Political experiences in Nigeria
Nigeria as a postcolonial nation has experienced many of the
problems common to other new nations. It began its independent existence in the
enviable position of having proven reserves of oil (it currently
produces between $US18 and $US30 billion of oil a year), a relatively
developed infrastructure associated with strong primary industry development,
and a fully functioning administrative bureaucracy. Yet, its subsequent history
is one of economic difficulty, political violence, and growing poverty amongst
its peoples. In the following outline of the political experiences of the
country, an attempt is made to understand why these troubles have developed.
Nigeria is one of the largest countries in Africa, with an
estimated population in mid-2005 of 133 million people and a very high average
annual population growth rate of 2.98 per cent. There are over 400
different languages and dialects spoken and about 250 different ethnic groupings
in the country. The major groupings are Hausa, Fulani, lbo, Yoruba, Edo Urhobo,
Efik, Ijaw, Tiv and Kanuri, with many smaller, but distinct ethnic communities
living contiguously with these groups. About 65 per cent of the population is
made up of the Hausa-Fulani of the north, the Yoruba of the west and the Ibo of
the east. Over the past 100 years there has been a great deal of movement of
these groups between regions so that at the time of independence, there were
enclaves of Yoruba in the east and north, of Ibos in the west and north and of
Hausa-Fulani in the west and east. The country is also divided between the
Moslem north majority (some 51-57 per cent of the population) and the Christian
south and is currently administratively divided into thirty provinces and one
territory.
In a book entitled Path to Nigerian Freedom, Obafemi
Awolowo, later to be a prominent Yoruba politician in independent Nigeria,
spelled out his view of the nature of the colonial territory known as Nigeria
and of the relationship between Nigerians and their colonial masters:
The conquest of one nation by another in an unprovoked act of
aggression cannot be justified by any standard of morality. Britain came to
Nigeria of her own choosing, and with motives which are only too well known. She
sought to impose her rule on the various tribes that inhabited the country in
order to attain her own selfish ends. There was then no question of trusteeship.
This was the result of a later compunction of conscience which usually dawns on
any evil-doer who is not hardened beyond redemption. Those tribes with whom she
first came into contact resisted the unwarranted attack on their political
independence. They were overpowered by force of arms. Thereafter, each tribe was
faced with a choice of one of two roads leading to subjection: defeat or
surrender ... There are various national or ethnical groups in the country. Ten
main groups were recorded during the 1931 census as follows: (1) Hausa, (2) lbo,
(3) Yoruba, (4) Fulani, (5) Kanuri, (6) Ibibio, (7) Munshi or Tiv, (8) Edo, (9)
Nupe, and (10) ljaw. According to Nigeria Handbook, eleventh edition,
'there are also a great number of other small tribes too numerous to enumerate
separately[ ... ]'. It is a mistake to designate them 'tribes'. Each of them is
a nation by itself with many tribes and clans. There is as much difference
between them as there is between Germans, English, Russians and Turks for
instance. The fact that they have a common overlord does not destroy this
fundamental difference ... All these incompatibilities among the various peoples
in the country militate against unification ... It is evident from the
experiences of other nations that incompatibilities such as we have enumerated
are barriers which cannot be overcome by glossing over them.
(Awolowo 1947, pp. 24, 48-9)
Historically, the northern, Moslem region was part of a north
African caliphate, with a number of well-organised emirates whose territories
existed within and overlapped parts of the current nations of Nigeria, Chad,
Sudan and Cameroon. In the south a number of independent kingdoms existed which
also often extended beyond present national and regional boundaries. The ethnic
and clan composition and territorial extent of the states of West Africa, like
states in most regions of the world, were continuously changing, with alliances
being broken, groups of similar ethnic background fusing and fissioning, and
territories expanding and contracting as the fortunes of the various states and
emirates waxed and waned. The boundaries of any of these states, if fixed,
would, inevitably, have been subjected to increasing pressures as the normal ebb
and flow of political life made them increasingly anachronistic. In modern
Nigeria, some of the consequences of rigidifying boundaries can be found in
heightened inter-ethnic tensions focused on enclaves of people from other
ethnic/ religious regions, and in the kaleidoscopic changes in party/ethnic
political affiliations resulting from those migrations which have bedevilled
political organisation and activity since independence.
In 1914, Nigeria was brought together under a single
administration by the British, with three regions: the Northern Provinces,
predominantly Hausa-Fulani and Moslem; the Western Provinces, predominantly
Yoruba and Christian; and the Eastern Provinces, predominantly Ibo and
Christian. In 1951 the first elections were held in the regions. The results
were victory for the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) in the north; for the
National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) in the east; and the Action
Group (AG) in the west. These parties represented the interests of the dominant
ethnic groupings in each of the regions. They remained the major political
groups through the next fourteen years.
In 1957 the Eastern and Western
regions were made self-governing within a federally-organised Nigeria, and in
1959 the Northern region was also made self-governing. Nigeria gained
independence from Britain in 1960 and in 1963 was declared a republic. As it had
in other colonies, Britain seems to have considered it both inevitable and
desirable that Nigeria's independent political organisation should parallel that
of Britain itself. As Paul Beckett describes:
Nigeria's Westminster-like parliamentary system was developed
hurriedly, seemingly with little consideration given to possible alternative
forms. Yet in Nigeria, as in other African colonies rushing toward independence,
there seemed to be an assumption of permanence to the new institutions.
(Beckett 1987, p. 87)
Those responsible for preparing Nigeria for independence seem to
have taken it for granted that the British system, transposed into Nigeria,
would provide the best possible system of government for the new nation. At the
time of independence there was widespread optimism about the new nation's
future. It was felt that the new Nigeria, with its mineral wealth, its
well-established bureaucracy, and its Westminster system of parliamentary
democracy, would set the pattern for new African nations, providing a model of
economic, political and social development which other nations could emulate.
Yet, despite the euphoria and optimism of planners and politicians, Nigerians
soon found themselves embroiled in all the problems and turmoils which have
beset most postcolonial nations. As Whitaker describes:
Widely heralded in 1960-independence year-as a testing ground of
democratic capacity in Africa, Nigeria subsequently experienced a serious
breakdown of civil order, partisan rejection of constitutional arrangements,
several coups d'etat, civil war, and out of five heads of state, the
assassination of three and the exile of a fourth. Gross idealisation of
Nigeria's democratic prospects gave way to deep despair. Perhaps both extremes
of attitude stemmed from the same naive conception of political development in
Nigeria as a straightforward (if troubled) process of transfer of institutions
from Western to African settings.
