By
Reuben ABATI
President Olusegun Obasanjo has a bad way of making a good point and a good way of making a bad point, always. Within the last month alone, he has shown an unusual capacity for uncontrollable, impulsive outbursts in a manner that is best suited to his Ota farm, but which appears indecorous in the mouth of the President of arguably, the most important country in Africa.
Following ASUU's belligerence and one-week warning strike, the President had turned his tongue on the university lecturers calling them "utterly irresponsible and immoral", best known for printing handouts and harassing female students... by 12 noon, they are in the staff club and what do they do?, nothing" Then, he promised to fight them. "God will fight them too", he added, as if he, or anyone at all, is in a position to speak for God. When Professor Sam Aluko, who candidly, I think should keep quiet, made the uneconomical point about Abacha's economy being better than Obasanjonomics, the President shot straight from the hips. He said the retired Ekiti man is senile.
Then, Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu, reacting to the contentious electoral law made the sensitive point about secession. Obasanjo didn't waste time. At the latest opportunity, he dismissed Ojukwu and other secessionists, as "irresponsible rascals": "Anyone who talks of secession should have his head examined". And he threatened to deal with them. Ojukwu like the rest of us, must be wondering what his happening to his friend whom he likes to call "Omoba."
What is bad in the President's style is its ad hominem content: instead of addressing the issue, the President goes for the individual, and tries to knock out their legs. Like the soldier that he is, he adopts an ambush tactic, hoping that that would disorient the opposition. The idea is that if the President turns on you personally with the SSS, NIA etc on his side, you would be afraid to talk like that again. Except that in a country like this where every issue is urgent and emotional, things do not always work that way. What is mostly likely to happen is that the President would bring down his high office to the level of the ordinary man, the area boy.
Imagine: Professor Aluko had the effrontery to talk back to the President. Then his wife gave an interview in which she was disrespectful enough to say that President Obasanjo, not being a medical doctor, is not in a position to determine her husband's mental state. If it were in the days of General Abacha, Professor and Dr (Mrs) Aluko would by now, be cooling their heels in a detention camp.
But the point is: a President is supposed to be dignified and wise above the common run. He is not expected to run his mouth at every opportunity. Since President Obasanjo cannot take mud, and would like to throw it back immediately, then he needs someone who can throw mud for him, and carry the can if there is wahala, so that the President can look good all the time. Every President surely needs a bull-dog. But the way President Obasanjo is carrying on, no one would be surprised if one of these days, he slaps an offending official in public. Afterall, in Ghana, President Jerry Rawlings, a former soldier like President Obasanjo, once wrestled his Vice-President to the ground. The way Baba Iyabo carries himself, he in fact looks like one of these days, he is going to give one of his critics either a knock on the head or a kick to the groin. A guy like Abubakar Rimi surely deserves a punch in the nose. I am sure that there are many of us who enjoy the comedy of the President's style, but I should like to identify with those who insist that the office of the President should not be denigrated.
Always, from President to my "washaman", we should all be interested in the issues, for if there is anything that unites us all, it is the expectation that this country called Nigeria will serve our purpose by guaranteeing our safety and happiness. Safety and happiness: those are the two things that the average Nigerian wants whatever may be the nature of his zoogeography.
When we do not focus on the issues, we trivialize critical aspects of our own lives. I have dealt elsewhere and frontally, with the issues of ASUU's greed and methods, and the idiocy of Professor's Aluko twisted economics, so what I intend to do, here and now, is to show how the issue of succession is far more critical than the President has taken it.
It is not enough for Chief-turned-General, General-turned-President Obasanjo to dismiss the secessionists as irresponsible rascals. The critical questions are: what is the meaning of secession in the context of Nigerian politics? And when in the 21st century persons talk about secession, what exactly do they mean, or want? Is secession possible today, and why and at what cost?
