Now Is The Time!

Written by E.C. Ejiogu

Anyone who studied basic West African history would know how what exists today as the Nigerian supra-national state came into existence—it is an arbitrary imposition on the diverse nationalities that inhabit the parts of the Niger basin that the British called Nigeria. In the many years that I have researched and studied political evolution in and amongst these diverse nationalities, I’m yet to find or been shown a document that bears witness to a voluntary declaration made by their truly elected representatives that they surrendered their general will and allegiance to the supra-national state.

Elsewhere, including parts of Africa such as Tanzania, Botswana, and South Africa, the afore-stated scenario was the case. That, is one of the several reasons political stability prevails in them. Instead, in the case of the parts of the Niger basin in question, the archives are littered with all manner of documents under the label of “constitution” written by groups of actors who claim that they represent their distinct inhabitants. The latest of those documents was dated 1999. Its provisions proclaim the “legitimacy” that gave birth to the contraption that Mr. Umaru Yar’Ardua presided over in Abuja since 2007 until he voluntarily abdicated to an unknown destination since more than forty-five days ago.

I’m not a lawyer. But I’m sufficiently educated to infer from my research and studies to argue that there is logically no legitimate grounds for any of the nationalities that inhabit the Niger basin that finds itself capable, to waste another day before it disentangles itself from the Nigerian supra-national state. Politics is the act of the possible. Mr. Yar’Ardua’s abdication should be taken for what it truly is—a legitimate indicator of the ruse that has been used to frustrate genuine political development amongst the inhabitants of the parts of the Niger basin that were called Nigeria. If the latest inheritor of the ruse could take the liberty to violate vital
provisions of the instrument from which he claimed the “legitimacy” to wield power and authority over the nationalities, by way of abdication, it’s in deed rational and legitimate to argue that now is the time for the nationalities, any one of them that wants and is capable of to summon the nerves and walk!

●E.C. Ejiogu, PhD is a political sociologist.

(culled from www.saharareporters.com)

Nigeria, the unimagined nation-state

Written by Ogaga Ifowodo

THE current issue of the BBC's Focus on Africa magazine features the debate, "Is Nigeria well on its way to being a failed state?" When contacted to argue the "aye," my willingness to do so belied my own "prickly nationalism," a condition that afflicts almost every fellow citizen I know. But the contrary view that sees Nigeria "far from being a failed state" was argued by my far more optimistic co-debater. Events of the last few weeks, headlined by the controversy over the relocation of the proposed University of Petroleum Technology from Effurun-Warri to Kaduna and Boko Haram's bloody jihad for illiteracy have heightened the failed state debate. Concerning the former, President Yar'Adua has sought to reassure the long-suffering people of the Niger Delta and the nation as a whole that nothing is amiss.

What will be sited in Kaduna is a College of Petroleum Studies to train, according to Alhaji Rilwanu Lukman, Minister of Petroleum Resources, "senior management personnel who are transiting to general management in NNPC." And it will be the exclusive privilege of the petroleum university in Warri to continue to train "middle level manpower for the oil and gas industry." These constitute "the right manpower" that our oil industry needs, according to Lukman, as opposed to the "higher level technical and senior management personnel" universities produce but whom "we don't need." President Yar'Adua himself endorsed this curious logic before hurriedly jetting off to Brazil, fleeing the burning streets and corpses that trailed Boko Haram's mayhem and the incandescent rage of the Niger Delta.

What neither Yar'Adua nor Lukman would admit is that the Kaduna college effectively supplants the Warri university, or that if we follow the logic then the college is a massive waste of scarce (oil) resources. Worse, by this display of naked power, Yar'Adua and Lukman, acting on behalf of the northern oligarchy, stick a finger in the eye of the Niger Delta. It is an act of provocation and belittlement by which power spitefully mocks the expropriated: "Amnesty, what amnesty? Do your worst! We will continue to take your oil and relocate every infrastructure save the very oil wells themselves from the Delta." Unfortunately, it is "a son of the soil" who articulated the cold calculation behind this ideology of blood-curdling dispossession. In a public lecture given twenty-nine years ago, Chief Philip Asiodu, no stranger to unaccountable power as a former super permanent secretary, paid the customary lip service to the predicament of the Niger Delta then thus: "Given, however, the small size and population of the oil-producing area, it is not cynical to observe that even if the resentments ... continue, they cannot threaten nor affect continued economic development." This view was echoed only two months ago by Bala Ibn N'Allah, honourable member of the House of Representatives, who called for the extermination of the 20 million inhabitants of the Niger Delta. There is only one snag, though.

While Asiodu, three decades ago could not foresee any threat to continued economic development, peaceful and armed insurgencies from MOSOP to MEND have since proved otherwise. What Yar'Adua, Lukman, N'Allah and their small-minded ilk of power-mongers must now devise as the final solution is the relocation of the Niger Delta land from the Atlantic shore to the edge of the Sahara, complete with the necessary population transfers. Nothing else will answer the sworn determination to set the nation ablaze in order to perpetuate the daylight robbery. It is clear to every patriotic Nigerian that the Niger Delta crisis is by now the National Question and tops the reasons why Nigeria seems set on becoming a failed state. I will conclude this piece then with my contribution to the BBC debate.

Most of the indices of failed states declare Nigeria well on its way to joining that disreputable league of nations. For a start, Nigeria boasts a government unable to deliver basic social services; is plagued by corruption so endemic and monumental it is hard to separate it from state policy; lacks the capability or discipline or both to prevent threats to public safety and national integrity; and is assailed by active challenges to its legitimacy. Besides, what passes for the Nigerian state simply cannot manage to conduct a credible election, whether into a local government seat or the presidency. The latest disaster of a gubernatorial re-run election in Ekiti state, meant to correct the errors of the first, proved an even greater show of shame. While Nigerians, notoriously prickly in their nationalism, may loudly denounce any suggestions from abroad of the imminent disintegration of their country, they nonetheless admit the unflattering truth of its possibility to themselves and each other. The inflammable Niger Delta, for long the booty of successive bands of political pirates and now also a seething swamp of untameable angst, points clearly to the dangerously frayed social fabric.

Anyone who may not have been paying attention and would need "objective" evidence might do worse than consult the Brookings Institution's Index of State Weakness in which Nigeria ranks 28 out of 141 developing countries. Co-authored by Susan Rice, Barack Obama's top diplomat at the United Nations, it places the self-styled Giant of Africa in the honoured company of Somalia, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. As if to assert her unparalleled gift of settling for the worst even when the tolerable is within grasp, Nigeria sits happily in the cut-off position for countries termed "critically weak" as opposed to the merely weak states. But if the Brookings Institution takes a kind view of Nigeria, not so the Fund for Peace in whose 2008 Index of Failed States Nigeria is only two short rungs away from where she might, at the very least, have enjoyed the consolation of dissociation from Somalia and Zimbabwe. The irony is unmistakable that Nigeria has to look up the ladder at Sierra Leone and Liberia, two countries she spared no expense of life, limb and hard currency to bring out of civil wars and restore to democracy.

Yet none of this goes to the heart of the problem. For, to speak of Nigeria as a failed state is, in a sense, to put the cart before the horse. Never having been a nation to start with, the question of a legitimate state to handle her affairs proves redundant. We must, therefore, open the dusty archives for the radical cause of Nigeria's state of distress. And there we will find that what we have grown accustomed to calling a nation deserving of a state, what we take for granted as a nation-state, is - to quote one of her founding fathers - "a mere geographical expression." Nigeria is not a nation, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, with characteristic forthrightness, declared more than a decade before nominal independence from Britain. For saying the unsayable, and for championing constitutional federalism along the lines of Nigeria's multitude of ethnic groups, Awolowo was labelled a tribalist and unjustly maligned till his death in 1987. But events have more than vindicated him since, not least the spectre of dismemberment raised by the abortive Orkar coup of 1990.

