Before Nigeria became independent, the British colonial masters organised a series of conferences in Ibadan and London to enable the elites of the various regions and socio-cultural divides to negotiate and agree on the terms of their future cohabitation. Since independence in 1960, there have been series of conferences, some of which ended with new constitutional proposals or documents.
Let us name them for the benefit and education of our younger readers. After the coup and counter-coup of 1966, there was a conference in Aburi, Ghana, aimed at mending fences between Col. Yakubu Gowon (the Head of State and leader of the Federal Government’s delegation) and Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (the Military Governor of the defunct Eastern Region) in January, 1967. It produced the famous Aburi Accord, which Gowon later backed out of at the behest of senior bureaucrats and Britain, because it would have resulted in a loose federation. This would have enabled Ojukwu’s Eastern Region to become the richest and most powerful federating unit because of the Region’s impending oil power.
Gowon, while consolidating his hold on power, caused another conference to be held in Benin later that year, aimed at presenting Ojukwu with a fait accompli to accept Gowon’s totalitarian authority or face the consequences. Ojukwu refused to yield to these hectoring tactics. He insisted on the Aburi Accord, and that was how the slide to war started.
Other conferences held in the search for the elusive answer to Nigeria’s national question included: the 49-member Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) headed by Chief Rotimi Williams and the subsequent Constituent Assembly (CA) led by Dr. Udoma Udo Udoma. These efforts produced the 1979 presidential constitution, which replaced the parliamentary system that was partly blamed for the failure of the First Republic. Military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, during his own convoluted Transition to Civil Rule Programme, empanelled a Constituent Assembly in 1989 in Abuja which also produced a constitution that merely amended that of 1979. It was never put into practice.
General Sani Abacha, who overthrew the Interim Government headed by Chief Ernest Shonekan, set up the National Constitutional Conference in Abuja in 1994, with a view to burying the June 1993 election won by Chief MKO Abiola. It also produced a Draft Constitution in 1996, which was never experimented. However, the 1999 Constitution, which General Abdulsalami Abubakar asked the Dr. Clement Ebri panel to produce, merely brushed up the 1979 Constitution, borrowing heavily from new ideas contained in the Abacha constitution.
Since that time, two other constitutional talks have been held in Abuja. One was the 2006 event which President Obasanjo had arranged in a failed attempt to obtain a third term for himself. The other one was the recent event organised by former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2014 obviously to increase his chances of getting re-elected in 2015.
Few countries in the world have made more attempts to find solutions to their nationality woes than Nigeria. In addition to the search through the constitutional route,forceful military takeovers have been explored. Some coups were bloody. Others were bloodless palace coups. Some succeeded. Others failed. The question is: why is it that in spite of these searches for the perfect fix for Nigerian’s disunity problem the situation gets worse, rather than better?
If you want proof that over 55 years after independence and 46 years after the war “to keep Nigeria one”, Nigeria remains one of the most disunited nations on earth, read the reactions to this article below. Read other articles touching on the national question. Most of those tearing at one another are young people born long after the civil war. They were born and nurtured with the diet of mutual, ethno-religious and regional bitter rivalry, and they have produced fruits according to their nurture: hatred, anger, mutual suspicion, ethnic and religious irredentism (“proudly” Igbo; “unapologetically” Yoruba and such asinine bunkum). You can only live your live as you were brought up. Sometimes I wonder how our Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Fulani, Christian and Moslem youth of today are going to live in the Nigeria of the next twenty to thirty years if things continue this way!
The Bible says that two cannot walk (or work) together unless they agree. Nigeria is like a basket, and Nigerians are like crabs in it. Each of the crabs wants to get out of the basket, but none will allow the other to be able go. Reminds me of the story of the two foolish goats on a precipice. Two sheep demonstrated their usual meekness and cooperation when they met at the centre of the narrow path on the precipice. One bent down to allow the other climb over his back to pass. When it was the turn of two stubborn he-goats, they decided to fight it out and both tumbled down the precipice to their deaths. Crabs in a basket are propelled by the “pull-him-down (PHD)” syndrome.
We go to conferences to discuss how to live together peacefully and make our country great. But we go back home and betray everything we agreed to do. I must say, the North is very sadly fond of that. We go to conferences to discuss how to change things for the good of all Nigerians but North (as Gowon did over the Aburi Accord) always goes back to disown anything that would result in a change in the status quo which unduly favours them. Yet the favour bequeathed to them by the British colonial masters has never translated to the North’s progress and development. Instead, we see the multiplication of poverty and destitution among its lower classes, while the upper classes live the lifestyle of kings, nobles, mandarins and oil sheikhs.
When we hear of a Nigerian performing a feat, we rush to check if the person is from our tribe. If he/she is from another tribe we are deeply disappointed and we quickly belittle the achievement. If he is from our tribe we boast to others. If it is a criminal act and the person comes from another tribe (especially a “rival” tribe, such as Igbos versus Yorubas), come and see insults and venom being traded!
Nigerians are experts at derisively profiling one another. When Yorubas were involved in the NADECO struggle, some (especially Igbos) called them “cowards” and dared them to go to war as Igbos did during Biafra. When the Niger Delta agitation started, President Obasanjo and some Northerners called them “criminals”. Many Northerners asked the military (which they felt was theirs) to “level the whole place”. When Boko Haram started in the North, some Southerners called Northerners “parasites” who wanted power back so that they would return to their Abacha-style “looting” of the oil wealth of the Niger Delta. And since the Biafra protests started late last year, some Yorubas and Northerners laughed at Daniel Kanu’s supporters, saying they were “criminals” looking for “money”.
In all these profiling, little attention is paid to the cry for equity and justice, which are at the centre of all these agitations.
Unfortunately, at the helm of affairs today is a leader, President Muhammadu Buhari, who has no regard for equity and justice. All that occupies his mind is to reward those who brought him to power for their years of “suffering”. He sacrifices the sacred principle of Federal Character boldly guaranteed in our constitution to promote national unity, and splits the goodies of governance on the basis of his quaint Formula “97%/5%” which he propounded in Washington DC last year.
Let me warn all of us: for as long as we cannot agree we will never walk (or work) together. The search for Great Nigeria will remain chimeric, quixotic, elusive. It will continue till one day, when those who pontificated in our 1999 Constitution that Nigeria is an “indivisible and indissoluble” country will find themselves on their own.
VANGUARD
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