Isokan Yoruba Magazine, Fall
1996/Winter 1997 , Volume III No. I, Page 32.
Historical Perspectives on the
Balance of Power Crisis in Nigeria:
An Argument For Restructuring Nigeria, By Taiwo Akinola.
INTRODUCTION
If there is any country in Africa which has no
reason to be poor, that country is Nigeria. As the sixth largest
exporter of crude oil in the world, revenue from oil alone has
been substantial.
It has the most sophisticated middle class in
Africa and enjoyed considerable political good will both in
Africa and beyond. Even though the military has ruled the country
for 26 years out of her 36 years of independence, it is still
fair to say that the problem with Nigeria is more than military
dictatorship. Even under civilian regimes, Nigeria was not an
egalitarian society of its people and nationalities-it was never
a progressive society nationally.
Thirty-six years after independence, the
country has made minimal progress in the social, economic and the
political facets of its nation building. Socially, unlike before
independence, the phenomenon of constant insecurity has become a
characteristic of its existence.
Economically, the country which was once tipped
as capable of becoming a medium power is today the 13th poorest
country in the world. With inadequate infrastructure, it is $41b
indebted to international financial institutions. Politically,
ethnic assertiveness has replaced Nigerian nationalism. How, why,
and when did we flounder? And what is the way forward?
I submit that there is considerable evidence
from the social, economic and political direction of events in
Nigeria to show that the structural imbalance of the Nigerian
state is the most critical factor in why the state has not been
able to combine and synthesize its enormous resources into
effective socio-economic and institutional mechanism to further
its national interest.
Put simply, Nigeria has a balance of power
problem, fronted by the three major nations Hausa/Fulani, Yoruba
and Igbo, whose particular configurations form the basic
structural framework within which all other interest groups in
the federation are forced to operate, and that power is
overbalanced to the advantage of the Hausa/Fulani, the leader of
the northern group of nationalities.
It is the superstructure provided by this
problem which compounds the normal problems associated with
developing countries such as corruption, poor education,
inadequate infrastructure, ethnicity, military rule, class
problem and manipulation by the elites.
It should be pointed out that Nigeria has two
major battles to fight, if it is to become a great country. The
first battle to gain political independence has been fought, won
and lost. The battle was won because we got the British out of
Nigeria, and lost because the British left us with the second
problem (the balance of power problem). It is this second problem
that brought us here today, and the one that has to be fought and
won before the first battle for political independence could be
said to be fully won. Taking balance of power as a starting
point, one could examine a whole range of factors contributing to
lack of political stability and integration in Nigeria.
BALANCE OF POWER
Balance of power is defined by Toynbee as
"a system of political dynamics that comes into play
whenever a society articulates itself into a number of mutually
dependent local states. It operates in a general way to keep the
average calibre of states low in terms of every criterion for the
measurement of political power...a state which threatens to
increase its calibre above the prevailing average becomes
subject, almost automatically, to pressure from all the other
states that are members of the same political constellation"
The action of each state is based on the notion that the pursuit
of power is the common denominator to which all foreign policy
can be reduced and the notion that any preponderant power will
always be a menace to the interest and security of others.
The core objective of balance of power is to
preserve "at all cost" the system of states from being
transferred by conquest into a universal empire; to protect the
independence of states in particular areas from absorption or
domination by a locally preponderant power and to preserve the
conditions in which other institutions on which international
order depends and are managed. This includes diplomacy, war,
international law and great power management. The need to balance
power could lead to war but this is not to say that balance of
power is the cause of wars. The cause of wars can be found in the
fundamental issues which the balance of power seeks to remove;
the temptation to resort to preventive war to gain over balance
of power.
Balance of power is a widely used concept in
international relations, one whose importance in the
understanding of the political dynamics in multi-ethnic states
has been undervalued due to the limitations in the
interpretations of its meaning. These mistakes arose because of
the assumptions that tribalism or ethnicity are primitive and
transitional. Also, it should be noted that the observation on
which the concept was based was only carried out in fully-formed
nations or nation states in Europe where the internal balance of
power struggle had become either stable or reversed. Even in
those states, such as United Kingdom, Canada, Belgium, Italy,
Spain, the talk of a devolved parliament, autonomous regions and
outright independence still characterize the relationship between
different nations and nationalities in those states.