The unwillingness to grapple with the trauma of Nigeria's stillbirth as a nation is the great political unconscious, the implacable repressed, that returns at will to haunt and mock the state-of-denial. This repressed truth, being political, hides as it were in the open. It can be seen in the headlines and by-lines of the newspapers. It is volubly declaimed in bars and every public forum where two or more Nigerians are gathered. It defines the so-called "national question," so cacophonous that the prodigious expense of political and psychological energy needed by Nigeria's self-appointed rulers to repress it produces such frightful spectacles as compel the verdict of a failed or rapidly failing state.

A mere geographical expression. Or, as another founding father from the former Northern Protectorate preferred to put it, "the mistake of 1914." That was the fateful year Lord Lugard merged by colonial fiat northern and southern protectorates and the colony of Lagos to enact Nigeria. The word, unknown to the "tribes and tongues" it purportedly described until colonialism, proclaims the malevolent mapping of imperial design. Meaning simply, people of the (lower) Niger area, it was as if the hallowed river possessed the magic to transform disparate denizens within its acceptable radius into nationhood by mere eponymous naming. This would be deemed superstition in any other context but the colonial. Unfortunately, this mistake has yet to be acknowledged despite repeated and increasingly strident calls for a sovereign national conference or some such other credible conclave of political re-engineering. For, if nations are imagined communities, as Benedict Anderson has shown in a book of the same title, Nigeria was clearly unimagined by its would-be citizens. And, perhaps, Nigeria is unimaginable for very long in her current state of existence.

(culled from the Nigerian Guardian of  Wednesday, Dec.8, 2009)

Exploring the failed state

Written by Edwin Madunagu

NIGER Delta rebellion, Boko Haram insurrection, mass poverty and alienation, armed robbery and kidnapping, state robbery and corruption, high-profile election rigging, institutionalised anarchy, industrial unrest, violent cultism, state delinquency, etc, etc. All these maladies - and many more - have led some people to suggest that Nigeria has become a "failed state", or a "failing state".

An essay I have just obtained from the internet defines a failed state as a state "that can no longer perform its basic security and development functions and that has no effective control over its territory and borders"; it is a state "that can no longer reproduce the conditions for its own existence". The essay then provides a number of explanatory notes: the opposite of a "failed state" is an "enduring state", but the absolute dividing line between these two conditions is difficult to ascertain at the margins - for "even in a failed state, some elements of the state, such as local state organisations, might continue to exist". The essay avoids defining the state - an exercise that can be very contentious. Rather, it provides some assistance to those who may be interested in the exercise. The essay's main concern is the exploration of a state that has failed, or is failing.

Still avoiding a technical definition of the state, we may however go around the problem by considering the central element of the definition of a failed state, namely, the "functions" of the state. This exercise has been performed several times in this column, but it is obligatory to repeat it here. The functions of the state can be separated into three broad groups, namely: coercive functions, ideological functions and social-economic functions. The group of coercive functions is what has been described in the essay under review as "security" functions. But we prefer to call a spade a spade: "security", as employed in the definition, is the use of force.

Let me quickly add here that we, the citizens, all need security and the state claims that it is concerned with security and is, in fact, often seen providing it, or trying to provide it. But there is an "optical illusion" here. The point I wish to make is that the security functions of the state are designed and carried out in a manner that shows very clearly that the main concern of the state is not the citizens but the social order and the classes and blocs that are ruling. The state provides security for the citizens only for the same reason that it provides means of livelihood, or permits or supports the provision of means of livelihood, for the citizens: the citizens must survive for the state to continue to exist.

Put differently, the state provides security to the social order and the ruling social classes and blocs for the status-quo to remain and be strengthened, while it provides security for the citizens at large (the "common" people) so that the latter can continue to serve the social order and the ruling classes and blocs. The former concern is maximum, while the latter is minimal. The coercive functions of the state - which the essay under review calls "security" - are primarily aimed at preventing or discouraging any threat to the social order. That is why - as some analysts have already observed - the Nigerian state confronted the Boko Haram insurrection with maximum ferocity.

We may introduce the ideological functions of the state with a passage which I took from Ernest Mandel's Late Capitalism. Here, Mandel remarks that "it was Napoleon, an expert in the matter, who coined the adage that one can do anything with bayonets except sit on them". What Napolepon, a military genius, meant here was that force could not achieve everything. Another author remarked that if the ruling classes used only coercive methods to maintain their power, then society would be perpetually in tumult. The state needs ideological weapons as well as coercive (or repressive) weapons to maintain and reproduce its power. By ideological weapons or apparatuses I mean ideas and the institutions that systematically disseminate them: schools, religious doctrines and institutions, political parties and social movements, cultural and traditional institutions and practices etc, etc.

Just as the state is not repression alone, it is also not (repression plus ideology) alone. The third group of functions (of the state) is social-economic. The state has to provide "those general conditions of production which cannot be assured by the private activities of the members of the dominant class", as Mandel put it. Even the fanatical "apostles" of privatisation in our country would agree that the ruling classes and blocs cannot privatise everything: roads, telecommunications, electricity, schools, industries, air transportations, etc., and still remain in power. The competition between the various fractions and individuals, and the extreme selfishness of most of them, will tear the state apart or grind it to a halt.

Even if you theoretically construct a state that divests itself of all social-economic undertakings you will need a state institution - a big and powerful one - to coordinate the activities of the most strategic of them or act as their "overlord" - in the interest of the ruling classes and blocs as a whole. The current global financial crisis and recession and the interventionist responses of various governments attest to this. We are then back to the starting point, namely, that the state provides those social and economic "conditions" of production that the members of the ruling classes and blocs cannot, acting as individuals, provide.

The internet essay under review recognises that if there is the concept of "failed state" and the concept of "enduring state", then there ought to be the concept of "failing state", that is, a state that is "becoming" failed, or a state that is neither a filed state nor an enduring one. This last concept, "neither failed nor enduring" state, happens to be the most important. If we dismiss tautological definitions such as "a failing state is a state that is failing", it becomes necessary to construct a scale for determining the location of any state in the advance to failure.

The internet essay does exactly this. Twelve indicators are provided to determine the location of any state. Four of the indicators are social, two economic, and six political. The social indicators are given as: demographic pressures; massive movement of refugees and internally displaced peoples; legacy of vengeance-seeking group grievance; and chronic and sustained human flight. The economic indicators are: uneven economic development along group lines; and sharp and /or severe economic decline. The six political indicators are: criminalisation and/delegitimisation of the state; progressive deterioration of public services; widespread violation of human rights; security apparatus as "state within a state"; rise of factionalised elite; and intervention of other states or external factors. The indicators are elastic enough to cover all known state maladies.

Employing these indicators, one may ask: Is Nigeria a failed state? I shall preface the answer to this question with further comments and observations on the essay under review. First, I think that "failed" is being confused with "delinquent" where "delinquency" is measured by the degree to which the state does not satisfy the ordinary (basic) existential needs of the people. When the "delinquency" element is removed from the definition of a "failed state" what we have left in that definition is a state's inability to be a de facto effective ruler of the whole polity - by coercive means, however concealed or mediated. The connection between the two categories - "delinquent" and "failed" - is that a delinquent state usually tends to a failed state because a delinquent state ultimately invites rebellions, insurrections, anarchy, "states within a state", revolutions, etc.

Secondly, the state is always a class state. There is no "state of the whole people". A state that is becoming a state of the whole people would have started to transform its character as a state; it would have started shedding some features of the state. Strictly speaking, it is illogical to use such terms as "the state is expected to..." or "the state ought to...", because the state is, and has always been essentially, a class weapon. The basic function of the state is not the satisfaction of people's needs. No. The state meets the basic existential needs of the people only to the extent that this allows it to continue to rule and protect the social order and the dominant classes and blocs, or because it is compelled to do so by the dominated classes and groups - through struggle, of course.

