By Malcolm Fabiya
The
occasion of the 100th anniversary of Frederick Lugard’s amalgamation
of the Northern and Southern protectorates of Nigeria has reopened discussions
about whether that action was a monumental error – one which has led to the
entrapment within the same country of ethnicities that would otherwise never
have been in union with one another. There is no question that the amalgamation
of 1914 was intended to benefit the British. Its goal was solely to reduce
colonial administration costs by consolidating the two civil service operations
of the Northern and Southern protectorates into one. Frederick Lugard, the
architect of the amalgamation was an unapologetic advocate of colonial grandeur
and a fervent believer in British Imperialism. Lugard served as a colonial
administrator in Nigeria, Hong Kong, and Uganda – spreading his imperialist
ideas and dutifully serving his Queen wherever he went. Like most of the
Colonial actors of that period, Lugard was insultingly paternalistic. In his
book the “The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa,” Lugard likened the
“virtues and defects of this race-type (Africans)” to those of “attractive
Children.” If there were any benefits that would accrue to the new Nigerians,
those gains would be merely incidental. To attempt to interpret Lugard’s action
in any other way will not be supported by the facts.
However,
the fact that the amalgamation was not instituted with the interest of
Nigerians at heart does not imply that there was nothing about amalgamation
that could benefit the inhabitants of the newly formed nation that became known
as Nigeria. Was there anything about the amalgamation of 1914 that
enhanced any movements towards unity that Nigerians were themselves already
working towards? Were there any attempts by the peoples of the lands now known
as Nigeria, to forge unions – through peaceful engagement or conquest – with
each other prior to Lugard’s actions? Nigeria made sense to the British
for the three primary reasons that motivate all expansionist conquests.
Firstly, the Nigerian nation offered lands that were rich in minerals, superbly
arable and fit for agriculture and animal husbandry; rivers and oceans that
teemed with aquatic bounties. Secondly, the Nigerian nation offered inland
waterways and unfettered access to seas that allowed for the movement of
persons and goods. Thirdly, Nigeria offered an abundance of hardworking and
enterprising people who would transform the factors of production with which
Nigeria was abundantly blessed, into products and services that could be
taxed.
The
North had ample land and mineral resources. Spanning three vegetation types –
the Sahel, Sudan and guinea savannah – the North’s lands could sustain a
diverse variety of crops. Grains, cereals, cotton and legumes could be farmed
in the Sahel and Sudan Savannah regions; Yams and fruit crops were especially
suited to the guinea savannah. The extensive grasslands of the North, and its
dry, low humidity climate were excellent for cattle rearing. The South
had land that was particularly suited to the farming of yams, cassava and oil
palms. Its forests offered an abundance of timber and jute, and its lands were
especially conducive to growing cash crops like Cocoa. The South also had an
abundance of coal – a fuel necessary for providing the energy to be used for
transportation and for production. While the North offered lands, minerals and
people, it had no access to the oceans. While the South had an abundant of
enterprising citizens, it did not have the diversity of lands and climes that
the North offered.
By
amalgamating the Northern and Southern protectorates, Lugard could consolidate
the disparate benefits that the two protectorates offered. By consolidating the
colonial civil service into one and reducing administrative costs, Lugard was
able to obtain what modern productivity experts would call synergies – benefits
that provide higher gains than would have been obtained by a simple addition of
the benefits offered by the sum of the parts. What Lugard and the British saw
in Nigeria over a century ago has not changed. If anything, in the intervening
century, Nigeria has become a much more viable proposition. It turns out that
the North does not only have Tin and Columbite, but its lands also contain
enormous reserves of Iron ore, Tantalite (the source of tantalum – a major
component of capacitors used in cell phones, laptops, DVD players, TV sets,
Medical equipment, etc.), Talc, Gypsum, Gold, Kaolin, Lead, Zinc, and
Gemstones. The South, it has since been discovered, has an abundance of Oil and
Gas, Bitumen and Gold, in addition to Coal. Apart from Oil and Gas, most of
these mineral resources remain largely untapped and underutilized. While it is
proper to credit Lugard with the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern
protectorates, it is wrong to ascribe to Lugard the original idea of Nigerian
unification. Long before Frederick Lugard stepped foot in Nigeria, Nigerians
had looked across the Twin Rivers – the Niger and Benue - and imagined the unification
of the tribes on either sides of the divide. Lugard was a century away from
setting foot in Nigeria when Dan Fodio launched a Jihad in 1804 which was aimed
amongst other things at extending Hausa Fulani hegemony across all of Nigeria.
