouraged European invasions of Yorubaland.

Unhappily, such Yoruba unity did not happen. The leaders of each Yoruba group, while expressing great sentiments about their Yoruba ancestry, were too focused on their own goals. The Ijebu army single-handedly fought a gallant battle against the British invaders. They narrowly lost – only because the invaders had a few Maxim machine guns. Ultimately, most of Yorubaland became British possession and part of Nigeria. France and Germany seized the rest.

However, in 1952, most of the Yoruba again had some control over their own affairs – in the Western Region of Nigeria. Demonstrating great unity, Yoruba leaders immediately gave their people the most progressive and most productive government in Africa. But then, the old disease showed up again in 1962, allowing a hostile federal government to launch a war of destruction against the Western Region. The Yoruba people have not come out of that cloud till now.

Today, in the great confusion, conflicts and poverty buffeting Nigeria, we Yoruba face again very serious challenges to virtually everything important to our lives and our future. Admittedly, the state governments of the Yoruba South-west, controlled by different political parties, still manage to perform above the Nigerian average. But that is insufficient today. The Yoruba nation needs to have a Yoruba leadership structure above the leaderships of civic groups and political parties, uniting the various segments of Yoruba leadership, and able to speak confidently for the Yoruba nation in the increasingly uncertain and troubling situation of Nigeria. Yoruba leaders, and groups of them in their civic organizations or political parties, are, without doubt, committed to the well-being of their Yoruba nation, but experience is showing that none is, by itself, capable of fully addressing this moment’s desperate needs of their nation – or fully effectively promoting the Yoruba kind of enlightened solutions to Nigeria’s problems. Those Yoruba leaders who have been urging the controllers of the Nigerian Federal Government to treat the Yoruba nation more fairly in the affairs of Nigeria forget the old truism that, in politics, only power really works – and that a strongly united and well-led Yoruba nation would easily earn respect in the affairs of Nigeria.

Apparently inadvertently, Yoruba leaders are demonstrating today a particularly dangerous kind of incapability to unite. It looks like a version of the old family disease – the type that has shown up from time to time since the era of Gaha, Awole and Afonja. We need to suppress it – urgently. Saving our nation and our proud civilization, and properly sorting out Nigeria’s problems, are worth our best effort and sacrifice.

I ended my first article on this subject last week thus: “From 1952, the federation of three regions went into effect. Each region had considerable freedom to manage its own affairs, and each achieved a lot for itself. But the British had different ultimate arrangements in mind. They wanted to put in charge of Nigeria a people whom they believed they could trust to protect British interests after independence and, having decided that the Hausa-Fulani of the North (who were afraid of the vastly more literate southerners) would do that, they proceeded to twist the Nigerian federation in order to make it virtually a Hausa-Fulani “empire”. The foundation was thus laid for conflicts, decline and ultimate disintegration of Nigeria”.

It is that scheme that has been playing out since independence – the scheme of one large nationality (but yet a minority among all the people of Nigeria), regarding Nigeria as their “empire”, and striving doggedly to mastermind and control all the affairs of Nigeria through their control of the powers of the federal government. The details of this striving are very well known to most Nigerians – the strategizingto hold on to the control of the federal government through northern civilian or military regimes, the alternate uses of election rigging and military coups as tools for the changing and installing of governments, the use of election rigging by federal agencies to impose and sustain vassals in our states, the use of the secret service and other security agencies to intimidate and suppress resistance or dissent, the creative employment corrupt enrichment of individuals to undermine, emasculate, and subdue the elites of other parts of Nigeria, and the ruthless enforcement of the strange claim that all resources in all parts of Nigeria belong to, and should be controlled by, the federal government.

All Nigerians know, and live with, the disastrous outcomes of these ways of running the affairs of their country. At independence our Nigeria was a land of hope and pride, a country that the world viewed with great expectations. Today, our country is a battered and broken entity on the verge of total collapse. An overwhelming majority of our citizens, in all regions of our country, are reeling in poverty and hopelessness. The more literate peoples of the south who were poised for great steps forward at the time of independence have all been crushed into poverty and hopelessness. Even the peoples of the north, on behalf of whom the northern elite claim to seek domination of Nigeria, are horrendously poorer today than at the time of independence. The north was beginning, as at independence, under Sir Ahmadu Bello’s highly respectable leadership, to make impressive economic and social progress. In a group of youths visiting the Northern Region from the Western Region in 1961, I had the privilege of visiting this great Nigerian and premier of the North in his office, and of listening to him for a few minutes as he told us, his sons, what he was doing for the people of our Northern Region. I left his presence very proud of him, and very proud of my country and myself. Now, the North is sunk, and sinking deeper and deeper, in poverty; and countless youths of the North are reacting to their hopelessness by giving their energies to callings that are dedicated to destroying and killing.