The last point can be put differently. The "performance" of the state is a statement about the state of class and popular struggles. In all these we should remember that there are inter-class and intra-class struggles, as well as struggles within the state itself. So, is Nigeria a failed state? My answer is that, with the distinction that we have made between a failed state and a delinquent state, and if we dismiss all illusion concerning the functions of the state, then Nigeria is not a failed state - even with MEND, Boko Haram, OPC, etc. At least not yet. The Nigerian state is still in full control. But Nigerian state is a delinquent state.

(culled from www.nigerialog.com/the Nigerian Guardian, Thursday 3 September 2009)

THE ORIGIN OF NIGERIA: GOD OF JUSTICE NOT ASSOCIATED WITH AN UNJUST POLITICAL ORDER. Appeal to President Obasanjo not to rewrite Nigerian History. {PART 6}

Written by Prof. Omo Omoruyi

SOUTHERN DISUNITY NOT FACTOR OF ZIK-AWO RIFT

The southern disunity has for too long been associated for lack of rigorous scholarship with the rift between Dr. Azikiwe and Chief Awolowo. Unfortunately the followers of these two Nigerian leaders have since then attributed the southern disunity with the rift between the Igbo and the Yoruba at various stages in Nigerian history. It is deeper that these two rifts. In my view, if the two rifts were resolved at anytime in the past, the disunity in the south would still be there for obvious reasons.

SOUTH IS MORE THAN YORUBA AND IGBO

We constantly make the error as to what constitutes the south. We should appreciate that the south is not made up of the Igbo and the Yoruba alone. Even Dr. Azikiwe and Chief Awolowo in their various writing acknowledged that the regions over which they presided were not homogenous. They therefore knew that the south was more than the sum of Igbo and the Yoruba. Why did their followers make the error of believing that the south was made up of the two ethnic nationalities? The southern solidarity or unity or disunity is therefore not contingent upon the unity of the two political leaders. It could help. There are today six states with their claim to autonomy and independence of action whether the Yoruba and Igbo decide to work together.

What has not been emphasized is the colonial basis of the southern disunity that for too long gave the two majority ethnic nationalities power that they did not deserve. In fairness to the Yoruba or the Igbo, they did not lay claim to other peoples’ territories before the colonial creation of the three regions in Nigeria.

There was no reason why the Yoruba should be made to lord it over the Benin and Delta Provinces during the colonial period.

There was no reason why the Igbo should be made the overlord of the non-Igbo peoples in the old Eastern Region.

STATES IN SOUTH AS HOMES TO MINORITIES ARE FACT

In fairness to the Yoruba, they since 1964 accepted the fact that the old Bendel State was not part of the Western Region. They accepted the fact that there are two distinct entities the Yoruba States and the non-Yoruba States that could meet on the basis of progressive platform. This was why Chief Awolowo could use his Four Cardinal Program to rally the people Bendel to his party in 1979.

Unfortunately, the Igbo leaders since the end of the Civil War have not reconciled themselves with the fact that there are four states in the non-Igbo part of the old Eastern Region. Even when they accepted that fact, the Igbo leaders are still to accept that the non-Igbo States in the old Eastern Region are endowed with power to determine their future and who to work with in Nigeria.

The Igbo leaders are still unhappy that the non-Igbo people were ever excised from the old Eastern Region the way it was done in 1967.

The Igbo leaders are unhappy that the Igbo states are landlocked even though that would have been the case without colonialism.

The mistrust between the Igbo and the non-Igbo in the old Eastern region on the one hand and between the Igbo and the non-Yoruba sector of the West (Midwest) on the other is real. I experienced it during the campaign in 1979 when the former Premier of Eastern Nigeria Dr. Azikiwe became a candidate. The non-Igbo people rejected him and supported candidates from other areas.

While the Yoruba leaders are realistic enough not to promote a pan-Western Region plan in form of a return to the old Western Region, I find that Igbo leaders are unrealistic to me when they are bent on a union of Eastern and South-South, euphemism for the old Eastern Region.

IGNORANCE ABOUNDS ABOUT NIGERIA’S PAST

There is a lot of ignorance and gaps in Nigeria among the political class about the colonial aspects of Nigeria. Therefore when President Obasanjo decides to tell the cock and bull story about God and the origin of Nigeria, some members of the political class could believe him because they too have no independent source of knowledge. Let me use one case to illustrate this point.

THE CASE OF PORT HARCOURT

How many Nigerians know the origin of Port Harcourt? As a mark of gratitude to his patron, Lord Harcourt, Lord Lugard founded the Port town at the southeastern part of Nigeria and named it after his master, Lord Harcourt. That is the origin of the town named, Port Harcourt. Port Harcourt is named after Lord Harcourt, the oppressor and the creator of Nigeria.

It is sad that a Commissioner in Katsina State (Alhaji M. Shehu Maikai) like many politicians of his generation displayed his ignorance of this vital aspect of Nigerian history. I am referring to when he wanted Port Harcourt be renamed after Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe in place of the "British explorer". Lord Lewis Harcourt, a British Explorer! See Tell of June 19, 1996 p. 17. The distinguished State Commissioner genuinely thought that he was making valuable suggestions to how best to immortalize the sage, Dr. Azikiwe after his death. But he displayed his ignorance in the process.

If the Commissioner could be this ignorant, what do you expect of the school children under his charge? One wonders what is being taught in schools in Katsina State in the name of Nigerian history. Would the Nigerian schools be told to imbibe the new doctrine of the President, that God created Nigeria. Incidentally, Katsina produced one of the finest historians in Nigeria, Dr. Bala Usman. I am sure he would readily correct the Commissioner if he had consulted him before making what to him was a profound suggestion. One wonders how many mistakes are made from such ignorance? President Obasanjo is not helping the political class with his "godism".

As to the real purpose of the Port and the building of the Eastern Railway line, it was meant to make the north less dependent on the southwestern political leaders who from beginning were distrusted by the British officials. This distrust by the British was extended to the successive northern political leaders. Did the British trust the Igbo and others in the Eastern Region? Why did the British not trust the Yoruba and the Western Region? The northern political leaders saw themselves buying the British prejudice against the Yoruba and the British indifference toward the Igbo as a basis of the coalition behavior between the Igbo-led political parties and the Hausa-led political parties in the First and Second Republic.

NORTH AND SOUTH: SUPERORDINATE-SUBORDINATE!

Lord Harcourt was so happy that he appeared at a Dinner Party and made a profound statement, which has implications for the modern Nigeria. According to Lord Harcourt,

‘We have released Northern Nigeria from the leading strings of the treasury. The ‘promising and well conducted youth’ (North) is now on an allowance on his own and is about to effect an alliance with a ‘Southern Lady of means’.

Lord Harcourt went on

I have issued the special license and Sir Frederick Lugard will perform the ‘marriage’ ceremony.

For the interest of President Obasanjo, Nigeria in the plan of the founder was to be a marriage between the north (husband) and the south (wife). This was the plan at the birth of Nigeria when there was no oil. This has been the way the north saw Nigeria since 1914. From records this was the way successive Colonial Governors General from Lord Lugard to Sir James Robertson organized Nigeria and handed over to the north on October 1, 1960. This was the intention of the departing British colonial regime in the days leading to independence and finally at independence.

"The Lady of Means", the Wife (South) since 1958 had oil to the bargain in the marriage. "The Promising Youth", the Husband (North) is poorer since then. Since then the north and Nigeria have become more dependent on the oil than what was originally anticipated at the time of amalgamation.

The next issue, which became evident in June 1993, was whether the wife and the husband could alternate position in the conjugal power structure through the fact of a ‘one man’ ‘one vote’. The north did not see the husband becoming the wife by the fiat of an election. To put it clearly is the fact of a husband and wife not permanent? This means that the north as the husband and not the south, the wife would continue to be the permanent ruler of Nigeria.

