In just two years, it will be 100 years since
Nigeria was created as a single
amalgamated political entity by the British
colonial adventurers.
Today, as we celebrate our 53rd
independence anniversary, we have our
eyes more on the Centenary, because it
offers us a great opportunity to assess our
hundred years of gains, losses and hopes.
The gains: Of all the entities which the
European colonial powers amalgamated all
over the world, especially in Africa to
further their colonial interests, Nigeria
stood out in many ways. She was the biggest
nation populated exclusively by Black
people on the face of the earth, with the
largest population on the African continent.
Sahelian ambience
From the mangrove coast in the South to
the Sahelian ambience of the North, Nigeria
is wholly arable, and therefore able to
support healthy populations year round
almost evenly throughout its territory.
It is also blessed with enormous natural
resources, including petroleum, coal,
bitumen, limestone, iron ore and so
many other mineral deposits in
commercial quantities.
Its agricultural resources include palm
produce, cocoa, groundnuts, timber,
rubber and other forms of cash and food
crops. Before the advent of oil boom,
Nigeria’s economic and political
prospects were rated so highly among
the emerging Third World countries that
she was categorised along with Brazil, India
and South Africa.
Historically, even before the coming of the
white man, Nigeria boasted prestigious
empires, such as the Benin, Oyo, Sokoto
Caliphate, Kanem-Borno and powerful
coastal kingdoms at Bonny, Calabar, Lagos
and others; all of which had established
treaties and diplomatic ties with world
powers out there.
*Taking charge: President Goodluck
Jonathan being inaugurated on May 29,
2011
Apart from the monarchies, some cultural
groups, notably the Igbo, Ibibio, Ijaw, Tiv
and Plateau groups had developed intricate
forms of republican democracies which
forbade expansionist imperialism while
stiffly defending their own respective
independence from invaders.
The amalgamation of 1914, which some
now describe as a “mistake” created a
model with the potentials to put a black
nation among the frontrunners of world
political economy.
In addition to its large population, the
quality of human resources found in the
country was second to none. In fact, the
three largest ethnic groups – the Hausa,
Igbo and Yoruba, each had enough
population to compete for the top five of
Africa’s largest linguistic groupings.
Nigeria was also one of the first to catch the
bug of independence. Through the efforts of
Nigeria’s father of independence, Dr Herbert
Macaulay and Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, who
shone the light for other Africanists such as
Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Dr Julius Nyerere and
even Dr Nelson Mandela to find their ways
to remove their people from the clutches of
colonial rule, Nigeria quickly moved, on
gaining independence, to establish Africa as
the centerpiece of her foreign policy.
She dedicated much of her efforts towards
the struggle for freedom of southern African
countries still in the grips of the
colonialists, such as Zambia, Zimbabwe,
Namibia, Angola, Malawi, Botswana and
South Africa.
Regional security
Nigeria contributed her troops and
funds to help bring peace to war-
torn African countries such as the
Congo, Angola, Liberia, Sierra
Leone, Cote D’Ivoire and Sudan,
thus becoming a partner with the
African Union, United Nations and
the sole superpower, the USA, in
the maintenance of regional
security and stability.
This is one of the reasons for
which she has for long queued up
for the prime spot for a
permanent seat in the United Nations should
the decision be made to grant Africa a slot.
Nigeria is looked upon as the leader of Black
Africa; a role she has gallantly endeavoured
to play. However, her many failings have
always come in the way between her and
Uhuru.
The losses: Wherever countries have
managed to achieve unity in diversity, their
greatness in the wider world arena is
almost always assured. This is because
every group within the nation submerges its
individual interests to that of the nation and
act as one people towards the realisation of
grander national objectives.
Therein lays the power of diversity. And
that is the ingredient that is boldly lacking
in the Nigerian experiment, which accounts
for the huge losses she has experienced
since: (a) the country was amalgamated in
1914, and (b) Nigeria got her independence
in 1960.
