Revisiting
Nigeria's Political History
By Ben Lawrence
The generation of Nigerians who
made political history in the colonial days has fast dwindled. Hardly will
there be up to 10 of those pioneer members of the Nigerian houses of assembly
in 1952 still alive. Chief Safia L. Edu has recently died. Apart from Chief
Augustus M. A. Akinloye, Chief Theophilus O. S. Benson, Chief Anthony Enahoro,
Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Alhaji Ado Bayero, and a few others, there are hardly up
to 10 left of the men of that epoch in Nigeria.
The same
goes for young men and women who stuck their necks out to free this country
from colonial clutches. The painful thing is that many of them have died unsung
and unnoticed even by their peers. How will the present youths be patriotic
when nationalists before them passed away unnoticed because they were not wealthy?
Nigerians now worship unearned wealth.
A very
painful case is that of the death of Mr. Valentine Edobor-Osula, a former
national vice president of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ). The union
did not issue any condolence message nor did newspapers, radio and television
stations announce his obituary. Osula was not just a journalist; he was one of
the final year of King's College, Lagos, who were conscripted into the Royal
West African Frontier Force (RWAFF) to fight for the Union Jack for challenging
British injustice in 1944. He served in North Africa from where Allied General
Montgomery drove away German General Rommel (alias Desert Fox). There, Osula
passed his Senior Cambridge School Certificate in the trenches. Among those
conscripted with him were the late Justice Dapo Aderemi, the Ife prince;
Bendelite Joe Achuzia of Biafran fame, an Asaba prince; Professor Okonjo, an
Ogwashi-Ukwu prince who later became principal of Ibadan Boys' High School;
Sratt, the late Ayo Yon Dakolo and some other gallant pupils of that college.
One of the conscripted pupils, Okparanta, died during the campaigns in Burma.
Osula was
just 18 plus when the British authorities forced him to fight enemies he did
not make. Born into the Bini royal family, a handsome six-footer, he attended
Government School, Benin City, before he proceeded to King's College, his
father's alma mater, in October 1938.
On his
return from the war, he worked briefly with the Nigeria Customs Service before
he opted for a life in journalism, which suited his extroversive bearing and
literary flair. He worked with the Daily Times before he moved to Benin to be
the first organising secretary of the young Action Group party (AG) in 1952.
Even then, he was the correspondent of the Daily Service and he became the
pioneer modern newspapers' distributor there, his elder cousin, the late Chief
Alfred B. Osula, then the first Nigerian manager of the Daily Times, having
revolutionised newspaper marketing in this country in 1949. Osula later joined
the Western Nigeria Information Service at inception and became one of the
pioneer editorial staff of the first television station in Africa, WNBS/WNTV.
Apart from his tenure as public relations manager of the UAC of Nigeria, he
served all his active years in the press. He was one of the leading members of
the NUJ in those embryonic years and became its national vice president after
being chairman of the Mid West Council for years, succeeding Peter Modupe
Ayeni, former NUJ president and Johnson Rabor Newton Abaide, one of the best
newsmen Nigeria ever produced. As a sportsman, he was one of the leading
billiards players in Nigeria.
The story
of Osula is that of the chain of events that climaxed their draft to the Army,
one of which was the birth of the first nationwide political party in Nigeria.
Thanks to the irrepressible Rev. Israel O. Ransome-Kuti, who engineered the
protest against the conscription that led to the formation of the National
Council of Nigeria and the Camerouns (NCNC) in 1944. Rev. Ransome-Kuti, principal
of Abeokuta Grammar School, unleashed his boys, led by the late Chief Adewale
Fashanu, the late Chief Ogoegbunam Idise Dafe, Senator David Dafinone and
others on the Lagos authorities, joined by Baptist Academy, Lagos pupils led by
the late Chief Olu Akinfoshile. Most of them were in their teens but were
politically mature and articulate, as it was wont to be in those Zikist years.
The youths and labour, especially with the presence of Alhaji Haroun Popoola
Adebola (alias Horsepower), a former Abeokuta student leader among the workers,
led the organisation of a mass rally to denounce the King's College episode. It
was presided over by Dutse Mohammed, an Egyptian, Oxford Scholar and editor,
from whom Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe baught over the Daily Comet newspaper. There, Mr.