(Whitaker 1991, p. 227)
The naivety of planners was evident in the way in which
potential problems were handled in the lead-up to independence. Despite the
early warnings of writers like Awolowo and experiences of other West African
postcolonial countries, it was assumed that with the establishment of democracy,
tribalism and ethnic difference would fade as people learned to identify
themselves primarily with the nation rather than with their own ethnic
communities.
In 1957, a number of minority groups complained to the British
administration that they feared that in an independent Nigeria, dominated by the
three major parties and ethnic groups, they would be severely disadvantaged.
Their complaints were referred to a Minorities Commission which recommended that
the three major divisions be retained, arguing that division into smaller states
would accentuate and perpetuate tribal differences. So, as in many of its other
colonies, Britain left some of the thorniest problems unresolved at
independence. As Ugbana Okpu claimed:
To the extent that the structural imbalance derived from an
arbitrary division into three 'natural' regions with diverse ethnic groups, many
of which resented their 'inferior' status and challenged the right of the major
political parties to a monopoly of political leadership and the distribution of
the national cake, the presence of ethnic minority groups and the refusal to
grant them equal status was a sine qua non for structural imbalance.
(cited by Anifowose 1982, p. 54)
Not only was there strong resentment amongst minority ethnic
groups at the organisation of the new state, the rivalries which developed
between the major ethnic groups and their parties in the pre-independence period
produced equally strong antipathies and resentments. These resentments and
tensions were to result in the destabilisation of both regional and federal
governments over the first four years of the new nation's existence.
During the 1950s strong antagonism developed between the
southern parties and their northern counterpart in the course of
pre-independence jostling. As Nnoli describes the confrontation of politicians
both in the pre-independence House of Representatives and in the heat of
campaigning:
The Southern leaders ... attacked the Northern leaders accusing
them of colluding with the Britishers to perpetuate colonial rule. In response
the Northerners were equally bitter and tempestuous. They accused the
Southerners of being motivated merely by a partisan desire to outdo each other
rather than by any genuine intention for the good of the country. The bitterness
and acrimony continued outside the House. The AG and NCNC had, by this time,
negotiated an alliance to press the issue of self-government in 1956. In the
event of failure, they planned to summon a constituent assembly of Southern
Nigerians, draft a constitution, and declare the independence of Southern
Nigeria. Their supporters in Lagos hurled insults and abuses at the Northern
delegates. Their newspapers subjected the Northerners to vitriolic criticism,
and ridicule. These attacks exacerbated the anger of the Northerners, making
them determined not to be subjected to such indignities again. Consequently,
they adopted an eight point program which, in effect, would have meant Northern
secession. This action, in turn, led to harsher criticisms by the NCNC, AG and
their newspapers. The NPC leaders were not only vilified as imperialist stooges
who had no minds of their own; they were also accused of being unrepresentative
of their people. The Southern leaders' strong belief in the latter accusation
caused them to send their party delegations to Northern cities to campaign for
self-government in 1956
(Nnoli 1980, p. 236)
Loudest in denunciation of the northern leaders was the Action
Group leader, Obafemi Awolowo who criticised not only the political leaders of
the NPC, but also characterised northern emirs as 'backward, corrupt and
oppressive', earning the deep resentment of northern leaders. As Anifowose says,
'It was against this back-ground of deep-rooted distrust and conflict among
Nigerian politicians, that Nigeria became independent' (1982, p. 56).
The 1959 elections, establishing the governments which were to
lead Nigeria into independence, resulted in victory for the three major parties
in their respective regions. The NCNC, the Eastern Region party, decided, in the
wake of the elections, to support the NPC from the north in a coalition
government, with the AG of the west in opposition. The NCNC accused the Action
Group of persecuting its supporters in the Western Region and threatened
retaliation. As the national president of the party pronounced:
I am aware of the clamour in our rank and file to repay the
Action Group in the Eastern Region in their own coin. In the past, our efforts
to adhere rigidly to the tenets of Democracy in the Eastern Government have been
misunderstood as weakness. I now issue a final warning that unless the Action
Group abandons this inhuman policy of persecuting its opponents they can expect
precisely the same treatment against their supporters in the East.
(Post & Vickers 1973, p. 69)
However, while each party seemed to speak with one voice, the
reality was far more complex. As Lambert Ejiofor describes for the people of the
eastern region:
The Igbo communities constitute one major ethnic and linguistic
group, nevertheless they differ by modifications in culture, social orientation
and thinking. This diversity may be minor but it is still strong enough to
affect the political life of the people.
(Ejiofor 1981, p. 7)
The apparently politically unified regions were, in fact,
divided amongst themselves, with as many tensions and possibilities for rupture
of political relations within each region as there were within the nation as a
whole. A national political structure which appeared, superficially, to be based
on bloc politics, with major ethnic groups dominating proceedings, was, in fact,
a series of weakly connected coalitions of interests which might unravel at any
time given sufficient cause. This was to result, almost immediately after the
election results, in new alliances being formed between politicians and
supporters in each region and nationally, challenging the continued viability of
the elected parties and their representatives. From the outset, those in
political control had to spend a great deal of their time both in retaining the
loyalties of their parliamentarians and confronting the political challenges of
adversaries. In order to retain the following of their elected representatives,
leaders had to deliver tangible rewards, and had to be able to do so more
effectively than their adversaries. As Nnoli says:
... [this] involved efforts by the ethnically based ruling
parties in the regions to secure the complete domination of the regional public
service positions by the relevant regional functionaries, or, in their absence,
to prevent rival ethnic groups from filling the relevant posts. This same
strategy was evident in the inter ethnic struggle for positions in the federal
public service.
(Nnoli 1980, p. 196)
Until 1962, despite a number of riots and disturbances involving
minority ethnic groups in the three regions, the federal government and the
three regional governments, through developing patron-client relationships with
key supporters, maintained political control of their respective territories.
