Nigeria's political problems sprang from the carefree manner in which the British took over, administered and abandoned the government and people of Nigeria.
British administrators did not make an effort to weld the country together and unite the heterogenous groups of people. This does not imply that British administrators did nothing good in Nigeria. Far from it. Many things stand to their credit, and it is clear that present day Nigeria owes certain achievements to the spade work of British administrators.
Nevertheless, there was one evil that outlived British administration, namely political advancement. When the British came, they forcibly rubber-stamped the political State of the ethnic groups of Nigeria, and maintained that status quo until they left. Upon their departure nearly a hundred years later, the people resumed fighting for their political rights.
When the British came to Nigeria as an imperial nation to take over the rulership of the country from 1861 (with the cession of Lagos), they met the people of the South totally free, only observing and regulating their own monarchies and institutions. But in the North, the British met the Fulani in the process of establishing their rulership in most parts, except in the Kanuri area in the north-east.
The gradual but continued establishment of Fulani rulership over the former independent states such as the Hausa, Birom, Anga, Nupe, Tiv, and the Yoruba of Ilorin started in 1804 in Gobir (Sokoto), with the rebellion of Usman Dan Fodio. It was by the success of that rebellion alone that the Fulani, who formerly dwelt as strangers and settlers among the various peoples of the North, began to unseat the traditional rulers of these people, and imposed members of their own clan as rulers, styled Emirs.
They demolished the free monarchial institutions of these peoples and imposed them on them as Islamic orientated, but feudalistic rulership. It was this rulership of this Emirs and their kinsmen that reduced the Northern peoples from their erstwhile free and happy, land-owner-farmer state, to an oppressed, landless serf state, in which they had to pay sixty percent or more of their food crops, Cattle, and other products to the Village Head, District Head and the Emir, in political hoamge. In addition, those of them who had accepted Islam had to worship behind the said political leaders, in religious homage. In that way, the Fulani aristocratic feudalism was established in the North.
It is to the discredit of the British that they, who understood the the principles of personal liberty, and who had nurtured the the ideals of social justice for twelve hundred years, still came to Nigeria in the latter part of the nineteenth century simply to bolster up the forces of feudalism, and so prolonged the oppression of the people.
As was traditional, the people of the North did not meekly give in to the rulership of the Fulani. They strove hard to pull down the strange rulership, especially because it completely took away the political freedom to which they were accustomed. Unfortunately for them, the British came in at this particular time with a superior military force and imposed the "peace of Britain", rubber-stamping the Fulani hegemony over the whole area. After that, every effort by the people to be free was regarded as a rebellion against British rulership and was forcibly suppressed.
From this, we can easily understand why there was a fundamental difference between the political aspirations of the leaders of the North and South. In the South, political leadership sprang from the people, that is, from the grassroots.
These people had been the custodian of their own civic rights before the British came. It was easy and natural for the common people to be active again, when political agitation for national freedom became a popular pre-occupation of Nigerians in the 1940s. In the North, however, the ruling class, made up of the sons and kinsmen of the Emirs, took over the political leadership of the people.
Unfortunately, they represented their own class interests, rather than the popular will of the masses. This happened because the British governed Nigerians indirectly through their traditional rulers. In the South, they governed through the obas, obis and ammanyanabos, who were relatively powerless amongst their people. In the North, they governed through the Emirs whose sons and kinsmen were the Chiefs and Native Authority officials, who lorded it over the people. These emerged as the aristocratic political leaders of the 1940s. As a result, the true leaders of the masses were hamstrung and held down.
From the onset, the British governed the North as a monolithic unit, merging the separate kingdom of Bornu with the Fulani emirates. They also governed the South as a unit until the Richard's Constitution of 1946, which split the South into two, establishing a country with three large regions. From these, three centres of power we're established: Kaduna in the North, Ibadan in the West and Enugu in the East. Each region was administered from its centre of power by British representatives called Lieutenant-Governors.
The overall co-ordinating centre was Lagos, where the Governor resided. This was the pattern that led to the independence of Nigeria. With the calling forth of regional representatives to the constitutional conferences that followed, the political leadership of the country split into three, so that the British motive of "divide and rule" was exemplified. It must be noted that that this political arrangement by the British was not really necessary.
They could, for instance, have carved out a region for the Kanuri in the north-east, since that area was never captured by the Fulani. They could also have carved out a region for the Yoruba of Ilorin and the Tiv of the Benue, since their areas were geographically and ethnologically distinct from the Hausas areas, further North. However the British choose the tripartite arrangement because it was more to their purpose of keeping Nigeria perpetually within their sphere of influence, even after its independence.
This historical analysis and exposition is an accurate narration of how the British crippled the political development of Nigeria, by handling a greater proportion of Federal power to the North.
What do you think about this essay? Do you believe this political arrangement by the British can stand the test of time in Modern Nigerian Democracy? Let's hear your opinions in the comments section.
Once again, thanks for reading through.
This post appeared exclusively on Kings Media NG.
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