Chief Anthony Enahoro is the last of all the principal actors who confronted and successfully compelled the British to vacate their colonial domination of the parts of the Niger basin they carved into Nigeria. He’s very much alive today. During the campaign to actualize the June 12 presidential election won by MKO Abiola, which was criminally annulled by the dictator Ibrahim Babangida, Chief Enahoro was forced into exile here in the US. It was from here that he directed that campaign which for some regrettable reasons failed to rise to the level of a struggle. But some of us were privileged to get close and cultivate the man’s trust and friendship during his stay.
On several occasions he generously bared his mind to us about some of their travails during their anti-colonial activities against the British. On one such occasion we took him to task over why they ended up bequeathing the festering problem that Nigeria is to generations that came after them. His response was both contrite and inspiring. He admitted to some decisions that in hindsight boiled down to very serious mistakes. He craved our understanding that we shouldn’t judge them harshly for so doing because they were “honest mistakes” that they made in the heat of things. One such “honest mistake” was their uncritical attitude in their engagement with their counterparts from the upper Niger. Asked why? He disclosed that they were literally drunk on the notion of “national unity”. So much that they easily acquiesced to decisions without subjecting them to hard and necessary debates. We were very eager to accommodate the North, he lamented. He gave an example with the bland green-white-green that became the national flag. It wasn’t debated at all when their counterparts from the upper Niger submitted it for approval, he said. He admitted that the symbolism that a national flag represents for citizens is so huge that he still regrets that they failed to do the right thing. We simply adopted what they presented, he said.
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Regretfully, that eagerness to accommodate the North at the expense of raising crucial issues in what ought to suffice as legitimate debate that would lead to just resolutions, which Chief Enahoro laments as the bane of their efforts during their time, is still a fixture of our interaction and engagement with the upper Niger and its inhabitants in the Nigeria project. I’m sure that if the adoption of a national flag had been rightly debated, someone could have raised the observation that the green broadsides in the flag showcases Islamic symbolism, albeit veiled. Somehow, it’s likely that something better, which would symbolize equitable inclusion, could have been arrived at. I didn’t ask Chief Enahoro, but I can bet in the name of my late grandfather that some myopic character from the lower Niger certainly won the day for that uncritical adoption of the proposed flag by pointing out that doing otherwise would alienate that single ‘progressive’ element from the upper Niger.
The flag, the mere symbolism that it represents pail in the face of other serious issues that get glossed over even today all in the quest for One Nigeria, an element, which has delivered lopsided outcomes in state building at the expense of some for the good of a very few in the name of an unproven multitude who inhabit the upper Niger. articleadslinks
Who would remember today that young Major Abubakar Dangiwa Umar was a self-sworn Babangida boy? Yes, he was one of the key foot soldiers that delivered the coup d’état that brought Babangida to power. He was appointed a military governor at that impressionable age for his role in that event, and his rise to prominence began from there. He’s cannon today, a ‘progressive’ on the grounds that he ‘fell out’ with his kinsmen over the annulment of Abiola’s victory at the polls in 1993. For that, you dare not call him out on issues that relate to his past roles in the Nigeria project without myopic self-appointed Unitives stepping out to rain invectives on your person on the grounds that he’s a ‘progressive’ from the North. Who has forgotten the havoc that Babangida wrecked on the Nigeria project? Should we forget? I mean wasn’t young Umar’s role crucial in making that happen? Should we forget? Is it illegitimate to raise all that?
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How about Mr. Balarabe Musa, another ‘progressive’ from the North? Why is he staunchly opposed to the idea of a Sovereign National Conference? Did you forget that the late Dr. Bala Usman was a ‘progressive’ too? In the years before he died, did you hear the theory that he came up with that said that the oil and other hydrocarbons in the homeland that God gave to inhabitants of the Niger Delta came from wash-offs from dead flora and fauna washed down river Benue and the River Niger to the Delta? He was a ‘progressive’ who rose valiantly to justify the claim that his kinsmen lay over the wealth that comes from Niger Delta’s hydrocarbons.
Try to import or export any item into Nigeria and you’ll see that it’s on the contraband list. Turn around and you’d see that some character from the upper Niger benefits unashamedly from the prohibition that makes it impossible for you to freely import or export the same item. There’s one who’s called Aliko Dangote. Go to the Onne jetty in Port Harcourt. When you return come and tell me what you find about how he has absolute control over what comes in and goes out through that jetty. Should he rightly lay claim to and misuse that jetty the way he does? What empowers him to do that? Dangote and his ilk are produced and nourished by the same state patronage that produces Northern ‘progressives’, and ‘national unity’ makes them untouchables.
It’s myopic to be uncritical about ‘progressives’ that emerged through state patronage. It amounts to self-debasement to worship them. Not even ‘national unity’ should justify those, especially when ‘national unity’ sustains inequity. Why must some people climb on the backs of the rest of us to sustain One Nigeria? This question is legitimate. In fact, no question, no issue that knocks at the heart of the Nigeria project is sacred and beyond critical debate. To side-step the weighty questions about the Nigeria project in the name of sustaining ‘national unity’ is crass myopia. Shame the devil! It’s noble to stir and even knock over the pot of mess that Nigeria is. That is the only way to achieve a just society in the space called Nigeria. The myopic Unitives amongst us are free to sit around and continue to count the one bean—‘progressives’—that the upper Niger and its autocratic authority patterns have given them, even as they await the sound of the drum. Trust that I won’t join them.
● E. C. Ejiogu, PhD is a political sociologist.
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