About 400 years before the Dan Fodio Jihad of the 1800s, the Yoruba had
occupied Nupe in the heart of the Middle Belt in a wave of expansion of the Oyo
Empire. Yoruba mythology suggests that the deified Yoruba King Sango, son of
Oranmiyan, was born to a Nupe Princess.
While
the Igbo were historically a largely republican people, who spurned empire
building, their cultural and economic influence extended well beyond their
South Eastern enclave to reach the Southern extremities of Nigeria.
Like other Nigerian tribes, the Igbo also have a story of origin
that includes stories of migration from the Upper Egypt region of Northern
Africa. Ethnic admixture, cultural exchange, trans-border migrations of people
and products, has long been a part of the DNA of the people that inhabit the
land called Nigeria. All of these facts make a strong case that the original
idea for the possibility of interchange, admixture, and unity of the peoples of
the Nigerian nation was initiated historically, by Nigerians themselves –
sometimes through trade, but also by conquest.
Lugard’s
amalgamation therefore was no more than a convenient fast-tracking of a project
that Nigerians had themselves set in motion over 500 years earlier. By
the time of the amalgamation, Nigeria was probably well on its way to
unification through conquest by the Hausa Fulani. Dan Fodio’s Jihad had already
claimed all of the core North, and large swathes of the Nigerian middle Belt –
including Nupe land, Auchi in the Benin Empire; Ilorin, the Kogi highlands and
Old Oyo in the Oyo Empire. The truncation of that possible historical pathway
by the British implies that we will never know what Nigeria could have been,
had Dan Fodio’s army swept onwards to the Sea. We will also never know how far
the Igbo, the Yoruba, the Ijaw, the Nupe, and other groups would have gotten in
their quest to extend their reaches beyond their frontiers. To speak of the
amalgamation as the “accident of 1914” is to hold the view that there were no
plausible geopolitical considerations that could have led to the emergence of
the Nigerian nation in its present form. History is clear in its verdict that
Nigeria’s constituent nationalities have long had expansionist aims that would
have ultimately led to the unification of Nigeria.
Nigeria
was, and remains a viable proposition. Nigeria’s lands remain arable and
superbly fit for agriculture. Its inland and coastal waters offer rich
potential for aquaculture. Since Lugard’s time, its population has grown almost
tenfold from an estimated 17 million people in 1914 to about 160 million –
increasingly literate, and extremely creative, energetic and entrepreneurial
people. In the 100 years since Lugard’s amalgamation, the riches in Nigeria’s
earth and the numbers and dynamism of its people, have exploded. Its
potential is more immense, than Lugard could have ever imagined. Nigeria’s
tragedy is that its people, particularly its leaders, have not been able to
turn the potentials offered by the amalgamation of 1914 into enduring benefits.
The amalgamation brought Nigeria’s constituent nationalities into a melting pot
that was intended to distil its disparate peoples into one united country.
Nigerians have so far been unable to birth a more united nation out of the
crucible of amalgamation. That failure has nothing to do with Lugard, or with
the amalgamation. It is primarily a failure of Nigeria’s leaders – especially
the triumvirate that led Nigeria to independence. For all their brilliance and
erudition, none of those three – Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello and Azikiwe – can be
called a father of the nation. They did more for their tribes than they ever
did for Nigeria. They were all sadly incapable of forming a nation. At the end
of their two decade control of Nigeria’s politics from 1946 to 1966, these men
had managed to create a country whose inhabitants identified themselves first
as members of their regions and ethnicities, before they were citizens of
Nigeria. It must be conceded that the three leaders of the Nigerian nation
created fully functional and effective regional governments. The period of
their leadership of their various regions has been unrivalled since, in terms
of the real growth engendered in schools, public health facilities, public
infrastructure, and economic development.