Herbert Heelas Macaulay (alias Wizard of Kinsten Hall) was elected president of
the new party and one Coker the general secretary. Coker declined and Zik was
unanimously asked to take over the position. Among Osula's schoolmates at K. C.
were Justice Ovie-Whiskey, Justice Adenekan Adetokunbo-Ademola, the late Chief
Abel Y. Eke, Professor Tiamiju Bello-Osagie, the late Layinka Akpata and others
who also rose to great heights in Nigeria. But Osula died with no comets seen
because he passed away at an ungrateful age in Nigerian's history, his
outstanding career, notwithstanding. Osula's story is being told to correct the
misinformation by some ignorant writers that the great Zik formed the NCNC. Zik
never, all through his illustrious and enviable life, made such a claim nor was
the NCNC an Igbo party. Give credit to the Yoruba for foresight. Even then in
1951, only a few NCNC members won election to the Eastern House of Assembly on
their party's ticket. In the old Calabar Province, for instance, the NCNC won
two out of 13 seats. The two went to Professor Eyo Ita and an ally in Calabar
Division, the famous Mazi Mbonu Ojike, NCNC top brass and deputy mayor of
Lagos, was beaten by Chief Ezerioha, an Independent, to whom with Chief
Kingsley O, Mbadiwe (alias K. O.) tactically tagged to win a seat in Orlu
Division. Reuben J. Uzoma, an Independent, also won from Orlu Division. So no
NCNC man was elected from there, although they all later cast their lot with
the party. In Onitsha, the hometown of Zik, the NCNC was floored. Justice Louis
Mbanefo, an Independent defeated NCNC candidate to the Eastern House and
subsequently to the Central House of Assembly. Most of the Eastern victors
swung to the NCNC to form the government because of the respect they had for
Professor Eyo Ita, founder of the West African People's Institute (WAPI)
Calabar, in the East. The Western Region was more politically organised on
party basis and general franchise. The NCNC and its supposed allies thought
they had 51 seats and that the Action Group and allies had 29 seats. But on
that day of judgement at the inauguration of the Western House, the Action
Group had 45 seats and the NCNC 35.
As for
the Northern People's Congress (NPC), it had not been formed as at the time of
the elections. The Northern Elements Progressives Union (NEPU) won all the
seats at the ward level. But at every stage during the Electoral College
progress, the Native Authority, teleguided by British interests, injected local
officials until those nominated outnumbered elected councillors. The British
authorities feared that the NCNC and NEPU constituted a "red danger"
and should be crushed. So in 1952 when the Northern House of Assembly was
inaugurated, no NEPU member got there, they all having been eliminated in the
electoral college process though they won the elections at the ward level in
the North. In the case of Western Nigeria, the people never yielded to being
cheated. In the 1954 first general elections to the federal house, the NCNC
defeated the AG with 23 seats to 18. It also overwhelmingly won in the East
even though it lost seats in Calabar Opobo Ngwa divisions. Dr. Jaja Wachukwu
returned as Independent candidate, having earlier left the NCNC with Eyo Ita,
Udo Udoma and others. Co-incidentally, Eyo Ita, the first Nigerian to lead
government business in the East, also led Biafra out of this country after the
1966 pogrom, literally speaking. He was a moral and political force. Udoma was
back in the federal parliament as a UNIP member. Dr. Okor Arikpo was defeated
in Ogoja; so also were Alfred Chukwu Nwapa, Professor Eni Njoku, all former
central ministers. The 1954 federal elections frightened White Hall because the
NCNC won two regions, which gave it six ministerial places. As the results from
the North were being awaited, the governor, Sir John Macpherson, was in panic
because he thought that if the NCNC could win just 30 seats more from there it
would overwhelmingly control the House of Representatives. So they used all
sorts of guile to ensure that it never happened. They had used the Nigerian
Citizen, a colonial newspaper in the North, to warn of the "Red
danger".
So in the
federal cabinet, there were six NCNC ministers to NPC's three. Yet, in 1957,
Sir James Robertson hoodwinked members to get Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to
be made prime minister in a carefully contrived grand coalition of all parties.
