Onlytruth:

@PhysicsQED

I followed your long posts (though I think readers get lost by long posts), but I still cannot see any other rational or urgent reasons for the creation of the Midwest when others like COR and Middlebelt failed in theirs.

Like I said earlier, it is more likely that Igbos in the East gave the defining impetus for the creation of Midwest because they hoped to "one day" carve Igboland out of that too and unite it with Igboland to the east of the Niger. Common sense. Of course no rational person would expect NCNC elements to announce it openly when the NCNC was a national party.

To get to these rational conclusions, please answer these questions:

If Igbos in the western region were happy and, the Igbos in the Eastern region very happy that Igboland was split in half with one half under the control of the Yoruba, do you honestly believe that there is any amount of agitation by other minority groups in Midwest that would remove them from the west? Please answer this honestly!

What is there (about midwest creation) for the NCNC that it cannot get any other way?

What is that special interest by the NCNC to split the west, when they resolutely rejected the same thing in the East, and the north rejected same in the north?

Remember that these parties understood that Nigeria should not be splitting up into states. Zik called it balkanization. NCNC, AG and NPC all hated it!

Was it just a power show? I strongly doubt that!
Never forget that NCNC was very sensitive about appearing tribalistic. That party valued its national outlook, thanks to Zik and his fierce Nigerianism.

My educated and logical guess is that there must have been a VERY STRONG agitation by Igbos in the East for Igboland to be united, much like how the Ijaws also wanted a united Ijawland, but the NCNC must have been embarrassed about that agitation due to its image.
They therefore must have gone for the best compromise available -hide under minority agitations in the midwest to surreptitiously carve away Igboland from Yoruba control.

I wasn't there, but the above scenario is very logical and plausible.

Don't expect an answer from PhysicsQED. He will misinterpret what you said, put/use words you never used, give your statement his own meaning to please him, then he will dribble round the goal post only to forget what he was asked to do - put the ball in the net.
He doesn't understand English.

Just wait and see.

I had already responded. And made another response but my responses kept getting deleted. Might post under a different user or something though.

Onlytruth:

@PhysicsQED

I followed your long posts (though I think readers get lost by long posts), but I still cannot see any other rational or urgent reasons for the creation of the Midwest when others like COR and Middlebelt failed in theirs.

The Middlebelt state creation movement didn't succeed because they only partnered with the AG, which had been on the losing end of Nigerian politics for a while (never had enough power by itself at any point) and never recovered after Akintola. They (the UMBC) only won a small amount (one-third) of the seats in their Middle Belt region in elections! The rest went NPC. This is in stark contrast to what happened in the Midwest, as the Omoigui article showed, where the AG could only capture three out of the 15 seats and the other 12 were NCNC. This means the Midwest region itself went NCNC while the Middle Belt never even went AG. So the UMBC-AG alliance didn't even have a political movement strong enough to get the majority of its representation allied with the state creation cause, in stark contrast to the Midwest, where the NCNC politicians there knew that once it was put to a vote, as the Western government and colonial authorities both agreed to, the majority of the region would support the will of the party (state creation) because they simply controlled it as shown by their votes.

The COR state thing may have been mentioned in 1948 but it only gained any momentum in 1954, right after the whole Eyo Ita misunderstanding. The COR movement was allied with the Action Group, not the NCNC. Once again, the Action Group were the political losers in 1950s-1960s politics. Furthermore, the NCNC was in alliance with the NPC so the NPC definitely could not have acted against the NCNC. So the only thing they had to support their small movement was the support of a weaker and soon-to-be-dead (murder by way of Akintola) party. To make matters worse, they weren't even united in what it was they wanted, some wanted Rivers state alone, some wanted the full COR state, and neither movements  were united as one nor were they actually successful in capturing the majority of political votes in their areas. Meaning that once again they were allied with the weakest of the three political parties and had not even won over their own regions with their movements.

For an objective look on the COR:


Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent African Nation by Richard L. Sklar (google book this, I can't post the link or this post will get deleted.)

In the Eastern region, non-Ibo groups in the former provinces of Calabar, Ogoja, and Rivers agitated for separation from the numerically dominant Ibo areas. Here the minority zone is a non-compact belt of culturally diverse peoples who are united only by feelings of hostility to the Ibo-speaking majority. However, a determined effort to unify these minorities was made by political opponents of the NCNC, some of whom left that party during the struggle between its national and parliamentary leaders in 1952-1953. The demand for a Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers State appears to have been made for the first time by a conference of chiefs and representatives from these provinces in December 1953. The COR State Movement was inaugurated at Uyo (Calabar Province) in 1954; it was closely linked to the National United Independence Party and subsequently absorbed by that party's successor, the Eastern wing of the Action Group. Among the Ijaw people of the former Rivers Province and an adjoining Division of Delta Province in the Western Region, the demand for a Rivers State appears to have been more popular than the idea of a COR State; in 1959, the Niger Delta Congress, an outgrowth of the Rivers Chiefs and People's Conference, captured one seat  in the Federal House of Representatives. The NCNC has steadfastly opposed the creation of a COR state, mainly on the ground that its sole rationale is anti-Ibo sentiment. In 1959 an administrative reorganization was effected in the Eastern Region, abolishing the old provinces and devolving wide local government functions to an increased number of new ones based on a carefully designed system of local representation. This innovation among others-e.g., the establishment of a Regional House of Chiefs-partially offset the COR State appeal, and candidates to the Federal House of Representatives in 1959 who supported the "COR" solution to the Eastern minorities problem were successful in the Ibibio and Efik areas of Calabar Province only.

You can also see on the page right after that, p. 138, where it mentions the Nigerian Non-Moslem league in the Middle Belt and the UMBC-AG, which kind of contradicts the idea that Middle Belters didn't see themselves as distinct from the North (of course, how they see themselves and how they actually are may be two different things entirely)- an idea that has been suggested on this thread. Can't access the section it's actually referring to in the preview however. The next pages have a whole wealth of extremely interesting information-much of which I can't see in the google book preview-on the NCNC and the AG, including their many internal conflicts, and on p. 245 (right before the preview cuts off) it talks about how the AG absolutely could not hold anything in the Midwest although it gained a little in 1960.

