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Exposing revisionists of South South history By IN an era of revisionism, truth is of no premium. Who else, in all honesty should be given due recognition for pioneering and spear-heading self-determination for South minorities other than the departed Oba Akenzua II of Benin and Dr. Udo Udoma of Akwa Ibom? The vision of those two titans for the minorities of the East and West of the political divide was crystal clear as far back as 1947.
The North was even then not a monolithic region and was ruled purely on provincial basis with residents at the apex and three commissioners co-ordinating the business of the three groups of provinces for the governor in Lagos.
Dr. Marshal Harry, the new revisionist of South-South history of self-determination, would not know that three commissioners ruled the three groups of provinces as provided by the Sir Arthur Richards Constitution of 1946. He would not know that with the John Macpherson's constitution of 1949, the groups of provinces were ruled by lieutenant governors who had executive powers even with the coming of representative government in 1952.
At the time Oba Akenzua and Udoma started to advocate for the creation of a state each in the East and the West, the Northern People's Congress (NPC) had not been founded. The NPC did not contest the 1951 representative elections. The party was formed after the elections in the north before the inauguration of the then Northern House of Assembly.
So to say that the North created Rivers State is to desecrate the memories of those early fighters who caused the Willinks Commission to be a reality and who articulated and sharpened the nationalism of southern minorities struggle for self-determination. Chief Harold Dappa-Biriye was not a pioneer fighter for Niger Delta rights. At best he was a late comer. He was not even there mid-stream. The North never supported the creation of states or else its charity should have started at home. Even today, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), the incarnation of the NPC, does not recognise that states have been created in the Middle Belt and the North East.
The Abubakar Tafawa Balewa government only instigated Isaac Adaka Boro to treason and insurrection in the attempt to destabilise the government of Eastern Nigeria so as to impose an emergency administration there. The West had fallen to his control in 1962 through Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola with the emergency weapon. And Dr. Michael Okpara, then leader of the east, remained the unyielding hard nut to crack. So Boro, who had turned coat as a student leader, came in handy as the tool to use in unsettling the East and perhaps, the Midwest Region, which sympathised with the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA).
One should now proceed to tell the history of the minorities' struggle and the brains behind the movements in the South.
When Sir Arthur Richards (later Lord Milverton of Lagos and Liverpool) with a decree broke Nigeria into three groups of provinces, some leaders of the Niger Delta read between the lines of the act and agitated. They were naturally more enlightened than other Nigerians because of their history of resistance against being grouped in the two groups of provinces of the east and the west. There was a conference of people of Benin and Warri provinces at the old Conference Hall, Benin City, in 1947 at which delegates aired their fears of possible domination by the monolithic majority groups. Co-incidentally, that was the year of the birth of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa in Britain and which nationalists like Emmanuel Obahiaghon (Dappa-Biriye's classmate at King's College, Lagos) unfairly opposed. The opposition was truculent, patriotic, but unfair against the background that the Ibo State Union was founded in 1937 without hue and cry; the Ibibio State Union had existed before then and had trained men like Udoma at Trinity College, Dublin. Even the Urhobo Progress Union, led by Chief Mukoro Mowoe, was already alive with Chief Mowarin and Chief Jereton Mariere as very active participants.
Yet in the West, the far-sighted Oba Akenzua, who was a direct descendant of Oduduwa and had far more claims to leading that society than any other traditional ruler, sensed some uneasiness in the new group of provinces in the west, because it was linguistically incongruous. Akenzua was a product of King's College, Lagos, with wide administrative training as an Edaiken (something like Prince of Wales), and was a major contributor of political articles to newspapers, even as an Oba. This writer first heard the terminology "Afro-American' used by him in 1958 while he was welcoming the New York Philhamornic Orchestra to his palace in Benin City during their tour of Nigeria. He refused to address the only black man in the band as a "Negro", which was then the popular term. He called him "my Afro-American brother." That was when officially black Americans still called themselves "Negroes" or "Coloureds". That showed Oba Akenzua's political and intellectual depth.
