What's in a name?
By
THE name NIGERIA, we know, was forced down our throats by the wife of Lord Lugard through the amalgamation of the Northern and the Southern Protectorates in 1914 more for the convenience of our colonial masters. History has it that until that time, the North and the South had distinct political administrative systems. We have since discovered that the merger is nothing but an association of strange bed-fellows. Nevertheless, we staggered on. At Independence in 1960, our political leaders changed our governing constitution, our coat of arms, our National anthem, the texture, colour and design of our flag as well as the officers' uniforms; we replaced some foreign names on our structures with indigenous ones, all in an attempt to remove foreign traits in our political history. At that time, the entity called NIGERIA had existed for nearly 46 years. Our leaders did not consider it necessary to change the structure of the Nigerian entity bestowed on us by a white woman!
I can almost hear readers saying: "but we started out very well as one entity, or so it seemed, until some ambitious and hungry soldiers committed treason on January 15, 1966." Thus opening a new and dangerous chapter in our chequered political history. Those who believed in surviving on the crumbs shouted 'hosanna' whenever soldiers one after another, mostly of Northern origin, announced a successful coup-d'etat. The North had its agenda, and the soldiers were working to a script. The rest of the country tagged on sheepishly. Such was the lot of Nigeria and Nigerians that for yet another 40 years, the North steadily but stealthily changed the structure of both the geographic entity and the institutions of governance - the Army, Police, Air Force, Navy, Security apparatus, and tilted same to itself right before our very eyes. Perhaps we were too na•ve to read the signals as they were unfolding. There are more than enough evidence now to contrast the early days of our independence with the present. In the early days, there was development. Each of the then existing four regions enjoyed some degree of autonomy which allowed it to develop at its own pace. Soon, the North realised it was lagging behind, and rather than strive to catch up with the progressive East, Mid-West and West, the Northern elite, being at the helm of affairs at he centre, decided to drag the entire country backwards by holding on tightly to political power by hook and crook. The North had its agenda, while the South tagged along in the name of Federalism. It may help to remind us of parts of this evidence, as I believe that unless we know where we are coming from, we may not know where we are going.
Between 1966 and 1999, there were eight military governments at the centre. Six were headed by northerners, two by southerners. Unitary governance was the vogue in fulfilment of the northern agenda. At one time, a Federal Minister of Education of northern origin denied the southern governments federal allocations to slow down educational development in the South. Yet another Federal Minister from the North wanted Nigerians to thank God as we had not started picking food from the dustbins! There had been more ethno-religious riots in the North than in the South. Kano is notorious for such since the fifties. The absence of statistical figures notwithstanding, more Christians generally had been killed or maimed in these riots than Muslims. Tens of thousands had been displaced and their properties destroyed.
In the recent past, the riots and crises escalated, and we are all living witnesses to what happened in Kaduna, Jos, Nasarawa, Tafawa-Balewa, Makurdi, Taraba, Kano, Zango-kataf, Zakibiam, Lagos to mention a few. As if these were not enough evidence that communal cohesion had ceased to exist in the northern part of the geographic entity called NIGERIA, some northern states' Governors chose to add fuel to the fire by introducing what President Obasanjo calls "Political Sharia" in their respective geographical areas. An Islamic law, according to Nigerian Muslim fanatics, that allows public flogging, stoning to death of pregnant women and amputation of limbs, as punishment for wrong-doing, in a contemporary world! The Islamic law that does not recognise conventional imprisonment for reformation and rehabilitation of convicts; an Islamic law that consigns women to the backyard; an Islamic law that does not believe that women are created by the same God that created men. An obnoxious law that frowns at education for women. It was even reported in the media that Governor Sani of Zamfara State gave warnings in a radio and television broadcast, on the eve of President Obasanjo's state visit - September last year, that women should not come out to welcome the President; threatening to apply Sharia law against any women caught violating the order (Weekend Vanguard, 15 September 2001).
By their own choice, and for politically motivated reasons, the northern states that introduced Sharia law and chopping off their people's limbs on ridiculous offences, are living in the stone age. The distinction between the northern and the southern cultures, customs, laws and characteristics represents a dividing line. While the southern part of the geographic expression known as Nigeria is trying to reach the moon, the northern part is struggling to reach its villages. The entity called Nigeria is made up of fundamentally different and incongruous elements; thus civilisation and sustainable social and economic development for us as a people, have taken a downward turn. In the last 41 years since independence, we have always taken one step forward and four steps backward. I shed tears for my country, as current situation makes it inevitable for us as a people to sit around a table to discuss such fundamental issues relating to our so-called Federation. If the powers-that-be continue to shy away from this fact, for fear of the unknown, only a divine intervention can save Nigeria from self-destruction.
May 2003