History is irrepressible. She is impossible to cage. Bury history a million times. She springs back to life each time ever more vibrant and resilient. With the collapse of communism in the late 1980s, Eurocentric intellectuals like the brilliant political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, in his book, ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ imperiously pronounced the end of history. History laughed derisorily at such palpable ignorance. She has since resurrected with a fury in the form of civilizational, culture and religious clashes, particularly the horrendous spectre of extreme Islamic terrorism, that have since replaced the comparatively tamer and far saner super-power ideological clashes of the cold war years.
For inexplicable reasons, the mysterious masters of the Nigerian universe decided to banish history from primary and secondary school curricula in the country. Were they afraid of their own shadows? Was this a subliminal fear of the power of history to record their atrocities in indelible ink on the unalterable pages of time for the perusal and contemplation of generations yet unborn? No matter. History like the genie last Friday, January 15, escaped from the bottle and has been on rampage. That day marked the 50th anniversary of the invasion of Nigeria’s political space by Professor Samuel Finer’s fabled ‘men on horseback’ signalling the loss of the country’s political innocence.
Barred from schools, history erupted in beer parlours, pepper soup joints, newsrooms, board rooms, commercial buses, newspaper vendor stands and sundry other places. Many columnists and analysts lampooned the hot headed masterminds of the January 15, 1966 coup – Majors Kaduna Nzeogwu, Emmanuel Ifeajuna, D. Okafor, C.I. Anuforo and Wale Ademoyega. They have been variously described pejoratively as unrealistically idealistic and naïve. Some deride them as simplistic. Others assail them as inept in the execution of the coup. Some excoriate the seeming bloodthirstiness that saw the savage slaughtering of key political and military leaders principally from the North and the West. They have been blamed for rupturing the country’s democracy and setting the stage for the country’s descent to anarchy and civil war.
I think this is entirely wrong- headed. What happened on January 15, 1966, was only the whirlwind. Those who sowed the wind were the rabidly anti-democratic elements that raped the country’s constitution with impunity, violated the rule of law and enthroned a reign of impunity. Yes, democracy in the first republic was buried on January 15, 1966. However, it had died much earlier. The first republic and constitutional rule were effectively guillotined on May 29, 1962, when the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) and National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) coalition government at the centre unwarrantedly and illegally declared a state of emergency in Western Nigeria and effectively took over the Action Group (AG)-controlled government of the region. This was in reality the first coup in the history of Nigeria executed, ironically, by civilians who were apparently following the due process of law to perpetrate blatant illegalities.
Capitalising on the intra- party crisis within the Action Group, the leaders of the NPC and NCNC in collaboration with the treacherous Premier of the Western region, Chief S. Ladoke Akintola, saw it as a golden opportunity to break the hold of a supposedly rigid and stubborn Awolowo and his party in the west. It did not matter to them that Awolowo remained the hero of the masses of the west. No, Awo was not born great. He did not have greatness thrust upon him on a platter of gold. Indeed, Azikiwe and his NCNC enjoyed considerable popularity and electoral support in many parts of a liberal western Nigeria including Lagos giving the AG stiff competition in the area. It was Awolowo’s superlative performance, first as Leader of Government Business and then Premier of Western Nigeria between 1952 and 1959 that decisively changed the political tide in his favour in the region.
The crisis between Akintola and the leader of his party, Awolowo, degenerated irreparably. Chief Bola Ige gives a vivid account of the crisis in his book, ‘People, Politics and Politicians of Nigeria (1940-1979)’. On 19 May, 1962, Akintola was charged and tried for anti-party activities by the Federal Executive Council of his party. The trial lasted six hours. At the end of the day, he tendered an apology and gave an assurance to relinquish his office if there was a recurrence. That evening, however, he quit the AG with his supporters and announced the formation of a new party – the United People’s Party (UPP). He was consequently expelled from the party.
Satisfied that a majority of the members of the region’s House of Assembly had lost confidence in Akintola, the governor of the West, Sir Adesoji Aderemi, the Ooni of Ife, exercised his constitutional powers by removing him from office as Premier and appointing Alhaji D.S. Adegbenro as his replacement. Akintola was recalcitrant. He rejected his removal from office arguing that this could only be done by a vote of no confidence in parliament. Yet, knowing that he did not have the requisite support to survive as Premier, he refused to convene a meeting of the House.