Like I said earlier, it is more likely that Igbos in the East gave the defining impetus for the creation of Midwest because they hoped to "one day" carve Igboland out of that too and unite it with Igboland to the east of the Niger. Common sense. Of course no rational person would expect NCNC elements to announce it openly when the NCNC was a national party.

I don't see how anybody could possibly read Omoigui's article and think Igbos in the East gave the defining impetus for the creation of the Midwest. If the actual people of the Midwest had decided to go AG and accept Yoruba suzerainty, the NCNC would have been irrelevant and the issue of state creation in the West would have been irrelevant because the NPC would not have been involved. It was the minorities' actual agitation which brought the issue up, and their actual actions and chosen alliances that made it necessary to resolve the issue and that is what I would call an impetus.

To get to these rational conclusions, please answer these questions:

If Igbos in the western region were happy and, the Igbos in the Eastern region very happy that Igboland was split in half with one half under the control of the  Yoruba, do you honestly believe that there is any amount of agitation by other minority groups in Midwest that would remove them from the west? Please answer this honestly!

If what you're saying is that if there was an NCNC-AG alliance rather than an NPC-AG alliance that the Midwestern region would not have come about then I completely agree and have never said even a single thing contrary to that. in fact my very first post in this thread states that it was because of alliances and strength of parties that it came about. I do hope you realize that what you state here would imply an NCNC-AG alliance or a coalition of interests. (If it does not, then you mean just the NCNC alone, which I will discuss below.)

What you don't seem to realize is that by the same logic, no amount of agitation on the part of Delta Igbo plus the Eastern Igbo could have made the Igbo parts of Warri and Benin province be removed from the West without a direct deal with the West to fracture itself when no AG-NCNC alliance existed. The point you made here employs the same logic I have been trying to get across in all my posts on this thread- it is about levels of power of groups and alliances versus the power required to achieve what they want to achieve. If what you are saying here is that the East could have conspired to force the Delta Igbos to stay in the West (acknowledging of course that this makes no sense politically, tactically, etc.) and that they had wanted to, regardless of whether an AG-NCNC alliance existed then I would have to point out that if they went about it alone, whether or not they wanted the Delta Igbo to be or not to be in the West would be irrelevant because the result of going about it alone would have been a fully AG controlled Western region, and the NCNC could not dictate to the AG what should constitute its region.

I also have to comment here that the particular argument here doesn't necessarily follow from reasoning, although I get the point you're trying to make. It isn't the case that the Ijaws could be forced to stay in the Eastern region if the only the Western region suddenly wanted to keep that particular group there for some strange reason. It isn't the case that the Tiv and Berom could be forced to stay in the Northern region because only the West wanted to keep that particular group there for some strange reason. What is needed is for two out of three to want to oppose their leaving or support their leaving, not for one to want to keep a group in that region. If both the West and North say, for some strange reason, that the minorities and Delta Igbo should leave the West, there is no amount of agitation on the part of the East that could possibly keep them there even if the East wants them to stay there. Are you getting it now? There's nothing special about the East in particular that can make it agitate and then things change in far away lands. So it doesn't follow that if one region wants to keep a group in a region it can necessarily override the other two regions' wishes.

Your comment about the East being happy with the Delta Igbo being in the West resulting in the minorities having to stay in the West is perfectly correct but what you and Obiagu1 keep doing is this ridiculous slant where you ignore that the West/AG is perfectly happy with the Delta Igbo staying in the West and using their tax money to build up whatever they want in Yorubaland while leaving the Delta Igbo undeveloped. How hard is that to get? 2 out of 3. It's that simple. 1 on 1 is a stalemate. In the situation you hypothesized BOTH the East and West are supporting the Delta Igbo staying in the West. What you and Obiagu1 have been doing this entire thread is some ridiculous slant where the East alone is dictating what is passing and what is not and because of some supposed magical juju agitation power of Eastern Igbos that allows it to dictate what should or should not compose the West to the West's face it can actually be held responsible for just somehow directly creating the Midwest on the back of the Midwest Movement of the minorities. This is rubbish. If the Midwest minorities support the AG and the North remains as uninvolved as they were, and even tries to reach out, rather than attack, the AG with Balewa, and the Northern leaders loathe the dangerous (for their region) precedent of freeing the minorities and creating a new state, the East can agitate from now until the month of Foreverary, nothing will happen.

The movements for Ijaw, Tiv & Berom, etc. to leave were simply weak and just as importantly they could not get more than one of the three groups to support their movements (no doubt because of the NCNC-NPC alliance and their lack of connections). You keep talking about Igbos in the Eastern Igbos in NCNC but what you conveniently ignore is that if both the NPC and AG wanted to keep the Delta Igbo in the Western region (AG-NPC alliance) there is no amount of agitation on the part of any group that could have removed them. It's all about power, that's what I've been trying to get across. All you need is a majority of support (2 out of 3) or backing in the country and a majority of support of the populace of a breakaway region against the political power controlling the entire region. The Midwestern Movement was the ONLY minority movement which ever met both these criteria and it did so by the initiative of the actual populace in the Midwest, not through Eastern Igbo NCNC agitation.


The Delta Igbo were around 20% of 20%, that is, 4% of the Western region. I can't see they could have removed themselves or the East removed them without a direct deal with the AG (which would be playing right into the AG's hands) from the NCNC, which obviously didn't happen as it would have been an enormous tactical mistake. So for the East to get the Delta Igbos out of the Western region they were directly dependent on the non-Igbo majority opposing the AG, which that non-Igbo majority did with no impetus from the East. You've basically flipped things on their head here. What I have been trying to get across is that Igbos in the East could not directly make the non-Igbo majority oppose the AG and align with the supposed "Igbo party" (NCNC). The AG had to do that themselves through mismanagement and chauvinism and the minorities had to align themselves correctly by choosing to align with the East, choosing to align with the North and also being resolute about what they wanted when they could have chosen not to (for some of the dubious and lousy reasons I mentioned earlier, or through bribery, as Isaac Boro alleges resulted in some elements in the Niger Delta Congress deciding to kill their own movement and go with NCNC) and/or could also have just developed a rather weak movement (not even able to capture up to 50% of support in their own region, like the UMBC and COR movements), leading to the death of the movement and the consequent irrelevance of the Delta Igbo or Eastern Igbo agitations.