In the unrealistic interpretations of the
meaning of balance of power for example, the balance of power
struggle within the original India state was not recognized until
partition and war, followed by negotiations, created three
autonomous states, which were later recognized as three
independent countries that can engage in balance of power
struggle in the Indian subregion. In addition, it does not
require the wisdom of Solomon to recognize the balance of power
struggle within states such as Canada, Nigeria, Sudan, United
Kingdom, and Turkey.
The application of balance of power to
Nigeria's domestic politics is based on the belief that Nigeria's
internal politics reproduces rather than provides an haven from
the anarchy of international politics. Instead of sharply
differentiating the lack of consensus among the national groups
in Nigeria from the anarchy of international politics, it is more
accurate in this application to consider Nigeria's politics as a
microcosm of international politics. Balance to ensure survival
is as important for nationalities within states as it is between
states.
The balance of power concept assumes that
states will seek to expand their power to provide themselves with
the maximum security that would ensure their survival. It further
argues that the primary concern of states when seeking alignment
is to prevent any other state or group of states from achieving
preponderance which could threaten their security. It would
appear that both internal and external threats influence alliance
needs.
WHAT IS NIGERIA?
Many political analysts have claimed that
Nigeria has ethnic or tribal problems, yet the justification for
applying the balance of power concept to the internal politics of
Nigeria is the belief that the Nigerian state is neither a
nation, a nation-state nor a national-state, but a collection of
nationalities. Therefore, the question to ask at this stage is,
what is Nigeria?
1. State is the major political
subdivision of the globe, which could be conceptualized in
quantitative terms. Thus the Nigerian state is a territorial unit
consisting of 88.5m inhabitants occupying 913, 072 square
kilometers of land mass located in West Africa between 2 degrees
and 14 degrees east of the meridian and latitude 4 degrees north
of the equator.
2. A nation is a social group which
shares a common ideology, common institutions and customs, a
sense of homogeneity and the "notion of shared blood."
A nation may comprise part of a state or extend beyond the
borders of a single state. The use of nation as a substitute for
territorial juridical unit (the state), created an unnecessary
ambiguity since a nation is not the same with a state unless in a
situation where a nation has its own state- a territorial
political unit whose borders coincided or nearly coincided with
the territorial distribution of a nation. This is known as a
nation-state.
By the above definition of a nation, Nigeria is
not by any standard, a nation, while Hausa/Fulani, Yoruba and the
Ibo, the three largest self aware groups in Nigeria, for example,
are nations. The Yoruba and Hausa/Fulani nations, for examples,
extended beyond the Nigerian border. There are quite a lot of
nationalities in Nigeria today that are bigger or more aware than
a tribe but less aware than a nation.
THE MAKING OF NIGERIA'S PROBLEMS
Before British colonial government arrived, the
geographical area which now constitutes the Nigerian state was
made up of independent nationalities. Opinions on the number of
nationalities range from 250 to 350; however, a recent survey put
it at 71 nationalities. Some are large while others are small.
Despite some degree of cultural assimilation by the larger
nationalities, each nationality has a unique culture, language,
territorial contiguity and the will to maintain their identity.
The area was naturally going through the process of enlarged
communities and people moved across ethnic boundaries either to
maximize opportunities or to minimize threats. But there was no
consciousness to bring about a Nigerian nation-state. Fulani
expansion was arrested militarily in the northeast by the Kanuri
of Bornu, and in the southwest by Yoruba, while in the southeast
impenetrable terrain barred the Fulani cavalry.
According to Robert S. Smith, who carried out a
study of interaction among pre-colonial social units in West
Africa, "in large parts of West Africa before partition of
the region among European powers, international relations in
peace and war were carried on in a more or less recognizable
fashion, and, to go a little further, in a coherent and rational
manner which showed itself capable under favorable conditions of
leading to political, economic and technical improvements in
sociality."
However, since the European partition, William
Graf says what we all know that: "Harmony, co-operation and
'unity' have manifestly not characterized social and political
life in post-independent Nigeria...whenever the Nigerian
political system has most dramatically experienced
breakdowns-constitutional crisis, political stagnation, coups
d'etat, civil war, etc.-this has always occurred within a context
of inter-ethnic controversy...The phenomenon of ethnicity,
ethno-nationalism or, as it is popularly termed, tribalism, is
thus a focal point of national politics."