Alhaji Adegbenro thus convened a meeting of the House for May 29, 1962. The task before the House was simple: affirm support either for Akintola or Adegbenro as Premier. Akintola and his minority of supporters attended the sitting but with an agenda to disrupt the proceedings. They broke the mace, jumped on tables and caused pandemonium. Rather, than restore order so that the House could sit peacefully, men of the Nigeria Police, acting on the instruction of Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, shot tear gas into the chamber, dispersed members and locked up the House.
Claiming that law and order had broken down in the region, Balewa thereafter declared a state of emergency in the West, removed the constitutional government and appointed his Minister of Health, Dr Koye Majekodunmi, as Administrator. This was despite the fact that there was peace and calm throughout the region. It was a swift and ruthless takeover of the west – the first successful coup in Nigeria. Of course, one act of impunity needs a succession of even more brazen acts of lawlessness to be sustained. In the course of time, Awolowo and his key supporters would be serving prison terms for farcical and comical allegations of treasonable felony and Akintola was back in power as Premier of the West – courtesy of his federal friends and supposed ‘conquerors’ of Yorubaland.
Matters came to a head in 1965 when the regional elections in the West were blatantly rigged to keep Akintola and his Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) in power at all cost despite being deeply detested by the vast majority of the people. Akintola’s deputy, Chief Remi Fani-Kayode, openly boasted that the NNDP would win the elections whether or not the people voted for them and that is exactly what happened. Of course, the proud people of the West would have none of such barefaced injustice. The region descended into anarchy. Amazingly, when Balewa was told that the West was burning, he calmly replied that he could see no flames! That is the kind of arrogance and impunity that set the stage for the tragic events of January 15, 1966. Serve impunity diligently all your life and your pension is death!
Recounting history just to excite and titillate is nothing but a futile exercise in intellectual masturbation. The crucial thing is to learn the appropriate lessons at the feet of erudite ‘Professor History’ so that past disasters do not mutate into even more devastating future catastrophes. On Wednesday, January 27, the tenure of the incumbent governor of Kogi State, Captain Idris Wada, expires. What should ordinarily be a smooth transition to a new democratically elected government in the state is being turned into a veritable fiasco with dire implications for our democracy by an Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) with increasingly blighted professional and moral integrity since the exit of its immediate past chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega.
The good people of Kogi State went to the polls on November 21, 2015, to elect a new governor to pilot their affairs for another four years. They cast 240,867 votes for the APC TICKET of Prince Audu Abubakar and Honourable James Abiodun Falake and 199,415 votes for the PDP TICKET of Captain Idris Wada and Architect Yomi Awoniyi. It was a decisive and CONCLUSIVE victory for the APC ticket. They won the highest number of votes and had the requisite Local Government spread as stipulated by the constitution and the Electoral Act.
Before the results were announced, the APC candidate, Prince Abubakar Audu, died. It is precisely for unforeseen occurrences like this that presidential and governorship candidates are constitutionally mandated to have running mates. For some inexplicable reason, INEC declared the election inconclusive and on December 5, 2015, held so called ‘supplementary elections’in 91 polling units across the states.
Curiously, on the advice of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Mr Abubakar Malami (SAN), an interested partisan party, INEC allowed the APC to substitute the late Audu with Alhaji Yahaya Bello who came second in the APC primaries. Unlike James Faleke, Audu’s running mate, Bello is completely alien to the election of November 21, 2015, on which the supplementary election stands. The Electoral Act, legal pundits point out, does not give room for substitution of candidates AFTER elections have been held – this can be done only before the polls.
Bello went into the supplementary election without a running mate since Faleke openly declined to play that role contending that he should rightly be declared duly elected as governor of the state. This is another patent illegality. Unless Faleke changes his mind and accepts to be his deputy, Bello cannot come up with a constitutionally valid deputy unless further acts of impunity are perpetrated.
As it were, Yahaya Bello has added absolutely no value to the APC in the election. Remove the 13,000 votes recorded in the supplementary election in which he participated and the result of the November 21, 2015, polls still stands clear, conclusive and inviolate. That election needs no crutches. We may need more impunity to consolidate the present impunity in Kogi. But let us be wary of impunity. It will always demand its wages in full and democracy is always the ultimate casualty.
NATION
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