E jo laa ko; a kii ko ija” is, for the Yoruba, one of the fundamental principles of a good fight. Simply put, for a successful fight, the trick is not just to be a good fighter, but rather it is important to be adept in the art of stating one’s case effectively. If you are a lousy combatant but an eloquent narrator of events, you are likely to have the sympathy of the judge and jury. On the other hand, even when you are a good fighter but your recounting of the issues is defective, the risk of your losing the case is pretty high.
All oppressed people have good cases in the court of world political opinion. But not all oppressed people have made a good impression on the world. Many factors are responsible for this, not least of which is that the world itself is a veritable centre of great injustice that has not always been moved by the plea of the oppressed for justice. But even when oppression is so morally outrageous that many are moved to help, the misfortune of the oppressed is that they play into the hands of the oppressor with the manner of their approach to the fight and with their poor narratives of the issues.
The principle of self-determination was Clause 3 of the Atlantic Charter adopted at a meeting between the British Prime Minister and the United States President and issued by them in August 1941. It was the agreement that got the United States involved in the war of the greatest generation. The principle of self-determination may have been strategically invoked to assure subordinated groups that they too had something important, namely their freedom, to gain at the end of the war and with victory over the adversaries. But originally it wasn’t meant to apply to African colonies. Who were Africans, after all?
Africans adopted the principle anyway, and vigorously and effectively deployed it to expose the inconsistency and duplicity of the allied powers. The 1945 Pan African Conference made it its focus and dispersed the conferees with the instruction to fight for their self-determination. It worked.
The self-determination battles of the 1940s to 1960s could have finished the job by insisting on new boundaries for the new states. For pragmatic reasons, they did not because they didn’t want a delay in the granting of independence to their states by the European powers. The self whose determination was the object of the struggle turned out to be the colonial-imposed boundaries and independence from colonial rule was the goal.
Within a decade of the achievement of the goal in respect of each of those “mere geographical” entities, it became obvious that it was a wrong self that the struggle succeeded in determining and it was clear even to the vision-impaired that the various nationalities which made up the multinational states that the colonisers left behind had been unfairly treated. This was especially the case with the cultural minorities.
It was clear then that the goal achieved cannot serve the purpose of good governance and self-government. John Stuart Mill is right on target: “Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist.” In many cases, including ours, it is a truism.
Yet, two factors have since made it almost impossible to reverse the action. First, the Organisation of African Unity insisted on the principle of non-interference with colonial-imposed boundaries even in cases where those impositions were clearly ridiculous and outrageous.
Second, the new indigenous powers as beneficiaries of the hand-over from imperialists also saw themselves as keepers of a sacred trust which they were not willing to betray. Of course, the imperialists only retreated to the corner, effectively controlling events of their former colonies from the sideline. Therefore, the new leaders swore to keep their various countries united at all cost. In addition, there was the human fear of the unknown creeping to the subconscious of national leaders, preventing them from taking the bold steps their countries needed.
Granted that the most extreme of those steps, namely complete separation and/or full-scale boundary redrawing may be traumatic and sometimes counter-productive. But there are less radical approaches, such as true federal or confederal arrangements.
For the trauma of complete separation and full-scale boundary redrawing, we do not need to go beyond our national borders and reflect on the new struggle for the Republic of Biafra. Assume that it is a genuine struggle based on the fundamental principle of self-determination. Assume also that there is a hundred per cent support for the cause among all Igbo of the Southeast. The snag is this: what about the Igbo in the Northwest, Northeast, Northcentral and Southwest, not to talk of Southsouth? Do they return to the new Biafra? Do they stay put wherever they are and become aliens requiring visas and work permits? What about those in the civil service of other states and the federal? Or in the university system?
Of course, these issues would have to be part of the details that a more comprehensive approach may need to work out if there is a consensus on a complete separation. But barring such a consensus, there is bound to be severe tension across the land even as we are now witnessing.
A consensus is not out of the question, but it has eluded us for a long time especially since Aburi. Every now and then, a political crisis rocks the nation and one zone or region feels the pinch, cries foul and demands an out. But somehow the crisis is resolved and with it goes the demand. It happened in 1966, 1967, 1993, and now it appears that the cycle is being restarted by agitators for a new Biafra. What sparked this new agitation is anybody’s guess! Is it marginalisation or electoral shellacking?
A genuine fight for self-determination doesn’t need to be supported by any defensive justification other than that self-determination is the birth-right of human beings and groups. And where a group was unfairly imposed upon by an external entity, leading to its involuntary incorporation into a larger entity with others, it must retain its right to pull out at any time, provided that all the parties impacted reach a mutually agreeable consensus on the terms of separation.
A consensus is not impossible. And despite OAU and AU it has happened in Africa. It can happen again. But it cannot be unilaterally achieved by one nationality especially when that nationality has its tentacles spread throughout the nation space.
A more rewarding approach is genuine negotiation that includes all nationalities. This was the object of the Congress of Nigerian Nationalities (CONN) which the late super patriot, Chief Anthony Enahoro, initiated and struggled to achieve in exile and later upon his return to the country. His demise left a vacuum in the struggle for reform and cultural democracy.
Hopefully there is a Joshua in the land who will take the people to their desired destination. Let dialogue and negotiations begin in earnest. We know that there are nationalities that are not afraid to go it alone and are capable of standing on their own without encroaching on the space of others.
