Resolving the North-South dichotomy

KUNLE ODEREMI writes on the discordant tunes among stakeholders in the Nigerian project over issues considered as stalking the progress of the country.

UNARGUABLY, one of the finest moments in the history of the Nigerian bar Association (NBA) in the last few decades was under the presidency of the late Mr Alao Aka-Basorun. Coming from a revolutionary background, he had led a coterie of other like-minds that shared his vision about pragmatic action plan to resolve the riddle called the National Question. Though the euphemism for issues that constituted the real stumbling block against nation-building had, according to Professor Obaro Ikime, predated 1960 when Nigeria was freed from the shackles of British colonialism, the NBA leadership forcefully pushed the agenda to the front-burner of national discourse. This was against the backdrop of the sustained grip of the nation’s jugular by military autocracy.

The contributions of other world-class scholars like Professor Ade Ajayi and Eko Toyo also reinforced the debate on the National Question to address what some key stakeholders in the Nigerian project are wont to refer to as the “1914 mistakes.” This presumes fundamental errors on the part of the British colonial masters that amalgamated the Northern and Southern Protectorate in 1914, and which had magnified in various dimensions even more than 55 years after the country became independent in 1960. Within the context of the nation’s history, the national question implies the absence of what many consider as a sense of national belonging and identity, as well as nation-building. The fabrics of nationhood still dangles in the air, as the slogan one of nation one destiny remains what it is: a mere slogan, as it is not rooted in the psyche and the subconscious of the citizenry.

Whereas some believed the three-year civil war that ended in 1970 ought to have sign-posted a major leap in the resolution of the National Question, events over the years seem to point to the contrary. The implementation of the post-war agenda of the Three Rs: Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation had only a salutary effort, going by the resurgence of ethnic agitation for autonomy, restructuring and devolution of powers, as well as fiscal federalism.  The growing schisms over the unity in diversity of the country notwithstanding the huge untapped potentialities of the country smacks of the paradox of not just a sleeping giant but also of a snoring elephant. At present, the futility of stakeholders in the Nigerian project at nation building. Is underscored by the contentious issue bordering on warped and weird revenue allocation, bohemian centre; federal character, incredulous headcount; curious indigeneship or citizenship policy. All these issues have further amplified the syndrome of North-South dichotomy and made the slogan of one nation one destiny.

From the military era to the civilian dispensation, the governing elite had tried to provide what they consider as workable and realistic legal and constitutional framework for the country. A lot of the projects crumbled even before they took off because of a lack of sincerity, patriotism and political goodwill to midwife a truly people’s constitution based on mutually agreed terms by the various nationalities making up the Nigerian federation. The 2014 national Conference was one of the most recent assembly designed to move the country towards reinventing itself by overcoming the “mistakes of 1914 and other ancillary issues plaguing the country for more than 100 years.  While the political establishment is rigid on its stance on the outcome of the conference, the issue has further concretised the North-South divide, with mass ethic-based groupings, eminent persons and professional bodies joining the fray. Whereas, the pan-Yoruba organisation, Afenifere, Yoruba Unity Forum (YUF), Ohanaeze Ndigbo and the South-South Assembly, all from the Southern part of the country are sticking to their gun that the implementation of some far-reaching recommendations in the Confab report constitutes an antidote or panacea for the core challenges facing the country, pro-north bodies like the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) and the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), as well as prominent individuals have vowed that the current status quo must subsists.  This is how a legal practitioner, Rotimi-John, rationalises the report of the 2014 confab: “The convocation of the National Conference of 2014, it is submitted, is a studied acknowledgement of our attenuated links and of the futility of a continuing threadbare explanation or rationalisation of a giddy or untenable federal state. It is recognition of the grim potential dislocation that is imminent to afflict our essentially weak link as a people conducing, if not checked or arrested, to eventual monumental disruption or catastrophe. The conference’s recommendations, it is humbly submitted, amply provide us with a workable agenda. The truth is that the conference resolutions have presented us with a document that is development or people-oriented, that abjures regional, ethnic or sectarian ambush of the polity, and that is generally less odious or problematic.”

One of the surviving nationalists that saw Nigeria through talks that culminated in Nigeria’s political freedom in 1960, Chief Ayo Adebanjo is displeased by the reservations being expressed by Northern leaders’ opposition to restructuring and indeed the implementation of the Confab report. He accused them of double standard and lack of sincerity, recalling most of those leaders were major actors when the Independence Constitution was operational. He said some of the current security challenges that have taken the country to near precipice was because of the pretext was that all was well with the country and that the status quo must remain his words: “Imagine the amount of money they are spending now to cow Biafra and the Avengers in the Niger Delta. Imagine the amount of money they are losing because of the quantities of crude oil they cannot export.  Imagine such huge revenues accruing from importation of that quantum of oil being used for development. It is as simple as that. Until you have the political stability to do the needful and right thing, you can’t have peace; without peace, there won’t be progress. The unity of the country must be agreed upon. It can’t be a one-way thing.” He said if the northern leaders were opposed to the adoption of the 1960 Constitution, they should “tell us what they do not want so that I can tell them what we believe are not proper in the present constitution and why they must be changed.”

But the presidential Adviser to former President Shehu Shagari in the Second Republic, Mallam Tanko Yakassai believes otherwise, even as he claims the clamour for restructuring is a hidden agenda of the South-West, which is trying to force down the throat of the South-South and the South-East. He says he is disappointed that the arrow-heads of the campaign are those who ought to be a rallying force for the modern Nigeria, with the hindsight of history.

Before his demise, another nationalist, Chief Anthony Enahoro, a major promoter of a new Nigerian project, had also diagnosed the ‘ailing’ Nigerian nation, especially against the background of seamless and protracted crises. He had said: “The failure of Nigeria so far may be attributed in great part to the perennial tensions and conflicts among its nationalities, resulting from mutual insecurity, poverty, jealousies and fears. Rather than manage primordial identities, which are our nationalities, positively, successive constitutions have studiously and dismissively ignored them. But as disillusionment with the Nigeria project has grown, it is to these very celebrated identities that the people have begun to look for refuge. Thus the nationalities that the colonial invaders thought they had buried have forced themselves back into our collective consciousness. No amount of blank repetitions of hollow appeals to unity can change those realities.”

Nonetheless, he suggested the way out for the country, which was that Nigerians must be allowed to negotiate the terms of their co-existence, which should be codified in a Constitution; and not for the country to operate a dubious document prepared by a clique of local demagogues and power mongers that replaced foreign oppressors after the country secured independence from Britain. His words: “Our constitutions have not, to date, endured not only because they were successively abrogated by military regimes but also because, among other reasons, they were not the handiwork of the people. The mechanical preamble of “we the people” cannot disguise the true identity of the originators of these constitutions. The constitutions have merely been the expression of the fears and aspirations of the authors and promoters, whether these were the colonial rulers, military dictators or ruling cliques.”