The federal system of government pitted national and regional politicians
against one another.
Although the duties and responsibilities of each administration
were clearly spelt out, and though federal and regional parliamentarians did not
directly compete with each other in elections, they both competed as patrons
within the same constituencies, and this proved to be an important field of
contest. So, not only was there rivalry between politicians of different party
and ethnic affiliation, there was also strong rivalry between politicians of the
same party / ethnic background. Since regional politicians were more immediately
in touch with their electorates, this produced, over a short period, a bias
toward regional rather than federal governments. As Arthur Nwankwo claims:
The regions constituted the political base for the contenders of
power at the Federal level, and tribal or ethnic sentiments were used by these
politicians to whip up support for their equally regionally and ethnically based
parties ... In the struggle, the powerful regional governments overwhelmed and
incapacitated the Federal Government, regardless of the central government's
constitutional superiority.
(Nwankwo 1984, p. 6)1
In May 1962, the party of government in the Western region, the
Action Group, split and bitter infighting developed between two major factions.
At the end of May, the federal government declared a state of emergency in the
Western Region, deposed the elected government and appointed a federal
administrator to run the region. After six months, the federal government handed
control back to the former Prime Minister of the Western Region, Chief Akintola,
who had been forced to step down by opponents in the Action Group. Following his
reinstatement, he formed a new party, the Nigerian National Democratic Party
(NNDP) which, at the next elections, formed a coalition with the Northern
People's Congress. Amongst people in the Western Region there was a
strongly-held view that the political troubles of the region had been engineered
by the NPC and the NCNC in retaliation for what they perceived to be Action
Group hostility against them. This produced a widespread, deep-seated animosity
toward the Eastern Region among westerners.
In 1963, Obafemi Awolowo, leader of the Action Group and of the
opposition in the federal parliament, and a number of other Action Group leaders
were charged with plotting to overthrow the federal government. As Anifowose
says:
During the treason trial, which lasted nearly eight months, arms
and ammunition were 'discovered' in Lagos, and at the Ikenne house of Chief
Awolowo as well as in the premises of the houses of his supporters ... This
evidence ... led the presiding judge, Sowemimo, to declare ... that there was
overwhelming evidence of a plot to overthrow the Federal Government by force of
arms and that Awolowo was privy to it ... Awolowo and some others were found
guilty and imprisoned.
(Anifowose 1982, p. 59)
In late 1964, a general election was held during which new
alliances were struck between parties. The NPC joined with the Western Region
Nigerian National Democratic Party and a number of smaller parties to form the
Nigerian National Alliance (NNA), leaving the Eastern Region NCNC to uneasily
join with the Action Group from the west and two small northern parties in
opposition.
The split between the Northern People's Congress and the NCNC
resulted from a dispute over a 1962 census of Nigeria which seemed likely to
reduce the estimated population of the Eastern Region, thus reducing the number
of federal seats for the region. Because of the dispute, the census was taken
again in November 1963, with even less satisfactory results for the Eastern
Region. It produced apparently inflated population estimates for the Northern
and Western regions but no increase in population from the previous census for
the Eastern Region. As Robin Luckham describes:
Both the NPC and Chief Akintola's government in the West ...
stood by the result, and, protest as it might, the NCNC was quite powerless to
prevent the apportionment of seats in the forthcoming Federal election on the
basis of the census figures. This dispute also led to vitriolic exchanges
between the North and the East in politicians' speeches and the regional
government-controlled newspapers ... In the North, the Ibos were already the
focus of much hostility as a large and successful immigrant group and the open
conflict between the regions at a national level was made the occasion for
punitive measures against Easterners at a local level, such as expulsion from
market stalls by the Native Authorities.
(Luckham 1971, p. 213)
The problems between Ibos and northerners quickly spread to the
west where, in March 1964, the regional government accused Ibos of nepotism
within federal educational and bureaucratic organisations and moved to 'correct'
the situation.
As might be expected, the 1964 election was a turbulent one. As
Post and Vickers describe:
... the institutional trappings of the democratic electoral model
of the Western world were faithfully reproduced. Electors were enumerated and
registered, candidates nominated, and security arranged. Parties set
organisation machinery in motion, issued manifestoes, and even signed pledges
ensuring non-interference in the campaigns of rival parties [but] ... the
parties ignored or only paid lip-service to electoral provisions laid down by
the administration. In place of these provisions others, designed to give grater
assurance of success at the polls, were adopted. Thuggery (a term used by
Nigerians to describe beatings and killings) and rigging (another term meaning
illegal alteration of administrative procedures to influence the election
outcome) became favoured methods through which the parties gained and maintained
support.
(Post & Vickers 1973, p. 3)
Major parties were accused of hiring thugs to disrupt campaign
meetings and intimidate candidates, local and regional government resources were
used by those in control to make electioneering difficult for rival parties and
rumours of possible coup attempts were rife-none of which seem to have had any
substance. The result of all this was a sweeping victory for the NPC in the
north and the NNDP in the west, with the results for other parties badly
affected by threatened electoral boycotts and by the tactics of the winning
parties.
In 1965, with a new coalition in power federally, patronage
shifted from incumbents of positions in federal institutions to those who had
earned favour with the new leadership. The big losers in the reshuffle seem to
have been Ibos who, with the loss of coalition status by the NCNC, lost federal
government patronage.
Since the NPC controlled the north and the NNDP the west,
opposition parties looked forward to the 1965 regional election in the Western
Region, hoping that the Action Group, which had lost ground to the NNDP in the
1994 election, would regain control of the west, thus counteracting the NNA
strength in the federal parliament. This was not, however, to eventuate. As
Luckham describes:
The campaign was the most violent in Nigerian politics so far;
and the election itself, which took place in October 1965, was openly rigged by
the NNDP. Candidates were prevented from filing their nominations, local
government police and thugs kept political opponents from the polls, ballot
boxes were stuffed with extra ballot papers and when all else failed, NNDP
candidates were declared elected by the regional radio station in contests that
went against them. The outcome was popularly regarded as unjust and illegitimate
and the AG refused to recognise the result. Widespread rioting ensued, from
October 1965 to January 1966, and the conditions of disorder permitted gangs of
party thugs or brigands purporting to be party members, to rob, loot, burn and
kill.