Perhaps the first time the word secession was used in Nigerian politics was shortly before and during the counter-coup of July 1966. On January 15, 1966, the first coup codenamed "Operation Damisa" (Operation Leopard) was enacted under the leadership of six majors and a captain - six of whom were Ibos. Only one Major was Yoruba - Ademoyega Ademulegun, author of Why We Struck. The others were Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna (who killed Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, Brigadier Zak Maimalari and Lt. Col.Abogo Lagerma, Major D. Okafor, Major Anuforo (who killed Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh), Captain Nwobosi (who killed S.A. Akintola), Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu (who killed the Sardauna of Sokoto, his senior wife and his bodyguards) and then, Captain Ben Gbulie.
In retrospect, Ifeajuna and co. wanted to clean up the country, they wanted to rescue it from the corrupt politicians of the time who had caused the mayhem in the West and the drift across the nation. When Nzeogwu addressed the nation on Saturday, Jan.16, he spoke of a "revolution of the Nigerian Armed Forces". He added:
"Our enemies are the political profiteers, swindlers, the men in the high and low places who seek bribes and demand ten percent, those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as Ministers and V.I.Ps of waste, the tribalists, the nepotists, those that make the country big for nothing before the international community, those that have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian calendar backward... We promise that you will no longer be ashamed to say that you are Nigerians".
True words and considerably, the coup was popular in Southern Nigeria, whose press offended the North eternally by declaring in one notable headline- "Bribe? E Done Die O, Chop-Chop-E No Dey" (Morning Post, Jan. 27, 1966), but the problem was that the Jan. 1966 revolution, more than the 1964 carpet-crossing in the Western House, had ethnicised Nigerian politics forever and irretrievably.
The coupists were mainly Ibos, they killed mainly Northern officers and no single Igbo man (except perhaps, Lt. Col. A. G. Unegbe, the Ibo Quarter-master General who was killed because he refused to surrender the keys to the armoury). Even Nnamdi Azikiwe, an Ibo, then President, was conveniently away in Britain. The revolution was therefore interpreted by the North, as an Igbo conspiracy. To worsen matters, an Igbo man, Major-General Johnson Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, succeeded Tafawa Balewa. And Ironsi not only made the mistake of surrounding himself with Igbo advisers, including the strong-headed Francis Nwokedi, under him, nearly every major department - Education, Railway etc was dominated by Igbos and he was not willing to deal with the coupists of Jan. 1966.
About the same time, another Igbo man, Chinua Achebe wrote a novel, A Man of the People in which he predicted a military coup. Indeed, as at 1966, fifty percent of the officer rank of the Nigerian Army was Ibo. It was therefore so easy and plausible to speak of an Ibo conspiracy.
A day before Ironsi then introduced the Decree No. 34 of 1966, Major Hassan Kastina, Governor of the Northern Region, had told reporters, "tell the nation that the egg will be broken on Tuesday." The substance of Decree 34 was that Nigeria would no longer be a federation but a "Republic of Nigeria" ruled by a National rather than a Federal Government. The Unification decree indeed broke the egg, because it took power away from the existing regions, locating it more concretely in the Federal Government: a Federal Government which was then dominated by Ibos. The North was particularly scared because it was, as now, the most backward region in the country.
In 1960, the North had only 41 secondary schools, whereas there were 842 in the South; today, there are 6,400 secondary schools in Nigeria and more than 60 per cent of that is in the South. Under a unitary government, the North would have had no chance at all. Understandably, by May 29, riots had broken out in the North, notably in Kano, Kaduna and Zaria.
The Northerners targeted Ibos, killing hundreds of them, although the official figure was an improbable 92 and indeed, this was the first time the word secession crept into Nigerian politics. The Northern rioters carried placards proclaiming "A Raba" (Let us Secede). It was not the first time that the Hausa-Fulani would kill Ibos. They had earlier done so in Jos in 1945 and in Kano in 1953. Now, in 1966, they did not want to be part of a Nigeria that was dominated by Ibos at all levels, with one of them as Head of State and Commander-in-chief. The North had every reason to be angry. There was drought. Life was difficult for the average northerner.
