Demands for the restructuring of Nigeria have become an irresistible flood. In desperation, opponents of it are saying strange things. The strangest in the past week is the claim by some in the northern political elite that it is the North that has always provided the revenue for developing the rest of Nigeria! In the interest of truth, and especially in the interest of our youths, most of whom are now so disenchanted as to want Nigeria dissolved, there is need to state the basic and well-known facts of Nigeria’s history. It may not help to save Nigeria – Nigeria seems to have passed that point. But it would, I believe, eliminate some serious errors in our youths’ perception of the course of Nigeria’s failure.
Before the British came as empire-builders, hundreds of different nations inhabited what is now Nigeria. Each nation had, and still has, its own homeland where it has lived for millennia, its culture and language, and its pattern of governance. The British empire-builders conquered or made treaties with these nations. By and by, the British established two protectorates – a Southern Protectorate and a Northern Protectorate. In 1914, they amalgamated the two to make the one country which they called Nigeria.
But, in spite of the amalgamation, the British continued to rule the two protectorates separately and differently. The only thing connecting the two was that, because the Northern Protectorate could not generate enough revenue to fund its administration while the South generated surplus revenues, funds were taken from the Southern to pay for the Northern administration.
It was not until 1949 that the two protectorates were at last given the same constitution as one country. In effect, therefore, Nigeria really became one country, not in 1914, but in 1949.
In the 1949 Constitution, Nigeria was organized as three regions. The Northern Protectorate was preserved as one region, while the Southern Protectorate was split into an Eastern Region and a Western Region. It was generally understood that Nigeria would soon become an independent country.
In the course of the 1950s, all the leaders of the three regions (with Sir Ahmadu Bello leading the Northern leaders, Chief Obafemi Awolowo leading the Western leaders, and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe leading the Eastern leaders) agreed on a federal arrangement. In a number of Constitutional Conferences, they spelt out the details of the federal arrangement. The leaders from the Northern Region proved the most difficult to persuade about the arrangement. The Northern Regional leaders were fearful that their region was in danger of being relegated to the status of a second-rate part of Nigeria after independence, because the Western and Eastern Regions were very far ahead of the Northern Region in Western education and modern development generally. The northern regional leaders insisted on much autonomy for their region. On occasions, they proposed that Nigeria should be split into three separate countries joined together only by a customs union. On other occasions, they even wanted to secede from Nigeria altogether. So strong was their desire for regional freedom and autonomy.
Ultimately, the agreed federal structure was finalized and sealed in 1957, giving the three regions, and other regions that might be created afterwards, much freedom over their governance, resources, and development. Each region had its own constitution, coat of arms, and even its own representative in London. On the basis of this federal constitution, each achieved considerable socio-economic success – by developing its own resources: groundnuts and some mining in the North, palm produce and some mining in the East, cocoa, some mining and port revenues in the West. Among these agricultural export products, cocoa was the biggest revenue and foreign exchange earner, making the West the richest region. Federal revenues were derived mostly from subventions from the regions.
But, in the preparations for independence, the British manipulated Nigeria’s politics and elections, and imposed the northern regional leadership over control of the federal government. They wanted to hand Nigeria to “a friendly people” that they could depend upon to protect British interests after independence.
And the northern leaders then took advantage of their new position to begin to widen the control of the federal government over the regions – in sharp rejection of their earlier stand for regional autonomy. They planted northerners in key positions in the military.
Their urge for control resulted in the federal declaration of an emergency, and the imposition of a federal sole administrator, over the Western Region in 1962 – and the rigging of elections in order to impose a federally dependent regional government. These actions provoked a rebellion in the Western Region, and that resulted in January 1966 in a military coup, which removed federal and regional governments and replaced them with a military dictatorship. The coup planners and the resulting military dictator happened to be of Igbo origin. Attempts by this military ruler to cancel the regions infuriated the northern leaders. And the first mass killing of people in Nigeria began, with northern masses killing tens of thousands of Igbo citizens in northern towns. In the course of this, in July 1966, the northerners in the military took over through a coup. The killing of Igbos continued in the North. The Igbo then tried to secede, and a 30-month civil war ensued, resulting in nearly two million Igbo deaths. Thereafter, northern military officers organized coup after coup, and appointed northern military dictator after northern military dictator. Hausa-Fulani control, and the centralization of power over Nigeria, advanced.
As these conditions have worsened, more and more Nigerians, mostly from the South (especially, at first, from the South-west) have raised their voices to demand that Nigeria should return to the federal structure agreed upon in 1957. In the face of escalating poverty and chaos, the cry for “restructuring” has become very widespread and intense.
But most of the northern political elite have rejected restructuring point-blank. Some have even threatened that their North would start a war rather than agree to restructuring.
What, then, are these northern elite fighting for by resolutely defending the present structure of Nigeria? First and foremost, the present structure represents a very high level of success of the Hausa-Fulani ambition to dominate Nigeria. They see Nigeria today as, more or less, their “conquered territory” – and they cannot resist behaving like conquerors. And then, there are the enormous material gains from their position of dominance. It is commonly publicly stated that at least 80% of the allocation of oil blocks from the Niger Delta are, at any time, held by northerners. In fact, the northern elite often cannot restrain themselves when talking about the Delta oil. For instance, in a recent meeting whose deliberations became public worldwide – a meeting of highly placed elders of the North – speaker after speaker rose to claim that the oil of the Niger Delta does not belong to the people of the Niger Delta but to the North. Some have even made the strange claim that the oil should belong to the North because it originally flowed from the North to the Delta! The northern elite are also defending the present structure of allocation of funds from the federal centre to the states. The federal allocations are mostly from revenues derived from the Delta oil as well as the Value Added Tax (VAT) derived mostly from Lagos State. That has left most of Nigeria’s resources undeveloped.
In contrast to this, those advocating restructuring want that each state should develop its resources, develop much Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) just like the pre-independence regions, and thereby make its own contribution to the overall progress of Nigeria. The northern elite mostly reject it; they want the federal centre to remain all-controlling, rolling in funds, and generating wastefulness and corruption.
Frightening chasms now separate our different nations? We have allowed over-centralization to do irreversible damage all round. Almost all the youths of all our nations now want separation. And we their parents mostly agree. Most of our nations are tensed up, and bloody conflicts lurk close to the surface. Must we wait until violence, war, chaos and streams of blood actually materialize?