(Luckham 1971, pp. 218-9)
The stage had been set in January 1966 for the first of
Nigeria's military coups.
In the eyes of many Nigerians, politics had become irredeemably
corrupt and there seemed no way out of the political morass into which the
country had drifted over the preceding three years. The big losers in the
political infighting of the period had been the NCNC which represented the
majority of Ibos and the AG which claimed to represent a majority of the Yoruba.
The Action Group was under siege in the Western Region and in some disarray,
with violence escalating. As Anifowose says:
... a section of the army finally intervened in a coup which led
to the overthrow of civilian governments throughout Nigeria. ...Among the
Yoruba, the immediate reaction to the violent change of government was one of
relief at the elimination of the hated government of Akintola.
(Anifowose 1982, p. 251)
During the latter half of 1965, a number of military officers
began discussing the possibility of a coup to restore' order' to Nigerian
politics. In November, with the regional elections resulting in widespread
violence and fraud, they completed plans for the overthrow of civilian
government and the establishment of interim military rule. Arthur Nwankwo spells
out his view of the situation:
On 15 January 1966 Nigeria's postcolonial experiment with
democracy ended when soldiers struck, killing some politicians, sacking the
civilian government, and imposing military rule. Several factors were
responsible for the collapse of Nigeria's First Republic, but among the most
crucial was Regionalism, with its attendant ethnic dominance of each of the
three regional governments .... it was not the Constitution that failed, but the
politicians who operated it, for they were too narrow-minded, too reckless and
intellectually and emotionally unprepared for the functions the Constitution
placed on them. It was the violent rivalry for power among the politicians,
coupled with massive corruption, brazen injustice and political and religious
intolerance which brought about the demise of the First Republic.
(Nwankwo 1984, pp. 6-7)
The military coups of Nigeria have, in almost all cases, been
justified as necessary in order to stamp out corruption in high places and
restore law and order to the country prior to civilian rule being once again
established. As the leader of the first coup put it:
Neither myself nor any of the other lads was in the least
interested in governing the country-we are soldiers and not politicians ... We
were going to make civilians of proven honesty and efficiency who would be
thoroughly handpicked to do all the governing.
(cited in lhonvbere 1992, p. 108)
Because the military have often enjoyed widespread support from
people disenchanted with the consequences of democratic party politics, they
have usually been able to co-opt civilians to serve in key government posts, so
that, despite there being a military head of state, many of the key bureaucratic
positions have been held by civilians. Democratic party politics, in a country
where people's primary allegiances are to their ethnic groups and clans, seem to
lead not to democratic government but rather to ethnic and/ or clan-based
warfare, with leaders of groups competing for the spoils of electoral office.
Given the historical relationships between the groups in Nigeria, and the lack
of a sense of national identity amongst most people, the presumption by the
planners of independence that the federal government would dominate the
political scene seems naive indeed. As Isawa Elaigwu puts it:
... the regional governments had become so powerful that they
relegated the federal government to obscurity. They violated the constitution
with reckless abandon. Politicians, in making their exit from the political
arena, extracted no sympathy tears from Nigerians. They had prostituted
political power, adulterated the political process, and bastardised the rules of
politics. As politics was drastically transformed from a game into a battle, the
political stadium was grossly polluted ... politics became dangerous for
politicians and spectators alike.
(Elaigwu 1988, p. 176)
Those under threat from the political developments of late 1965
were the Action Group in the west and the lbo-dominated NCNC in the east. Coup
leaders could clearly be identified with these disadvantaged groups, and the
consequences of the coup seemed to favour them. As Oyediran describes:
Even if the coup was planned with the best of intentions, its
outcome looked patently to the other ethnic groups, particularly in the North
and West, like an lbo conspiracy. Firstly ... of the seven ringleaders, six were
lbo. Secondly, but more importantly, the victims were virtually all non-lbo,
even though the lbo political leaders ... were as solidly steeped in the vices
of the First Republic as any other ethnic group. However, matters grew even
worse when the dust of the January coup settled and General lronsi eventually
took over ... Even in the North where there was scepticism, the attitude was
that of wait-and-see rather than of outright hostility. Unfortunately, lronsi
wasted this goodwill and in this he was not helped by the post-coup actions and
words of his fellow lbos who in public places in Northern towns jeered at and
taunted the people of the Northern Region for their losses.
(Oyediran 1979, pp. 27-8)
Within the first six months of the coup, in order to counter the
strength of the regions, which many commentators of the time saw as one of the
major reasons for the failure of democracy in Nigeria, Ironsi announced the
abolition of the federal system of government in Nigeria. To consolidate his own
position he also promoted a large number of Ibos to high rank in the military.
Northerners and those westerners who supported the NNDP saw the abolition of the
federal system as an attempt by the east to grab control of the whole country to
their advantage. This seemed to be corroborated by the promotion of Ibos through
the military ranks. Consequently, rioting erupted in both the north and west
over the next six months, aimed mainly at Ibo populations in those regions. This
resulted in increasing numbers of Ibos migrating back to the east to escape the
escalating hostility.
In July 1966, Yakubu Gowon led a successful counter-coup against
the military leadership. Ironsi and numbers of his Ibo officers were killed and
hostility toward Ibos spread throughout Nigeria. For the next three months,
military leaders were more concerned with establishing power within the military
than with governing the country, and the rioting of the pre-coup period
'degenerated into mass killings of Ibos in September 1966' (Oyediran 1979, p.
28).
Finally, Gowon, who was regarded by many as representing
northern interests, emerged as head of state, to the dismay of Ibos, and the
scene was set for civil war. As Oyediran says:
This unacceptability of Gowon as the head of state ... had its
source in the September killings. However, it eventually became a factor in its
own right; Gowon was seen as a symbol of 'Northern domination' which in turn was
considered as a threat to the very existence of Ibos. For the Ibos therefore the
solution to this crisis lay not merely in removing Gowon but in breaking up the
country and allowing the Ibos a separate existence.
