New Telegraph

The danger of Nigeria’s autocracy and its apologists

The problem of Nigeria is something that has defied all reasons and explanations and like Turkey in the early twentieth century that was called the “Sickman” of Europe, Nigeria is now the “Sickman” of Africa. Several eminent Nigerians have tried to define, explain or describe the problem but it does not seem to be cognizable to human mind and the more these several thinkers try to grasp it the more it becomes inexplicable and elusive.

Sometime in 1980s, it was Chinua Achebe that tried to lay hand on it and after strenuous rumination; the eminent novelist shouted eureka that he has discovered the problem of Nigeria which he zeroed on ‘leadership’. And since then the learned and the unlearned, the rulers and the ruled, the knowledgeable and the ignorant alike have echoed Achebe that the problem of Nigeria is leadership.

But, is leadership the problem of Nigeria? Yes, leadership is as much a problem as myriad other problems such as corruption, tribalism, religious bigotry, etc. The problem of Nigeria simply is identified in the state formation and the constitutional framework designed and imposed right from 1900 when Britain took over the administration of the areas later constituted as Nigeria from its commercial agent called the Royal Niger Company, a company it had chartered under the headship of Sir George Taubman Goldie to effectively hold Nigeria under its sovereignty, against the backdrop of 1885 Berlin Conference Resolutions and the competing interests from France and Germany.

In 1900, the administration of areas under Britain in the Bights of Benin and Biafra were divided into two namely; The Colony of Lagos and Southern and Northern Protectorates. Captain Frederick Lugard, a security officer of Royal Niger Company was appointed High Commissioner of Northern Protectorate covering the long line running from Kabba and Idah into the Sultanate of Sokoto and Kanem Bornu Empire as he was instrumental in the conquest and pacification of Eastern principalities and those northerly regions. Lagos Colony and Southern Protectorate were administered by British colonial officials led by Sir William Macgregor under a law different from those used in administering the Northern Protectorate.

In 1909, Lugard was transferred to Hongkong but later recalled when Britain required his services to forge Nigeria into a manageable entity that will be less demanding on the British Imperial Treasury. So, in 1912, Lugard was reposted back to Nigeria as its Governor-General charged with the amalgamating the entities and forming them into a functional united country.

On January 1, 1914, Nigeria was constituted and divided into two distinct entities, the Northern and Southern Protectorates; each under a Governor. The Instruments of formation and structuring as a state and country were embedded in the Amalgamation Proclamation, the Letters Patent and the Ordinances. All these laws were brazenly autocratic having conferred absolute power in the office of the Governor-General who wielded unfettered powers over the country.

Lugard ruled until 1919 when he was posted out and replaced with Governor Hugh Clifford (1919 to 1925). Governor Clifford identified Nigeria’s state structure and constitutional framework as a fundamental problem which he called an “untramelled autocracy” which according to him had no counterpart anyway else in British West Africa and he condemned it without reservations declaring that imposing Indirect Rule as a uniform governance structure on the South and Northern communities hitherto outside the Fulani Sokoto Caliphate was tantamount to a conquest and callous subjugation of more progressive Southern Protectorate and Lagos Colony under the conservative governance system of the Northern Protectorate. Hugh Clifford worked to change it.

But Britain and its imperial officials were not amused about Clifford’s concern and desire to change the unmitigated autocratic Nigerian state structure and constitutional framework. Britain rebuked Governor Clifford and pointedly told him that Britain had chosen the Northern Protectorate’s governance structure encapsulated in the Sokoto Caliphate Emirate System which had been baptized as Indirect Rule System. Nigeria’s state structure and constitutional framework are the root causes of Nigeria’s problem, not leadership.

A country’s state structure of constitutional framework determine whether a country will achieve positive development of unforced unity and functionality or will regress to stagnancy and crises as has been established in the history of Russia until the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and Britain before the 1788/89 Glorious Revolution that abolished absolute monarchy and replaced it with democracy founded on freedom, rule of law and egalitarianism. Beginning from Clifford Constitution to Arthur Richards Constitution of 1946 that split Nigeria into three regions with regional assemblies with the central government coordinating the whole, Nigeria has regressed to developmental immobility.

The nationalists’ rejection of the Richards Constitution as “obnoxious” quickened the reforms culminating in Macpherson Constitution on 1951 which federalized Nigeria but it was a subtle compartmentalization of Nigeria into ethnic fiefdoms wherein the Nationalists were consigned to fight for control and imposition of hegemony of the majority tribe in each region where such had sphere of influence.

The 1951 Macpherson was a masterstroke that effectively destroyed the incipient Nigerian nationalism and national vision as a focus of development and from then on Nigeria has been wobbling and stumbling from one disaster to the other. The 1951 Constitution was the bedrock of all subsequent Constitutions as 1957/58 Constitutions were mere amendments leading to the Independence Constitution of 1960.

In all these constitutions, there is one strand of unbroken autocracy that runs through them and until that autocratic strand is broken Nigeria will neither know justice nor peace. Many are wont to aver that 1960 Constitution was a free expression of the sovereign-will of Nigerian ‘Peoples’ to live together as a nation of one people but that is not true as Britain cunningly played one faction of Nigerian elite against the other but with its mind set on its goal to constitute Nigeria as a neo-colonial facility amenable to its control and exploitation as copiously captured in its declassified British Imperial Record available now to the public.

What made Nigeria’s case irredeemable was the military takeover of Nigeria of which Britain supported the Northern Nigerian military clique to hijack the state and foist autocratic governance structure on Nigeria to the satisfaction of Britain.

The Biafra War fought to consolidate the hijack was supported by Britain and Nigeria’s continual existence depends on Britain and Western Allied Powers’ (especially Britain and USA) desires. Since after the Biafra War, the struggle of all the oppressed ‘Peoples’ of Nigeria have been captured in episodic eruptions of political troubles in the form of agitations for self-determinations for freedom to organise themselves locally to achieve a measure of control of their destines but the July 29, 1966 political establishment with its arrays of draconian laws has been struggling against the current of these turbulent diverse ethnic agitations which this ruling clique kicks against and would neither concede nor admit holistic reforms or accede to decentralized governance under the constitutional framework.

Their usual argument is that the problem of Nigeria is not a constitutional issue but that of leadership failure. And then, you ask: who have been the leaders? It is against this backdrop that one views the position of Senator Abdullahi Adamu who contemptuously dressed down the 17 Southern governors’ stand on changing the 1999 Constitution and abolishing open grazing as that of cracking sound of a broken record.

The greatest threat to Nigeria’s unity and existence and as it is, an imminent danger to Nigeria’s existence are these politicians from the North and elsewhere that have constituted themselves into a seeming impregnable fortress against change in Nigeria and resolutely stand in the way of Nigerians’ open expression of desire for a change of Nigeria’s unitary autocracy foisted on Nigeria by the soldiers since January 15, 1966 and now consolidated in the military’s imposition of 1999 Constitution. These are the real and present dangers to Nigeria and these apologists for the continuance of the autocratic instrument of governance may not recognize the damage they are doing to Nigeria until it is late. Russia, Britain and France while basking in the euphoria of monarchical authoritarianism did not recognize the political tremors of volcanic eruptions until their respective monarchies were swept away in gales of unstoppable revolutions.

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