THE BRITISH CAME TO AFRICA
To fully understand the British colonial
policies in Nigeria, it is essential to first of all try to
understand why they came to Africa along with other imperialist
powers. According to William D. Graf "colonial rule was a
manifestation of nineteenth-century capitalism, namely
imperialism.... The motive was to ensure the effective and
unchallenged exploitation of the colony to the benefit of British
finance and industry." To achieve this objective, the
British colonial administration attempted the following:
1. A metropolitan state supplies, inter
alia, a military machine to maintain law and order, a
bureaucratic apparatus to administer the areas under its control,
and a series of infrastructures, especially in transport and
communications.
2. Undermine the pre-colonial
social-political structure with new beliefs and values which are
considered to be superior to the local value.
3. "Amalgamate and divide [the
people] for its own purposes of domination and
exploitation."
4. Train some of the people to
supplement the lack of European manpower reserves.
5. Tend to yield a good portion of
colonial authority to groups more receptive to the objectives and
ideology of British imperialism. The Fulani north was one of such
groups; it resisted early independence or self-government while
the East and the West were eager for both.
Nigeria as a territorial state evolved
gradually, under British administration, from the establishment
of the crown colony of Lagos in 1861, through a series of
extensions and corporations and amalgamation by Lord Lugard in
1914. Lugard, the high commissioner of the protectorate of
Northern Nigeria, who was appointed to the governorship of both
northern and southern Nigeria in 1922, was designated
Governor-General of the amalgamated territories called the colony
and protectorate of Nigeria.
The first planned political development of
Nigeria started in 1898 when the British government set up the
Selborne Committee, which among other things, was to look into
the British government's organization of the Royal Niger
companies assets and liabilities, as well as, mapping out the
future development of Nigeria. The committee recommended that the
union of the three administrations would be desirable as soon as
communication networks were established. It also recommended that
the administration of Nigeria through native ruler-the indirect
rule system-will reduce for the British the colony's
administrative cost.
In summary, Britain unified Nigeria because of
the following reasons:
1. The North and South formed a
continuous stretch of British territory without any intervening
foreign power between them, but surrounded by very ambitious
foreign powers; it made both political, administrative and
economic sense to administer it as one unit.
2. Southern Nigeria was financially
self-supporting, while the British administration of the North
depended on £100,000 annual grant in aid between 1912 and 1918.
As Professor Osuntokun observed: Amalgamation served as a way to
unify the unproductive part of the empire with the productive
part.
3. There was the need to unify the
railway policies of the two administrations to facilitate easy
transportation of goods from the hinterland to ports.
4. To make the entire social and
political situation in Southern Nigeria to conform to the
Northern Nigeria standard where no modern system seems to have
existed.
5. The educated Nigerians in Lagos
agitated for the unification of the Northern and Southern
Nigeria.
The significance of how and why Nigeria was
amalgamated is that Nigeria was defined, not on the basis of its
peoples' shared historical, economic or social experiences, but
merely by the arbitrary amalgamation of a number of disparage
ethno cultural units which happened to occupy continuous land
areas that were then under British colonial administration.
Reflecting on the nature of the new state, Sir
Arthur Richard (Lord Milverton), the former governor general of
Nigeria once observed that:
It is only the accident of British suzerainty
which has made Nigeria one country. It is far from being one
country or one nation socially or even economically. Socially and
politically, there are deep differences between the major tribal
groups. They do not speak the same language and they have highly
divergent customs and ways of life and they represent different
stages of culture.
While the arbitrary amalgamation of the
different nationalities without any consideration for its ethnic
differences is no doubt the original cause of the tensions within
the Nigerian state, it is fair to say, that amalgamation, if well
managed, could have provided opportunities for the different
nationalities to pool their limited resources together so that
they can become collectively more powerful than they would be if
they existed separately. But, today, no such advantage exists for
the nationalities in Nigeria.
THE AMALGAMATION THAT WENT WRONG
To occupy any of the Nigerian territories, the
British metropolitan power had to resort to the use of
compensatory and conditioned powers in different proportions. But
once occupation was complete, the people are defined in terms of
their ability to make the objective of the British government
achievable or their threats to the chance of achieving these
objectives. Influences are apportioned on the bases of these
definitions.
