Category: Jide Osuntokun

One last point I want to make is how to balance regional autonomy against national unity in Nigeria. The constitutional device that every governmental institution must reflect the ethnic plurality of Nigeria, euphemistically referred to as its “federal character”, is not without drawbacks since it could be abused if enforced at all costs; it could lead to injustice and unfairness to some groups who quantitatively have more educated and experienced people than the up-and-coming ethnic groups. One hopes that career opportunities would continue to open up so that there would not be unnecessary job competition to an extent that would provoke nepotism and jobbery. A federation is inherently weaker than a unitary state, but a federation where its leaders understand its strength and weaknesses need not be weak to the point of political instability. In Nigeria our appreciation of our weaknesses is a move in the right direction. The fact that we are prepared to take “affirmative action” such as admission to federally-funded institutions on a quota basis, if only for now, is evidence of our recognition of existing problems of disunity. It is better for these problems to be brought into the open rather than to be swept under the carpet while everybody pretends and wishfully thinks that no problems exist. In bringing the problems of ethnic division, nepotism, and disunity out in the open, Chief Akintola touched on sensitive issues but his lasting contribution was to make Nigerians aware that the problem of the inequitable distribution of national resources does exist and that something must be done about it, if the political entity and pluralist state of Nigeria is to survive. Each ethnic group must have control of its God given land and the question of a common citizenship must not override the rights of indigenes in their own land.

In conclusion, Chief S.L. Akintola as a patriot would have been opposed to any move to swamp local or indigenous people by massive migration of others into their territory under the rubric of a common citizenship. The idea of comparing the fact that one can move from one state in America and instantly contest for an elective office would have been laughable to him. This is because America is not Nigeria and Nigeria is not a newly settled country like the United States. In this context, he would have been on the side of indigene-ship against citizenship. His Ogbomosho people are to be found in Northern Nigeria and other parts of West Africa where they have remained Omo Ogbomosho and not natives of the places where they settled. Chief Akintola built his first house in Ajasa Street in the heart land of the Island of Lagos and he would not have because of this claimed Lagos indegeneship for himself and his descendants. The same thing would go for the thousands of Ogbomosho people in Jos, the Ivory Coast and Ghana. The import of this on the sterile debate of the ownership of Lagos is clear. He would have said Lagos belongs to its original owners and their Awori neighbours. The growing tendency all over the world is the yearning by people for their God given right to their own separate land and space. This accounts for the desire for separate identities by old nations like the Welsh and the Scots embedded in a common United Kingdom of Great Britain. The same desire for their own land and space has led to the disintegration of the old Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and possibly Belgium in the future. In order to avoid this in Nigeria we must respect peoples love and desire for the land which their ancestors have historically occupied. There should be no conflict between patriotism and nationalism. This would have been Chief Akintola’s position.

It is also now clear that the Yoruba people realise that they cannot do it alone in the politics of Nigeria. Although his idea is quite different from those who advocate belonging to the mainstream of Nigerian politics so that they can join in ravenous eating of the national cake with others. Chief Akintola rightly believed that the Yoruba people have fundamental right to contribute to building the national edifice, the architecture of which they must have participated in designing. He was also of the belief that absence of the Yoruba in national government will derogate from the value of such government because the experience and more than a thousand years of Yoruba culture of governance would have been denied to that government. It is therefore a welcome development that in the two political tendencies now prevailing in Nigeria, the Yorubas are not in a tight corner and making themselves victims of their history of regarding the Northern part of Nigeria as enemy territory. The acceptance of this new tendency in Yoruba politics has more than confirmed that Chief S.L. Akintola has been right all the time and has not died in vain.

One of the concrete legacies of Chief S.L Akintola is the Odua Conglomerate which is perhaps the biggest indigenous company in Nigeria. It was also under his administration that the University of Ife now Obafemi Awolowo University was established. Although the Nigerian Airways is no more, it was Chief S.L Akintola who established it in 1958. In 1957, he moved the motion for Nigerian Independence which was supported by the whole House in contrast to an earlier motion by Chief Antony Enahoro which unrealistically called for independence in 1956. A British commentator once said about Chief Akintola while he was leader of Opposition that he led the government from the opposition bench. This was probably because he spoke Hausa fluently and he was generally an amiable and friendly person.