We who know these things must never cease screaming them from the roof-tops. The people who have presumed since independence to own the privilege of ruling and controlling Nigeria have been wrecking Nigeria. Their policies and actions are now on the verge of wiping Nigeria off the map completely. The destructive tradition of governance that they have foisted on our country is so powerful (powerful because of its irresistible appeal to the worst in human nature) that merely changing the personnel of our governments will never change anything.

The Obasanjo and Jonathan presidencies are proof beyond doubt that no matter what part of Nigeria our presidents comes from, we will never get any positive change in the way our country is being run and wrecked. Obasanjo emanates from a Yoruba nation with strong ancient traditions of government based on the power and will of the people. Hardly any Yoruba citizen who has commented on the Nigerian federal structure has failed to ask for a rational federal structure based on Nigeria’s nationalities. In fact Obasanjo himself, in 1998, the year before he became president, wrote a book in which he advocated that the next Nigerian constitution must include clauses spelling out how nationalities that want to secede from Nigeria may do so peacefully. Jonathan comes from the most pitiful corner of Nigeria – the corner that produces all of Nigeria’s wealth and is the most viciously neglected, the most sickeningly pauperized. Jonathan’s brothers and cousins have been resisting this injustice since independence – and giving their lives (some of Nigeria’s most promising lives) to the fight. Yet when Obasanjo or Jonathan came to the presidency, each immediately began to wallow in the excesses of power, money and resources at the disposal of his position. Widely known to be indigent by 1998, Obasanjo stepped down from the presidency in 2007 as one of the richest Nigerians alive. Jonathan is just one of millions of Nigerians who went to school, did well there, and acquired university degrees. In Nigeria and the world, his type, living on their qualifications, may be materially comfortable, but hardly ever phenomenally rich. But the probability is that Jonathan will, on leaving the presidency, be one of the richest men on earth. That is the way the system has been designed to work. Consideration for the well-being of the common people is not part of its equation.

However – and this is a critically important matter – we who must not cease screaming these things must have a clear purpose in our minds. We should not scream to blame or recriminate. In a written message delivered by the Arewa Consultative Forum (a major Northern leadership group) to the Yoruba Unity Forum (a major Yoruba leadership group) in Ikenne in December 2012, the ACF urged that we Nigerians should eschew recrimination in discussing Nigeria’s heavy problems. I agree absolutely. The blame game will produce nothing but hostility and more confusion. Instead, we must seek change of mind – we must seek to get our Northern brethren to bring the era of destructive errors to an end, so that all parts of Nigeria may now join hands to restructure and re-order our country, and give our country renewed strength to revive and thrive.

I once wrote in another place: “The dream of a Hausa-Fulani (or Yoruba or Igbo) imperium over Nigeria is anachronistic and unattainable. Striving for it is chasing shadows – and chasing shadows in a manner that can only generate destruction. The dream of a prosperous and great Nigeria is attainable. We can make Nigeria prosperous, and we can all prosper together in Nigeria. That is a goal well worth striving for”.

Most Nigerian nationalities support a National Conference to discuss Nigeria. The Hausa-Fulani need to do the same in the interest of us all.

We Nigerians have distorted and brutalized our country into a chaotic federation – a land of poverty and insecurity for the overwhelming majority of its citizens, a failed state that is now on the verge of breaking up. In these critical times, we ought seriously to ask ourselves the question, Why?

As far as natural resources are concerned, Nigeria is one of the most endowed countries in the world. In quality of land, agricultural capabilities, forest resources, mineral resources, aggregate human development, etc, Nigeria was already very rich before the exploitation of its petroleum wealth. With the activation of its petroleum industry from about 1970, Nigeria became one of the foremost economies at least in the Third World. Yet, today, Nigeria is, on the whole, a very poor country. For the overwhelming majority of Nigerian citizens, Nigeria is a land of tortuous conflicts, hideous crimes and insecurity, and barbarous material deprivation. Even the Nigerian federal government admits that about 70% of Nigerians live in “absolute poverty”.