(Oyediran 1979, p. 29)
In May 1967, as a result of Eastern Region moves to declare
itself independent as the Republic of Biafra, Gowon declared a state of
emergency throughout the country and reorganised it into twelve states, to
replace the three-region organisation which seemed responsible for the present
problems. As Onyeoziri says:
... by altering the structure of the federation, state creation
enhanced the visibility of the centre as a focus of attachment of national
sentiments. Besides, by rescuing some of the minority groups from majority group
domination, state creation strengthened minority faith in the national unit. And
by reducing the size of the constituent units of the federation, state creation
reduced the capacity of large and majority groups to challenge the centre. Such
a reduced capacity can also rationally induce the people of those units to look
up to the centre as a more realistic hope for protection.
(As Onyeoziri 1990, p. 86)
What this reorganisation did, of course, was increase the
authority and visibility of the centre through decreasing the power of the
regions. At the same time, it gave more effective voice to minorities whose
interests had been swamped by the political machinations of the major groups
through the preceding six years.
Unfortunately, since Gowon was seen as representing northern
interests, the new military leadership was as unacceptable to the east as the
displaced leadership had been to the north. When Gowon announced that the
eastern region was to be divided into three separate states, easterners saw this
as an attempt to dismember the east and destroy its political effectiveness.
Within a month, the country was plunged into a bitter and bloody three-year
civil war.
Unlike many of the internal conflicts in postcolonial nations of
the period, the Nigerian war could scarcely be seen as a confrontation between
capitalism and communism. The central government and the military leadership
which displaced it were strongly supportive of Western interests and received
support from the major Western nations. On the other hand, the Ibo had long been
regarded as the most 'educated' and Westernised of Nigerians, those who were
strongly orientated toward private enterprise and capitalism and amongst the
most successful business leaders in Africa. Many people, and particularly a
large part of the Western press, identified with them in their struggle for
independence and readily supported the war effort. So both parties were given
arms and other forms of support by Western interests. As Oyediran describes:
The May-September 1966 killing of Ibos made the Nigerian case
difficult to understand not only for the Western press but also their readers.
Moreover there was a generalised sympathy for the Ibos arising from the belief
that they were the Jews of Africa and certainly the most Westernised
Africans.
(Oyediran 1979, pp. 37-8)
Without external support the war would have been of much shorter
duration since the Ibos had very limited military power at the start and relied
on external supplies to continue their resistance. The Nigerian military
increased its size twenty-fold during the war, giving it a far stronger hold on
the country after the war than it had before.
The leadership gained wide approval for the restraint it showed
in victory, providing it with a sense of legitimacy amongst Nigerians and in
international forums. Over the next five years, however, Gowon governed Nigeria
in an increasingly autocratic manner. States were governed by military governors
who, in the words of Martin Dent:
... were behaving in an increasingly arrogant way, more so even
than their colonial predecessors, and were, in addition, almost all practising
financial corruption on a large scale. They provoked great unpopularity among
the populations of their states and anger and jealousy among their colleagues in
the services ... Gowon seems to have had an inexplicable timidity in dealing
with them, and to have feared that they might gang up on him if he swept them
out of office.
(Dent 1975, p. 354)
In 1970, Gowon promised that Nigeria would be returned to
civilian rule by 1976, but during the next five years little was done to prepare
the country for this return. His failure to deal with the blatant corruption of
his military governors made many people suspect that he was as guilty as they.
This escalating corruption was accompanied by mounting economic problems which
seem, in part, to have been due to unwise decisions made by the leadership at
both regional and federal levels.
Despite problems of corruption and an apparent unwillingness to
move the country back toward civilian rule, Gowon's term seems to have been
characterised by an attempt to secure efficient local administration. The effect
of this was to move the country back to pre-independence forms of
administration, with district officers responsible to state authorities
overseeing area councils, and states directly responsible to the central
administration. Above all, in the wake of the civil war, a new emphasis was
placed on the need for a strong and efficient defence force. As the Second
National Development Plan spelt out:
... although the defence and security sector can be regarded as
largely unproductive from an economic stand-point, recent experience shows that
its effective performance is very crucial to the very existence of the
nation.
(Adekson 1981, p. 4)
The military was to emphasise the need for firm directive
control, focused in its central council. As Elaigwu suggests, by the time Gowon
was deposed, 'he had successfully centralised the political system. No state was
in a position to secede any longer' (Elaigwu 1988, p. 187). In 1974, Gowon
announced that the military would remain in control indefinitely, not returning
the country to civilian rule. This was strongly resented in many quarters and
was to be a major contributing factor to his downfall the following year.
Although the leadership was military, this did not entirely insulate it from
public scrutiny and criticism. As the Nigerian experience has shown over the
years, military rule needs to take account of civilian opinion if it is to
minimise opposition. Since members of the military hierarchy are strongly
connected to the various ethnic and clan-based communities of the country,
leaders respond to pressures placed on them by non-military groups.
At the end of July 1975, while Gowon was out of the country, the
military staged a coup and Murtala Mohammed replaced him as head of state.
Mohammed quickly responded to the main criticisms of the Gowon regime. The
military governors of the states were replaced by military personnel of lower
ranks and less power, with all but three of them appointed to states outside
their regions of origin, and with their term of office considerably shortened;
all officers of the rank of general were removed from their positions; a date
'not later than October 1st 1979' was set for new elections and a return to
civilian rule; a committee was appointed to examine the need for reform of the
state organisation of 1967; a fifty-member constitutional committee was
appointed with responsibility for drafting a new constitution to be ready for
the next elections; and work was started on the reorganisation of local
authorities. All this in the first six months of the new administration.
Mohammed was assassinated in February 1976 and General Obasanjo
took over as head of state, maintaining the initiatives of his predecessor. In
September 1978, the new constitution was promulgated, modelled on the US
constitution. It broke with the Westminster parliamentary system and instituted
an American-style presidential system with an elected president of Nigeria and
elected governors of each of the states. Legislatures were to be elected at the
state level, with two houses, a senate and a house of representatives, at the
federal level. Having found that the Westminster system did not work in Nigeria,
another Western model was to be used for the next attempt at civilian rule in
Nigeria. The number of states was also increased from twelve to nineteen, in an
attempt. to break the stranglehold of the three major ethnic groups and their
related political parties.