Those who would be wondering why June 12, Presidential election, which through the democratic process produced a southerner (wife) for the first time faced annulment in the hands of the husband should read The Tale of June 12. This is an aspect of the issues in the annulment of the June 12, 1993 Presidential election.

We can see the conjugal power structure manifesting itself in the call for the north to be prepared to reclaim its rightful place (the Presidency) after the one term of General Obasanjo. I can see this challenge in the outburst of Alhaji Lawal Kaita, the former Governor of Kaduna in the Vanguard of July 10, 2000. He was emphatic in the highly provocative article that President Obasanjo was made the President on the voluntary decision of the core north and not through the Constitutional means or through force. The question one would ask is whether in the next time around the core north would claim its rightful place, the President?

CHIEF SD LAR AND GENERAL TY DANJUMA TO THE RESCUE

I can also see the challenge to the myth of divine rule of kings among the northern leaders. President Obasanjo is copying this when he keeps telling people that God made him President and would rule in furtherance of God on earth. The way the President is carrying on, he would not be able to challenge the Buhari Platform of returning Nigeria to what Allah wished for the country, an Islamic State.

Does President Obasanjo appreciate one important fact of politics that his frequent use of God by him (President Obasanjo) could be used as the basis of Buhari Islamic revivalism in the North? He should heed the warning of the Chairman Council of Ullama of Kano, Dr. Datti Ahmed that it is the Christian God that Obasanjo is referring to when ever he uses the name of God. The northern leaders even accused President Obasanjo for inviting US President Clinton in order to send to the West a message that Nigeria had become a Christian sphere of influence. That would be contrary to the view held during the period of past Muslim political generals who took Nigeria to OIC and gave the impression that Nigeria is an Islamic State.

Does President Obasanjo appreciate another fact of politics that his frequent use of God’s name is not only disturbing, but it would constitute a threat to the secular status of Nigeria? Secularism does not mean a "Godless State"; it means as we conceived it in the Constituent Assembly in 1977/78 that Nigeria shall not adopt any religion as State Religion. The word State here does not mean the public administration at the federal level of government. It means the conduct of Nigerian political life at all levels, federal, state and local government. The picture painted recently by the Minister of Defense, Lt. General TY Danjuma of the administration in certain parts of the north violates the spirit of the Constitution.

Where are the retired political generals from the north? If General Shehu Yar "Adua were alive and aspiring to politics as he did in the past, he would have dissociated himself from the policies of the northern states that openly discriminate against non-Muslims. I would have expected some of the retired political generals aspiring to lead Nigeria again through the process of one person one vote would frown at the Islamization of education in the north at the public expense and to the exclusion of other religions. Why should a state Government cancel the teaching of Christian Religious Knowledge, as a discipline while making the teaching of Islamic Religious Knowledge a compulsory subject for Muslims and Non Muslims including Christians? While the Islamic students are not be exposed to the world religions because it is a sin, I have Christian friends at Ibadan who did Arabic and Islamic Studies. That is why the Bible is a prohibited commodity in some Islamic Republic. I am afraid that this is gradually being extended to some parts of the north.

I would like to appeal to the leaders of the Middle-Belt, where Christianity is on trial in the north to educate the southern Christians who are actually "Chrislam" or believers of anything goes. They are in a position to redirect the President to face Nigerian problems squarely. In this context, I hope Chief Solomon D. Lar and General TY Danjuma who led some of us to appreciate the danger in the politicization of religion. This was why some of us fought to delete the Federal Sharia in the Constitution in 1977/78. Chief SD Lar and General Danjuma I pray and hope would prevail on President Obasanjo to appreciate the danger in the politicization of religion.

AS NIGERIA WITH POLITICAL PARTIES FACES 2003

Now that the country is faced with six political parties with the possibility of having six Presidential candidates, six senators and House candidates at the Federal level and six Governors and six Assembly candidates at the State level in 2003, a new behavior is demanded of all candidates. One would expect that all candidates would face electioneering politics without invoking the name of God or Allah or the African Traditional Religion in the campaign.

God ordains competition among politicians with contrasting visions for our people to choose from. What is common or should be common to all Nigerians is the quest for a Just Society. Christianity, Islam and African Traditional Religion sanction this quest. It should be pursued in our own way without forcing one’s faith on the other as the President unwittingly does from time to time. I leave this to Mr. President.

July 2002

(culled from www.nigerdeltacongress.com. First published July 2002)

*Concluded

THE ORIGIN OF NIGERIA: GOD OF JUSTICE NOT ASSOCIATED WITH AN UNJUST POLITICAL ORDER. Appeal to President Obasanjo not to rewrite Nigerian History. {PART 5}

Written by Prof. Omo Omoruyi

BRITISH DESIGN AS A COMPLETE FRAUD

There is the opposite position about creation taken by Chief Richard Akinjide. According to him in the Vanguard of Sunday July 20, 2000

"the so-called Nigeria created in 1914 was a complete fraud". He continued, "It was not created in the interest of Nigeria or of Nigerians but in the interest of the British".

I was elated when Chief Akinjide confirmed the authorities I cited in my book, The Tale of June 12 to address the relationship between the annulment and the British Design for Nigeria. Chief Richard Akinjide would agree with me that Nigeria could not be the creation of God and at the same time, a fraud.

What is troubling to me is President Obasanjo’s notion of God that he parades at all public and essentially partisan political functions. God is perfect and He does not engage in anything fraudulent. Could God be the white man’s God or the white man himself? President Obasanjo seems to be equating God with the white man. With all the imperfections and injustices inflicted on many groups since the white man created Nigeria, how could President Obasanjo justify Nigeria as the work of God?

FOUNDERS OF NIGERIA

I had opportunity to examine the papers, which Chief Akinjide was referring to and more. I also examined some of the claims of the Nigerian leaders such as Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto on their notion of how Nigeria was founded. I did not see where the British or their successor Nigerian political leaders said that "God created Nigeria". I did not see where they spelled out "God’s purpose for Nigeria". Except the Sardauna who carried his Islamic religious practice to the public realm in the north with a threat of dipping the Koran to the sea, Dr. Azikiwe and Chief Awolowo, both products of Christian Missions schools saw religion differently. Their adherence to Christianity was taken as essentially personal matters that should not be at the expense of other religions. They did not engage in preaching to others in public functions. Dr. Azikiwe and Chief Awolowo were conscious of the multi-religious character of Nigeria and did not set out to offend others with their faith. On prayer, they did not want to be called hypocrites and adhered strictly to the Biblical injunction in Matthew Chapter 6 verses 5 to 7.

On the founding of Nigeria, the British and the Nigerian political leaders were all agreed on one issue that no Nigerian historically or in modern era could claim to be the founder or the creator of Nigeria. All of them are agreed that the founding fathers of Nigeria were the British. Let me use the work of the greatest exponent of them all on how Nigeria was founded. I am referring to Chief Awolowo. The apt expression of Chief Awolowo, the most versatile of the Nigerian political leaders that Nigeria is a "geographical expression" holds true for all time and was borne out of research and reflection. Was this, maybe what President was responding to? Did President Obasanjo read and understand the thesis of Awo? He should read again and again many books starting with the ground breaking one, Nigerian Path to Freedom (1947), which is still a classic on Nigeria. He will be able to understand how the revered exponent of progressive causes came to the apt expression associated with him that "Nigeria is geographical expression". Was this not what was put differently even though in a different context by Sir Ahmadu Bello that the Amalgamation was "the mistake of 1914"?