What then are the causes of this terrible failure? It is true that Nigeria had a fundamental weakness from the beginning – namely, the fact that it is a country of many different nationalities. These nationalities – Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Edo, Kanuri, Nupe, Tiv, Ibibio, Ijaw, Igala, and tens of others – had existed for thousands of years before the British came and put them together as Nigeria. Each nationality has its own cultural identity, its own territory, its own image of itself, and its own ambitions and desires in the context of the modern world.

This, no doubt, is a fundamental weakness. But, is it a necessarily all- decisive weakness? Absolutely not. Comprising many different nationalities creates obvious difficulties for a country, but it does not necessarily have to lead to poverty and failure. Many countries that comprise many nationalities find ways to be prosperous and successful in the world. Britain, Switzerland and India, to mention only a few, are successful multi-nation countries.

The principal reason for Nigeria’s failure is that we Nigerians have never found some way to manage our ethnic diversity sensibly. Because we Nigerians comprise many nationalities, we have a heavy duty from the beginning to find reasonable constitutional and structural arrangements to keep our country together in reasonable harmony. We also needed from the beginning to nurture a culture of mutual respect among our nationalities, to the ends that our country would be like a family in which every one of our nationalities, whether large or small, would feel belonging and protected. Unfortunately, we have never tried to do these things with any sincerity – whether in the years before or after independence. As Nigeria stands today, the time to do these things appears to have passed – and, in any case, the willingness and sincerity needed for doing them do not exist even now.

This failure to deal appropriately with the critical, structural, needs of Nigeria started with the British – the founders of Nigeria. And this column today will focus on the British roots of Nigeria’s political disaster.

The British were not familiar with the proper kind of structure for a multi-nation country. Though their own county, Britain, had consisted of different nationalities (the English, Scots, Irish, and Welsh) for centuries, it had been ruled as one (and not as a federation) under one government – the royal government of the English king in London. When Britain became a great nation and an empire builder in North America from the 17th century, the British mostly treated the sparsely peopled territories there as empty territories and transported their own people from Britain to establish colonies there. It was not until their military successes in the First World War (1914-18) made them controllers of territories occupied by fairly strong nationalities in the Balkans and the Middle East that they had to grapple seriously with managing the affairs of countries consisting of different nationalities. But even in the Balkans and the Middle East, they and their French allies ended making a mess of the multi-nation countries which they created, and such countries (notably Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Iran, Iraq, etc), became homes of big inter-ethnic troubles, and some broke apart later. Their handling of their large Asian empire, India, followed the same pattern – and India, at its independence in 1947, had no clear or rational federal structure for the management of its great ethnic diversity.

This is the background to the British handling of the Nigerian situation. Until the end of the Second World War (1939-45), the British did nothing to give any unified structure to Nigeria. The two large chunks of Nigeria (the larger Northern Protectorate and the smaller Southern), that had been acquired separately, remained separate. Each had its own administration – and the two were connected only by the fact that the South provided the money for funding the North’s administration, and that a superior British official (a Governor) loosely held common sway over both. Nothing was done about the fact that each Protectorate comprised many different nationalities.

However, in the years following the Second World War, the British found that they had to give some structure to Nigeria. All colonial territories in Asia and Africa came out of the war demanding “independence”, and the colonial powers had to set about preparing their colonies for it. From the British consultations and conferences with Nigeria’s leading politicians, the idea of a federation of Nigeria emerged. The British response was a federation of the Northern Protectorate, the eastern half of the Southern Protectorate, and the western half of the Southern Protectorate – known respectively as the Northern, Eastern and Western Regions.

But it soon became obvious that this kind of federation was irrational and seriously unacceptable to Nigerians. The Hausa-Fulani leaders of the Northern Region, fearing domination by the vastly more literate peoples of the southern Regions, raised various objections – and even seriously considered secession or three separate countries. The various small nationalities in the Midwest, the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers, COR and the Middle Belt, fearing domination by the larger nationalities in their Regions, demanded a Midwest Region, a COR Region, and Middle Belt Region. The leaders of the large Yoruba nationality of the Western region put forth detailed proposals in 1949 for a rational federation in which Nigeria’s nationalities would be the basis for the federating units (Regions or States) of the Nigerian Federation – in which the larger nationalities would each be a federating unit, and the smaller nationalities, according to their geographical contiguity, would be grouped into federating units.