If the Eastern Igbo NCNC had reached out to the North from the Start and simply started a direct two pronged attack on the integrity of the Western region (without even bringing up that it was for some hidden motive of uniting Igboland), by just pointing out that the non-Yoruba area of the Midwest was dissatisfied, and should be granted autonomy, and therefore causing the issue to go to referendum, I would definitely have agreed with the plausibility of the conjectures being thrown around here from the start, but that is not what actually happened. This should not be so difficult to understand.

^--- Looks like he is being blocked from posting again

Yeah. I had more responses. Also meant to say "NCNC-AG alliance rather than an NPC-NCNC alliance that the Midwestern region would not have come about" above.

What is there (about midwest creation) for the NCNC that it cannot get any other way? 

If NPC and AG had both opposed it, or the AG opposed it and the NPC was "neutral," Midwest creation would not even have been brought up at conferences, etc. and there would have been no way the NCNC alone could have made a referendum happen.  I hope this is clear.

What is that special interest by the NCNC to split the west, when they resolutely rejected the same thing in the East, and the north rejected same in the north?

Remember that these parties understood that Nigeria should not be splitting up into states. Zik called it balkanization. NCNC, AG and NPC all hated it!

Was it just a power show? I strongly doubt that!
Never forget that NCNC was very sensitive about appearing tribalistic. That party valued its national outlook, thanks to Zik and his fierce Nigerianism.

No. This is just incorrect. AG very strongly supported balkanizing the East and North. NCNC supported balkanizing the North and West. North supported balkanizing the East and West but with less passion. Balewa realized that support for something like the Midwest set a dangerous precedent that could balkanize the united North so he didn't really like the idea. The Sardauna was more calculating however and knew they could balkanize the West while still retaining a hold on the Middle Belt. It was about splitting each section and gaining more adherents,/supporters/allies to each group's political party OR simply weakening the other group's political party and its hold on other areas OR allowing your region to be split only as long as every other region was. Otherwise you were the weaker for it (think about Awolowo losing Benin tax monies used to develop Ibadan and Ijebu or Eastern Igbos in Enugu losing Port Harcourt or Northerners losing Middle Belt agricultural lands).

As for Zik with regard to state creation in the East. He actually had rather liberal views about balkanization and was willing to accept it under certain (much more difficult to achieve) conditions that made the resulting balkanization not just about an anti-Igbo agenda:

(from the same book above, p. 137)

During the general election campaign of 1957 the NCNC proposed the creation of three states in the East as part of a 14-state plan for Nigeria as a whole. The People's Mandate (NCNC Manifesto), March 1957, p.21. In a broadcast on the eve of the election, Dr. Azikiwe explained the opposition of his party to the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers State proposal and made this statement: "The right of the people of former Calabar, Ogoja, and Rivers Provinces to determine their political future is conceded. It is for them to decide whether they should form a separate state or whether they should be merged with other states; but we frown upon any idea which will lump them together so as to create minority problems where they have not previously existed. For this reason we hold that if the people of former Calabar Province desire to form a separate state we shall support them, and if the people of former Ogoja Province will prefer to form a separate state we shall support them also. The same holds in good respect of the people of former Rivers Province."

^^

You still did not provide any new information to counter[b] Obiagu1[/b]'s claim. If the NCNC was opposed to the creation of midwest, would it have been created? NO.

Zik was arguably Nigeria's best NATIONAL leader at the time and all you did was provide evidence that he had conceded creation of some states under STRICT conditions. If he was not Zik, he would have opposed it everywhere in Nigeria. Yes, Zik was liberal (to a fault if you ask me). On this issue, Sarduana was more resolute in his defence of a united north. He understood the dangers of conceding it under any circumstance.

Igbo agitation (mind you that Igbo elements held sway in NCNC leadership) must be the ONLY REAL impetus (the "what is in it for me" that led to Midwest being created. As you rightly pointed out, if NCNC was in alliance with AG, the Midwest would not have been created, since Igbos would not worry about a "Yoruba control of Igboland".

I also speculate that the whole Igbo agitation must have been a result of the carpet crossing incident, remember the Yoruba fear of "Igboman controlling Yorubaland". Nothing really gets done politically in Nigeria unless majority interest is somehow involved. That is a historical fact which I don't want to spam this site with.

I've been trying to respond to this thread for a while now but it just keeps deleting my responses.

In fact I never even finished responding to that last post of yours @ Onlytruth. I just got frustrated and said screw it after it banned me for posting "spam"  when I posted a response of not more than 4 lines! The spamblocker system is messing up. I might have to answer in increments.

summation of the situation

Muslim north = northerner

Christian North = middlebelter

Onlytruth:

^^

You still did not provide any new information to counter[b] Obiagu1[/b]'s claim. If the NCNC was opposed to the creation of midwest, would it have been created? NO.

I never said anything to the contrary! I never said the Midwest would have been created without the NCNC. That is NOT what this discussion was about.

That was not his claim. First he claimed that Eastern NCNC Igbo agitation was the reason for the Midwest being created. There's a world of difference between making the claim he made and making the claim that it was necessary for two out of the three major political groups joining to support a state being formed from a region. I mentioned the latter in my very first post in this thread. What you and initially, him, didn't seem to grasp is that, if for some bizarre reason, AG supported the creation of the Midwest (if they were suddenly honest and empathetic towards those they were previously discriminating against, for an example of how that could somehow come about) and minorities reached out to NPC and got them to support it, then the NCNC's opposition to it would have been irrelevant and the Midwest would have been created. The point of this argument is that there was NOTHING about the NCNC, or the phantom agitations ascribed to some of its Eastern Igbo members, that was particularly special such that the Midwestern state could be created either solely from, or only because of, or mainly from these "agitations."