There were secret correspondences to the Colonial Office, plotting a merger of
the NPC and the AG, with the NPC producing the party leader and AG, the
parliamentary leader in 1953. But those British rulers underestimated the
progressive currents in the AG, like the leader, Chief Obafemi Awowolo, Chief
Anthony Enahoro and a few other politicians who had used the party merely as a
secure base to launch a more dynamic radical role of liberation. As the British
plotted, Enahoro had raised a private member's motion asking for
self-government, which the NCNC supported. The two parties proposed a merger
and formed an alliance in 1953. Still as that session was on, the AG played its
trump card; it said it was irrelevant in government in the West because the
lieutenant governor there reserved the executive rights. The AG threatened to
withdraw from the government and called its central ministers to resign. The NCNC
supported it but its central ministers defied their party and a constitutional
impasse arose with the NCNC and AG in the same boat. A motion was successfully
raised in the Eastern House by party loyalists to dissolve the house, with all
the ministers, except Dr. Michael Okpara, voting against it. It was dissolved.
The renegade NCNC central ministers lost their seats in the eventual election
because it was from there they were elected members of the Central House of
Assembly. Even though Eyo Ita, Jaja Wachukwu, Udo Udoma, Marcus Ubani Ukoma
Uzoma were re-elected, they went into opposition as UNIP. Most of the ministers
in the Eastern House, most of them former secondary school principals, except
Professor Eyo Ita, lost their seats. That was when the West African Pilot, in
sheer journalistic sarcasm, renamed Merchant of Light College, Oba, whose
proprietor and principal E. D. Oli was one of the dissenting ministers in the
East as Merchant of Darkness. The NCNC from thence largely controlled the East,
short of the old Calabar Province. That incident also set in motion the
departure of the Southern Cameroun from Nigeria. It was part of Eastern Nigeria
with the late Dr. Emmanuel Endeley, representing the NCNC. In the Central House
of Assembly. Before him, Paul Kale was the prominent politician from that part.
Endeley won election to the Eastern House with his new party Kameroon National
Congress (KNC), but agitated for a separate region for Southern Cameroun, which
was granted in 1954. He became the Premier of that fourth region. While Endeley
was satisfied with the status quo as it then was one political upstart and
headmaster of a school who earlier represented the KNC, Mr. John Foncha, formed
a new party, the Kameroon People's Party (KPP), a separatist group that
demanded re-union with French Cameroons, in a subsequent regional election in
Southern Cameroun. He defeated Endeley's party in 1959 and he became premier as
at 1960. He forced a plebiscite in 1961, which led Southern Cameroun out of
Nigeria, while Northern Cameroun which was part of the North, now part of
Adamawa and Taraba, stayed. The politics of that plebiscite will be told in
another issue.
The
Action Group never had it easy in the West as some ignorant commentators now
misinform people there were always close to call. Neither did the NCNC in the
East, especially after the Forster-Sutton Commission, have a free ride. The
NCNC lost Onitsha, Port Harcourt, Aba, Enugu and Calabar many times. Could
there have been more painful losses? Even Dr. J. O. J. Okezie gave Okpara a
good run for his money all through that period. Chidozie ruled Enugu until
Christian C. Onoh punctured it. If the Sardauna of Sokoto and premier of the
North was so powerful, why did his equally powerful lieutenant, Alhaji Shettima
Kashim Ibrahim, lose his seat in Bornu to a bicycle repairer and member of the
Bornu State Movement, an ally of the Action Group, in the 1954 federal
elections? And Kashim Ibrahim was a central minister. Despite all the
repression and oppression, why did Alhaji Wada Nas, a 21-year-old teacher of
NEPU defeat a giant NPC politician in Zaria? Some of these new commentators of
Nigerians history build larger-than-life pictures of Zik, Awo and Alhaji Ahmadu
Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto in their writings, presenting Nigerians as moron.
Really, it was the treasonable trial of Awo that thrust him as the
unquestionable leader of the West because Westerners are always with the
oppressed. Awo used to be amused by those who built such flattering picture of
him because he knew he was only a simple, jovial intellectual hardworking and
purposeful person who believed in results. He hated to be spoon-fed and the
British realised that mid-stream and transferred their support upcountry. They
saw that he was more dangerous to their course than Zik, who was an
intellectual extrovert, not giving to fighting to the last; a humble blackman
whose focus was pandemic, but who was very much the urbane Lagosian who liked
the good things of life.