The British rejected all these proposals. From 1952, the federation of three regions went into effect. Each region had considerable freedom to manage its own affairs, and each achieved a lot for itself. But the British had different ultimate arrangements in mind. They wanted to put in charge of Nigeria a people whom they believed they could trust to protect British interests after independence and, having decided that the Hausa-Fulani of the North (who were afraid of the Southerners) would do that, they proceeded to twist the Nigerian Federation in order to make it virtually a Hausa-Fulani “empire”.

The foundation was thus laid for conflicts, decline and ultimate disintegration of Nigeria. Expect the details next week.

A couple of days ago, I took part in what amounted to a technological miracle. It was a conference by telephone by Yoruba intellectuals from virtually all countries of the world. We were meeting under the auspices of a Yoruba think-tank organization with members all over the globe. Participants in this meeting were located in the deepest south of the world (in Australia and New Zealand), in countries across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, all the way as far north as Canada in North America and Norway and Russia in northern Europe. And we were meeting to discuss the all-important subject of the well-being and future of the Yoruba nation in Nigeria. Believe me, it was awesome hearing speaker after speaker, each an eminent scholar or professional, separated by tens of thousands of miles across the face of the earth.

In a way that is impossible for most Yoruba people at home, and for most Nigerians, to imagine, the Yoruba nation, by investing heavily in education for many decades, has transformed itself into a formidable global force. About a year ago, I stumbled upon a website of one of America’s ivy-league universities where it is written in bold type: “The Yoruba of West Africa are one of the most travelled peoples on earth. Their language and blood-type show up almost everywhere on the globe”. There must be very few countries in the wider world in which highly educated Yoruba men or women do not occupy important positions in academia, government service, or the professions. Increasingly in due course, all this global influence is sure to impact the fortunes of the Yoruba nation and the affairs of Nigeria in mighty ways.

The global tele-conference went on for hours and explored many subjects at very profound levels. I am not authorized to make such things public. I cannot even possibly do it in any article of any length. But there are some things that I can skim from the surface – and those I will touch now, to satisfy my irrepressible urge to communicate with my people.

First, it was emphasized that it is crucial that we Yoruba people must hold dear the shining treasures of our political culture, even in the jungle and wild storm that Nigeria has become. The temptation is strong for our leading public figures to go chasing and catching the trash and scum from the confused debris, but they must resist the temptation – if the Yoruba nation is to fulfill its destiny in the world. For instance, all strata of the Yoruba nation must make very clear our unyielding attachment to government based on the power and consent of the people, government that decently respects the will of the people – because this is a strong pillar of our political culture, and was so for over a thousand years before we became part of Nigeria. That means that there are many things that are strong features of the Nigerian political jungle, but that we Yoruba must denounce and reject in very clear terms.

One example is that we must make it clear that we do not endorse military coups as a means of addressing the failings of a democratically elected government, and that we will never again accept to live under any military regime in Nigeria. Faint indications in Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo’s recent letter to President Jonathan that a military intervention against President Jonathan might be under consideration in some quarters are against the collective will and interest of the Yoruba nation in Nigeria. We are conversant with the weaknesses of President Jonathan’s government; we also know that he has some distaste for us Yoruba people – apparently, partly because of some inexplicable ethnic animosity, and partly because we have been too freedom-loving to succumb to, and let our state governments be controlled by, his monstrous party, the PDP. In spite of all these, we must be strong and steadfast in rejecting any attempt by any group to terminate his presidency, or any future government of Nigeria, by a coup or any kind of violent force. Some of our leading politicians are part of a movement working now to create a new political party that aims to push the PDP out of power. Others among our politicians are working against this emerging political party. Those kinds of open democratic processes are harmonious with our political tradition; hideous plotting in the dark to change government by force is, on the basis of our political culture, an outrage and a very serious crime – and we must make that absolutely clear to the rest of Nigeria.