Political parties were also required to have certain
characteristics before they could be registered for the 1979 elections. Amongst
other requirements, they had to demonstrate that they were genuinely
Nigeriawide parties, with active party organisation in each of the nineteen
states. The range of requirements was detailed and aimed at ensuring that
politics could not devolve into competition for power between major regions
(Beckett 1987). However, despite all efforts, three major parties emerged from
the 1979 elections with voting profiles which all-too-closely echoed those of
the early 1960s. The stage was set for all the political manoeuvring of the
first democratic period. As Beckett says, by 1983, the economy was in disarray
and:
The public's sense of economic disorder was heightened by a
rapidly growing public awareness of a level of corruption, especially on the
part of many of the elected officials and their allies in the large-scale
business sector, that, in terms of scale, was without Nigerian precedent.
(Beckett 1987, p. 105)
The 1983 elections, the first since the handover of power from
the military to civilian leaders, were marked by levels of rigging, violence and
intimidation that echoed the elections of 1964 and 1965: In early 1984, the
military once again took control of the country:
Interestingly, despite the participation by so many in the
democratic electoral processes just four months earlier, scarcely a voice was
raised against the suspension of the Second Republic. To the contrary, there was
every evidence of public rejoicing at the overthrow of the Shagari regime. And
there was evidence as well of anger directed against the corruption,
violence and mismanagement that was now said to have been the essence of Second
Republic' democracy'.
(Beckett 1987, pp. 106-7)
It appeared that civilian Nigerians in political life were prone
to the kinds of competition and violence which Sangmpam (1994, p. 4) claims are
common in Third World countries. It seems that for violence and intimidation to
be lessened in political life in countries where such competition inevitably
divides people into competing ethnic and clan communities, Western-style
electioneering needs to be minimised, for it is in the lead-up to elections that
the problems arise, and in the aftermath of elections that recriminations lead
to rioting and bloodshed directed against rival communities.
What military rule has offered in Nigeria is political
leadership without the initial party competition which is inherent in Western
democratic politics. Of course, there has been competition for position during
military rule, as the coups and counter-coups have demonstrated throughout
Nigerian postcolonial experience, but that competition has been constrained and
channelled through the military. It does not result in open competition between
ethnic and clan groups, each jockeying for power in a world where those who hold
power gain access to wealth which can be passed to their supporters. The
competition between ethnic communities shifts from electioneering to political
manoeuvring within the military hierarchy.
Any military head of state who wishes to secure his hold on
power needs to recognise and negotiate with leaders of important regional and
ethnic groups. As Ironsi and Gowon both found, control of the military, without
acceptance from the range of pressure groups in the country, will, almost
inevitably, lead to leadership challenges and attempted coups. The upshot
becomes a balancing of interests within the military and civilian bureaucratic
hierarchies reflecting those pressures. Those leaders, in turn, need to shore up
their support within their own groups through ensuring that a variety of forms
of 'favour' flow to their supporters. Nigeria, in common with many Third World
countries, is organised in terms of patron-client relations, with patrons
distributing favours and clients delivering support. Nnoli describes the
situation as it developed in Nigeria during periods of both democratic and
military government:
Most Nigerians have come to believe that unless their 'own men'
are in government they are unable to secure those socio-economic amenities that
are disbursed by the government. Hence, governmental decisions about the siting
of industries, the building of roads, award of scholarships, and appointments to
positions in the public services, are closely examined in terms of their
benefits to the various ethnic groups in the country. In fact, there has emerged
a crop of 'ethnic watchers' who devote much of their time and energy to
assessing the differential benefits of the various groups from any government
project.
(Nnoli 1980, p. 176)
Since 1984, Nigeria has been ruled by military heads of state,
each on record as claiming that his administration would move the country back
towards democratic civilian rule. In 1985, Ibrahim Babangida organised a
bloodless coup which displaced the existing military leadership with his own
supporters. He faced two pressing problems.
First, as a military leader, it was assumed that he was an
interim head of state with a prime responsibility to reorganise the political
landscape to ensure more effective civilian government. Having done so, he would
organise national elections and return the country to democracy. In December
1985 he started the process. As Larry Diamond describes:
Babangida effectively inaugurated the transition back to
civilian, democratic rule. His rhetoric was blunt and incisive, like countless
pronouncements from former military regimes, in identifying 'the main
contributors to our political instability' -political intolerance, economic
mismanagement, electoral fraud and violence, abuse of power, 'crass opportunism'
and corruption. He was no less accurate in noting the 'social chaos, cynicism,
apathy and total disaffection of the general citizenry from the political
leadership and processes' which those abuses generated.
(Diamond 1991-2, p. 33)
As had happened before, the gap between rhetoric and action was
important. Although politicians were condemned as corrupt, Babangida, in fact,
brought trials for corruption to a halt and freed those who had been arrested by
the previous military leadership. This, given the patron-client nature of
politics in the nation, is scarcely surprising. Any astute head of state, given
the task of balancing the interests of the wide range of pressure groups within
the country, knows that, inevitably, he also will one day be accused of
corruption, of siphoning wealth and power to himself and his supporters. To set
a precedent which could only rebound on oneself is hardly wise.
As in most Third World countries, the dividing line between
political and economic activity is very blurred. As Terisa Turner described
economic activity in Nigeria in the 1970s:
The relationship between foreign businessmen and local actors
from the national private and public sectors is called a 'commercial triangle'
in this study, because it involves three parties to a buying or selling
transaction. These parties are first, the businessman who represents the
multinational corporation; second, the local middleman from the national private
sector; and third, the state official who assists the foreign businessman in
gaining access to the local market ... If a contract materialises, the state
official is usually rewarded with a payment arranged by the go-between or
middleman.
(Turner 1978, p. 167)
This has resulted in the emergence of a number of extremely
wealthy 'capitalists' whose wealth, in large measure, comes from their ability
to network transnational corporations with political leaders and provide those
companies with means of circumventing indigenisation regulations. Very often
these Nigerian 'economic leaders' appear to own and control major economic
enterprises without, in fact, having any real authority within them (see Robison
1990 for a discussion of similar arrangements within Indonesia). As Biersteker
explains, 'Several foreign executives commented that they deliberately have "no
management role by their board of directors'" (1987, p. 268). Their role, of
course, is not to manage day-to-day business activities, nor to formulate
company policy, but to ensure an ongoing positive relationship between the
company and relevant politicians and bureaucrats. They are the political
partners in a political/ economic marriage, ensuring that businesses, which
otherwise would encounter countless delays and obstructions in dealing with
government, receive prompt attention and favourable consideration. Inevitably,
there is a positive, affirming relationship between these major wealth holders
and political and administrative leaders. Both benefit from the patronial
relationships between them. Since those holding political power are, by
definition, closely involved with such wealth holders, it is less than rational
for politicians to institute stringent legal proceedings against them, even if
those being prosecuted belong to other patron-client networks. Babangida was
well aware of these matters when he moved to close proceedings against those
accused of corruption in the civilian government.