Zik never
exalted himself. He was only a master of stagecraft. The Sardauna was not the
all-powerful the new commentators make of him. True, he liked the North and
northerners, yet some of his colleagues, like Alhaji Inuwa Ribadu, challenged
his actions many times, saying they were teleguided by the British. Twice he
survived being removed as party leader and had to earnestly seek compromise.
The Lagos wing was very knowledgeable about the world and was radical. Had the
Sardauna not agreed to their request for self-government for the North and a
Nigerian, Kashim Ibrahim, as governor, he would have been replaced as NPC
leader in 1959. If the Sardauna were alive today, he would have been amused
about the flattering comments being made about him. If he were that powerful,
the incident about to be narrated would not have occurred. Once, Sardauna
returned from one of the pan-Islamic meetings and told reporters that no state
like Israel existed in the world. Alhaji Abubakar also was returning from a
trip overseas and reporters asked him whether Nigeria recognised Israel. He
told them that Israel had an embassy in Lagos. The message was clear. And
nothing happened in Lagos. In the 1956 Western regional elections, though the
incumbent AG won narrowly, all the ministers who crossed carpet from the NCNC
lost their seats and their divisions. Thus, Akinloye, Chief F. O. Awosika,
Chief Babalola, Chief Awokoya (he had left AG to form the Nigerian People's
Party) Chief Samuel Ighodaro and many parliamentary secretaries lost the race
for re-elections. So money buys nobody in the West. The East, Kano and Zaria
used to be politically faithful to progressive forces.
This
drags one to events after the federal elections in 1959, which have been
misrepresented many times by pseudo-analysts. It is true that the Action Group
marginally beat the NCNC in the West in the 1959 federal elections. The Action
Group had tactlessly allied with Mbadiwe's Democratic Party of Nigeria and
Camerouns (DPNC) in that election. The DPNC got no seat in the elections,
giving rise to what became a popular Hausa term, "Ba ko daya." The
NCNC in the West, with men like Chief Odeleye Fadahunsi, the Ijesha leader;
Chief Humphery Omo-Osagie (alias B2), the Edo leaders, Chief Festus
Okotie-Eboh, the Itsekiri leader, Chief Theophilus O. Shobawale Benson, Chief
Bademosi, the Ondo leader; Chief Gabriel B. Akinyede, the Ekiti leader, Pa
Afolabi, Oyo leader and maternal grandfather of Archbishop Anthony Okogie, was
formidable and was no pushover. The cleavage between Zik and K. O. did not make
any dent in the party's followerships in the West and the East. Only acolytes
of K. O. like Chief Kola Balogun, Chief Mathias Ugochukwu, Chief L. Obioha and
a few others suffered for blindly following him. The NCNC almost tied with the
AG in the seats won in the West and had the West parliamentary wing of that
party agreed to team up with the Groupers, they would have had a majority of
182 to NPC's 134. Other parties had 16. But the British government and its
agents foiled such a progressive alliance. True, there were entrenched conservative
interests both in the NCNC and the Action Group that did not want such a
coalition to come to pass.
It is
necessary to correct a statement in an interview by Chief Melo C. K.
Ajuluchukwu that elders in the Eastern NCNC, like K. O. preferred the NPC to
the AG in 1959 and that they, the youths, were for the A.G. The fact was that
the Eastern wing supported the AG while the Western wing opposed it. K.O. was
of no reckoning then because he had been expelled from the NCNC and he had the
luckless DPNC as at the time of the 1959 federal elections K. O. could not have
a say in a party to which he did not belong. It was his friend, Balewa, who
rehabilitated him a day after independence by appointing him adviser in African
affairs. Asagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkruma, K.O's friend and colleague in America,
later reconciled him with Zik, who was always forgiving, from where he played
another ace to scheme himself to the federal parliamentary leadership of the
NCNC and also a ministerial appointment. First, the West parliamentary wing of
the NCNC swore not to have anything to do with the AG while its Eastern wing,
led by Dr. Michael I. Okpara, spoiled to go with the groups. Akinfoshile was
about the only person from the West who supported coalition with the AG. On the
A.G's side, there were conservative interests who termed themselves
"fathers of the party" with whom Akintola schemed an alliance with
the NPC. Awo was at Onitsha with Zik thrashing out terms of NCNC-AG coalition.