The South, especially the Yoruba were the first
nationality to benefit in a large proportion from Western
education which was initially provided by the commissioners. The
British preferred Lagos to become the capital of Nigeria because
of the advantage presented by its deep ports. However, it was not
long before the quality education provided for the Yoruba became
the source of their threat to British interest in Nigeria; the
Yoruba elites wanted the British out of Nigeria and the
liberation of the North.
Thus the Yoruba were defined by Lord Lugard as:
"extremely dangerous...seditious and rotten to the core.
They are masters of intrigue and they have been plotting against
the government, I am somewhat baffled how to get in touch with
educated native. To start with I am not in sympathy with him, his
loud and arrogant conceit."
As early as September 21, 1910, another British
official John Holt complained that "elements of Southern
Nigeria most closely identified with European influences provided
the persistently hostile critics of the administration. The
British authority admire the Ibos for their republican
attributes, their sense of commerce and good education. However,
they too could neither be trusted with political or military
powers because "The Ibos quite unknowingly appeared to take
the position of the Irish."
Lord Lugard's first report as High Commission
to the North provides an insight to the British attitude and
definition of the Northerners: "I am anxious to prove to
these people [the Fulani] that we have no hostility to them and
only to insist on good government and justice, and I am anxious
to utilize if possible their wonderful intelligence, for they are
born rulers, and incomparably above the Negroid races in
ability."
Though Wirz (1982) may be correct in his
observation that the stereotypes were more or less explicitly
conditioned by contemporary racism; however, there is evidence to
believe that the British did not necessarily consider the
Hausa/Fulani to be very intelligent. The issue of race was just a
camouflage of an assessment based on the 'local's' usefulness to
the empire. During the colonial era, a number of processes of
differentiation were put into place to create or enhance
disparities among Nigerian ethnic groups.
Some of the processes of differentiation
include:
1. Education
The Southerners were provided with high quality
Western education while the Northerners who were not too eager to
have Western education because of its association with the
Christian missionaries were not. Commenting on the damaging
effects of this policy, Professor Awa observed that, "it was
the educational policy of the country more than anything else,
which helped to create a cleavage between the North and the South
in intellectual and psychological orientation."
2. Land Area
From nationalities' point of view, the Northern
region is more heterogeneous than the South, yet the North alone
contains approximately 79 percent of the Nigerian land area. The
British authority did not support the idea of creating a middle
belt region out of the Northern region, a factor which could have
helped to balance the federation, yet it split the smaller South
into two in 1939. Sir Charles Orr of the colonial service once
described how the population of Bida and Koton Guras petitioned
"to be freed from their Fulani oppressors," but it has
already been decided that the pagan communities should be allowed
to let: to 'benefit' from Fulani administrative skill. Former
British Governor, Lennox Boyd, in the heat of the agitation which
preceded a federal election warned that for any party to canvass
support with such platform as the creation of state was
unacceptable to Britain. Worse, he added, should any party that
has shown interest in such platform win, the British would
reconsider the outcome of the constitutional conference ahead of
independence.
3. Population
Gross population became a strategic element of
nationalities' power in Nigeria after 1952, when regional
governments were set up and census figures were used to determine
representations to the federal legislative, for revenue
allocation, and representations to different federal agencies.
The Southern nationalities claimed the British administration
rigged the 1952/53 census for the North and granted them an
automatic 50 percent representation in the Central House of
Representatives.
4. Administration
Different policies and conceptions of colonial
administration were allowed to evolve in each of the two
protectorates during the fourteen years of their separate
existence. In the North, the theocratic emirate system of
government was relatively modernized to allow the British
authority to control it under a system called indirect rule. This
ensures the continuation of the conservatives of the North as
their leaders evolved mainly within the framework of traditional
authority and value. In contrast to what was happening in the
North, the Southerners were well educated and highly exposed
politically. When the system of indirect rule was eventually
introduced there, it was met with qualified success.