What I have been demonstrating, and what you guys seem not to grasp is that[b] if the actual populace was not opposed to AG and did not join NCNC, then there could have been no reason for the Midwest being created. It's that simple[/b] and I've provided a wealth of evidence to show that. If they don't go NCNC, there's not even an issue and NPC doesn't even get involved anyways. How hard is that to grasp? So Eastern NCNC Igbo, apart from there being absolutely no proof that they were actually agitating, played a much more dependent role in bringing Delta Igbo out of the West because if the non-Igbo in the West suddenly decided they wanted to be loyal to AG or they just decided to give up and accept their fate or refused to align with NCNC, the game would be up. The only other way would be if Delta Igbo, Eastern NCNC Igbos, and AG negotiated in the background to transfer territory from one region to another quietly.  

The reason for Delta Igbo getting out of Yoruba control then, is AG mismanagement and chauvinism combined with the minorities ability to build a successful movement. Why? Because the minute either of these things fails to occur, Delta Igbo cannot get out of the West (and he (Obiagu1) even implied that the Midwest was the reason the Delta Igbo were "grouped with the minorities", completely oblivious to the fact that the colonials were responsible for that grouping in the early 1900s).

The use of the word "reason" for something is somewhat ambiguous as it does not distinguish between auxiliary and primary/necessary reasons but Obiagu1's argument has been to replace necessary reasons for events (majority of populace swayed to oppose regional government and align with opposition, lobbying of NPC support for state creation) with unproven (completely conjectural) auxiliary reasons (the supposed agitation for greater Igboland) that are actually dependent on the necessary reasons to achieve their goals and then call what was actually primary/necessary irrelevant (by distorting what the role of the minorities was in the state formation- "If the minorities had enough influence"- Obiagu1, as if anyone claimed they created the state out of their own national influence or power!)




Then you modified his claim

Onlytruth:


I think that what he is really saying is that the Igbo dominated NCNC, with its power sharing agreement with the NPC at the center, was in a position powerful enough to ensure that Midwest was created. If AG was in similar position, the midwest would not have been created. The East may even have been balkanized. So, I still maintain that Midwest was a compromise  of sort because NCNC would have even cut Igboland from Western region and joined it to East if they were not compromising. The minority agitations in Midwest was only a convenient support to the original goal -cut Igboland out of Yoruba control

and made it into the claim that the Eastern NCNC Igbo supporters who passed the motion supporting the referendum had ulterior, ethnic, motives for doing so. That's a completely different claim which I never even doubted the plausibility of. What I doubted was that there was in fact any "agitation" as originally mentioned by Obiagu1 because there was no evidence of such and then I corrected the bizarre notion he seemed to have that the NCNC could just breathe and through Igbo influence alone, get the Midwest created. In reality, Midwest state creation was even successfully held up by the AG,  until 1962.

Obviously for them to have these supposed ulterior motives as their main motivation for getting the Midwest created there would have had to have been some desire to so which may have manifested as agitation. But I doubted that there was agitation for that specific goal of removing Delta Igbo from the West, not that it would be possible to support something with ulterior goals or motives in mind. The idea that they supported the movement with ulterior goals in mind is too far within the realm of conjecture for me to even bother about agreeing or disagreeing with.  He even implied that C.C. Onoh, who was 12 years old when the Provinces containing the Delta Igbo went to the West in 1939, claimed he was part of a group of protesters when "Igboland was split" to no avail. "To no avail"? Comedy. Obviously this protest, so lacking in seriousness or importance that it even included random 12 year old children, if it happened, was much later and not "when" the "split" occurred, but more to the point, we should note that these protests were to no avail: why would anybody listen to the East alone about what should or should not compose the West?

And do you somehow not realize that if somebody states that some group is "agitating" for something and that their "anger" caused something to come about and even mentions a specific supposed protest as proof of this agitation, that nobody in this world or the next would ever take that to mean that that person is stating that that group had covert plans to ride on the back of some other not-yet-successful and completely uncontrollable (by the "agitating" group) movement. These are just two completely different claims/statements. If the latter is what you want to talk about, then you don't even understand what I was arguing against. I have no qualms with the plausibility of the latter but it rests on paper-thin conjecture so I would not even care to agree or disagree as there is not evidence to be debated.  I should also point out, if I haven't already, that as NCNC members these Eastern Igbo NCNC had much to gain from the balkanization of the West, weakening of the AG and the gain of new political supporters WITHOUT consideration of whether they could unite Delta Igbo with Eastern Igbo. Yorubas in AG had no possible groups to unite to Yorubaland from the East but were steadfast in support of fracturing the East and from that they gained political supporters among the minorities. Similarly with the North and the East had the same drive to fracture the other regions.

What you, and Obiagu1 have completely failed at all points, to ever offer even the slightest evidence against is the fact that without the minorities agitation, without the moves they made, there could have been no Midwest. The movement could have completely failed like that of the Ijaw, Calabar, Middle Belters, etc. ! That directly flies in the face of the claim that obscure agitations known to nobody in some quiet cabal somewhere in the East were the real impetus, or the only real reason for that being brought about.

(The impetus for the event in this case is not "what's in it for me"  on the part of the Eastern NCNC Igbos (and by the way I even already pointed out that there was something in it for them regardless of Delta Igbos being united with East because they would still weaken the West and strengthen the number of political supporters their party had.), the impetus (in your words) or the reason for (in Obiagu1's words) for something is what makes it occur. You can't replace an actual impetus (AG misgovernment, minority alignment with the opposition, winning over the majority of the populace away form the AG) with a possible (not proven) auxiliary, or possible supporting motivation that is still dependent on the actual impetus to cause anything to occur and start calling that auxiliary thing the impetus, or reason for something occurring, and then call the true impetus "only a convenient support."