Critics may say that his politics of participation is not based on principles but rather than on sharing the proverbial national cake. This would be wrong because his idea is that national resources must not be under the control of a certain group with the exclusion of his own Yoruba people. He recognized that there is no ideology guiding politicians in their struggle for power and rather ethnic interest is hidden under the camouflage of one ideology or the other. In any case in a largely illiterate society, ideology counts for little and since politics is about people and development, absence from the dinner table of national resources would be detrimental to the group that is not present. His politics is based on individual and group interest and a belief that one can be a Yoruba patriot as well as a Nigerian nationalist. His life as an editor of a major newspaper, a practicing lawyer, one of the first central ministers, leader of opposition and premier was a living testimony to the harmony between individual, group and national interests.

A way out for the dominants of the three major ethnic groups was the creation of states, which was expected to take the sting out of ethnic chauvinism. This ideal has been realised to a certain extent. But the block-voting by the Yoruba for Awolowo, the Igbo for Nnamdi Azikiwe and the Hausa-Fulani for Shehu Shagari during the election ushering in the Second Republic in October 1979 provided a reason to question the success of the attempt to remove the ethnic basis of Nigerian politics. The irony of Nigerian politics is that the erstwhile monolithic North has been broken or fragmented politically to such an extent that support for political leaders is not based on ethnic considerations alone; indeed one can argue that “statism” has emerged as the most potent force working against greater integration of the country.

It is now doubtful that any of the three major ethnic groups could control Nigeria short of alliance with either most of the minority groups or at least one other majority ethnic group. It therefore stands to reason that we must come back to the idea of Akintola, who saw Nigeria as an “Ethnic Commonwealth” in which all must participate, in the interest of peace and stability. The hard facts of the Nigerian political situation call for a constitution that takes this into consideration; it calls for leaders who are able to compromise and who in the traditional Fabian fashion, will strive to reform from within. Nigerians must recognise that theirs is a multi-national and pluralistic country in which each of its ethnic groups has a stake. Any political privilege based on the rule of might of one group over others is bound to fail.

If Nigeria is to survive and prosper, a means must be found to actualise the idea of an “Ethnic Commonwealth” which would lessen the political tension in the country. This is not to suggest that a loaded epithet such as “federal character” or any other is the panacea to all Nigerian problems; but the recognition of the ethnic factor in our country as a potential for divisiveness, and the willingness to deal with it on a realistic basis of consensus politics may yet be the strength of the Nigerian federation. This is what Akintola stood for and history has proved that to that extent and in spite of the way he went about effecting the principle, he was right. The zoning of political offices and the alternating the presidency between the North and South are attempts to paper over the fundamental division in the country.

Indeed it would have been helpful if the six recognized zones could be made the federating states instead of the puny 36 states which are too week financially and politically to restrain the tendency for abuse of power by the centre. No matter how long Nigeria survives, the fact will always remain, as it has in Switzerland, Belgium, the former U.S.S.R., and even the United Kingdom, that linguistic and cultural differences are not easily obliterated and that recognition and accommodation of these differences are the sine qua non of political wisdom. This political realism is Chief Akintola’s major contribution to Nigerian politics.

The Civil War ought to have taught us a lesson that every Nigerian group is capable and able to press its claims of inclusion in the government of Nigeria and if peaceful means fail, by violent means. It is in the interest of all that things do not degenerate to this level. Realism and tolerance must be the basis of a Nigerian federation. To survive Nigeria must recognise that if one part of the country is disgruntled, the others cannot ignore it. Nigerians are most anxious for stability along with development, and if that means total mobilisation of all zones of the country as long as political plurality is tolerated, the people would not be opposed to it. This was what Akintola stood for after his disastrous 1953 venture into the North as Action Group leader. The experience convinced him that Nigerian politics in the future must be based on the kind of compromise which would permit a capable Hausa, Fulani, Igbo, Yoruba, or any other to be President, and as President to command respect of the entire country. Recent events have shown that there is indeed a light at the end of the tunnel, and that the body politic of Nigeria is flexible enough to accommodate all the shocks and challenges the future may have in store for us.