The Sardauna was the father-figure of the north; with his murder, Northerners were left without a political leader. Even now, leadership in the North is in a state of drift; the average Northerner wishes that the Sardauna were still alive, and he holds the average Ibo man responsible for his absence. Besides, the Ibos were somewhat arrogant. They didn't know how to deal with their new-found pre-eminence. They even had a song, Celestine Ukwu's "Ewu Ne Ba Akwa" (meaning "Goats Are Crying") with which they taunted the Northerners. They were unnecessarily and excessively triumphant about the January 1966 coup and the emergence of one of their own as Head of State and Commander in Chief of Nigeria.
Northerners and their Emirs wanted Decree 34 abrogated and the Majors of the 1966 coup punished, but Ironsi, now increasingly an Ibo man, was unwilling to reverse himself; instead he sought to strengthen his control over the nation. Meanwhile, Northern officers within the army felt a need to defend their own people. On July 29, 1966, they struck while Ironsi was still on a tour of the federation. It was a revenge coup, led by Northern soldiers and targeted at Ibo officers and civilians.
The key executors of the coup were Lt. Colonel Yakubu "Jack" Gowon, Major Theophilus Danjuma (who ordered the killing of Aguiyi-Ironsi and Col Adekunle Fajuyi, Governor of the Western Region), Lt. Colonel Murtala Mohammed, Captain Joe Garba, Captain Musa Yar'Adua, Captain M. Adamu, and Major A. Kyari. The key casualties were Ibos, even if the coup did not quite succeed in the East to which Lt. Col Odimegwu Ojukwu, the highest-ranking Ibo officer had fled. This notably was the second time that the word secession crept into the grammar of Nigerian politics.
The ordinary Northerner wanted to get out of Nigeria, away from the Ibos. Northern officers and other ranks had stopped taking orders from non-Hausa-Fulanis, the reason why Brigadier Ogundipe, then No 2 man in the army had to flee. Northerners in the South had also fled to the North. Airplanes, manned by Northern soldiers were already airlifting Northerners to Kano. Middle Belters had also joined the core Northerners: Northern secession was in the pipeline. Murtala Mohammed was the spokesman of the secessionists. Gowon spoke for those who wanted the unity of the federation.
Britain and America advised the northerners against secession. Power was, at that moment, in the hands of the Northerners. They chose to stay. Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon, the apostle of "One Nigeria" emerged as the new Head of State. The Ibos had lost out; they licked their wounds and returned to the East, where they all had a dull Christmas in 1966...
Last week, under the same title as above, I had attempted an additional commentary on President Obasanjo's style and public relations and beyond that, traced the roots of the ongoing talk about secession within the Nigerian federation. Today, I seek to draw attention to other highlights in Nigerian life and history, and in the process arrive at a number of conclusions as to why secession?, what is the place of the Igbo in Nigerian politics and society? And when people talk about secession in 2001, are they really serious, or are they just doing body language?
Our last line last Sunday, was that the Ibos all had a dull Christmas in 1966. But just before we explore that phenomenon and its historical aftermath, it is worth noting that by February 1966, yet another Nigerian, Isaac Adaka Boro, an Ogoni student of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka had felt so troubled by the failures of the six-year old Nigerian state, that he unilaterally declared the creation of a "Republic of the Niger Delta" by which he sought to mobilize the people of the present Rivers and Bayelsa states to secede from Nigeria. His grouse was that Nigeria was too dependent on the oil resources of the Niger Delta without giving anything in return to the people who own the oil. Adaka Boro was an idealist, and as has now turned out, a prophet; but all that he had was just his voice and guts, he had no army and no funds.
But he had made yet another fundamental point about perceived cracks in the Nigerian architecture. If Boro was a would-be Robin Hood in 1966, the Tivs were a bigger collective who by then were also beginning to talk of the rights of the Tiv nation. They were not seeking secession, but they wanted due recognition, a region of their own, and more rights and freedom from the overbearing Northern oligarchy and its imperialist interests.
This was not the first time that the minority question would crop up in Nigerian politics. In the 50s, the Willinks commission had been set up by the colonial authorities to address the grievances of the minorities. But it is a question that has refused to go away: the Ogonis and other peoples of the Niger Delta are still aggrieved, the Tivs are still fighting their immediate neighbours and vice versa. In other words, it was not just the Ibos or the Hausa-Fulanis who were disturbed very early in the day by the Nigerian arrangement and who sought ways of strengthening their stake in it. The Nigerian state that emerged in 1960 was at best a convenient arrangement, dangerously perched on a tension wire.