As
Nigeria enters into its second centennial, the question that still lingers in
every mind is whether the Nigerian nation will make it. Will this marriage
survive? There are two answers to that question. If Nigeria continues along its
current path, where charlatans and ethnic jingoists jostle for power and place
their interests above that of the nation; Nigeria will die, if not a sudden
death, then a slow, painful death that will include bloodshed and internecine
strife. However, if leaders who are genuine in their intentions and nationalistic
in their outlook emerge, and find a way to win the confidence of the Nigerian
people, a strong and virile Nigeria will yet emerge.
The
challenge of nation building and the capacity to achieve true unity is best
exemplified by the South African nation and its timeless hero, Nelson Mandela.
The majority black and colored people of South Africa were victims of the
racist policy of Apartheid for most of the 20th century. It is easy
to forget that Nelson Mandela was sent to jail, for his fight against
Apartheid, and for his struggles on behalf of the black and colored people of
South Africa. After his release in 1990, Mandela began his service for South
Africa. He championed forgiveness as a national principle, and pushed for the
new South Africa to be racially inclusive – a true rainbow nation. Mandela
became a champion for the rights of the minority whites. It was not a popular
position to take, and there were many black South Africans who vilified him,
and accused him of selling out. The task of leadership is however not one that
always takes the path of public adulation and praise. The Mandela that was
jailed in 1963 was a leader of black South Africa. The Mandela that died in
December 2013 was the father of a rainbow nation. Nigeria needs leaders in the
mold of Mandela - selfless men and women of clear vision and strong will. Divided
as we might imagine ourselves to be, our differences pale in comparison with
nations like South Africa and the United States. We must learn from the
examples that those nations offer, how lessons from a painful past, can be used
to build a more perfect union. We might be Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Ijaw and
Ibibio – but we are all black and brown sons and daughters of Africa. We
have none of the racial complexities of nations like South Africa and the
United States. We might complain about the dominance by certain groups of our
national life, however, no Nigerian ethnicity has been systematically denied
its humanity and consigned to second class citizenship through laws and
policies instituted by the State.
In
the new world order in which we live, where global conflicts are no longer
ideological but based on religious cleavages and value systems, Nigeria more
than any other nation on earth, offers the world a natural social experiment
for how nations must address the new challenge of our times – the so called
“Clash of Civilizations.” With its near 50:50 split along religious lines, its
diversity of ethnicities and fledgling democracy, Nigeria is an object lesson
in nation building. The amalgamation of 1914 was no mistake. Here in Nigeria,
we have a unique opportunity to demonstrate the workability of the African
dream of unification. What other nation in all of Africa combines within its
polity, all of the contradictory factors that plagues modern day Africa.
Feudalism exists side by side with an emergent democratic culture. Superstition
and religious fatalism inhabits the same space with an emergent technological
modernization. The Nigerian state stacks Traditionalism versus modernism;
Community versus individualism. The Nigerian experiment is also the global
black experiment. Black people everywhere need a success story from the
continent. South Africa, despite its impressive technological and economic
returns cannot claim the pride of place that Nigeria occupies in the black
sub-conscious. The world is rooting for Nigeria to succeed. As the world’s
largest back nation, Nigeria’s fate – its progress or the lack thereof, will
determine not just how the nation is viewed, but how black people everywhere
are regarded.
As
we enter into our 2nd century as a nation, there are a number of
small gains that we can celebrate. Faulted as our democracy is, we have managed
not one, but two successful democratic transitions. We have shed blood for this
union in a brutal Civil War. We have demonstrated in Western Nigeria that Islam
and Christianity can survive and thrive in the same space – a lesson that the
world, and the rest of the country, would do well to learn. We have laid to
rest the myth that Nigerian leadership is not accessible to minority
ethnicities. We simply need to demonstrate that Nigeria’s leaders can work for
the good of all Nigerians, and to define for ourselves the terms under which
we, Nigeria’s peoples, will engage with one another. For one hundred years, we
have managed to move this socio-political experiment forward, even though it
has tottered on the brink of collapse at times. Faulted as the Nigerian
experiment is, it has blessed the world with poets, authors, jurists, doctors,
scientists, diplomats, athletes, footballers; it has brought an end to
fratricidal wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Darfur, Cote D’Ivoire and Congo, and
spear headed regional and continental growth. Nigeria can yet be salvaged. What
needs to be done is to address the structural faults that the union presently
has, and then to forge ahead with the urgent task of catching up with the rest
of a world that has continued to move ahead, in leaps and bounds.