On a related note,

What's funny here is how you emphasize Zik's non-ethnic based Nigerianness (born in the North, spoke Yoruba,Hausa, etc.,  associate of T.O.S Benson, mentored by Herbert Macaulay, etc.,etc.,) and Nigerian patriotism and pan-Africanism but don't seem to see how implying that the leader of the party (N.C.N.C.) was secretly pursuing an ethnic agenda (and let's not build up further conspiracy and conjecture here and say that this mysterious agitating Eastern Igbo NCNC cabal managed to exclude Zik, plan around him, and then trick Zik into supporting their hidden agenda) as his ONLY REAL impetus for supporting state creation rather than the obvious and clear-cut gains of political victory  is a direct and complete contradiction . If we are to go down this road of conjecturing and guessing about supporting motivations, I would even wager that the prospect of delivering a massive blow to the strength of the AG, fracturing the region of a political rival and enemy (Awolowo) while he sat helplessly by and watched, weakening one's ethnocentric political rivals (Yoruba AG) and making them bear the necessary negative consequences of the kind of mentality that (may have) lead to their 1951 move against Azikiwe would even have been more attractive and important a supporting motivation to NCNC leaders, including Azikiwe, than any supposed desire to create a greater Igboland and unite all Igbo areas under Eastern rule.

Onlytruth:



Zik was arguably Nigeria's best NATIONAL leader at the time and all you did was provide evidence that he had conceded creation of some states under STRICT conditions. If he was not Zik, he would have opposed it everywhere in Nigeria. Yes, Zik was liberal (to a fault if you ask me). On this issue, Sarduana was more resolute in his defence of a united north. He understood the dangers of conceding it under any circumstance.

Zik doesn't explicitly state so or even admit that the NCNC opposition is about the COR state not having an anti-Igbo agenda but note that what preceded (what he said in that book I quoted) is basically political doublespeak (quite similar to Awolowo concerning his supposed "support" for the Midwest state) and makes very little actual sense since the condition for the release of the minorities has the arbitrary (irrelevant to the resolution of the main minority-majority problem) requirement that each minority state must be formed independently rather than all at once into one mega state (which could certainly just break up later if there were "minority problems" and ignores the fact that even if these not yet extant "minority problems" were to be created, in the Eastern region there was [color=#990000]currently a "majority-minority problem" when one had not previously existed[/color]) which just so happens to "arbitrarily" exclude most Eastern Igbos, hence the reason for the (reasonable) interpretation of Azikiwe's statement given by the author of that book (the author interprets the NCNC opposition as basically being founded on accusing the breakaway minorities of only calling for separation out of anti-Igbo sentiment; it should be noted that being anti-majority group is not necessarily the same as having an inherent dislike for a whole ethnicity and culture. This can clearly be seen by the fact that when Igbos were seen by the neighboring peoples as fellow minorities, such as the Ikwerre, Ekpeye, Ndoni, etc. they were in no way discriminated against or asked not to be in the new proposed states (Rivers or COR). Basically the NCNC completely misread the situation. It wasn't truly an anti-Igbo agenda, it was anti-majority/anti-domination. However, the NCNC Eastern Igbo would not even have been in a position to understand, so they can't even be blamed for "not getting it"


As for the Ahmadu Bello, he was an anti-Southern feudalist. He did not want a situation where the educationally advantaged Southerners took over the North (consider as his comment about "Northerners first, then Expatriates (British, Indians, etc.), then other (Southern) Nigerians" when filling positions in the Northern region) and even sent Balewa ("I bring a message from the Sardauna. . . to those in the South who think that they would dominate the politics of this country . . . especially the Igbos . . . who come as invaders . . .etc.etc." to say so. he realized that to check Southern economic, social, and political domination he had to have the North dominate the politics of the country and to do so he would need a large population. Even though the census figures were no doubt distorted, the fact was, actually having the Middle Belt be counted as part of the North gave the North more seats, more representation as a political unit than it could possibly have had otherwise, and once it lost NPC dominance in the Middle Belt areas, it would lose out to the West and the East and was not merely finished politically, but more importantly, it was finished economically, socially, financially, developmentally, and would have been unable to ever taste power again off of merit, being so far behind the whole country.

Onlytruth:



Zik was arguably Nigeria's best NATIONAL leader at the time and all you did was provide evidence that he had conceded creation of some states under STRICT conditions. If he was not Zik, he would have opposed it everywhere in Nigeria. Yes, Zik was liberal (to a fault if you ask me). On this issue, Sarduana was more resolute in his defence of a united north. He understood the dangers of conceding it under any circumstance.

I would have liked to think Zik was looking out for other people’s interests as well, but on further examination of the statement, I see why the author of that book (R. Sklar) claimed that opposition to the realization of the COR state by the NCNC was due to their perception of the COR state movement as being based only on anti-Igbo sentiment.
Zik doesn't explicitly state so or even admit that the NCNC opposition is about the COR state not having an anti-Igbo agenda but note that what preceded (what he said in that book I quoted) is basically political doublespeak (somewhat like Awolowo concerning his supposed "support" for the Midwest state) and doesn’t make much sense since the condition for the release of the minorities (creation of COR) has the arbitrary (irrelevant to the resolution of the main minority-majority problem, that is) requirement that each minority state must be formed independently rather than all at once into one mega state, a state which just so happens to "arbitrarily" exclude most Eastern Igbos, hence the reason for the (reasonable) interpretation of Azikiwe's statement given by the author of that book (the author interprets the NCNC opposition as basically being founded on accusing the breakaway minorities of only calling for separation out of anti-Igbo sentiment.

Furthermore the state could break up later if there were "minority problems" and Zik’s statement ignores the fact that even if these not yet extant "minority problems" were to be created, in the Eastern region there was currently a "majority-minority problem" when one had not previously existed . It should be noted that being anti-majority group is not necessarily the same as having an inherent dislike for a whole ethnicity and culture. This can clearly be seen by the fact that when Igbos were seen by the neighboring peoples as fellow minorities, such as the Ikwerre, Ekpeye, Ndoni, etc. they were in no way discriminated against or asked not to be in the new proposed states (Rivers or COR). Basically the NCNC completely misread the situation. It wasn't truly an anti-Igbo agenda, it was anti-majority/anti-domination. However, the NCNC Eastern Igbo would not even have been in a position to understand, so they can't even be blamed for "not getting it."


