Nigeria: A Country Of Unequal Stakes

By Amanze Obi  

It is sometimes said in certain circles that the Yoruba is the only ethnic bloc, among the ma­jor ones in Nigeria, that has not called for the dismemberment of the country. Individual Yoruba may have, at various times, wished and called for a divided Nigeria. But the people as a group have never done so publicly. Rather, the Yoruba have been advocating for a regional ar­rangement that will whittle down the powers of the centre. This is a middle ground position.

However, you can hardly say the same thing of the other ethno-political blocs. Those who have a sense of history will readily recall that the North was the first to call for the dismem­berment of Nigeria. The bloody coups of Janu­ary and July 1966 ignited feelings of secession in most northerners. Even though the coun­ter coup of July 1966 and the pogroms that followed were supposed to calm the frayed nerves of the North, they did not. Rather, the region bayed for more blood. It was in that fit of bitterness that the idea of secession crept into their imagination. Consequently, the less restrained among them began to advocate for a divided Nigeria. It was in response to the pre­vailing mood in the North at the time that the Yakubu Gowon government, in August 1966, declared that the basis for one Nigeria no lon­ger existed. Even though the North later went to war to enforce the idea of one Nigeria, it is a historical fact that the region was the first to nurse and propagate secessionist sentiments in the country.

If the North was the author of a divided Nigeria, the East was its finisher. The coun­ter coup of 1966 and the pogroms had taken a heavy toll on the people of East. The situation was made worse by the fact that the people of the region had nobody to appeal to. The Feder­al Government led by Yakubu Gowon, a north­ern army officer, was complicit in the blood­letting. The situation, regrettably, drove the Eastern region into a precipice. That was how it came to declare its own republic. Strangely, however, the Gowon that had, a few months earlier, held that the basis for a united Nige­ria no longer existed was the one that took up arms against the secessionists. That was hy­pocrisy in action.

The war has since been lost and won but the Igbo, who were at the receiving end dur­ing the war years are still perceived, rightly or wrongly, as a group that is ever ready to quit the Nigerian setting once an opportunity pres­ents itself.

Given the fact that it is always the preroga­tive of the victor to rewrite history, events took an unexpected turn in post-Civil War Nigeria. The ruling military junta, which was dominated by the North gradually but steadily bastardised the country’s federal set-up. The principles of federalism were not only eroded, the country’s republican status was yoked to­gether with strange systems, which ended up corrupting the original idea. The result is that Nigeria, as we have it today, is neither a federa­tion nor a republic.

This incongruous set-up has been fueling agitations for either a divided or restructured Nigeria. While the North is holding tenacious­ly to the present order, apparently because it is benefitting unduly from the incongruity, the other blocs of Nigeria are differently per­suaded.