The tension is still there. But it was the Ibos who first dared to opt out in real terms, and they were confronted with the biggest irony of the Nigerian condition: a nation that is made up of unequal, angry parts but which seems trapped in "a wedlock of the gods", from which no one may escape. On May 30, 1967, the Ibos, under the leadership of Col. Odimegwu Ojukwu declared the creation of the Republic of Biafra, which meant that the Eastern region of Nigeria had chosen to go its own way. The same day, the Nigerian government, under Yakubu Gowon, announced the creation of 12 states out of the four regions: it was a well calculated move meant to move the minorities who had always sought states of their own, behind the Federal Government. Gowon later declared that "if circumstances compel me to preserve the integrity of Nigeria by force, I will do my duty".
The die was cast. A civil war ensued resulting in deaths, disease and mayhem in the East. The Ibo population was decimated, the women were brutalized, the children were scarred. When the war ended on January 12, 1970, the Ibos had been badly beaten. Ojukwu had fled, the Ibos had to pick up the pieces of their lives. It was said that there was "no victor, no vanquished", but what really happened was that the Hausa-Fulanis had completed the second phase of their offensive against the Ibos.
There is substantial literature on the whys and wheretofores of the civil war, and it may not be necessary to rehash that which is already familiar here. Except to restate that one, the slaughter of Ibos by the Hausa-Fulanis and the general hatred of Ibos all over the country was one major causative factor. It was as if nobody wanted the Ibos anymore inside Nigeria. Hence, Ibos fled to the East, about two million of them ran away from Nigeria leaving only a few like Ukpabi Asika who stayed on at the University of Ibadan even after all the Ibo lecturers had fled.
Second, was Ojukwu's own ego. He could not accept Jack Gowon as Head of State and Commander-in-Chief and he was unequivocal about this: "Militarily, Gowon is not my superior and the question of acknowledging him does not arise."
Third, was the antipathy of the Ibo intelligentsia. They had lived all their lives either in the West or the North, only to be thrown out of the academia and the civil service overnight on account of their ethnicity. It was a traumatic experience, and it was why persons like Christopher Okigbo, the poet, Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi, Eni Njoku, and Kenneth Dike had no option but to identify with the Biafran cause. In 1967, it was all a question of identity and where you belonged.
By October 1966, in fact, the Hausa-Fulani had slaughtered so many Ibos, there was no family in Eastern Nigeria that was left untouched. Fourth, just for the records, was the disagreement over the Aburi accord of January 4 and 5, 1967. In Aburi, Ghana, the two sides, the Federal side and the aggrieved Eastern Nigeria, represented by Ojukwu, the only Ibo man at the meeting, had agreed on confederation, and the payment of the salaries of displaced Ibo civil servants who had fled to the East, but on their return to Nigeria, Federal civil servants advised Gowon to renege on Aburi. Ojukwu who had seen confederation as the way forward had in the meantime, broadcast the outcome of the Aburi meeting to all Easterners. It became a question of honour.
The East asked for the payment of the salaries of displaced Easterners, the Federal side refused. It is also worth noting that Ibos are the first to have ever asked for resource control in this country, through the Revenue Collection Edict of Eastern Nigeria, No 11 of 1967. Again, the Federal Government frustrated that. So, the war.
Now, to the hard issues. When Ojukwu threatens that the Ibos may consider secession again, should he be taken seriously? I agree in toto that the Ibos are still badly served inside Nigeria. After the civil war, and with power in the hands of the North and its allies, one of the first things that the Northern power elite did was to make sure that the Ibos would never again be in a position where they would be able to talk of secession again. They were kept out of every sensitive position in government and consigned to the role of second fiddle. The North was not willing to share its advantages with its enemy. It didn't want to give the Ibos a chance to repeat January 1966. Which is why when an Ibo man talks of marginalisation, he ought to be advised to contextualise it.