As for Ahmadu Bello, he was an anti-Southern feudalist. He did not want a situation where the educationally advantaged Southerners took over the North (consider as his comment about "Northerners first, then Expatriates (British, Indians, etc.), then other (Southern) Nigerians" when filling positions in the Northern region) and even sent Balewa ("I bring a message from the Sardauna. . . to those in the South who think that they would dominate the politics of this country . . . especially the Igbos . . . who come as invaders . . .etc.etc." to say so.
The Sardauna realized that to check Southern economic, social, and political domination he had to have the North dominate the politics of the country and to do so he would need a large population. Even though the census figures were no doubt distorted, the fact was, actually having the Middle Belt be counted as part of the North gave the North more seats, more representation as a political unit than it could possibly have had otherwise, and once it lost NPC dominance in the Middle Belt areas, it would lose out to the West and the East and was not merely finished politically, but more importantly, it was finished economically, socially, financially, developmentally, and would have been unable to ever taste power again off of merit, being so far behind the whole country in so many areas. For the North the dangers were real, and from the perspective of Northerners these dangers may have outweighed the importance of the Middle Belters having a voice or more autonomy, but I don't think that this example can be extended to the East.

Goddamn spambuster.

Onlytruth:



Zik was arguably Nigeria's best NATIONAL leader at the time and all you did was provide evidence that he had conceded creation of some states under STRICT conditions. If he was not Zik, he would have opposed it everywhere in Nigeria. Yes, Zik was liberal (to a fault if you ask me). On this issue, Sarduana was more resolute in his defence of a united north. He understood the dangers of conceding it under any circumstance.

I would have liked to think Zik was looking out for other people’s interests as well, but on further examination of the statement, I see why the author of that book (R. Sklar) claimed that opposition to the realization of the COR state by the NCNC was due to their perception of the COR state movement as being based only on anti-Igbo sentiment.
Zik doesn't explicitly state so or even admit that the NCNC opposition is about the COR state not having an anti-Igbo agenda but note that what preceded (what he said in that book I quoted) is basically political doublespeak (somewhat like Awolowo concerning his supposed "support" for the Midwest state) and doesn’t make much sense since the condition for the release of the minorities (creation of COR) has the arbitrary (irrelevant to the resolution of the main minority-majority problem, that is) requirement that each minority state must be formed independently rather than all at once into one mega state, a state which just so happens to "arbitrarily" exclude most Eastern Igbos, hence the reason for the (reasonable) interpretation of Azikiwe's statement given by the author of that book (the author interprets the NCNC opposition as basically being founded on accusing the breakaway minorities of only calling for separation out of anti-Igbo sentiment.

Furthermore the state could break up later if there were "minority problems" and Zik’s statement ignores the fact that even if these not yet extant "minority problems" were to be created, in the Eastern region there was currently a "majority-minority problem" when one had not previously existed . It should be noted that being anti-majority group is not necessarily the same as having an inherent dislike for a whole ethnicity and culture. This can clearly be seen by the fact that when Igbos were seen by the neighboring peoples as fellow minorities, such as the Ikwerre, Ekpeye, Ndoni, etc. they were in no way discriminated against or asked not to be in the new proposed states (Rivers or COR). Basically the NCNC completely misread the situation. It wasn't truly an anti-Igbo agenda, it was anti-majority/anti-domination. However, the NCNC Eastern Igbo would not even have been in a position to understand, so they can't even be blamed for "not getting it."

Onlytruth:



Zik was arguably Nigeria's best NATIONAL leader at the time and all you did was provide evidence that he had conceded creation of some states under STRICT conditions. If he was not Zik, he would have opposed it everywhere in Nigeria. Yes, Zik was liberal (to a fault if you ask me). On this issue, Sarduana was more resolute in his defence of a united north. He understood the dangers of conceding it under any circumstance.

I would have liked to think Zik was looking out for other people’s interests as well, but on further examination of the statement, I see why the author of that book (R. Sklar) claimed that opposition to the realization of the COR state by the NCNC was due to their perception of the COR state movement as being based only on anti-Igbo sentiment.

Zik doesn't explicitly state so or even admit that the NCNC opposition is about the COR state not having an anti-Igbo agenda but note that what preceded (what he said in that book I quoted) is basically political doublespeak (somewhat like Awolowo concerning his supposed "support" for the Midwest state) and doesn’t make much sense since the condition for the release of the minorities (creation of COR) has the arbitrary (irrelevant to the resolution of the main minority-majority problem, that is) requirement that each minority state must be formed independently rather than all at once into one mega state, a state which just so happens to "arbitrarily" exclude most Eastern Igbos, hence the reason for the (reasonable) interpretation of Azikiwe's statement given by the author of that book (the author interprets the NCNC opposition as basically being founded on accusing the breakaway minorities of only calling for separation out of anti-Igbo sentiment.

PhysicsMHD:

I would have liked to think Zik was looking out for other people’s interests as well, but on further examination of the statement, I see why the author of that book (R. Sklar) claimed that opposition to the realization of the COR state by the NCNC was due to their perception of the COR state movement as being based only on anti-Igbo sentiment.

You keep contradicting yourself with more and more evidence. Notice that I had since stopped debating you on this topic because you failed to see that without Eastern Igbo support (which Obiagu1 presented as being motivated by a feeling from certain Igbo elements in the East ) the Midwest would NOT have been created because the AG was firmly against it. The NPC was in national alliance with NCNC, hence they supported it as well. I doubt they would have done so on their own knowing the effect it could have on northern minority agitations. You have to wonder why NCNC supported it. The party didn't have to.

You talked about NCNC as if only Zik determined what happened in the party. I don't believe it was so, knowing how republican Igbos can be.

Let's allow ourselves to disagree on this topic and leave this thread for Middlebelters because I think it is unfair to hijack their thread.

