On January 1, 2014, it will be 100 years
since the colonial rubber baron, Lord Frederick John Dealtry Lugard
(1858-1945), made the audacious decision to bring what was then the
Northern part of the Niger (area) in unison with the Southern part, to
create what we have today as Nigeria. Before then, the two protectorates
lived as distinct and separate entities; not having much in common.
Lugard, however, felt it expedient to create the new country, Nigeria,
purely for administrative convenience. No account was taken of
differences in culture, tradition, religion, way of life or, for that
matter, and the wishes of the people being so rudely submerged. After
all, the inhabitants of the protectorates were colonial subjects, and
so, it was left to the master to do as he pleased. This singular
colonial fiat has been the source and fountain of Nigeria’s persistent
crisis of nationhood ever since.
Thus, the Federal Government’s plan to
throw up a huge party to “celebrate” the centenary of this forced
merger, next year, is bizarre and ill-advised. Of course, the act of
drawing up arbitrary boundaries and creating new state territories are
not such a unique thing to Nigeria. As a matter of fact, the whole of
modern African states were created in exactly the same fashion at the
Berlin Conference of European powers in 1885. They sat around a long,
round table with the boundary-less map of Africa in the middle, and
started carving up the territories into choice names: Cameroon (Land of
shrimps), Gold Coast (Land of gold), Ivory Coast (Land of ivories),
Upper Volta, Kenya, Mali, among others. That is how modern African
states acquired their identities. It is a painful part of African
history. That is why no one proposed the centenary celebration of the
Berlin Conference in 1995. The 1914 amalgamation of Nigeria was an
unfinished business from ‘Berlin 1885’. It therefore defies logic that
right-thinking Nigerians would want to turn that into a cause célèbre.
Perhaps, more than just the funfair
planned by the Federal Government is the more pressing issue of the
legality of the amalgamation itself. My search through the United
Kingdom Parliamentary archives did not reveal any promulgation of an Act
of Parliament on the subject as it should have.
Lord Lugard presented a series of
“reports”, one of which was published in May 1913 in which “the
Secretary of State has decided that the combined territories of Northern
and Southern Nigeria, divided into two or more subsidiary
administrations, shall be placed under the control of a single
Governor-General…” Lugard had simply prevailed on the Secretary of State
to rubber stamp his wish to rule over a vast swathe of land which he
had christened Nigeria. The next occasion of historical significance
that took place in relation to this was when Lugard actually delivered
the “Amalgamation speech” on the “amalgamation day of January 1, 1914”.
He boldly announced to the world, based
on his agreement with the Secretary of State the previous year, his
“desire therefore as briefly as possible to describe to his audience,
and through them to the official and unofficial community of Nigeria the
basis on which this Amalgamation is to be carried out…’’ The basis, of
course, was to facilitate the continued exploitation of the people and
their natural resources. Let’s not forget, this was done as World War 1
was just breaking out, Parliamentary process was thus dispensed with. It
is my submission, therefore, that a Nigerian court of competent
jurisdiction can and should be given the opportunity to rule on the said
amalgamation. Committed eminent Nigerian lawyers could, if they choose
to, seek a judicial review of the decision to amalgamate as soon as it
is practicable to do so. A declaration that the decision is null and
void should usher in an immediate convocation of a Sovereign National
Conference to give Nigerians the long awaited say on this most vexed of
all issues.
Having said that, I can hear discordant
voices saying: ‘leave well alone; let it be; the fraud was perpetrated
long time ago; it’s an act of God; it’s our destiny to be together,
among others. These voices are well-meaning, but wrong in a fundamental
respect. In 1707, the previously disagreeable Kingdoms of Scotland and
England were merged by King James (1), a Scottish Monarch, and was later
ratified by Scottish and English Parliaments when they both met for the
first time in October 1707. There lies the basis of the United Kingdom
as we know it today. Why was this precedent not applied to the
amalgamation of Nigeria over 200 years later?
Nonetheless, parliamentary legitimacy
notwithstanding, the “Act of Union” between Scotland and England has
been a running sore in the hearts of many Scots for a long time. With
its population of just over five million compared to England’s 53
million (or 84 per cent of the total UK population), Scottish
nationalist leaders have long felt “sub-merged” and “marginalised”
within the UK although, this may be more apparent than real to an
outside observer.
Nonetheless, because this feeling runs
deep, it was given political expression by the formation of the Scottish
Nationalist Party in 1934. Why can’t, for instance, Boko Haram members
be allowed to express their political grievances through a legitimate
political party with the sole aim of establishing a Sharia state in the
Northern region for that matter? Why not? Once you have feelings of
“injustice” running so deep, and being so visceral, it needs to be given
democratic expression or, the people will resort to violence.
Anyway, back to Scotland. The SNP was
berated and shunned for much of its early existence, until it gradually
began to win the hearts and minds of the Scottish people. It won its
first parliamentary seat in 1945, then, substantially increased its
representation in 1974 with 11 Members of Parliament, before finally
becoming the majority in Scottish Parliament in 2007. The party’s mantra
since formation has remained full independence for Scotland and a break
away from the UK. Guess what?
The UK Parliament has now agreed a
referendum of the Scottish people to take place in 2014 to determine
whether Scotland should opt out of the UK and re-start life as an
independent entity. The campaign has already started between pro and
anti independence camps. It promises to be lively and enlightening.
My haunch is that there will be a narrow
victory for those who wish to remain in the UK and the nationalist
fervour would have been extinguished for the foreseeable future. The
question for us in Nigeria is why are we afraid of an open democratic
debate about the terms of our existence as a state? Why is this type of
debate encouraged in Western countries as a mark of political maturity
and it is discouraged in our society as heresy?
Why do we want to spend a trillion naira
bringing out dance troupes and masqueraders next year to celebrate the
centenary of an amalgamation, which to all intent and purposes is a
legal infamy? Our leaders appear to have taken leave of their senses
with this one. Let’s hope common sense will eventually prevail.
- Tayo Oke (tayooke@okeassociates.com)
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