One should note that Chief Awolowo did not call himself or any of his fellow nationalists Dr. Azikiwe, Sir Ahmadu Bello and those below them as the "founding fathers" of Nigeria. Even Dr. Azikiwe hated the term, the "father of the nation". He rejected this term so strongly in 1978. He said the title came from the northern leaders who described him as such when he was the ceremonial Governor General during his official visit to the north. I still recall his response to critics of his decision to return to the "orbit of partisan politics" in December 1978. I knew this from my position as the then Protem National Secretary of the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP), when he was reacting to the accusation from some quarters in the north that as "the father of the nation", he should not have come back to partisan politics. They were unfair to the old man, as was confirmed in Shagari’s memoir, the same northern leaders wanted to recruit him to their party but lost to the NPP. Kicking him "upstairs in 1959" was seen by Dr. Azikiwe as one of the greatest fraud that was inflicted on the Nigerian political class. He did not want a repeat of what happened to him 1959 to happen in 1978 in the hand of the northern Nigerian leaders.

Chief Awolowo identified Lord Lugard as the "founding father of Nigeria" and put it succinctly in the following words:

‘To him (Lord Lugard)more than anyone else belongs the credit or discredit for settling Nigeria on a course, which Nigerian Nationalists and patriots feel obliged to pursue All be it with mixed feelings till the present day’.This is from Obafemi Awolowo The People’s Republic (Ibadan, Oxford University Press 1968) p. 17.

This is the popular story we tell our children in schools and not the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden as applicable to Nigeria. We never tell our children that Nigeria is the greatest masterpiece erected by God for the upliftment of the Black world, according to President Obasanjo. I have expressed my worry to some people who are in a position to know what I am talking about that the use of the name of God to justify many things the President is doing in the public realm is a source of disquiet in Nigerian politics. The name of God is constantly being used in vain by footballers in their communication with the President. The President invokes God’s name in his dealings with the National Assembly, even when the issue is the application of the rules governing legislation and the Executive-Legislative relation. All these are statutory matters. President Obasanjo freely uses God’s name in his dealings within the caucus of the ruling political party, the PDP when Christians and non-Christians attend it. It is sad that President Obasanjo even uses the name of God when the political will of the Nigerian people is being subverted.

Maybe Nigerian history is not a compulsory course in the Nigerian military institutions. I doubt that this is the notion of Nigerian history in the military academies. I once had opportunities to interact with many military officers in the Command and Staff College and in many settings including my stint at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS). I was not surprised that these officers happen to know the origin of Nigeria, that it is colonial and no one ever said that it was God that created Nigeria. Before now I have never read where officers of the Nigerian army ever said that Nigeria is the "creation of God"; they know that Britain created Nigeria for her purpose and not for the interest of Nigerians who inhabit the four walls of Nigeria. Certainly Britain did not create Nigeria for the Black people of the world, because that was not an issue during the colonial period. Even Sir James Robertson, the last colonial Governor General confessed 14 years after he left Nigeria that Britain underestimated the power of ethnicity. In order to support his claim, he quoted copiously from his diary of 1956. On the north and south in general, he had this to say:

The general outlook of the people (north) is so different from those in the southern Nigeria as to give them practically nothing in common. (underline is mine for emphasis)

Comparing two European countries and Nigerian ethnic nationalities, Sir James noted in his diary:

There is less difference between an Englishman and Italian, both of whom have a common civilization based on Greek and Roman foundations and on Christianity, than between a Muslim villager in Sokoto, Kano,or Katsina and an Ibo, Ijaw or Kalabari.

Posing a rhetorical question on the dilemma faced by him and the future Nigerian leaders who want to build Nigerian nation, Sir James notes in his diary, How can any feeling of common purpose of nationality be built up between people whose culture, religion and mode of living is completely different? (Underline is mine for emphasis) This is from Sir James Robertson, Transition in Africa,(London, 1974) p. 223.

It was obvious from what Sir James noted in his diary in 1956 that the Nigerian project was a failed colonial experiment. What would have been done by successive Nigerian political leaders a conscious plan to evolve Nigerian nation. The mode of governing Nigeria since 1960 should have been approached differently by Nigerian political leaders. How could President Obasanjo call {God's will} what the last colonial Governor General so described as lacking anything on which to build on?

What should be noted was that Sir James never blamed God for the ills of Nigeria. He never blamed the British or her successor in Nigeria for not realizing God’s Will in Nigeria.

Maybe the white man believed that later the political crisis would be resolved for and by Nigerians. Is President Obasanjo trying to run away from the colonial basis of Nigerian problem? He would have to rewrite Nigerian political science texts in Nigeria and abroad that associate Nigerian lingering political problems with the colonial origin of Nigeria. It is colonialism and not God that is at the root of Nigerian crisis. The danger in President Obasanjo’s thesis is that Nigerians should not make any attempt to change the Nigerian state as that would violate God’s purpose for Nigeria. To change it or to agitate for its change would therefore, in the view of President Obasanjo offend God.

WHAT GOD WANTS IS JUSTICE; IT IS ABSENT TODAY

My view is that God knows of the injustice in the land today since 1914. God knows that what was left behind in 1960 would not last. It would be in furtherance of God’s work on earth, if President Obasanjo could lead Nigerians to return to the path of justice and equity. Nigeria since 1999 should have made some attempt to address the mistakes of 1814 and 1960. This was what he should have doing since 1999 instead of associating God with his failure to find solution to the lingering political problems as Nigerians move to 2003.

General Obasanjo might not have read history of Nigeria from his High School days as the History taught then was mostly Empire History and of the Age of Discovery etc. But even then, under the Empire History the colonial exploits constituted the major part of the subject and the history of the peoples in the different colonies was de-emphasized. What about the military academies in the United Kingdom? That could not be true as Empire History is a compulsory course in all institutions in the United Kingdom just as Political Science 101 dealing with the US Politics is a compulsory course in the US institutions. Empire History was clear on one fact, the British creation of many colonies including Nigeria.

A lot of the account of how Nigeria was created is declassified in the United Kingdom and they can be found in reputable Universities in the United Kingdom and in the US. Distinguished Nigerian historians of the Ibadan School have copious documents on the origin of Nigeria. Nowhere is the issue of God raised as the basis of the origin of Nigeria.

I am aware that the colonial basis of Nigeria is taught in schools and that is what it should be. Nigeria should not hang on to what the President is telling Nigerians that God created Nigeria. God does not create an unjust setting, which is Nigeria. I had the opportunity to deliver a lecture before an African-American audience in 1996 that Nigeria is "A Case of Failed Colonial Experiment in Africa". Nigerians knew the basis of Nigeria; it is only the President who wants Nigerians to believe that the British for the upliftment of the African people worldwide-created Nigeria. Nigerians expect that when the President speaks, he speaks to them the correct thing. His plan is to rally the people of Nigeria to his plan of recreating Nigeria and bring justice to all. This is what God wants for Nigeria and for Nigerians.

The President should tell Nigerians and the children the truth that the creation of Nigeria was fraudulently put together by the British colonial rulers. He should blame successive Nigerian leaders, civilian and military that did not address the injustice in Nigeria at its creation. If dealing with the imperfection and injustice in the British design is what the President wants to do under his administration, he should tell Nigerians so and he would have the support of many Nigerians including me. Nigerian leaders have since 1999 been calling on him to lead in righting the wrong and injustice from colonialism the imperfections and injustices in the land.

REAL FOUNDERS OF NIGERIA

What Chief Akinjide was referring to when he called the Nigerian enterprise a fraud, was a simple question. What did Britain have in mind when amalgamation was considered as the proper policy in the first decade of the 20th Century? Here I would want to improve on what Chief Awolowo, Chief Akinjide and the popular literature on Nigeria told us in schools.

The real founder of Nigeria was not Lord Lugard as it is generally taught in Nigerian schools and in popular discourse. Lord Lugard was the architect of one north as the employee of the Royal Niger Company in the last decade of the 19th Century. His knowledge of the south and of the various states that made up the south in the 19th century and during the first decade of the 20th century was limited to what he knew from other British traders and British foreign representatives to these states. Whatever role he played during the time of amalgamation arose from his role as the messenger of Lord Lewis Harcourt, the British Colonial Secretary.