Look Onlytruth, I NEVER said  the Midwest would have come about without Eastern NCNC Igbos supporting it so you're going to have to stop distorting my position on this. That the Midwest would not have been possible  without Eastern NCNC Igbo supporting it was  NEVER Obiagu1's  original  claim that I argued against, so if you're honest, you will  stop portraying your agreeable modification of his claim, as what I was arguing against.

He specifically  claimed that Eastern NCNC Igbos actualized the creation of the Midwest somehow off of majority population  agitation and influence, while  the minorities  could not be responsible for bringing  it about because  they had no influence,  To this end he kept constructing the most ludicrous argument about how since Igbo. Hausa, and Yoruba had the most influence, Igbos must have done it just off of influence, and since the other minority movements failed it can be inferred that it was because of their lack of influence as minorities,  which is patently false  and nonsensical  because NO MINORITY GROUP  OR GROUPS TRIED TO GET STATE CREATION ACTUALIZED OFF OF THEIR OWN POWER OR INFLUENCE SO THIS IS IRRELEVANT AND ILLOGICAL AS A LINE OF ARGUMENT, FURTHERMORE THE EASTERN IGBO NCNC WAS COMPLETELY INCAPABLE OF MAKING THE AG HAVE TO RUN A REFERENDUM JUST BY THEMSELVES, AND EASTERN NCNC IGBOS WERE COMPLETELY DEPENDENT, IN GETTING DELTA IGBO OUT OF THE WEST, ON WHAT THE MINORITIES IN THE WEST DECIDED TO DO. How hard is that to understand?

His original  claim was unfactual and illogical and DapoBear cornered him about this and when he refused to concede that his argument was illogical  but instead kept bringing up points that did not prove his argument logically, DapoBear completely gave up trying to reason with him and just decided to “agree to disagree.” THEN, you came along and completely modified his argument into something reasonable, which DapoBear immediately agreed with and didn't argue against (“I see. I'm starting to have a good sense of Nigerian history . . . etc.”- DapoBear, the minute you modified Obiagu1's claim) and  which I NEVER opposed or offered any contradiction towards.

When I even pointed out that this “agitation” that supposedly lead Eastern Igbo NCNC to just actualize the Midwest off of their majority population had no evidence to support it, I don't see how you can interpret that as my opposition to the idea that the Eastern Igbo NCNC may have had ulterior motives for supporting a movement they were completely dependent on (that they WERE  completely dependent on that minority movement to get Delta Igbo out of the West is what Obiagu1 didn't initially seem to grasp, among other things)). What you are now calling Obiagu1's claim is simply something I NEVER voiced any opposition to!

Secondly, what you are stating with regards to the NPC-NCNC thing is an ABSOLUTE falsehood. The North absolutely did not get involved and did not want to get involved, until Okotie-Eboh convinced Ahmadu Bello and Alhaji Ribadu and then overcame Balewa's  resistance. Yes  Okotie-Eboh is NCNC but NOT Eastern Igbo NCNC, rather minority NCNC, so you cannot claim Eastern Igbo NCNC somehow obtained NPC support merely because of their power sharing agreement (not “alliance”. When I mentioned alliance before I mean they allied  to force the West to run a referendum, that was their alliance). So the Northerners DID NOT choose to get involved simply because of Eastern Igbo NCNC's supported the Midwest Movement and NCNC was in a power sharing agreement with the NPC so  NPC somehow felt obligated to follow along.

There is  no way that the Eastern Igbo NCNC's could be credited for getting the North involved unless  they ever reached out to Northerners to coordinate a two-pronged attack on the integrity of the West just off of their own initiative. Instead they did not and that is why I said that if they had, then I would not even have argued with Obiagu1 about the plausibility of part of his original conjecture.

He was also even unaware that a two-pronged attack was completely necessary to bring about the creation of the Midwest and THAT is part of why I was disputing Obiagu1's claim that the Eastern Igbo NCNC got the Midwest created off of their own influence and power. Once again, I was never involved in any dispute about what their possible  motives were for supporting the Midwest referendum, because  that is something completely within the realm of speculation and something I never set out to agree or disagree with.

With regard to Azikiwe and state creation in the East, no no no, I was  NOT providing evidence that contradicts myself, rather this deranged spam blocker deleted three out of my last  5 posts but not in order and so it left some middle  parts of what I was going to say in tact but completely deleted the beginning and end posts of my statement on the issue.

The one post  in my series  of posts about the NCNC's position on state creation that the spam blocker didn't delete was about how the COR state creation was not an anti-Igbo agenda but an anti-majority domination agenda, and that was in the middle of the posts. The posts have reappeared now, but they're not arranged properly so I will repost them at the end of this post.

With regard to Zik and the NCNC, they were very STRONGLY opposed not just to the COR state, but to the Rivers state (contrary to Azikiwe's claim in that statement) and  far from conceding the right of the various former Provinces to determine  their future , the NCNC, under Zik's leadership WAS DIRECTLY HOLDING IT UP BY ADOPTING FOR THE PARTY AN ANTI-STATE CREATION STANCE AND PRO-UNITED EAST STANCE AND USING AS THEIR REASON FOR DOING SO THAT THE COR STATE CREATION WOULD LEAD TO SOME (NOT EVEN EXISTENT YET) PROBLEMS BETWEEN THE MINORITY GROUPS, WHEN THE WHOLE PURPOSE OF CREATING THE STATE WAS TO RESOLVE THE CURRENT PROBLEM OF THE MINORITY GROUPS WITH THE MAJORITY GROUP.

Now let's see what I originally  was trying to post about Zik and Bello, in short, separate parts before the spam blocker went haywire:

Onlytruth:



Zik was arguably Nigeria's best NATIONAL leader at the time and all you did was provide evidence that he had conceded creation of some states under STRICT conditions. If he was not Zik, he would have opposed it everywhere in Nigeria. Yes, Zik was liberal (to a fault if you ask me). On this issue, Sarduana was more resolute in his defence of a united north. He understood the dangers of conceding it under any circumstance.