Chief Akintola was a product of his time and his society. This is not to deny that he was a man of free will, but there is no doubt that to a certain extent, the kind of situation in which he found himself determined his actions, his responses, his contributions and achievements, and his shortcomings. The colonial situation after the end of the First World War, a war fought theoretically to “make the world safe for democracy”, meant that any intelligent young child who had some financial backing to further his education could expect some rewards either from co-option into or participation in the colonial political dispensation or through agitation to bring down the colonial establishment with the aim of inheriting one of the positions vacated by the outgoing colonial overlords. In other words, if one was educated, one did not need to be otherwise distinguished during the dying days of European imperialism to be actively involved in the politics of liberation and to reap the rewards of progress in one’s country. As pointed out earlier, Chief Akintola was the editor of a major newspaper whose mission was to effect a change in the political situation of Nigeria from subservience and servitude to political autonomy and independence.

In the struggle against an external foe, it was relatively easy for everyone to rally round a few leaders, but with victory in sight, the inherent weakness of an ethnically variegated country became manifest. With this complexity in mind, the colonial masters, under pressure from the Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba leaders, devised a federal constitution which, even if it did not please everybody, gave the three major ethnic-national groups enough freedom to make the association workable. From the time of the Federal Constitution of 1954, the struggle for control of the centre has characterised Nigerian politics. First of all, the politics of ethnic-national autonomy gave rise to the Federal Constitution, and the power-sharing this involved led to competition among the three regions for participation at all costs and to shifting political coalitions and realignment. The dynamic vitality itself of Nigerian federation is what made the intricate political network unstable. It is by understanding this background that one can view in correct perspective the forces that impinged on the society and that created the ever-changing political situation in which individuals such as Akintola and others played out their roles.

The Oyo-Yoruba people, the group from which Chief Akintola hails, are now Oyo and Osun states and one wonders how Chief Akintola would have greeted this news. For in spite of all the efforts made by Alhaji Adegoke Adelabu to persuade the Oyo-Yoruba to demand the creation of this state in 1957, Chief Akintola seems to have been vehemently opposed to the idea of fragmentation of the Yoruba. But by 1965 when he was already under the strain of violent opposition to his regime from Ijebu, Abeokuta and Ondo provinces, he started making insinuations about the traditional hostility of these groups to the Oyo-Yoruba. What has happened since the end of the Civil War, particularly the fact that the federal cabinet has within it representatives of every state and therefore of the major and minor ethnic groups, has confirmed Chief Akintola’s belief that there can be no peace until there is a feeling of belonging to a ‘Commonwealth’, in which every group has a share, even though his party, the NNDP, never managed to rise above its origins as an opportunistic amalgam of personalities and power blocs. Akintola in a brutally frank way made it quite clear that Nigeria belonged to all of us and that a policy of exclusiveness and nepotism manifested by one group could not help but draw appropriate reaction from those who feel shut out of the normal run of things and the attendant ethnic or regional benefit accruing from shared revenue and shared risks and responsibilities of living together in a federation.

The constitution of the Second Republic which came into force on October 1, 1979, has further confirmed Akintola’s belief in team work by the fact that the constitution makes it obligatory for the President to see that cabinet members represent all the states and reflect the federal albeit ethnic structure of Nigeria. Nigerian leaders have learned from the lessons of the Action Group crisis and the Civil War. The present constitution and the built-in clauses emphasizing that the essence of the federation is cooperation and compromise attest this fact.  It is clear to me that the issues raised by Akintola’s later years are to a large extent being resolved. No single party can dominate Nigeria, and Nigeria is unlike a good number of other African countries in the sense that control of the visible apparatus of state does not necessarily ensure that there will be peace or that the populace will acquiesce in what is patently wrong.

