There is now no doubt that many of the past deceptions on which the so-called Nigerian nation was built are beginning to be properly seen; and are beginning to fall apart, as all lies eventually do! So, as the debates and discussions towards 2019 and the (only possible) attainment of the true Nigerian nation of the “everybody-a-winner”option or situation (or the obvious only other alternative, which will never be my role to inform anybody about!) keeps warming up, it is important to remind Nigerians about some pertinent events of our history that had either remained falsified, purposively beclouded or somehow else been neglected. I do this so that, if we are going to arrive at this win-win nationhood, we should hasten to redress them all:
One, when the movement for Nigerian independence and true nationhood got going under the leadership of Sir Herbert Macaulay and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Sir Ahmadu Bello informed anybody who cared to know it that as the great grandson of Uthman Danfodio, that there was not going to be any such thing unless the British divided Nigeria to give him/them back the “Northern Nigeria” that had previously been colonized by his great grandfather and which he had the natural mandate to keep; and most likely advance “it’s much craved-for march to the Atlantic Ocean”!
Second, at the British accession in principle to this insistence, Sir Ahmadu Bello and his colleagues in 1949 set up the Northern Peoples’ Congress as the political party to do this. This was not a Nigerian Peoples’ Party, mark you; but The Northern Peoples’! Third, in 1960, Nigeria won “independence” and was to be, and got being, ruled by the Nothern Peoples’ Congress. Before the ceremonial “independence” celebration at Lagos, there was a prior and similarly ceremonial Durba in Sokoto with the British and the Sultan in that regard. So most obviously, Nigeria got handed over to “the Northern People”! Fourth, when the January 1966 coup took place in order to put an end to the “Wetie” carnage of the Western Region that was largely the machinations of the same Sokoto sultanate or caliphate, it was quite easily turned into all sorts of interpretations except the truth of the matter. I had very personal experience of the “Wetie” crisis myself.
Again, those of us who studied history or especially geography before 1970 knew that the body of the Atlantic Ocean below Nigeria were known and called the Bight of Benin west of the River Niger and the Bight of Biafra to the east of same. The “no victor, no vanquished” deceptive slogan of 1970 and afterwards, which also removed history from our general education curriculum, also removed the Bight of Biafra thereof. Moreover, any time that any would-be independent-minded Nigerian is to be presented for presidential election or indeed to be so done, or actually got elected – whether s/he be Muslim or Christian – something must be done by the caliphate/sultanate or any of its many extensions to bring it to naught! This is only mystery to those who agree to be deceived about it! Besides, as obviously achieved from the onset and consistently executed till today in Nigeria, as a functional and true (non-nation) Sokoto caliphate or sultanate, ALL its “acceptable and accepted” rulers have had to come or get approved from there, except for a few obvious “mistakes” or deceptions thereof. The level of political marginalization in the country has remained the level to which such section in the country has refused to be fooled by the national deceptions. On the other hand, the depth of ignorance, fanaticism and under-development in the country remains measurable according to how much subjugation under (or free-will acceptance of subject-hood of) that caliphate the people in such areas have managed to remain.
With all these very easily verifiable facts of the Nigerian nationless state, and the fact that outside of the hotspots of the caliphate or sultanate especially (or even from there), Nigeria hosts the highest and greatest number of Africa’s and the developing world’s intellectuals; yet we are forever almost always between the first to the 4thfrom the rear of all measures of true human existence, services and fulfilment! We remain a country where the most qualified by ANY reasonable measures of educationand capability are ruled by the least and the worst thereof! Should we continue with this deception beyond 2019? As wisdom assures all humanity across all cultures, the people, anybody, who does wrong usually “do not know what they were doing”! In a similar way, I will observe that all I have written here, if any of them will be considered as bad or sinful by those who did them, nobody should hold it against ANYBODY; because, if truly so, the people who do or did them do not understand the errors or evil of it, even upon themselves or their “very own” people whom they fell they were benefitting by those errors! If we were in their position, we might as well have done even worse that they had done. That is the truth of the human nature; and which should inform us to always be humble.
If anybody believes that any, many or all the things that I have put down in this script are not true, let him test it out. Let us elect a talented Northern Far or Middle-Belt Christian (of which we have an avalanche of) as the president of this country in 2019; with a detribalized northern Edo Muslim as his running mate. There, my very dear compatriots, I rest my case! God bless Nigeria!!
- Asuzu is Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Ibadan
ALSO READ: FG reiterates commitment to press freedom
and then