While they met a telephone call came from the Sardauna, asking if Zik was still
interested in coalition with the NPC because Akintola and Chief Ayo Rosiji
(A.G's general secretary) were with him to talk about coalition with their
party. Zik was racked; he asked Awo if he knew his men were discussing
coalition with Sardauna in Kaduna. Awo was shocked and asked to speak to SLA.
The man in the Kaduna end replied that they were sent by the "fathers of
the party."
According
to sources close to Zik and Awo, the older nationalists had often warned the
younger man about the duplicity of some of his lieutenants for many years
before that incident. Awo was too direct and busy to harbour any room for
underhand political deals. In that 1959, he was ready to serve Zik as finance
minister so that they could build a powerful country. But the West
parliamentary wing of the NCNC and the conservatives of the AG, who then were
the real"Afenifere," thwarted that dream for selfish reasons. They
later abandoned Awo in his time of trial. Awo at that Onitsha meeting then, opted
for the AG to go to opposition but promised Zik that he would give him all the
backing he ever would need. Thus, Awo penned that powerful and revealing
article in the Daily Express of November 16, 1960, pledging absolute loyalty to
Zik, when he was being made governor-general. The NCNC-NEPU scored the highest
popular votes in the 1959 elections with 2,592,629. The NPC came second with 2,
027, 194 votes and the AG and its allies, 1,980,839. Others scored a total of
578,893 and 16 seats. NCNC-NEPU had 89 seats and AG and allies, 73. Even with
the advantage Zik and Awo had, the British government did not wait for their
talks to mature. As they discussed alliance in Onitsha, Sir James Robertson,
the governor-general, called on Tafawa Balewa to form a government even if it
was going to be a minority in the house. The two nationalist leaders read
through the plot of the British and allowed it because any disagreement would
have led to a constitutional crisis and would have delayed the granting of
independence to Nigeria. So to say that the Igbos and Yorubas never agreed in
1959 is false; they were the entrenched interests in the West that made the
union of NCNC and AG impossible. The late Chief Adeniran Ogunsanya, though he
won Ikorodu division as Independent, confirmed what is revealed here in a Lagos
Television interview. He was one of the objectors in NCNC West parliamentary
wing. The same with Benson. When in 1979 tongues wagged that Zik and Awo were
not together again and that it was a replay of 1959, one shunned such talks
because they were unreasonable. The Republican Constitution that was being
operated did not give such allowance because it was winner-takes-all as it
still exists. And this is very odd and destabilising for a multi-national
country like Nigeria.
In fact,
it is the cause of the endless blood-letting in Nigeria. Anybody conversant
with the building of a nation knows that centralised dictatorship is temporary
and a precursor to fragmentation. In a relaxed federation, the different units
develop at heir own pace. What is really wrong in the core North running a
Sharia republic, the East Central, a republican republic; the South-West, a
semi-monarchical republic; the Mid-West, semi-monarchical system, the Middle
Belt, a republican system; the COR, semi-monarchical and the North-East, Sharia
one in the Federal Union of the Republics of Nigeria (FURN)? All the republics
in the union will raise their taxes, control their own resources, run their own
educational systems and contribute to the defence, external affairs and trade
and communication of the union. If Josip Tito had done this, there would still
have been a Yugoslavia today. Many states in India use their languages up to
university level. What is wrong in the North-East and North-West using Hausa or
Arabic up to university level? Those aspiring for jobs in the federal union,
like in India, will then strive to acquire proficiency in English. We are
entangled in a mission impossible of building one nation from some incongruous
multi-cultural units. It is a task that cannot be accomplished. It is necessary
to go this length to recall events of the past because the younger ones, some
of them even university professors teaching history and political science, have
no knowledge of the tortuous tactical journey to independence. They even know
very little of what caused the Nigerian civil war. If the truth must vanquish,
it must be told as it is.
