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."