It was Lord Harcourt who discovered Lord Lugard from his work in the Northern Nigeria and wanted him to undertake a mission on behalf of the British Government. He therefore sent Lord Lugard on the mission to inquire into the prospect of amalgamation of the north and south of Nigeria and submit report to him on how it could be effected if he found the plan feasible.

On the receipt of the Lord Lugard’s report, Lord Harcourt rushed to the House of Commons with the plan that unification of the two "Nigerias" demanded both (a) a man and (b) a method. The man was to be Lord Lugard; the method was amalgamation.

Lord Lugard was elated with the prospect of going back to the two Nigerias, where he was to incorporate the disparate south into a united North. This is a matter, which history books should tell us as the root of the confusion in the south in its dealing with the core north. Since then, the south is fighting its disparate nature that has since mid 60s been complicated by the civil war and the creation of states. The north is still trying to make the north continue as one and indivisible entity despite the creation of many states since 1967.

(culled from www.nigerdeltacongress.com. First published July 2002)

THE ORIGIN OF NIGERIA: GOD OF JUSTICE NOT ASSOCIATED WITH AN UNJUST POLITICAL ORDER. Appeal to President Obasanjo not to rewrite Nigerian History. {PART 4}

By Prof. Omo Omoruyi.

ALLAH or GOD: DIFFERENT THINGS FOR NIGERIANS

I do not want to start a controversy; there is definitely a contrasting notion of right and wrong and in the origin, purpose and end of the State in Christian and Islamic political thought on the one hand and between these two religions and the African Traditional Religion on the other. Every community in Nigeria has its own history. Every community has a clear notion of what is right and wrong with the Nigerian project. Also every ethnic community in Nigeria has a clear notion of creation and of the creator of Nigeria. Let me speak of my people, the Edo people.

EDO PEOPLE HAVE THEIR HISTORY

The Edo people to which I belong have a history of how the world began and of the position of the Edo people in it up till this day. I recall listening to the Oba of Benin addressing a crowd of people at St. Matthews Church compound in 1952 on the need for the people of Benin and Delta to reclaim their right in Nigeria. He was very emphatic that the people of Benin and Delta must have a state of their own. I recall this incident very well as that was my first time of hearing the Oba speak in public. This was the first time I heard of the betrayal of his people by the British. He told his audience that Britain never told his father that they would be substituting one colonial rule for another one. These were profound statements that didn’t dawn on me as they did not form the subject of discussion in my home even though politics was well discussed in my home. These were not issues that formed the subject of discussion in schools. The year 1952 was the beginning of a new system of government that brought in Ministers.

The following year, the Oba of Benin carried this campaign to the leaders of Benin and Delta Provinces. He was very definite that in dealing with the British, his people were never told through their traditional leaders that at some point they would be made to serve under the Yoruba. In a powerful address to the leaders of the people of Benin and Delta Provinces in Benin on September 18, 1953, the Oba of Benin made a case for a new State for the people of Benin and Delta Provinces because all want to get freedom, not only from the white man, but from foreign African Nation (YORUBA).

The Oba had in mind two forms of colonialism and therefore two forms of liberation. While Nigerians in general were fighting for liberation from the British colonial order, the different ethnic nationalities that found themselves in the artificial political regions (North, East and West) should also seek liberation from the "African Nation". This was a distinction never appreciated until later by other ethnic nationalities in the north and in the east. Today, at the national level, the minorities in the north and in the south are confused as to how Nigerian politics can be moved beyond the tripod. We tried to experiment with how the minorities in the north and in the south could form the Fourth Dimension and move the country beyond the tripod. This is the subject of my book, Beyond the Tripod in Nigerian Politics.

One would recall how the Oba of Benin challenged his people as follows: I hope everyone will pull his weight in this National Struggle, because at this critical time when all the Nations of this country called Nigeria are fighting hard to assert their National status, it will be unwise for Benin-Delta to do nothing about asserting its own".

The Oba made another profound statement as follows: The unity of Old Nigeria can only be maintained by the type of regionalization the London Constitutional Conference has recommended.

He went on: Benin-Delta was a sovereign Nation before the occupation of the country by the British; that is why Britain cannot annex it (Benin-Delta Nation) to the Yoruba State". The above is from Michael Vickers: Ethnicity and Sub-Nationalism in Nigeria (Oxford 2001).

From the above, the Oba of Benin was clear that the people of Benin and Delta Provinces were one people before colonialism created the two artificial Provinces. He further said that the Benin and Delta Provinces were sovereign people before the British occupation and that the British deprived them of their sovereignty. The Oba of Benin was very definite that this was made worse with the creation of the artificial region that placed the people of Benin and Delta Provinces under the Yoruba, another "African Nation".

What the Oba of Benin was saying was what Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo said later in books. According to the Oba of Benin, Nigeria was made of many Nations before the white man came to amalgamate the different parts into one Nigeria. As the Oba put it, amalgamation did not mean the process of annexing one Nation to another State as the successors of the British in different parts of Nigerian attempted to do in the old regions of the North, the West and the East.

The Oba of Benin was reacting to the statement of the Alake of Abeokuta during the opening of the House of Assembly on January 7, 1952. It should be noted that after the Speech from the Throne delivered by the Lt. Governor, Sir Hugo Marshall, the Alake of Abeokuta rose to speak and commenced his speech as follows:

"On my right sits the Oni of Ife….. On my left, the leader of our Government, Obafemi Awolowo…..The voice of the West is complete". (Hansard of the Western House of Assembly January 7, 1952)

Did the Alake appreciate that Nigeria was made up of Nations brought together in the three political regions by the British? Did the Alake know that beside the Yoruba Nation there was another Nation in the West? Did the Alake know that that his speech was offensive to the non-Yoruba in the region? Where did he place the Oba of Benin and the Olu of Warri? How could the Alake of Abeokuta say that the voice of the West was complete after naming three Yoruba?

Where were the Benin and Delta Provinces who were though part of the Western Region were occupied by non-Yoruba people artificially put in the same Region by the British?

Who would recognize them? For how long would they go unrecognized?

Arising from this incident, the non-Yoruba in the House of Assembly made up their mind to agitate for a home of theirs, a new Region that later became the Midwestern Region as the Fourth Region in Nigeria.

Reading the report of Lord Lugard’s visit to the southern states before he proceeded with the amalgamation, it was obvious that the issue of making one ethnic nationality to serve under another was never raised with the leaders of the communities in the south. But that was what Lugard proceeded to doing in 1914 and after; it was this injustice that formed the basis of the north-south relation after independence. Lugard’s plan was to make one part of the country to serve under another part. That was never raised with the leaders of the south.

What the Oba of Benin was saying was that the Edo people have a history of creation or of their place in history. The Edo people lived in an independent country with diplomatic relation with Portugal in the 15th Century before the British people ever stepped on any part of Nigeria. Even at the commencement of the amalgamation project, the British had a treaty relation called the "Treaty of Protection". In fact, when the British Governor General to the two "Nigerias" visited Benin he had this to say about Benin and its administration.

The Binis are intelligent and law abiding. They had like the Buganda established a regular form of government.

Lord Lugard went on: Benin must be an ancient kingdom dating back to 14th and 13th century and the home of the highest art discovered in Africa outside Egypt, I suppose.

Narrating the subject of discussion when he paid a visit to the Benin traditional ruler and the leaders during the time he was planning his amalgamation, Lord Lugard had this to say in his letter to his wife: Of course, we (he and the Benin leaders) talked much of the massacre and of the subsequent army under Dawson, which broke the power of Benin.

