The foundation of the political and economic crisis Nigerians are grappling with today was laid by Frederick Lugard, Hugh Clifford and their successors in the first three decades of the 20th century. But it was a crisis also compounded by the failure of statesmanship on the part of Nigerians themselves, particularly the governing elites who inherited the state in 1960.

Lugard was an empire builder in the service of England. And so it was inconceivable that he would establish political structures that would benefit the local inhabitants of Nigeria at the expense of his employers. That much is to be understood. He did not establish proper parliamentary procedures and the rule of law in Nigeria, not because he was unaware that these were the foundations on which the prosperity of the people of his own native England was built, but simply because a people given the blessings of democracy and the rule of law are difficult to exploit.

And Lugard was in Nigeria to take the riches of the land for the benefit of England. I do not say this because I wish to diminish the man and his achievements. It is important that we understand the motive behind Lugard’s refusal to divide Nigeria into eight regions, as suggested by his lieutenant governor for the North, so the new country could begin life as a balanced federation.

Lugard also chose to take revenue from the southern provinces to
supplement administrative expenses in the north instead of tailoring
expenditure in the latter according to what it could afford. Some
Nigerian commentators, seizing on this fact of financial transfers from
the ‘Wealthy South’ to the ‘impoverished North,’ have been arguing that
northern Nigeria is congenitally impoverished and would not survive a
day longer without the help of her more ‘affluent’ neighbour.

This argument is not true to the evidence. Two developments plunged
our people in the north into poverty. The first was the jihad of Othman
dan Fodio at the turn of the 19th century. It established a new layer
of indolent and exploitative Fulani emirs on Habe (Hausa) peasants. The
second was the advent of colonial rule in Africa in the first decade of
the 20th century. The French cut off Kano’s access to the North African
trade routes, a vital prop of her prosperity for centuries. Lugard and
his British superiors were tardy in reshaping the local economy in the
north in line with the new flow of trade, from Lagos and Port Harcourt
to England. Northern Nigeria is poor today because Jihadists and
Europeans made her poor.

Lugard’s successors needed a large and authoritarian Northern
Region, presided over by dependent emirs, to make their ideal Nigeria
work. It was a Nigeria in which an unproductive but powerful governing
elite would sit on top of the political structure and shape social and
economic affairs to benefit only themselves and the wealthy few in
England. The mass of the English people, ordinarily well-meaning and
possessed of a fierce democratic spirit, had nothing to do with the new
regime of prettified feudalism in Nigeria. This too needs to be stated
and restated, so that we don’t fall into the convenient racist pit of
saying that all English people wish all Africans ill.

The ethnic nationalities that began to take shape in the 1920s and
subsequently hardened in the 1940s were born of two spirits – democracy
and citizenship. Denied jobs, social welfare, and avenues of
self-representation, people who shared a similar culture and language
began to band together in self-help projects in the emerging colonial
urban towns. When the politics of decolonization took on real power in
the 1940s, these ethnic associations provided ready platforms for the
nationalists battling the British.

It is thus clear that at genesis, what we now refer to as ‘tribes’
were really powerful civic and political associations, crafted by
Nigerian political and ideological entrepreneurs, in order to secure
for their various peoples the rewards of democracy and development.
That some of these ethnic movements veered into narrow irredentism is
due to the machinations of the colonial elite who sought to maintain
their hold on power by encouraging ‘tribal differences’ where non
existed, and pitting one against the other.

The tragic confrontation between Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo
in the 1950s when both could have brilliantly complemented each other
for the benefit of Nigerians was born of this ‘divide to conquer’
strategy. But then the two chose to be victims of their situation,
instead of mastering and transcending it. It is in this sense that I
argue that Nigeria’s political elites share part of the blame for the
state we are in today. Before the settlers in the United States won
their independence from Britain in the late 18th century, the rich and
powerful in London always referred to them as unruly Americans.
‘American’ was an abusive word. But the settlers appropriated the term,
reshaped economics and politics in the thirteen colonies to serve their
own interests, and today ‘American’ is a word that stands for power,
prestige, and prosperity. There is nothing that stops Nigerians from
taking over Lugard’s ‘Nigeria’ and reshaping it into ‘Nigerians’
Nigeria.’

Having said all these, I must concede that ‘ethnic nationalities’
is now a fact of Nigerian life. The ethnic principle should therefore
be given due weight in a new constitutional compact. But it must share
space with the civic-democratic principle, which insists that Nigerians
are fundamentally one people and share the same deep hunger for
democracy, justice, and the blessings of good government. Enabling
political institutions and processes should be designed in such a way
that those who want to order their affairs along ethnic lines should be
allowed to do so at the local levels of government, and also to a
limited extent, at the regional or provincial.

At the highest level of political aggregation, which is the
all-Nigeria National Assembly, there will have to be two key
representative principles, one ethnic, drawing on the lower levels of
government, and the other civic and pan-Nigerian, drawing its
representation from those at the local, regional and national levels
who are focused on the arduous work of making life better for Nigerian
workers, peasants, women, and youth irrespective of clan or creed,
while also ensuring that the excesses of Western corporations in the
country are reined in. Thus will the peoples’ civic republic be
achieved.

As usual, everybody is shying away from talking openly about oil and
the fact that the politics of revenue allocation will make or break the
national dialogue. Revenue allocation, as political theorist Egite
Oyovbaire has rightly noted, is at the heart of the crisis of Nigerian
federalism. In the coming debate, the oil revenues from the delta will
be the big elephant in the room.

It is important that sensible and thoughtful voices from that region
be listened to when the debate ensues. Oronto Douglas and Asume Osuaka
are two sober minds that must be accorded a prime place in the dialogue
if the maze that is delta politics is to be comprehended and made to
serve the larger cause of a just Nigeria. Why these two? In a follow-up
essay next week, I shall explain why.

Ike Okonta