The Yoruba as a people suffered between 1961 and 1966 because of lack of unity. It is one of the ironies of modern Nigerian politics that the most culturally homogenous people lack any semblance of political unity. The fact that political unity has eluded the Yoruba for so long reminds me of General Charles de Gaulle’s statement that if you ask two Frenchmen to form a political party they will probably emerge with three! This characteristic of the French applies to the Yoruba. It is not clear whether this is a weakness or an element of strength in a federation. The ideal of course is that political parties should cut across ethnic or regional lines, but when, in a pluralist society such as Nigeria, only one group believes in this idea, the tendency is for that group to become a pawn in the hands of others. Akintola’s championship of the cause of Yoruba unity was based on the above premise and analysis. It is only when Nigerians can rise above the primordial ties of ethnicity and language that Akintola’s idea of an “Ethnic Commonwealth” would lose credibility. But until that time, it would be foolish and unrealistic not to face the fact that Nigeria is a country of diverse peoples, each with clearly distinguishable strengths and weaknesses and that the only way to take in stride our diversity is not by forceful integration but by accommodation and cooperation through mutual respect of one another.

One thing that has emerged through the study of the life and times of Chief S. L. Akintola is that despite the fact that many Yorubas believed in what he stood for, particularly his idea that culturally Yoruba people have many things in common with the Hausa-Fulani, and that this should be translated into political cooperation, the Yoruba people have always drifted away from cooperation with the Hausa-Fulani. The reason for this has been historical. In the first place, the AG leadership, including Akintola himself, always saw Hausa-Fulani leaders as obscurantist oligarchs who had no idea of democracy and who were hands in glove with British imperialists during the colonial days. The second and perhaps most fundamental reason was the impact of the Usman dan Fodiyo’s Jihad of the 19th century which led to the forcible incorporation of Ilorin province into northern Nigeria. Until Ilorin is seen to be absolutely out of northern political control, the Yoruba are likely to continue to develop a revanchist tendency towards the Hausa-Fulani, which will make cooperation very difficult. The Yoruba, even though they lack political unity, are an extremely historically aware people and the Ilorin seizure by Alimi from Afonja more than a century and a half ago is still a vivid part of Yoruba modern-day political awareness, an awareness which, to put it mildly, immediately leads to a lowering of the group’s ethnic self-esteem. This fact has admittedly been exploited by politicians for their own ends, but the sore point remains and in any policy of political accommodation between the Hausa-Fulani and the Yoruba, this is a fact that must be taken into account. Finally, it is hoped that Nigerians will soon begin and continue to respect the feelings of one another, and in the words of Chief Akintola, Nigeria must strive to remain a “commonwealth, its resources must be accessible to all its citizens regardless of creed, clan or tribe …”. This will continue to be necessary until such time as Nigeria will have developed to such a level that the question of which ethnic group one comes from would only be of academic and not of political interest. This goal is not to be confused with any long-range attempt to obliterate our distinctive cultures and ethnic characteristics with the idea of super-imposing a national culture. Nigeria’s ethnic groups, some of which are “nations”, need not be made to face obstacles on the way to normal “national” evolution and development. In fact a conscious effort must be made to build the idea of a unified nation in diversity by encouraging each group’s cultural development and identity while fostering the idea of Nigeria as one multi-national state, where each group can contribute in a meaningful way to enhance the strength of Nigeria. This indeed is and should be the basis of an enduring federalism. The idea has been a factor in the organic growth of countries such as the Canadian Federation, the Swiss Confederation, and recently the Belgian State. These are three examples of countries wherein local, ethnic, or “national” specificities are being reconciled with the desire and need for an indivisible state in which particular groups can still realise their freedom and full cultural development. Akintola ab initio recognised that the most fundamental problem in Nigerian politics stems from the rivalry of the country’s great ethnic groups or nations. Lack of a resolution to the conflictual competition among the major ethnic groups and the breakdown of law and order in western Nigeria following massive rigging of elections in 1965 led to the coup of January 1966.