However, having freed those accused of corruption, Babangida
then banned all politicians who had been involved in the Second Republic (from
1979 to 1983) from holding political office or engaging in party political
activity. He later extended this ban to all those who had held military or
government posts and had been convicted of misconduct, and all those who
currently held high positions in either the military establishment or in
government. As Diamond says, 'The blanket ban effectively excluded every
Nigerian who had ever played a prominent role in party politics' (Diamond
1991-2, p. 34). (These measures were repealed in 1991.) Then, in 1989, faced
with very similar electoral problems to those encountered in previous Nigerian
elections, Babangida decided to reorganise party politics in a way c which is
reminiscent of the reorganisation undertaken in Indonesia in 1967 (see ch. 2).
The military government would, itself, create two parties: the Social Democratic
Party (SOP) and the National Republican Convention (NRC), 'one "a little to the
left" and the other "a little to the right' (Diamond 1991-2, p. 36). As
Diamond argues:
Since the early 1960s, Nigeria has had one broad plane of
cleavage that cuts across ethnicity, uniting more 'progressive' forces north and
south against a loose, northern-based coalition of conservatives and certain
ethnic minorities ... By forcing all the existing parties and politicians to
join the SDP or NRC on an equal footing, the government's fiat may have
facilitated the reformation of these two coalitions without the violence and
with less of the bribery than would otherwise have occurred. It also became
possible for new leaders to emerge from 'the grassroots' in the successive
elections that took place at the ward, local, state and federal levels during
the first half of 1990.
(Diamond 1991-2, p. 36)
In 1987 and again in 1991, local government elections were held
under regulations which minimised the possibility of states interfering in the
process. Babangida's aim seems to have been to strengthen local governments at
the expense of state governments, decentralising political decision making and
reducing the power of political centres other than at the federal level.
As part of the move towards full civilian government, state
governors and legislative bodies were elected during 1992 and 1993. This
returned the thirty states to civilian rule, but left the military in federal
control. In June 1993, a federal election was held to elect a federal president.
The new organisation of the country into two political parties greatly reduced
the violence and rigging of previous elections, so that the new elections were
hailed in many quarters as the fairest in Nigerian history.
However, whereas Indonesian leaders have managed to control the
electoral process by tying both the armed forces and civil service to their
party organisation and controlling the leadership and philosophy of the
opposition parties (see ch. 2, n. 24), the Nigerian military leadership failed
to maintain such firm control of the process. Rather than organising a party
which represented the interests of military and civil service personnel, headed
by senior military officers and civil service leaders as a Nigeria-wide
alternative to the other two parties, the Nigerian military chose to step back
from the process, yet attempt to influence the result; a dangerous practice
unless the electoral result is accepted whatever the outcome. The consequence
seems to have been that the victor in the federal election, Moshood Abiola, was
not the one preferred by the leadership. Babangida was, therefore, left with the
choice of either accepting the election result and losing control of government,
or of declaring the election results null and void. He chose the second option
and handed federal control to an interim-appointed government, giving it
responsibility for organising fresh elections.
A court challenge to this move resulted in a ruling which
declared the interim government illegal. This was accompanied by widespread
economically-based strikes through the country. In November 1993, Sani Abacha
led a military takeover of the interim government. He immediately moved to
reimpose firm military control of the country. He replaced the elected state
governors with military appointees, disbanded the elected state and federal
legislative bodies and banned all political activity within the country. This
coup, unlike those in prior Nigerian history, was not to ensure a return to
civilian rule, but an attempt to perpetuate military control. It has, therefore,
faced mounting opposition from the very forces which, in prior coups, supported
military takeover as the only means of combating political corruption and
ensuring that new civilian leaders ruled in the best interests of the
nation.
The second pressing problem faced by Babangida when he assumed
office in 1985 was that of pending economic chaos. In 1986, in attempting to
deal with the deepening crisis, Babangida adopted a World Bank-designed
structural adjustment program, through which the economy, and therefore, of
course, the government, would be subjected to structural reorganisation. This
was to entail devaluation of the currency, the removal of subsidies, the
'downsizing' of the administrative bureaucracy and of state-run and/or
state-controlled institutions, the privatisation of as much of current
government activity as possible, and the deregulation of the financial system
and economy. As in other Third World countries which have attempted such
reorganisation, the results in Nigeria have been, at very best, mixed.
Devaluation made local businesses less competitive; the removal of subsidies
shifted the burden of economic reform squarely onto the shoulders of ordinary
people, greatly reducing standards of living and placing increasing numbers of
people in economic jeopardy; and deregulation handed increasing control of the
Nigerian economy to outside forces, making the country increasingly vulnerable
to the ebb and flow of international economic forces, with the government
decreasingly effective in directing economic activity and organisation.
Babangida was fully aware of the thorough politicisation of
economic activity in Nigeria. In countries where political organisation is based
upon patron-client principles, economic activity is politically controlled.
Those who control the political system therefore also control the economy. This
is a feature of such government wherever it might be found. The economies of
Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and of many other countries are intimately
intertwined with politics, and economic success, in large measure, requires
political patronage. As Ihonvbere says:
The Babangida regime had no illusions about the role of money in
Nigerian politics. Politics in Nigeria has historically been an investment, a
business into which someone invested heavily in order to reap huge rewards
through access to state power and the control of public funds. The regime
therefore decided to take the place of money and the place of the bourgeois
class in the political transition process.