Appreciating the military prowess of the Benin military he had this to say in his letter to his wife: It took a strong upwards of 2,000 blue jackets with artillery etc. and they had heavy fighting. That was 1897, just when I came from South Africa to raise the West African Frontier Force.

Lord Lugard also acknowledged the level of political awareness of the Bini people and the development of Benin during his visit to Benin. According to him, The Bini Chiefs, who presented themselves stripped to the waist, only raised one question, the water rate as Benin had laid on water supply.

For the above, see Margery Perham, Lugard: The Years of Authority (London Collins 1960) p. 405.a

All the foregoing about the Benin attitude to the way Nigeria was formed by the British and the place of Benin in Nigeria during the visit of Lord Lugard contrast sharply with the notion of creation in the Bible and with the notion of creation of Nigeria in the theory of Obasanjo. I am aware that the Yoruba people of which the President is a part, have clear notion of creation and the place of the Yoruba in the past, the present and the future. These ethnic positions are not necessarily anti-Nigeria.

I still recall what Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the sage of Nigerian politics said that one has to be a good Yoruba before being a good Nigerian and not the other way round. Even Lord Lugard avoided the Yoruba elites in Lagos Abeokuta and Ibadan like a plague. Of the Yoruba of Lagos, Lord Lugard said in a letter to his wife:

I am somewhat baffled as to how to get into touch with the educated native…..to start with. I am not in sympathy with him. His loud and arrogant conceit are distasteful to me, the lack of natural dignity and courtesy antagonize me.

Of the Yoruba in Ibadan Lord Lugard had this to say:

You will see the class I had to deal with. They say that Lagos people will not be reduced to the futile condition of the north Nigeria without a protest and a big noise; they had emissaries all over Ibadan, Oyo and all the Yoruba towns stirring up the people to resist loss of their lands and taxation. They regard it with suspicion if I blow my nose, and think it means some deep-seated plot. I am beginning to think that they are hopeless and that any attempt to make any reform with their cooperation is impossible. The above is also from Margery Perham p. 389 and 390.

What should be noted was that at this time, the Yoruba could boast of many Lawyers, Doctors and Engineers, more educated than Lord Lugard and he knew so. He also knew that these Lagos educated natives who have been to Europe and studied in England had access to world news. He knew that they were conversant with the plan of the British to amalgamate the two "Nigerias" as they were able to read what was said in the British Parliament on the matter. This was why he wanted to move the Capital of the amalgamated Nigeria to the north, Zungeru or Kaduna, a plan that was later executed by General Murtala Muhammed.

The "Lugard’s children", as the northern political leaders were called by the Lagos elite, are still of the view of Lord Lugard today. This is Nigerian’s history; General Obasanjo did not tell us, which one he was referring to.

President Obasanjo is a Christian and a spirit-filled he professes. One should be of the opinion that whenever he refers to God, he actually means the Christian God. The interpretation in the north is that when Obasanjo says that God created Nigeria he is actually referring to the Christian God. The implication of this kind of reasoning is dangerous in a multi-religious society like Nigeria.

And that God is God of Justice and Mercy that saw him through the period in the Gulag. Why does the President not say so that the God he serves is God of Justice and Mercy that abhors what in the Nigerian military under General Abacha was blessed by Allah. Chief Obasanjo was a victim of what was dubbed "SET UP". The notion of "SET UP" is a special way of framing colleagues through suggestions For the meaning of set up phenomenon, see the copious instances in General Chris M. Alli memoir, The Federal Republic of Nigerian Army (Lagos Malthouse Press 2001) pp. 356-360. It is fascinating how it operated under the regime of General Abacha. When it leads to a successful coup not necessary bloodless or to the framing up of colleagues, it is characterized as receiving the blessing of Allah. But when it fails, it is also said that Allah prevented it. Allah worked both ways. This was part of the teaching of the military institutions and academies and in the barracks in Nigeria during this period of the military regime.

It was after reviewing the foregoing that I once suggested that the only solution to the politicization and ethnicization of the armed forces was total scrapping of the military and the starting of a new one all over again. It was my view that that was the only way we can have a representative and accountable armed forces in a democratic Nigeria.

One should have expected President Obasanjo to keep the above distinction in mind. He should have been in a position to say so in a gathering of his fellow believers as General TY Danjuma recently did. One would recall how General Danjuma spoke to a gathering of Northern (Nigeria) Christian Elders Forum on April 20, 2002 on the crisis facing the Christians in the North. According to the General, the Christian Religion was and is still under assault in Nigeria with the admission that the Muslims are planning to take over the country. See www. WorthyNews.com of May 24, 2002. He did not say so in the gathering of Nigerians in his office or in the barrack as President does in public function involving Christians, Muslims and practitioners of African Traditional Religion. General Danjuma spoke to the faithful in a Christian gathering and not in a public meeting of Christians and non-Christians. Does the President know that this is the proper thing to do?

STATE TO CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS

One should have expected President Obasanjo to refer to the original notion of the State in Christian political thought that it was created because of the original sin of man. He should have cited the works of the great theologians, St. Augustine of Hippo or Thomas Acquinas, who are the greatest exponents of the divine justification of the origin and purpose of state. He did not cite the link between this tradition and the later exponent of the secular nature of modern state. Only Israel of all the Judaic/Christian related states, that have religion as its basis. This is understandable.

But the President did not address the fact that the Islamic political thought is different from the Christian political thought. Does the President appreciate that in the Islamic political thought, there is nothing called the separation of the Mosque and State? Does President Obasanjo know that some key Islamic States in the world are organized according to the Koran except Turkey. Turkey has strict rules about secularism as a commitment to "Westernization". The Turkish political class must defend secularism as one of the Ataturk’s Imperatives. A government would risk being sacked if it toyed with it, as forcefully enunciated by the founder of the modern Turkey, Ataturk. Does the Nigerian President know that many of the key Islamic States are prefixed with the term Islamic Republic of this or that? This is the basis of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC).

Nigeria is a full member of OIC. I recall that the Nigerian President found himself attending a D8 Meeting of Islamic Leaders that has nothing to contribute to Nigeria economic development, except join them in the anti-Western rhetoric. While the Islamic leaders were harping on their concern with the West, President Obasanjo used the occasion to sing his hackneyed song of "Debt Relief". Debt relief from Egypt or Bangladesh or what! This was why I tried to help President Obasanjo that he should not do what the former Islamic political generals of the past who got Nigeria into OIC would not do in public because they knew in their heart that "Nigeria is neither an Islamic nor a Christian State".

When President Obasanjo said that Nigeria is a creation of God, he failed to address his notion of the origin of Nigeria within the context of the debate about Sharia and the fears of Christian who want Nigeria to return unto Caesar the things that are Caesars and unto God the things that are Gods. This notion is alien to the Islamic notion of State.

(culled from www.nigerdeltacongress.com. First published July 2002)

THE ORIGIN OF NIGERIA: GOD OF JUSTICE NOT ASSOCIATED WITH AN UNJUST POLITICAL ORDER. Appeal to President Obasanjo not to rewrite Nigerian History.{ PART 3}

Written by Prof. Omo Omoruyi

OBASANJO’S "THEORY" OF STATE

I was asked a question once by an American student what was the authority on which President Obasanjo based his "theory of state". I could not readily answer the question. His handlers are still to come to grip with this elementary question. Merely asserting without demonstrating how "God is a Nigerian" is not only dangerous for the multi-religious society of Nigeria, it is too simplistic and sometime borne out of laziness and maybe frustration. This is when one simply stop planning and thinking and relying on calling on God. We should pray that God should give us the ability to think plan and resolve issues. Why do we use God to explain many unjust acts of men?