The British colonial adventurers sowed the
seed of discord, not necessarily because they
meant to ensure Nigeria did not work but
more for their own self-interest of
administering the vast colony at minimal
cost and maximum gain.
Minimum cost and maximum gain
For decades after amalgamation, the
Southern and Northern Protectorates were
administered differently, with Indirect Rule
in the North and Direct Rule in the South.
While the North was allowed to preserve its
Islamic values with cautious adoption of
Western education and values, the South
embraced Western education and values on
a massive scale, and became the front from
which the drive towards independence was
ignited.
The colonialists reacted to the slow pace of
push for independence in the North with
many geopolitical favours, while the
Southern Regions (East and West) suffered
many disadvantages, including census and
electoral constituency configuration that
ensured the North would always win
elections.
It was with these serial clashes of values
and perception of injustice vis-à-vis one
another that the East, West and North went
into unhealthy rivalries; each fighting to
dominate the others while going into
alliances with the sole purpose of
undermining one another.
Besides, the Minorities embedded in each of
these Regions also wanted self-
determination and freedom from what some
of them saw as “internal colonisation” by
the Majorities. They commenced internecine
struggles that often had them joining up
with the rivals of their own local Majorities
to undermine them for selfish gain.
This is the summary of the causative factors
defining the apparently unending crises,
wars and mini-wars and blood-letting,
which have gripped Nigeria in the throat
from independence in 1960 to date.
The rivalries started in the political parties
and later spread to the ranks of the military
class when the first coup took place in
January 1966, which was read to be an
“Igbo coup” due to certain trends it took.
Another coup came up in July the same
year, which was equally dubbed a revenge
“Northern coup”, thus setting the pace for
the civil war and an attempt at secession by
the breakaway Republic of Biafra.
Attempt at secession
When the war ended with the defeat of
Biafra and the Igbos sidelined from the
mainstream of power, the coalition that
fought “to keep Nigeria One” went at each
other’s throats for dominance. Some groups
felt they led the war and must permanently
call the shots of power.
Others felt they also had the right to vie
since without their effort the secession
would have succeeded. The Minorities of the
North felt their role during the war entitled
them to princely treatment and status like
their Majority fellow Northerners. The
upshot was a series of coups, counter-coups
and failed coups that bedeviled the nation
between 1970 and 1995.
However, a watershed was reached when
Chief Moshood Abiola won a presidential
election on June 12 1993 – the first time
ever a southerner achieved that feat – in
what was seen as the freest and fairest
election in Nigeria.
The military, in the grip of the northern
elite, annulled the election and toppled the
Interim Government to bury Abiola’s
mandate. It became the turn of the Yorubas
to fight against injustice, which they did
with every ounce of determination at their
disposal through the National Democratic
Coalition (NADECO) between 1994 and 1998.
Power was ceded to the West, and General
Olusegun Obasanjo, who was in jail for
alleged complicity in a coup plot against the
regime General Sani Abacha, was released
and empowered to rule again, this time as
an elected president.
The Minorities have also fought their own
protest wars. The most poignant has been
the uprising in the Niger Delta against the
exploitation and despoliation of their
environment by oil giants with an
insensitive Nigerian state seen as co-
culprits.
The uprising of the Ogoni ended in murders
of a section of their elite, while the state
arrested the factional leaders of the
Movement for the Survival of Ogoni people
(MOSOP) led by Ken Saro-Wiwa and hanged
them on November 10th 1995. A couple of
years later the Ijaw youth gathered at
Kaiama in Bayelsa State and issued a
declaration for “self-determination” and
thus started a militancy campaign which
nearly brought the Nigerian economy to its
knees.
However, following an amnesty deal offered
by the government of the late President
Umaru Yar’ Adua, peace returned to the
Niger Delta; even though a high level of
violent crimes are still going on in the Niger
Delta and its immediate surrounding states.