(lhonvbere 1992, p. 110)
The regime attempted to circumvent the influence of the rich and
powerful on party politics by using government sources to fund the
infrastructures required by the two parties. This policy required massive
government expenditures in establishing the offices and positions required by
two national political parties. However, although the intent was clearly
laudable, the results appear to have been less than satisfactory. Those with
access to funds simply spent their money, not on establishing political party
infrastructure, but on a direct, aggressive buying of votes. As Ray Ekpu, a
journalist, described the 1990 election of officers in the NRC:
Money-and this includes dollars and pounds sterling-changed
pockets. Votes were freely auctioned at N1000 or $100 per piece and many of the
voters who were carted in mammy wagons from their villages to Abuja smiled home
with bulging pockets. One more proof that politics, Nigerian politics, is a high
yielding investment.
(lhonvbere 1992, p. 115)
Over the past three years, with Abacha firmly in control of the
country, despite mounting opposition and unrest within Nigeria and increasing
pressure from First World governments, the country has suffered increasing
political repression and the evidence suggests that there has been massive
siphoning of government resources into private hands. As David Bacon claims:
Behind its military rulers, five companies tower over Nigeria:
the British/Dutch Shell, the Italian AGIP, the French Elf-Aquitaine, and the
U.S. giants Chevron and Mobil. They operate in partnership with the Nigerian
National Petroleum Company, a government-run corporation. Control of the NNPC is
rumored to have made General Sani Abacha, head of the country's military junta,
a billionaire, and his military associates millionaires. According to Emmanuel
Abisoye, a retired general who headed a 1994 investigation into oil-related
corruption, 'the unwritten code in the NNPC style of management would appear to
be everyone for himself and God for us all, make hay while the sun shines, and
loot all lootables'.
(Bacon 1995)
On 30 May 1994, a National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) was
formed to oppose the military rule of Abacha. On 12 June, the
Presidentelect Abiola declared himself President of Nigeria. On 16 June,
Abiola was jailed for treason. This led to massive protest both inside and
outside the country and on 29 September, the Provisional Ruling Council was
dissolved with Abacha passing a range of draconian laws to insulate himself from
popular anger. On 4 November, Abacha ignored a Federal Appeal Court ruling
ordering Abiola's release on bail. Over the next year, with corruption and
incompetence escalating, the economy went into serious decline and the
government went into massive deficit. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company
(NNPC) owed its foreign partners nearly $1 billion in operating fees and
companies began to close down oil rigs in an effort to force the government to
meet its commitments.
On 10 November 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni were
hanged by the Abacha government for speaking out against environmental damage to
the Niger Delta caused by Shell Oil through its thirty-seven years of drilling
in the region. This resulted in expulsion from the Commonwealth and in major
protests around the world against Abacha's continued rule. In June 1996, Kudirat
Abiola, wife of the gaoled winner of the presidential elections in 1993, was
shot and killed, leading to further protests around the world and to an
escalation in opposition to the military government.
During the 1990s there has been evidence of escalating violence
throughout Nigeria. On 24 April 1996, the All Africa Press Service reported the
deaths of nearly 800 people in inter-ethnic fighting in all parts of the
country, with many more injured, and with thousands of people fleeing their
homes and villages to escape the violence.
Since 1992, the government has issued a range of backdated
decrees, legalising acts of repression against those who oppose its continued
rule. These include a sweeping removal of the jurisdiction of the courts to
challenge government authority and actions, and detention without trial for up
to three months.
Over the past three years there have been many rumours of
attempted coups. Numbers of senior military officers have been gaoled, and many
more demoted or 'retired'. Nigeria, in the 1990s, seems to be facing all the
problems it has faced over the preceding forty years, with little evidence of an
improvement in the political fortunes of the nation. As an Earth Action report
claims:
A wave of popular anger against military rule is sweeping across
Nigeria. As peaceful protest is replaced by violent confrontation, Nigeria's
fragile unity is threatened and there are ominous echoes of the 1967-70 Biafran
war, one of the bloodiest conflicts in African history. As the political crisis
escalates, dangerous separatist tendencies are being unleashed, and the country
risks once again spiralling towards civil war. Nigeria has many different ethnic
groups, and a north-south religious split. The three biggest groupings are the
Moslem Hausa of the north, and the Yoruba and Igbo in the south. Human Rights
Watch/Africa warns that the widespread abuses committed by the military regime
'are contributing directly to the creation of a climate of ethnic and regional
mistrust and violence'. Many southerners resent what they see as continued
domination by a northern elite, and the generals' close identification with the
northern Moslems means that ethnic and religious considerations become important
in any standoff between military and civilians ... Amnesty International warns
'The growing polarisation of Nigerian politics, compounded by increasing ethnic
tension ... could spell the beginnings of the bloodiest conflict since Biafra'.
Momodu Kasim Momodu, chair of Amnesty's Nigerian section, says: 'I have never
witnessed a potentially more explosive human rights disaster such as this. The
wounds left by the Biafran war have never healed. They run deep in the
collective consciousness of Nigerian society. If the world continues to ignore
what is happening in this country, we could have carnage on our hands.'
(EarthAction Nigeria Campaign 1994)
The emergence of Nigeria as a new nation-state in 1960 was
heralded as providing Africa's best chance at the successful establishment of
multiparty democratic government. Its history, however, seems to have
confirmed Julius Ihonvbere's assertion that:
... the masses in Africa, relate to the state as an exploitative,
coercive and alien structure [whose] custodians lack credibility and legitimacy
and are thus incapable of mobilising or leading the people.
(Ihonvbere 1994, p. 43)
As we have seen, the past forty years have not produced a
flourishing multi-party democratic nation-state, nor have they seen the
emergence of 'national consciousness' in an increasingly legitimised
nation-state. Rather, Nigeria has experienced continued ethnic conflict,
political and economic turmoil, and governmental repression. Nigeria seems to be
heading down a road from which there may be no national return. It seems
unlikely that multi-party democracy will be successful in the foreseeable
future, yet military rule has become increasingly oppressive and dictatorial.
This story is not peculiar to Nigeria.
Throughout the Third World, new nations have experienced
continued ethnic and religious conflict, and their governments have had
difficulty in establishing their legitimacy and credibility amongst their
populations. All too often, they remain unstable, faced by escalating economic,
environmental and population difficulties, and by condemnation from
international and First World organisations and governments. The future looks
bleak and there seem few answers to the enormous difficulties with which these
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