Nigeria's Political History

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.