We must also make it clear to Nigeria that we are now much more determined to uphold and show our rejection of electoral fraud – the heinous disease that has been periodically bringing disaster upon Nigeria since the 1964 federal elections. The source of this Nigerian disease is that the people who control the powers of the federal government have since independence assumed that it is their prerogative to dictate, by fraudulent means if necessary, the outcomes of elections to the federal government, as well as elections to state and local governments, in all parts of Nigeria. In the context of that disruptive assumption, federal agencies connected with elections – the electoral commission, the electoral appeal courts, and the Nigeria Police – have usually operated like invading armies in those parts of Nigeria where the people show some determination to elect their governors and representatives freely. The Yoruba states of Nigeria have always been the foremost of the areas so invaded by federal agencies at elections. And young people of the Yoruba nation have again and again stood up stoutly against the invasion, and since independence, countless thousands of these youths have given their lives in the fight. From October 1965 to January 1966, hundreds of these youths were killed by Nigerian law-enforcement agencies in all parts of the Western Region. In 1983, when falsified results were announced by the federal electoral authorities for the gubernatorial election in Ondo State and Ondo State youths arose to resist the fraud, tens of them were killed by police bullets in the streets. After the gubernatorial election in Osun State in 2007, the morgue in one large hospital in the state was reported to be holding tens of unidentified corpses – all of young men who had stood up against the electoral fraud and had been killed in the process. Very stubborn litigation fights in the courts followed the 2003 and 2007 elections in the Yoruba states, resulting in most cases in the throwing out of the official election results.

In short, we Yoruba, being for about one-thousand years accustomed to selecting our rulers, are too culturally attached to free and fair elections to tolerate electoral frauds. At the forthcoming national conference, the Nigerian federation must be so restructured that Nigerians in various states of Nigeria will be able to elect their governments freely without having to wrestle with any invading federal agencies. This is part of the reasons why we Yoruba people strongly support the calling of a national conference. But we will also look out sharp, and powerfully defend our electoral freedom, in the state elections that are due to come in 2014, before the national conference completes business.

We Yoruba nation have a lot to contribute to saving Nigeria from the collapse that now threatens Nigeria. And we fully accept the duty of cooperating with the other nationalities of Nigeria to save and build Nigeria into a stable, peaceful, progressive and prosperous country. But to be able to put forth our best contribution, we must hold loyally and uncompromisingly to the best and most constructive attributes of our own political culture. For our wobbly and stumbling Nigeria to stabilize and survive, all Nigerian peoples who have constructive cultural assets to give must stand strong and give.We must stand firm on our good principles; surrendering to those who desire to preserve the corrupt tendencies and practices that have been destroying Nigeria is not service but betrayal.

There is something mysterious about Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo’s attachment to the party called the PDP. There is also a suicidal angle to it – a certain resolute dig-in that has robbed him of much of the recognition and acclaim he deserves in political life.

As far as the world knows, Gen. Obasanjo’s earliest relationship with the PDP was in 1998-9 when the party picked on him to be their candidate for the presidential election of 1999. Nigeria was tottering on the edge of total collapse in those months, thanks to the horrendous misrule of the preceding years. Most of the country was seething with anger over what was called “Northern domination”. In response, the barons of the Northern political elite, also founders and barons of the PDP, decided to find a “compromise” candidate from the South – and they zeroed in on Obasanjo. And from that point on, Obasanjo has stuck like a leech to the PDP, sacrificing and dissipating a lot of value in the process.

As president, his first major mission was to “conquer” his own homeland and people – the Yoruba South-west of Nigeria, for the PDP. The voters of the Yoruba South-west– and even his own home state of Ogun – had rejected him completely in the presidential election. A party like the PDP was not the kind of political entity that the Yoruba people of the South-west could fraternize with. It was so manifestly and aggressively structured to uphold the “dominance” of a section of Nigeria in Nigerian affairs. And it was so arrogantly a cabal of the those elements that Nigeria needed to fear – former military brass who had through political offices become the richest Nigerians alive, and their cronies and fortune-seekers whose wealth-acquisitive objectives in politics were not easy to hide. But the PDP, controlling the powers of the federal establishment, was impossible to beat in any election and, by doing their thing for Obasanjo, they made him the winner of the election.

