When a man is set in his ways, it’s going to take a miracle to change his fortune. This is because Man is a creature of habits, predictable rituals that set an individual or a people apart from others. A man’s character, some say, determines his destiny.
To put it in the way of the academics, who have a preference for opaque grandiloquence, the structure of an entity determines how it functions. In other words, design determines the results that you will likely derive from a device.
At amalgamation in 1914, Governor-General Lord Frederick Lugard joined a disproportionately bigger Northern Protectorate of Hausa kingdoms that had been subdued by the Fulani and a collective of smaller kingdoms, to the Southern Protectorate, cobbled out of two major nations, Yoruba and Igbo, and their minority neighbours.
For inexplicable reasons, the British Raj, at the dawn of the Second World War in 1939, suddenly divvied up the Southern Protectorate into the Western and Eastern Provinces, but left the Northern Protectorate, restyled Northern Province, intact. Thus, Northern Nigeria became even more dominant.
Observers think the idea was to reduce whatever solidarity might have existed between the Yoruba and the Igbo, and further weaken Southern Nigeria, while Northern Nigeria remained monolithic. It doesn’t look like there could be any other reason.
If you take a good look at the map of Nigeria, you will see that Middle Belt’s Kwara, Kogi, Benue, Nasarawa, and Taraba states, and the nether parts of Niger, Adamawa, and Plateau States, even the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, cannot truly be said to be part of the geographical North.
At the introduction of the Lyttleton Constitution in 1954, membership of the House of Representatives was increased to 184, with Northern Region having 92 members, 42 from the West, another 42 from the East and another three ex-officio members from each of the three regions.
Observers think the idea was to reduce whatever solidarity might have existed between the Yoruba and the Igbo, and further weaken Southern Nigeria, while Northern Nigeria remained monolithic. It doesn’t look like there could be any other reason.
If you take a good look at the map of Nigeria, you will see that Middle Belt’s Kwara, Kogi, Benue, Nasarawa, and Taraba states, and the nether parts of Niger, Adamawa, and Plateau States, even the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, cannot truly be said to be part of the geographical North.
At the introduction of the Lyttleton Constitution in 1954, membership of the House of Representatives was increased to 184, with Northern Region having 92 members, 42 from the West, another 42 from the East and another three ex-officio members from each of the three regions.
In the plebiscite of April 1961, Premier Ahmadu Bello was able to persuade the peoples of Northern Cameroon to join Northern Nigeria, but his Southern counterparts missed the trick and failed to persuade Southern Cameroon to join them.
This further skewed the political numbers game against the South, gave the North an unverified higher population advantage, and consolidated the central authority of the federation, resident in the House of Representatives, in the hands of the North that produced the Prime Minister.
Excising the Mid-Western Region from Western Nigeria was another step, not only to spite Obafemi Awolowo, former Premier of Western Nigeria, who advocated the breaking up of the North into smaller units, but to further consolidate The Big North against puny, disarrayed, Southern Regions.
The near-fait accompli of consolidation of powers in the North came with the July 1966 countercoup, staged by Northern military officers to avenge the killing of Sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello; Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and military officers of Northern Nigerian extraction.
From that point, Northern Nigeria never relinquished its grip on the military. This poses a subtle threat to any opposition from the South, even when the President and Commander-in-Chief is a Southern Nigerian. Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan can confirm that.
There is even a general, if ominous, belief that if Northern Nigeria cannot obtain political power through the ballot box, it could resort to the barrel of the gun. Most Chiefs of Army Staff have been of Northern Nigerian origin.
Some suggest that the purge of federal civil servants, by the governments of General Murtala Muhammed in 1975/1976 and his successor, General Obasanjo, effectively placed the commanding heights of the Federal Government bureaucracy in the hands of the North.
This has led to further entrenchment and stranglehold of Northern political establishment in security agencies, government-owned enterprises, boards, corporations, and parastatals, and the top echelons of the three arms of government.
You will observe that, currently, the Executive Branch, the legislative arm and the judiciary are headed by Northern Nigerians. The number two positions of Vice President and number four position of Speaker of House of Representatives, on the protocol list, are tokens and nearly ineffectual.
Another strategic move of the Muhammed military regime was the review of the 12-state structure, introduced by the General Yakubu Gowon regime, so that there would always be more states in the North.
Whereas Gowon decreed six states in the North and another six in the South, Muhammed increased the number of states to 19, creating 10 states in the North and nine in the South.
This has continued to the extent that some even suggest that the creation of the Federal Capital Territory in Abuja, a part of the political Northern Nigeria, was a stealth addition of one more state to bring the number of states in the North to 20, while the South has 17.
Political analysts suggest that with more states and more local governments, the North attracts a higher remittance from the Federation Account. Others also posit that the continuation of this state of affairs is guaranteed by listing states and local governments in the essentially “unitary” 1999 Constitution.
The convoluted and complex amendment clause of the Constitution also ensures this continuity. Vide Section 9, the only way to amend the constitution is by the approval of two-thirds majority of the Senate and the House of Representatives, in addition to two-thirds majority of two-thirds of state Houses of Assembly.
Article 5 of America’s Constitution, which Nigeria is supposed to have copied, provides that “Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution.”
“Or on application of two-thirds of the several states shall call a Convention (read, plebiscite), for proposing Amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes,” it continues.
Anyone, or group, that will not allow peaceful amendment to the Nigerian Constitution, so that every group in Nigeria can progress at its own pace, is likely to be an enemy of Nigeria and does not mind balkanisation of the country.
See how America’s founding fathers responded, in the Declaration of Independence document of July 4, 1776, when British King George III visited “repeated injuries and usurpations… (and the) establishment of absolute Tyranny” over the 13 original colonies of America:
“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the Opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation…
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of (the ends of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness), it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
The document continues defiantly, “When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their security.”
Sentimental views like this suggest critical review of Nigeria’s political relationships.