Politics in Nigeria since independence has largely been devoid of ideology. When the Action Group party in opposition after independence claimed rather unconvincingly that it has embraced the political philosophy of democratic socialism, the NCNC, junior partner in the federal coalition government replied comically that its own philosophy was “pragmatic socialism”. Chief 04Remi Fani-Kayode, former leader of the NCNC in Western Nigeria after forming a new party with Chief S.L Akintola following the break-up of the Action Group shocked many people when he proclaimed that he believed in National Socialism, some kind of a black Nazi party. Chief Akintola in all these kept quiet because to him party ideology was secondary to inclusive political participation at the federal level. As a realist he knew that ethnic alliance and alignment were the rule rather than the exception in governing a pluralist and largely uneducated country like Nigeria. He was not too happy about the self isolation that the Action Group imposed on itself and that this was neither in the interest of the Yoruba people nor in the interest of Nigeria itself. The federal government from 1957-1965 was therefore largely an alliance between the Igbo-dominated NCNC and the Hausa-Fulani NPC to the exclusion of the Yoruba people. Chief Akintola had made his views known to Chief Obafemi Awolowo, his party leader that the Yorubas could not rule Nigeria alone even with the support of the northern and southern minorities which Chief Awolowo cultivated. In most cases this support was bought by the generous financial inducement of their leaders by the Action Group relying on large financial reserves of the Western Nigeria Marketing Board. It was largely because of these differences in strategy and not in goal that bedevilled the relation between the leader and his deputy. Of course there were other reasons such as the ambition of some of Awolowo supporters like Anthony Enahoro, Samuel Grace Ikoku and Joseph Tarka. When crisis eventually ensued in the Action Group between 1961 and 1962, these minority leaders stoked the fire of division in the party. Ironically the three of them were to desert Chief Awolowo political party to team up with NPN in 1979, the party of the northerners, the same northerners they crucified Chief Akintola for associating with.

Since Chief Akintola was murdered, numerous events have occurred to provide us with material for a reassessment of what the man stood for in Nigerian politics and to judge whether or not some of his ideas have become in some way acceptable. The regime of Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi swept aside the coup d’état of Majors Chukwumah Nzeogwu, Onwuatuegwu of the Military Training College, Kaduna, Major Ifeajuna, the Brigade Major at Second Headquarters, Apapa, Lagos, Majors Chukuka and Anuforo of the Army Headquarters, Lagos, Major Ademoyega and Captain Oji of the Army Headquarters in Lagos, Captains Gbulie and Ude in Kaduna and Nwobosi in Abeokuta. After consolidation of all powers into his hands, Ironsi tried to impose a unitary form of government on Nigeria in January 1966 with mixed results. The reason for the imposition of a unitary form of government was two-fold. First, there was tremendous public enthusiasm for this after the coup d’etat and secondly, the army by tradition was used to a uniform chain of command. This choice of a unitary form of government reversed the political trend in Nigeria towards federalism, begun in 1939 when the country was formally divided into three administrative regions: the North, the East and the West. Many people in Nigeria, particularly university students and staff, felt that the problems in Nigeria were caused by the exclusive regionalism which had led to people being treated as foreigners, especially in terms of employment as soon as they were out of their regions of origin. This had in fact been carried beyond the extreme in Northern Nigeria where Pakistani and Indian professionals were given preference over southerners in the schools and in the civil service. The reason for this kind of action by northern politicians was the fear of disloyalty on the part of their politically astute southern compatriots, whereas foreigners were less likely to be involved in politics and more likely to be motivated only by monetary rewards.

The northern fear of being taken over by an army of southern bureaucrats was exploited by northern politicians who saw the pattern of killing of civilians and senior military officers during the coup d’état of January 1966 as being heavily weighted against northern and western interests. This assessment culminated in the counter-coup of July 1966 during which northern officers and enlisted men struck back, sometimes with savagery to equal the score. The rest of what followed is history. The northerners seriously contemplated secession, an event that took Nigeria back to the situation of 1953, but wise counsel prevailed for a brief period at least. Ominous rioting broke out during the middle and latter part of the year 1966, leading to widespread murder of innocent people from Eastern Nigeria in the North. Even though many individual northerners, at the risk of losing their lives tried to prevent the mass hysteria and murder. The wound inflicted on Nigerian unity became almost fatal with the result that by July 1967 what later developed into the Biafra-Nigerian Civil War began, first as a police operation and later a full military action by Nigerian military authorities. This tragedy which attracted considerable international attention, some well-meaning but to a large extent designed to destabilise the most populous and important country in black Africa, did not end until early 1970. By that time, some constitutional changes had taken place in Nigeria either by pure design or, what is more likely, as a result of the pressure of the war and because the military leadership of Nigeria during the war was not unmindful of the political aspirations of which the famous Willink Commission’s Report of 1958 had taken note but had not been able to satisfy fundamentally.