The provision for the regional assemblies
helped to direct the attentions of the nationalists to local
issues. Unit 1947 (except for the abortive Nigerian council) the
people of the Northern provinces did not participate in the
legislative council. This does not only accentuate the separate
development of the region, but meant that during the most crucial
25 year period of Nigeria's development (1922 to 1947) there was
no central representative institutions which could have become an
instrument for inculcating a sense of Nigerian unity. In short,
before 1947, there was little opportunity for a Nigerian to feel
that he was under a common government which commanded his
obedience, allegiance, and loyalty. The British administration
consciously encouraged division among Nigerians, and Southerners
residing in the North were separated into strangers' quarters.
ECONOMY
In 1953 Sir Louis Chick devised the revenue
allocation formula "in such a way that the principle of
derivation is followed to the fullest degree" at a time that
only the Northern region has any mining activity. By 1958, at the
discovery of oil in Eastern Nigeria, the British changed the rule
to observe the "principle of allocation according to
need."
Possession of material or natural resources,
its quality and quantity influenced the development of the
nationalities where those resources were located. Middle belt
areas and other peripheral areas which contained few crops or
minerals of importance to the colonial government were neglected.
The long term effect says Graf, "is the structural economic
imbalance and hence inequality of opportunities among the
country's multiple ethnic communities and social classes, a
situation which mirrored the economic priorities and policies of
the colonial state."
MILITARY
In 1923, the Inspector-General of the West
African Frontier Force prepared a report on the prospects of
recruiting soldiers for the force. In the area dealing with
Nigeria, the report explained that 60 percent of the Nigerian
regiment was made up of Hausa/Fulani and 10 percent were pagans
from the middle belt.
The report found the people of the lower north
(middle belt) to be "of a franker and bolder disposition.
The Hausas of the far north were 'brave, intelligent, easy to
discipline and show a remarkable spirit of devotion to the
officers.' The Fulani of the far north were found to demonstrate
a decisive power of command. However, they were not considered to
be 'intelligent.'
The report found southerners to be 'timorous
and secretive in character...almost entirely pagans and much
addicted to fetish worship and are inclined to be suspicious of
Europeans.' They are not recruited into the military in large
numbers because it was felt they "lacked fighting spirit and
didn't possess the qualifications necessary to make good
soldiers." However, during World War periods when there were
shortages of European officers, this policy has to be reversed
such that "the principal sources of recruitment for the
infantry and light artillery had been the nature of the tribes of
the north of Nigeria and the Gold Coast and the hinterlands of
Sierra Leone, (but) these men had no education. The new forces
needed men with education, and the bulk of the educated groups
lay in the south of Nigeria and the Gold Coast and in the Coastal
districts of Sierra Leone." Because of these problems, lots
of southern educated non-commission officers were recruited into
the army. Majority of them were Ibos.
The insight to the fact that the northern
leadership tried to maintain its strategic leadership in the
military can be understood from Maitama Sule's address on 22
December 1992, thus:
When the first Iraqi coup occurred and the
prime minister was killed and tied to a vehicle and driven on the
street of Baghdad, Sardauna for days became restless and was
first praying to God. He then reasoned that it was important that
we contain this type of development, right now by fixing our boys
in the military in case we found ourselves in a like situation,
and our children are involved, it would not be too horrible for
us. But for his foresight, our situation would have been worse.
Indeed, a directive was issued to all the
ministers in Sardauna's cabinet, that each time any of them was
on tour they were to ensure that they visit schools and recruit
people into the military.
Traditional and religious leaders were also
mobilized to undertake visits within their domains to enlist
young boys into the military. Today, we are reaping the fruits of
that foresight. Anything anybody would want to say about the
military involvement in government; if you don't have your man at
the helm of affairs, you would have been dealt with or you would
have been killed...."
The conclusion to derive from the above
analysis so far is that while geographical, economic,
administrative and socio-cultural forces going back to
precolonial times made the federal option inevitable in Nigeria,
the British as a result of its socio-political engineering
between 1900 and 1946 to create a state but not a nation out of
Nigeria for selfish reasons created a balance of power problem in
Nigeria and made the power to be overbalanced to the advantage of
the caliphate whom it trusted to protect its interest after it
might have left Nigeria.