I would have liked to think Zik was looking out for other people’s interests as well, but on further examination of the statement, I see why the author of that book (R. Sklar) claimed that opposition to the realization of the COR state by the NCNC was due to their perception of the COR state movement as being based only on anti-Igbo sentiment.

Zik doesn't explicitly state so or even admit that the NCNC opposition is about the COR state not having an anti-Igbo agenda but note that what preceded (what he said in that book I quoted) is completely political doublespeak . It is completely  identical to  Awolowo's tactics concerning his supposed "support" for the Midwest state, and his  tactics to hold up the state creation until it was composed in such a way that was agreeable  to AG interests and did not create a situation where alleged “Benin Hegemony” problems would be created in the proposed new state, where no “Benin Hegemony” problem had previously existed while under the Western region government. Is that clearer? Just as there was currently a Yoruba (majority) and non-Yoruba (minority) problem and AG tried to dodge resolving this problem by claiming that new problems would be created out of the Midwest state  unless the new state met AG requirements of what should compose the state, Azikiwe/NCNC did the EXACT SAME THING with regard to COR.

Azikiwe's statement particularly  doesn’t make much sense  since the condition for the release of the minorities (creation of COR) has the arbitrary (COMPLETELY irrelevant to the resolution of the main minority-majority problem, that is) requirement that each minority state must be formed independently rather than all at once into one mega state, a state (COR STATE) which just so happens to "arbitrarily" (that is, intentionally) exclude most Eastern Igbos. The statement only means that as long as the state created out of the Eastern region is not created just to exclude the Igbo majority, the NCNC would support it. However, whether the state does or does not exist just to exclude the Igbo majority is completely irrelevant to whether or not such a state would resolve the majority-minority problem and give the minorities greater power to determine their own future. Hence the reason for the (reasonable) interpretation of Azikiwe's  statement given by the author of that book (the author interprets the NCNC opposition as basically being founded on accusing the breakaway minorities of only calling for separation out of anti-Igbo sentiment and uses Azikiwe's  quote as supporting evidence of a general perspective.)

Furthermore the state could break up later if there were "minority problems" and Zik’s statement ignores the fact that even if these not yet extant "minority problems" were to be created, in the Eastern region there was currently a "majority-minority problem" when one had not previously existed . It should be noted that being anti-majority group is not necessarily the same as having an inherent dislike for a whole ethnicity and culture. This can clearly be seen by the fact that when Igbos were seen by the neighboring peoples as fellow minorities, such as the Ikwerre, Ekpeye, Ndoni, etc. they were in no way discriminated against or asked not to be in the new proposed states (Rivers or COR). Basically the NCNC completely misread the situation. It wasn't truly an anti-Igbo agenda, it was anti-majority/anti-domination. However, the NCNC Eastern Igbo, who composed this majority, would not even have been in a position to understand, so they can't even be blamed for "not getting it."


As for Ahmadu Bello, he was an anti-Southern feudal lord desperate to consolidate the the future prosperity of the North  as against  (and not merely in harmony with). that of the South  He did not want a situation where the educationally advantaged Southerners took over the North (hence his comment about "Northerners first, then Expatriates (British), then other (Southern) Nigerians" when filling positions in the Northern region) and even sent Balewa ("I bring a message from the Sardauna. . . to those in the South who think that they would dominate the politics of this country . . . especially the Igbos . . . who come not as visitors but as invaders . . .etc.etc."- Tafawa Balewa, 1947) to say exactly that to Southern politicians' faces.


“This New Nation called Nigeria, should be an estate of our great grandfather, Uthman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities in the North as willing tools, and the South, as conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us, and never allow them to have control over their future.”  ---Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto in THE PARROT of October 12, 1960



“The conquest to the sea is now in sight. When our god-sent Ahmadu Bello said some years ago that our conquest will reach the sea shores of Nigeria, some idiots in the South were doubting its possibilities. Today have we not reached the sea? Lagos is reached. It remains Port-Harcourt. It must be conquered and taken.”  --- Mallam Bala Garuba in WEST AFRICAN PILOT, December 30, 1964.


The Sardauna realized that to check Southern economic, social, and political domination he had to have the North dominate the politics of the country and to do so he would need to keep a large population and stay as the original North and not a fractured North with part of the original North vulnerable to Southern influence. Even though the census figures were probably distorted, the fact was, actually having the Middle Belt be counted as part of the North gave the North more seats, more representation as a political unit than it could possibly have had otherwise, and once it lost NPC dominance in the Middle Belt areas, it would lose  out to the West and the East and was not merely finished politically, but more importantly, it was finished economically, socially, financially, developmentally, and would have been unable to ever taste power again  off of merit, being so far  behind the whole country in so many areas.

For the North the dangers were real, and from the perspective of Northerners these dangers  heavily outweighed the importance of the Middle Belters having a voice or more autonomy, but this example cannot be extended to the East unless one wants to portray the Eastern Igbo NCNC leadership as equivalent to the Notherners- acting only out of their own selfish interest and denying others the right to self-determination for personal gain of power. You probably didn't realize it but that is NOT a comparison you want to make because it indicts the Eastern Igbo NCNC leadership of raw opportunism. You do NOT want to imply that they were trying to create a strong East  at the expense of the voice of the minorities  because the only danger facing the Eastern Igbo NCNC leadership was loss of political  and economic power with the ceding of the minority area, so their decision  not to resolve the majority-minority problem in the East would be as a result of not wanting to lose power. That isn't something that I would argue the Eastern Igbo NCNC leadership should do, but it's exactly what one would argue that they should do if one states that the East should have followed the Sardauna's example.  Rather I would argue that their real motivation was not desire to retain power but that they saw the necessity of a united, not fractured, progressive East somewhat like one would the necessity of a united Nigeria- as a very positive thing which was of far more importance than some people feeling they were being dominated and left out of determining their own future.


But we should agree to disagree because I fear you will  just completely twist my position and my whole argument into something it never was and we'll end up going in circles again.