The Lugardian Legatees of Power

The Lugardian Legatees of Power
By Sam Onimisi

If attempts at revolt or actual rebellion is dispassionately examined, the root causes are likely to be located at inequity, injustice and the quest for freedom and self-determination. While the reasons for revolt or rebellion may differ, the purpose is often more or less the same, although the rebel and those who labeled him so, may never agree on the causes of rebellion. Many ethnic nationalities in Nigeria have had cause to revolt against government or rebel against the nation-state. And each time it happened, the sovereignty of the country is questioned if not challenged. The sad result however is that the state had often repressed the revolt with maximum force to the effect that the victims of repression surrenders, albeit temporarily. Having been brutally defeated, they regress into latent animosity to continue the fight by some other subtle means. What are these means?

By means of sabotage and non-cooperation, the defeated rebel would continue to inflict damaging injury to the body-politic, against public policies and national institutions. But why should they do so? Because anyone who embarks on a righteous cause such as the struggle to enthrone equity or justice and is defeated in the process will not rest until he obtains justice. No one who is brutalized and humiliated for doing the right thing will give up the fight until justice prevails. When will they not fight if they are denied their just deserve? When will there not be a fight once mutual trust is lost through injustice, inequity and lack of fairness? The deprived cannot trust the cheat just as the oppressed can never trust his oppressor. The oppressor or the cheat can never trust his victim as he will always suspect him of revolt or sabotage. And so with prevalence of mutual suspicions, how can there be a conducive atmosphere or environment for peaceful development?

I am not one to say that some people may not have revolted out of ignorance or inordinate ambition and greed or both, but these are easily sorted out once they are defeated when they could now see more clearly that they were wrong or unfair. The answer to ignorance is to be informed and inordinate ambition could be checked or regulated but greed is a stubborn foe as it comes intermittently unabashed. The greedy is always also the guilty who never admit to greed; as he has an inner propeller that urges him on in a recaltricant manner, especially if he his strong, large, big or numerically so. They operate through the boldness of a troop and behave as if they are always right, going by the doctrine of might is right.

Nigeria as a sovereign state has had her sovereignty questioned on several occasions. These are occasions when she could have embarked on self-examination with a view of making amends and administering redress. But her responses in those challenges have been the wrong anti-dote or remedies. This is why the country is perpetually at war against herself, the reason why what works in other countries does not work in Nigeria – not necessarily because those things are unsuitable – but because of our attitude. While ambition and greed may be innate in man, they are often triggered by external stimuli or instigation. Political greed comes from many sources including instigators. It is my view that our colonial masters contrived the political problems confronting Nigeria today for reasons and purposes that are inimical to our progress or stability.
The quest for independence was limited initially to the South who had a head-start in Western education – which was why Chief Anthony Enahoro’s motion for independence in 1953 was defeated. The Northern Peoples Congress voted against it and being the Party in majority, it had its way. However, when freedom came our way in 1960, those who kicked against it became the beneficiary of power and those who had some ideas of what they could do for the country if we were independent were forced to stay behind. In democracy, majority is expected to have its way while the minority would have its say. The irony is that the majority is not and cannot be always right; and yet would always have its way, which is the tyranny of the majority. Sad enough and nearly 60 years after, the Boko Haramites are still fighting against Western education!

Perhaps we need to know how the majority came about their number. The creation of regions by the colonial masters in the source. The North was twice bigger than the East and Western region combined. While this was so in size or land mass, census population was also manipulated to tally with land mass, thus allocating to the North what demography could not prove or support. To think that in terms of ethnic, cultural and religious composition, the Northern region was never homogenous or monolithic; the design of the colonial masters to entrench inequity and injustice in Nigeria is clearly laid bare. This is one reason why the fault of Nigeria’s ills must always be put at the doorsteps of Britain instead of the Nigerian North, for the North as it was never created itself. When the people of Central Nigeria demanded for their region, the British colonial masters refused, as it could have destroyed their design for Nigeria. Britain harvests a lot of profit from Nigeria’s instability and lack of progress. It was all a master plan!.
We must agree that most people value inheritance and would do all in their power to preserve and defend it or maintain the status quo; we should not expect less from Northerners as the legatees of political power in Nigeria. And the nature of power does not lend itself to bargaining or negotiation unless it is challenged by a greater power or serious threat. Power shifted to the South in 1999 because there was sufficient threat to the locus of power, not because the wielders of power were tired of it; not even because they wanted it to rotate. The North reluctantly conceded it to the South and was eagerly awaiting its return to base. But the South-South who inherited it by accident is also desirous to continue with it, may be because they also are legitimate citizens of Nigeria, or are they not?

As it is, there are only two things that keeps Nigeria together and they are, oil income and the lure of political power. Don’t be deceived, no ethnic group remains in Nigeria today because they love the country. They love her for the oil money and the possibility of exercising political power over her someday. Is that not why when they get to power, all that interests them is to grab oil dollars as much as they could – making hay while the sun shines? Was that not the reason for tenure elongation or third term attempt, coup and counter coups or zoning by force or dole? Don’t you observe that many progressive politicians of the North joined forced with their conservative counterparts in singing the zoning anthem? Is the magnet not the allurement of power as the key to accessing our oil dollars? Can we attribute this to greed?
To be continued