In fact, Sir Hugh Clifford, a former governor,
realizing the extent of the damage that has been done to
Nigeria's unity had expressed his concern of the correctness of
the proposed amalgamation when he said:
Assuming that the impossible were feasible-that
this collection of self contained and mutually independent Native
States, separated from one another, as many of them are, by great
distances, by differences of history and traditions, and by
ethnological, racial, tribal, political, social and religious
barriers, were indeed capable of being welded into a single
homogeneous nation-a deadly blow would thereby be struck at the
very root of national self-government in Nigeria, which secures
to each separate people and the right to maintain its identity,
its individuality and its nationality, its own chosen form of
government; and the peculiar political and social institutions
which have been evolved for it by the wisdom and by the
accumulated experience of generations of its forebears.
The British administration's policy of
allocating tasks and benefits including leadership to the
different nationalities, based on her perceived threats and
usefulness to the cause of achieving the colonial objectives,
unleashes a balance of power struggle between the different
nationalities; fronted by the three big nations - Hausa/Fulani,
Yoruba and the Ibo.
Those nationalities who were deliberately
slowed down by British colonial policy, not on the basis of their
abilities or inabilities, wanted to catch up and even to overtake
those who were placed at the lead. Those at the lead wanted to
maintain their position. Leaders were able to appeal to
"united action" for self-improvement, be it to tribal
or nationality groups.
The Yorubas and the Ibos, a non self aware
group before the colonial time, gained their self awareness
through this process of struggling against both internal and
external imposition and threats and the wish to impose itself on
others. The positive side is that this internal struggle between
the nationalities and diversity of skills and resources could
have ensured healthy competition which could have ensured the
progress of Nigeria, but the fact that the British policy ensured
that power was overbalanced to the advantage of the Hausa/Fulani,
the least educated nation in Nigeria, made this impossible.
In its "force care strategy" to
prevent the nationalist minded, educated southerners from taking
over political power, after it might have forced the British
colonial authority out of Nigeria, the British administration
allocated the leadership of Nigeria to the chosen nation whom it
trusted to protect its interest-the Hausa/Fulani nation.
With 79 percent of the total Nigerian land area
and 50 percent of its total population, the Hausa/Fulani were
guaranteed a win in any future election; the predominance of the
same nationality in the military was to ensure that force could
always be used to maintain its overbalance of power should
election fail. It is not a coincidence today that it is the same
group of nationalities who enjoys the overall balance of power in
Nigeria that are also predominant in the military. Many analysts
prefer to say it is now the middle belt that are predominant in
the army. The political reality in Nigeria today is that because
of regionalism, there is a high degree of northern awareness
under the leadership of the Hausa/Fulani. The influence of the
Yoruba nation too, extended beyond the Yorubaland.
THE WAY FORWARD
The attempt to redress overbalance of power
could be achieved through the combined skill and effort of all
the powers concerned, such as the defeat of Napoleon and Germany,
or through a "fundamental law" or tendency of political
forces to achieve equilibrium such as the conquest or the freedom
of smaller powers.
We are all agreed today that the continuing
existence of the Nigeria state and its development depends on its
ability to evolve a balanced structural and ideological
federation that reflects the hopes and aspirations of its nations
and nationalities. This can not be achieved under the existing
overbalanced structure.
State creations, initially helped to free some of the regional minorities and encouraged their economic development. According to the reports of the 1976 panel on the creation of new states, the principal justification for creating states are:
1. CULTURAL PLURALISM: This rationale
recognizes the persistence of heterogeneity, access religions,
linguistic, historical, regional, ethnic, economic and even
kinship axes.
2. POLITICAL BALANCE: This envisages
that the principle of cultural pluralism will remove the
potential for ethnic, religious or other conflicts.
3. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: Rapid economic
development which in Nigerian context meant the allocation of
revenues apportioned from the Distribution Pool Account, in such
a way that approximately half is divided among the states equally
and half relative to population.
However, despite the initial achievements of
state creation, it is not hard to see today, that despite the
creation of 30 states, and Abacha's recent addition of six new
ones, Nigeria is still an unbalanced federation which can enable
each of its nationalities, in the words of Chief Awolowo:
"not only to develop its peculiar culture and institutions
but also to move forward without being unnecessarily pushed or
annoyingly slowed down by others."
For More Information Contact:
Egbe Isokan Yoruba
P.O. Box 90832, Washington, DC 20090
Tel: (202) 270-6382
FAX: (301) 499-5386
Internet: isokan@yoruba.org