So, as Obasanjo came into the presidency, his greatest observable political objectives included conquering the South-west for the PDP. I use the word “conquer” deliberately, because that was how the functionaries of the PDP often categorized their escapades in the South-west. Endearing their party to the people of the South-west was not part of their game. Fortunately for them, most of the boys who had won elections as governors of the states of the South-west in 1999, and who would have easily won again in 2003, allowed themselves to become soft-headed as the 2003 elections approached – and so allowed Obasanjo to pull a hood over their faces. For Obasanjo, it was almost a clean sweep of a conquest and, naturally, it was followed by four years of the typical PDP brand of governance.

But it was only the South-west’s favourite political boys that had been swept aside. As for the overwhelming majority of the people of the South-west, they were unconquered and unbowed. Obasanjo knew that re-conquering the South-west in 2007 was going to be a much tougher proposition. He actually declared that the election of 2007 was going to be a “do-or-die” war. And he was true to his word. Most of the do-or-die battles, not surprisingly, took place in the South-west. Crowds of international observers saw some of the battles and were aghast at what Nigeria’s public officials were doing to the common people of Nigeria in order to rig the elections.

Obasanjo’s PDP claimed victory in the presidential election and most of the lower elections, but most observers who were interested in Obasanjo now agree that, as a result of the brutalities and crookedness of the Nigerian 2007 elections, this very capable man threw away all the political image he had acquired before 2007. Most Nigerians don’t know much about this subject, and therefore it is somewhat difficult to explain – but I will try.

In the wider world, for many years, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo was one of the most admired African political figures, and perhaps the most watched. His stock had begun to rise in the world in 1979 when he, as military ruler of Nigeria, had peacefully handed power over to a new civilian government. We in Nigeria had a quarrel with the crookedness introduced at the last minute into the presidential election of 1979, but, in the eyes of the world, that was a little thing compared with the gigantic accomplishment of handing over smoothly to civilian rulers in Africa’s greatest country. Obasanjo’s stock rose so high in the years to come that many influential people in the international community believed that he would someday become Secretary General of the United Nations – something that would have boosted the image of our country greatly in the world, and something that many Nigerians who knew these things were excited about.

And then, as president in the first years of this century, Obasanjo added a great deal to his image in the world. He became one of the makers of the African Union founded in 2002, and indeed about the leading spokesman for the new Africa that the African Union seemed to promise. Then, Nigeria struck out as the hope of Africa when political disasters befell country after country in West Africa (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Ivory Coast) and Nigeria forces became the principal agencies of peace and restoration in country after country. Without any doubt, Obasanjo was the chief architect of this new role for Nigeria in Africa and the world. In the wider world, interest in Obasanjo soared. A friend of mine witnessed a speech which Obasanjo delivered at Columbia University sometime during these years – and he later told me excitedly that our man was on his way heading for the stars.

But in 2007, in his unreasoning determination to use his enormous capabilities and the powers of his position to procure victories, at any price, for the PDP, Obasanjo more or less wiped out all his image, and all the prospects attaching to his image. In his own homeland in the Yoruba Southwest too, he virtually lost everything. In state after state in the South-west, the boys who had been robbed at the 2007 gubernatorial elections went to court, and after nearly three years of fighting in the courts, were vindicated. In state after state, the Obasanjo governors who had been fraudulently declared winners in 2007 were booted out by the courts.

About the Obasanjo-PDP marriage, there are questions that nobody will probably ever be able to answer.What is the chemistry of his resolute attachment to this party? How did a man with the discipline of a military education sink himself into the depths of this kind of party? You might answer that he owes the PDP a debt for adopting him, out of the blues, as presidential candidate in the 1999 presidential election, thereby giving him a chance to be president of Nigeria for eight years. But –does a man in his position, a man with his kind of background, have to throw away everything for that kind of favour?

Even today, unbelievably, Obasanjo is still fighting for the PDP. Read his recent published letter to President Jonathan – and you will see that this highly privileged citizen, this highly knowledgeable Nigerian, continues even now to equate the PDP with Nigeria. How could it be, one is forced to ask, that a man like Gen. Obasanjo fails to see that most of his countrymen identify the PDP as one of the worst things that ever happened to Nigeria, and one of the reasons why most Nigerians have now lost love for their country? Can this eminent citizen ever wake up, and thereby make himself the real source of wisdom that he can be for his country?