Udoma bestrode the intellectual and legal world with a clear vision, founding for his mission the "Eastern States Express" at Aba to advocate for a Calabar Ogoja Rivers (COR) State even though he was a young lawyer barely 30 years old. And that was in 1950 when most of those who now shout from the rooftops were still hunting lizards and rats in their villages with no radio sets or newspapers. The agitation from Akenzua and Udoma was overtaken by the John Macpherson Constitution, but which eventually fuelled the cry for separation. The struggle for the creation of the Midwest Region started immediately after the Action Group government was inaugurated in the West in 1952. Eastern Nigeria was quiet because Professor Eyo Ita, who was later to be the leader of the eastern minorities separatist movement, was at the helm of government there as leader of government business.
The North played no part in spear-heading the creation of states either in the West or in the East. Perhaps, Dr. Harry does not know that there was a constitutional crisis in Nigeria in 1953 which led to Eyo Ita losing control of the East and upon which the United Nigeria Independence Party (UNIP) was founded. The UNIP, which became an ally of the Action Group, sponsored the COR State Movement. Eminent persons like Eyo Ita, Dr. Okoi Arikpo and Udoma were in UNIP. Chief G.G. Morphy, an A.G represented Ogoja.
Most of the parliamentarians of the Rivers Province stayed put in the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) until that brilliant lawyer and nationalist, also a classmate of Dappa-Biriye, Chief Wenike Briggs, who was former assistant editor of the Daily Service and Chief Yellowe snatched that area from the clutches of the NCNC. Briggs was prominent before his classmate, Harold, and was a national figure, playing no second fiddle. Former magistrate Chief Wilcox, who Dappa-Biriye later defeated in the election to the Eastern House of Assembly, was still representing the NCNC. It used to be said that Dappa-Biriye and the late Mazi Sam Ikoku retired their fathers from active partisan politics by defeating them at the polls. When one read Harry's interview in the Sunday Vanguard one shuddered to note that ignorance now rules Nigeria's political firmament.
Harry was deliberately denying Chief Obafemi Awolowo the credit for championing state creation in the former Eastern Region. The Northern People's Congress (NPC) played no part in pushing the case of the minorities of the east in all the constitutional conferences. The Action Group was in control of COR state. Majority of members from the COR State Movement were Action Groupers. The later election of Dappa-Biriye and Melford Okilo (after independence) did not dent the leadership of Briggs and Yellowe who represented Rivers in the federal parliament. E.C. Akwuiwu, an NCNC lawyer who became deputy speaker, represented Port Harcourt. Adako Boro was a post-independence phenomenon. One is writing about the many years of struggle by Wenike Briggs and his colleagues for the cause of the Niger Delta when Boro was still at Hussey College Warri and when he later became a police cadet sub-inspector.
How can people discuss the politics of Rivers State without Awolowo and Briggs? That is extreme revisionism now common with political green horns, especially since General Ibrahim Babangida's newbreed crusade. They say what they think, not what they know. The NPC only used Boro to cause disquiet in the East with the ulterior motive of destabilising Michael Okpara. Unfortunately for the party, man proposes but God disposes. That treasonable declaration of the Niger Delta Republic achieved nothing. It did not cause the civil war nor was it countenanced by the military that took over.
General Yakubu Gowon merely broke the country into 12 states without rational criteria in order to divide and rule. Why do the Niger Delta people still cry wolf today that they have been short-changed if, according to Harry, the north liberated them and solved their problem? Who were those who ruled Nigeria from 1960 to 1999 (except the short periods of Ironsi and Obasanjo) and who the Niger Delta people allege stole their oil wealth.?
People like Dr. Marshall Harry are very inexperienced politicians without focus. How can those who swear that they would hold tight to your wealth be your liberators? With people like Harry and Admiral Augustus Aikhomu aspiring to leadership one hopes the South-South is not already doomed.
Aikhomu was the second-in-command for seven years in Nigeria, during which time he estranged the people of the South-South. He was there when Babangida passed a decree punishable by death against people from the Niger Delta who advocated for a fair share of their wealth. It was all designed to kill Ken Saro-Wiwa, whom a government led by another northerner later executed.
Where was Aikhomu when those gallant boys from the Niger Delta were executed with that patriotic Tiv nationalist, Major Gideon Orkar, for rising to ask for a fair share of the region's wealth.?
February 2002
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