What the President does too often in the name of God reminds one of the usual explanation of Muslim friends in the north that "Allah gives power to who so ever Allah wants and Allah can take that power away when He likes". I first heard of this from my former Chairman, Alhaji Yusuf Maitama Sule in 1993 after the annulment. This was recently attributed to him Dr. Alex Ekwueme as the basis for Alhaji Maitama Sule’s decision to withdraw in favor of Alhaji Shehu Shagari in December 1978 presidential race. This kind of reasoning goes against all grains of democratic thought that is anchored on the wishes of the people of all faiths (Christians, Muslim and Believers in African Traditional Religion) at election.

Allah’s wish was unfortunately used as the justification of coups in the past since these successful coups had been an "intra-Muslim" affair or an "intra-clique" affair. Could this be true? What would be the interpretation by Christians? Those who offered this simplistic explanation or justification seemed to ignore the implication of coup. Did Allah bless the shedding of blood of fellow Nigerians, Muslims and non-Muslims alike in the name of power? This is what coup is about. It is about the violent seizure of power. It is about killing for power or blood letting for power, simple. The office holders and their supporters are meant to be killed if they resist. This is the conduct of military officers in the name of Allah in the past. Again this is a conflict of civilizations. Christianity would not approve of coups that involve shedding of innocent blood.

What is disturbing to me whenever I recall how many coups were conceived and announced in the past is the role of Christian political generals as the implementers of the Allah’s wish. I still recall the coup of 1975 and 1985 announced by Col. Joseph Garba and Col. Joshua Dongayaro both Christians respectively ushering General Murtala and General Babangida both Muslims respectively. Muslims take their faith seriously but Christians pay lukewarm attitude to their faith.

There is another disturbing aspect to the use of God to justify the unjust act of public officials. This is why it is disturbing for President Obasanjo to argue in this manner. It is dangerous and akin to the terrorists who justify all manner of killing in the name of Allah, if he is not careful with his rhetoric.

DOES ALLAH JUSTIFY COUP AND HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

Nigeria never heard of the hand of Allah or God in the emergence of Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon in 1966. We did not read of Allah/God in his overthrow by General Murtala Muhammed. Policy issues were used to justify the actions of the coup plotters in the coup speeches of 1966 and 1975 respectively.

One started to read of the work of Allah in the intra-Muslim affairs from the coup in December 1983 led by General Muhamadu Buhari. He had to find justifications in moving against a fellow Muslim who Allah gave power through the ballot box. Later what General Babangida did on August 27, 1985 in getting rid of General Buhari on a Sallah Day also had Allah’s blessing. One recalls on this occasion, the three Majors sent to arrest General Buhari met him before he commenced his prayer. On this occasion, the ram General Buhari killed was still to be eaten and the beneficiary of the coup was planning to go the prayer ground at Minna. Did Allah sanction these acts both in Lagos and in Minna?

Another disturbing issue was whether Allah blessed the catalogue of injustices in the land under these rulers? Alhaji Shagari’s account in his memoir did not attribute what he suffered in the hands of General Buhari to Allah. Allah could not have commanded General Buhari to inflict the untold human right violations on fellow Muslims in 1984.

We may also ask why did the same northern leaders who rejected what General Buhari did to them as the work of Satan and in 1993 justify the actions of the political generals when it came to June 12?

What happened to the June 12 and his winner in the hands of clique even though justified by those who preached Allah, did not have the blessing of God or the blessing of those who practice African Traditional Religion. The former Sultan of Sokoto and many Muslim clerics in the north appealed to their colleagues in the south especially in the Yoruba land that "if Allah wanted Abiola to be the President nobody would have stopped him"! The meaning of this kind of religious justification of annulment and of the detention unto death of the winner of that election and other human rights violations was in bad taste. Again there was a conflict of civilization never appreciated. What did God tell Preacher Obasanjo in Abacha’s Gulag?

Incidentally, God told Chief Obasanjo the opposite of this in Abacha’s Gulag and Preacher/Chief Obasanjo told Nigerians and the international community so in June 1998 that the issues in the annulment should be resolved so as to move the country forward. Why did President Obasanjo abandon what God told him in Abacha’s Gulag as soon as he stepped into the Aso Rock?

What the Muslims were telling the Nigerian voters when Muslim political generals were inflicting inhuman treatment on fellow Nigerians was frightening. One wonders if this could be true in Islamic political thought. Few questions will be pertinent here.

Are they saying that Allah used the annullists to deny Nigerians their democratic rights in 1993?

Are they saying that Allah used General Buhari to sack the elected President, Alhaji Shehu Shagari?

Are they saying that Allah used General Babangida to sack the military Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari in 1985?

Are they saying that Allah used General Babangida to cancel the presidential primaries in November 1992?

Is there some continuity in Allah’s acts between the act of annulment and the Address to the Nigerian people and the international community on the new transition program by General Abdulsalami Abubakar on July 20, 1998?

There was; one only needs to read the analogy General Abubakar drew between what happened in the past and the act of annulment as his basis for asking Nigerians to forget about the injustice in the annulment.

What Nigerians should have been asking is whether Allah inflicted on the country the most horrendous crime on the Nigerian people through the denial of their right to human dignity under General Abacha between 1993 and 1998?

Aren’t they concerned that Allah could be said to bless the reign of General Abacha?

In all the Churches I attended and in all the prayer groups I participated in Nigeria before I left the country in 1995, the reign of General Abacha was the subject of prayer. I was told that this practice continued in Churches after 1993 until General Abacha died in June 1998. Chief Obasanjo confessed to the power of God when he was in Abacha’s Gulag. In all the Churches he attended after his release, fellow worshippers told him of the power of God and he too confessed and danced because it was made manifest in his life. This is the way Christians see life in general and this was the way they saw the reign of General Abacha. To Christians, the reign of General Abacha was not of God even if it received Allah’s blessing. This again was a conflict of civilization. General Abacha sacked one Sultan and installed another all in the name of Allah. Just as the former Sultan was the representative of the former Muslim political general and led Nigeria to the assume the full membership status of the OIC, the new Sultan also assumed the same role as the representative of General Abacha at the OIC meeting in Iran.

Of course when the "prince of Kano", General Sani Abacha died in June 1998 through the intervention of God, Allah again appeared to the geo-ethno-military ruling clique counseling a new strategy.

Allah counseled the clique not to go for another member of the clique either from the military wing or civilian wing of the clique.

Allah told the clique not to go for an Igbo. We saw how Dr. Alex Ekwueme was humiliated in the party of which he was a part founder. We saw how the Igbo leaders were pushed aside in the APP, even though, they as former agents of the political generals who annulled the June 12 and sustained it between 1993 and 1998 under General Abacha, thought that they were the faithful allies of the clique.

We saw how Allah told the clique to go for an Egba Chief that was put in the Gulag according to the wishes of Allah.

If within-the-clique succession was not of Allah after the death of General Abacha, Allah told them that going for the Egba Chief to reign for a given period was seen as a tactical retreat within the overall strategy of permanent northern control of Nigeria. What was the given time frame, a period? This has become the question since 1999 especially when the important members of the clique are no longer happy with President Obasanjo. When and how will the clique come up with a scheme to inflict on the country another member of the clique? This was why I raised the question in the past, what did Chief Obasanjo promise the clique? President Obasanjo never answered this question. The question was as relevant then as it is today, when the key members of the clique such as President Shagari and other key leaders of the Arewa Consultative Forum openly started talking of marginalization of the north and the betrayal of the north and all that.

One would have expected President Obasanjo to respond to the northern assertion and accusation. Maybe he would do so as part of his campaign for the 2003 election. He has to as he faces so many competitors from the north on the platform of Sharia and on the platform of how to reverse the northern marginalisation.

President Obasanjo would also say what he did for other areas. He would also say how he responded to the problems of other areas such as the quest for resource control by the people of the oil producing areas. He would have to say what he did for the Igbo. Of course, Nigerians at large would want him to tell them the effort he made to resolve the lingering political problems since 1999.

(culled from www.nigerdeltacongress.com. First published July 2002)