There is democracy fine, but other ethnic groups including the minorities that supported Biafra during the war have not forgotten what the Ibo man did with power when he had it. If other ethnic groups are envious of Ibos in 1966, they are even more so now in 2001. The Hausa-Fulani have also instructively not stopped taking off the heads of Ibos in the North. They do so periodically, even symbolically, I guess, to remind Ibos that the cycle of hate has not yet been closed. When Ojukwu or Orji Kalu or any other self-appointed spokesman of Igboland complains about the place of the Igbo in Nigerian politics, this is what they are referring to. But can the Ibos secede again? I don't think so. The point is they are not in a position to do so.
Under Obasanjo, let them forget it. When the man referred to Ojukwu and co as madmen, he was not joking. He made his career by helping to finish off the Ibos. He has also been a good friend of the North. If the Ibos provoke him with any threat of secession, he would have no option but to do his duty as Gowon did. And it is not just the Ibos alone, the Northerners have managed to make Nigeria secession-proof. When Ken Saro-Wiwa tried to continue from where Adaka Boro left off, and managed to mobilize his Ogoni people against the Nigerian nation, the Northerners moved quickly and took off his head and the heads of his kinsmen. If MASSOB, which like Ojukwu has been talking about secession gets too serious tomorrow, Obasanjo would not hesitate to take off some Ibo heads to prove a point. After all, he has already made it clear that if Ojukwu shows his head, this time around, he would lose it.
Again, all that talk about not paying compensation to Ibo soldiers who fought on the Biafran side is part of this politics. Obasanjo will not pay any Biafran any benefit. We might as well get that straight. I will come to the morality of it later, but for now, I think this is the reality. In 1967, secession was presented to the Ibo man as a necessity. In 2001, the situation is different. Ibos have not done anything since 1967 to make it possible for them to have another Biafra. Within Nigeria, they are even more vulnerable than they were in 1966. They are still economic refugees inside the country and the bulk of their investment is outside Ibo land. They have been busy going into other people's territories, they have not quite allowed other ethnic groups to enter Ibo land.
Such that any time, there is a threat to the Ibo man, the only way he can secure his safety is to flee to his homeland. Anything can happen to him on the way home. And if he flees, his property as happened in 1967, will be taken over by other ethnic groups. Before Ibos can talk of secession, they have to develop the East into a viable economic region that can accommodate its own people. Since the civil war ended, the Ibo man has done well for himself no doubt, he has effectively re-integrated himself into Nigeria in a physical sense. After all, Ibos now sell land in Lagos and Kaduna, and they are in charge of commerce, "419" and "international trade." But there is a problem of leadership. Every Ibo man who has access to the media, and some money in his pocket thinks that he is an Ibo leader. The biggest disease in Ibo land is money. When Ojukwu talks these days, it is not exactly the same Ojukwu of 1967, he is at best only a symbol.
Those who talk about secession in Ibo land and are taking it too seriously are making yet another mistake. Secession is at best only a tool of negotiation in Nigerian politics. The Ibos are the only ones who have tried to cross the line. They got the game right in 1963 and 1964 when they threatened to leave the federation and did not. Both the North and the West talk about secession too but they never do it. As recently as 1993, Yorubas were talking about secession. They even set up the OPC and they have a constitution but you can be sure that if push comes to shove, the average Yoruba will stockpile food and stay indoors and "siddon look" He won't cross the line.
When Awo was said to have made his statement, that "If the Eastern region is allowed, by acts of omission, or commission, to secede from or opt out of Nigeria... then the Federation should be considered to be at an end, and the Western region... should also opt out of it", he was only speaking as politician not as a Yoruba man. Did he say what Yorubas would do if push came to shove? He was leader of the Yorubas at the time, but he didn't have the authority to tell all Yoruba what to do. One more thing is that whereas in 1967, the Ibos were able to mobilize other minorities within the Bight of Biafra under the secessionist agenda, that would be very difficult to do now.
At best, when Ojukwu or MASSOB talk about secession, they are just doing body language. They really do not mean it. But the body language points to the survival of the contradictions in Nigeria and the need to address them...
To be continued
Culled from the Guardian Newspapers
January 2002
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