The July coup of 1967 which swept the then Lt Colonel Yakubu Gowon into power also saw the release of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the jailed leader of Action Group, and his lieutenants. This single political action in retrospect contributed to the success of federal army over the secessionist Biafran forces. With Awolowo out of prison, the Yoruba along with their compatriots in the North, East, and the Mid-West were mobilised to deal with the Eastern secession. This would have been impossible if Gowon had not brilliantly read and discerned the mind of the Yoruba. The war also saw the growth in influence of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s ideas, particularly about the creation of states. Twelve states were therefore created in 1967 to accommodate the yearnings and aspirations of minorities, and also to undermine the solidarity of the East, which was then divided into East Central State (mainly Igbo), a separate Rivers State, and South-Eastern State, incorporating the areas previously referred to as Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers  (COR). The North, which had always appeared to be a political albatross weighing down the southern regions, was split into Kwara, North-Eastern, North Central, North Western, Benue-Plateau, and Kano states. With this fragmentation, the political dynamite of one single region lording it over the rest was defused. On February 3, 1976, seven more states were created by General Murtala Ramat Mohammed to make up a 19-state federation. Babaginda and Abacha added to this fragmentation of Nigeria until we arrived at a 36 states structure, with Abuja being more or less a state. With the creation of these states, Nigeria seems to have settled down, and the politics of ethnic chauvinism, even though still apparent, has been replaced by politics of state solidarity.

In spite of Awolowo’s opposition, even the culturally homogenous Yoruba and the Igbo have been further split into smaller states. Chief Awolowo had always believed that states should be created on an ethnic basis and that there was no point in splitting homogenous states. But if carried to its logical conclusion, it would have been impossible to satisfy the separate identities of the more than 250 linguistic groups which inhabit Nigeria. What is of interest here is the fact that the Yoruba now find themselves in six states and a large number live and form the majority in Kwara. And yet another Yoruba group constitute a minority in Kogi.

The political intervention of the British led to the emergence of the Nigerian state as we know it today; but even more relevant for our present purpose was the Christian Missionary proselytisation of Southern Nigeria, on the one hand, and the Islamic revival and revolution of the late 18th and 19th centuries on the other. In the case of the Christian missionary impact on Southern Nigeria, the society underwent considerable change, not only in beliefs but also in lifestyle and world-view. Christian missions provided Nigerians with the opportunity to acquire a Western education and a window through which to see other civilisations, but most of all, it led to the growth of educated, Western-oriented elite which would demand the application of all the basic tenets of liberalism in the conduct of Nigerian affairs. The missionary factor in modern Nigeria was first perceived in Yoruba and Efik and later in Igbo areas. The result of this gradual penetration was that the Western-educated elite emerged first in areas where the missionary impact had been greater and more sustained. By the early 1890s, there were Yoruba lawyers, doctors, and other Western-educated men, some of whom were indigenous Yoruba, others the children of repatriated slaves from the New World, particularly Brazil, and also from Sierra Leone.

The point to note is that by dint of an earlier Christian proselytisation, the Yoruba had a head start in the acquisition of Western education and all its consequences. Up to the 1920s, therefore, nationalist agitation for improvement of the African condition was led and completely dominated by the Yoruba and a few Efik, Izon (Ijo) and Itshekiri people. The Igbo did not become a factor in Nigerian nationalism until the arrival of Nnamdi Azikiwe in 1937 from America, where he had trained as a journalist and a political scientist. With his arrival in Nigeria and founding of his newspaper business, Azikiwe was able to fire the imagination of his people and mobilise them to catch up with the Yoruba with regard to Western education, but unlike most of the Yoruba, this goal was sometimes achieved by a community effort. Members of certain villages or clans usually collected money to send ambitious and brilliant young men to the United States or Britain in search of the “Golden Fleece”. This practice, which was widespread in the Eastern part of Nigeria, meant that when the young men returned to Nigeria after their studies, they would be obliged to return the favour of their people either by directly repaying the union that sent them, or by using their newly acquired status or position to somehow advance the cause of the clan or ethnic group. In a pluralist society such as Nigeria, this payment of an educational debt through favouritism and jobbery to one’s own ethnic group was to exacerbate inter-ethnic rivalry if not antagonism.