Oil has brought Nigeria stupendous wealth
valued at nearly $500 billion since 1958.
But rather than become a catalyst for rapid
development, it has unleashed a curse
blamed for the civil war, runaway
corruption, indolence of the elite and high
poverty rate among the common people.
It has reduced Nigeria to a net importer of
every need, including goods that used to be
produced in Nigeria and exported.
Resultant poverty
Misrule and its resultant poverty are
blamed for the rise of religious extremists
in Northern Nigeria known as Boko Haram.
Linked to international Islamic Jihadist
group, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram has crippled
the economy of the north and sent
thousands of innocent Nigerians to their
early graves through their orchestrated
suicide bombings and gun attacks, even in
places of worship.
But the Nigerian security forces have
swooped on them and the signs are
beginning to emerge that there is light at the
end of the tunnel.
The hopes: Nigeria has gone through the
blacksmith’s forge. Way back in 2009,
predictions emerged from a report
submitted to the US Congress committee on
Foreign Affairs by diplomat and expert on
African affairs, Mr. John Negroponte that
Nigeria could disintegrate by 2015. Some
say the activities of Boko Haram might
bring this prediction to pass. Others are of
the firm view that since Nigeria could not
break up in 1966 – 1970 and after all that
she has gone through the country has
become unbreakable.
Symbiotic relationships
Perhaps, Nigerians themselves under-
estimate the quiet, off-politics symbiotic
relationships that have evolved over the
past 98 years and beyond, which bespeak of
the people’s preference to stay together
under well-negotiated terms and conditions
that will remove injustice, domination and
corruption.
Nigeria has indeed changed a lot in the past
13years since the return of unbroken
democracy – the longest unbroken run. For
the first time in her history, two presidents
have been elected from the South and one
from the North.
The era of power belonging to one section is
now over. With a Minority person elected
president in 2011 in a mandate given by the
electorate from across the board, hope is
rekindled that Nigeria is outgrowing her
post-colonial teething problems. The
journey to Uhuru is still a long one, but
many good things hitherto thought
impossible are now happening.
If Nigeria is able to successfully create states
in the ongoing constitution amendment, she
would have crossed a major hurdle that
will assure that anything else can be solved
through constitutional means rather than
violence, wars and threats of disintegration.
The economic front is also very promising.
The national goal of making Nigeria one of
the 20th largest economies by 2020 was
based on prognosis of foreign-based
economic rating agencies such as Goldman
Sachs way back in 2004. It has now become
the Nigerian vision, even though the drive
towards achieving it has been rather
inchoate.
But that Nigeria is once again an emerging
economy is in no doubt. There are now
talks of a BRINCS of the near future (Brazil,
Russia, India, Nigeria, China and South
Africa).
Perhaps, for the first time ever, a US
President (Mr. Barack Obama) has taken
public note of a rosy future unfolding
before Nigeria on the economic front.
Matters are helped by the fact that the
economic team in the President Goodluck
Jonathan cabinet is peopled by world
renowned technocrats, such as Dr Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala (Finance/Economy) Dr
Akinwunmi Adesina (Agriculture), Dr
Olusegun Aganga (Investments), and Mrs.
Stella Oduah (Aviation) and till recently,
Professor Barth Nnaji (Power).
Security challenges
There is hope that by the time Nigeria
celebrates her Centenary in 2014, the
security challenges of the nation,
especially in the North, would have been
largely overcome, and the “surprise” that
President Jonathan promised recently
would be there for all to see.
A lot of governors are working very hard
to develop their states and the rot left
behind by the military is gradually being
addressed.
The Nigeria once dreamed of might bounce
back from the stupor of hopelessness to a
glittering reality. When that time comes the
world will rush to Nigeria to pick nuggets.
They are already coming.
But are Nigerians ready to play? Or will
they wake up one day to find out that
“foreign investors” have re-colonised their
economy and thus resort to another struggle
against “foreign domination”? Time will tell.

happy independence!