Most of the Yoruba student, by contrast, did not have to rely on his village or town to send him to London or New York because in many cases the parents concerned were involved in import-export trade or in the cocoa industry and were therefore able to pay the way of their children. Furthermore, with Lagos being the administrative and commercial capital of Nigeria, opportunities did exist for quick profit and subsequent capital accumulation by the indigenous entrepreneurs. Sometimes too, the missionary societies which had their headquarters in Yoruba land were able to aid students in their aspirations toward Western education without their having to rely on a communal financial levy.

The case of Northern Nigeria was different. While the Igbo people by the 1940s were trying to catch up with the Yoruba educationally, Northern Nigeria, for historical and religious reasons, continued to lag behind. With the revival of militant Islam and the founding of the Sokoto caliphate in the 19th century by Usman dan Fodiyo, his son, Sultan Mohammed Bello, and his brother, Abdullahi dan Fodiyo, Islam, which had been in a state of decline since the 15th century in Northern Nigeria, revived vigorously. The frontier of Islam continued to expand throughout the 19th century into the Yoruba country and even to Lagos. By the time of the advent of the British in Lagos in 1861, Islam was already a force to be reckoned with in Yoruba land, particularly among the Oyo, Egba, Ijebu, and what later became the Lagos colony areas. Western education was associated with Christian evangelisation. Yet the British colonial regime in Nigeria was not particularly interested in spreading Western education anywhere in Nigeria. For administrative convenience, peace and security, the British under Lugard discouraged Christian evangelisation in the Muslim areas of Northern Nigeria. It is therefore understandable that Northern Nigeria lagged behind the rest of the country in terms of educational advancement. This regional disparity in education resulted in a different attitude towards colonialism by the various peoples in Nigeria. While the Yoruba and the Igbo were impatient and anxious to secure political autonomy as soon as possible, because they felt they were ready educationally, the Hausa-Fulani and Kanuri bided their time and did not want to be rushed into taking what they regarded as a leap in the dark. Western education, when it finally was allowed in the North, was officially funnelled through the so-called Nassarawa schools for the education of sons of Emirs and the Masu Sarauta in the science of administration and local government. Even when the Katsina College was to be elevated in 1930 to a higher status along the lines of the Yaba Higher College, the plan was dropped, ostensibly because of insufficiency of funds and to avoid duplication, but primarily because the British thought otherwise. As a consequence, the Southern and Northern Nigerians were first educated together at the Yaba Higher College, despised by the nationalists because what they wanted was a full university. Lagos as a city was not particularly popular with the British who dissuaded Northerners from coming there.

Lagos in the 1930s was a sleepy old African city which the British colonial administrators were trying to upgrade to the status of a federal capital. Since the old city itself could not be developed, considerable amounts of money were spent on the outlying Ikoyi plains from 1920 onwards. It was in Ikoyi that the Britons lived, in what was the equivalent of the quartier blanc (white area) in French West Africa. The discrimination implicit in segregation did not go unnoticed by the educated Africans and they certainly made sure that in their newspapers one of which was edited by Ladoke Akintola, the British were told about how galling it was for Africans to pay cost of segregated quarters for whites in an African city. It was no secret that European administrators did not like educated Africans, those who were described by Edward Lugard, Sir Frederick’s brother and political secretary as “trousered Niggers”, and it would likely be just as correct to say that nationalism, whether African, Indian, or West Indian, developed mainly as a reaction to the covert and overt racism that go with colonialism.

This was the social situation of Lagos into which young Ladoke Akintola moved in 1930 as a pupil-teacher at the Baptist Academy. The substance of his politics was already present in the ethnic rivalry between the Igbo and the Yoruba, the political rivalry between conservative and traditionalist Northern Nigerians and the impatient and sometimes unrealistic Southern Nigerians and also in the sharpening racial antagonism between the ruler and the ruled, the African and the European. Akintola’s life from 1910 until his assassination in the coup d’état of 1966 encompasses the attempts of Akintola and other nationalists to cope with the forces and the effects of colonialism in Africa in general and Nigeria in particular, and the challenges and eventual failure of the first years of African independence.