by – Austin J. Otah, Notary.

I write from a diasporean perspective. And still do even though I have been back in the Country for at least a Decade but thanks to technology turning the World into a global village, I have not lost touch with my diasporean experience which from the realities of living at home in Nigeria, has made my senses keener whilst comparing my experience abroad with living at home in pondering over the solutions to ensure a greater Nigeria.

It is a unique perspective, having had the fortune of being born out of Nigeria and lived both abroad and within Nigeria surfing the social, educational and professional waters of these quite differing yet obliquely similar Worlds. My intention is to ‘detonate’ and destroy brainwashed ‘colonial’ thinking; it is to uproot colonially- influenced educational maleficent direction; it is to introduce the reader to the joys of original and independent thinking, mind- setting and objectivity. It brokers no peace for the occluded. For the cognitively dissonant. For the otiosely and fundamentalist-thinking ritualist who claims to be ‘religious’. .

In London, United Kingdom [UK] back in the late Nineties, as the Abacha/Abiola saga was coming to a head and having interacted with ‘players’ in the Nigerian space, professionally and personally as I entered early mature adulthood, I had a ‘Eureka’ moment. it suddenly dawned on me with incredulous certainty that Nigerians were not the ‘problem’ of Nigeria – the seemingly intractable challenges she faced and which seemed almost always likely to overwhelm her but somehow never really did. I coined a phrase that these challenges were orchestrated between the ‘halls of Whitehall and the White House’ ably assisted by their Occidental allies!

I had no real data to support my growing conviction but it seemed to me that the penny had finally dropped! All the research and knowledge I had garnered knowingly and unknowingly, consciously and unconsciously, through primary to tertiary education, experientially and outside formal education had led me to this poignant conclusion: the rationes for Nigeria’s challenges were sponsored by foreigners! Nigerians on their own were foremost in their endeavours, interactions and application in their various fields. Nigerians are notable for their intelligence quotient and achievements across the board. Left to themselves Nigerians and Nigeria would have no problem but flourish most naturally.

I came to this conclusion ironically abroad in the land of the UK – our colonial ‘parasites’ – the gestalt but not the only reason for Nigeria’s fundamental and foremost challenges that haunt her till date. It is easier to appreciate and understand these issues looking at Nigeria as a ‘Project’. That was the original intention of the creators of Nigeria. The Colonialists. Not Azikiwe or Awolowo etc as we were taught most insidiously amongst other things that they were the ‘fathers of the Nigerian State’. We innocently believed back then. We should also examine the vision of the original creators and why the Northern and Southern Protectorates were amalgamated in 1914. It was not for convenience of unity and bonding but based purely on commercial considerations. These points need to be examined.

It is now 25 years – a Generation – later. A great deal of ‘surfed’ water has passed under the bridge and I have seen the origins and excitement of the birth of the Third Republic – a Civil, not military dispensation. Today I am experiencing with my fellow Nigerians, the travails besetting Nigeria’s Third Republic as it lurches from an uncertain yet hopeful birth through the travails of ungainly youth and now in the throes of young adulthood beset with the indulgencies of impotent leadership and myopic vision – exposed haplessly to the menacing temptations of vice’s twin sisters: drugs and alcohol. So Nigeria lurches on these travails have never been more keenly felt than today.

In the same intervening period, the elements that gave rise to my nagging conclusions that Nigeria’s challenges take root in external rather than internal factors began to emerge. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s songs began to make sense beyond the latent humour to the stark realities of life after colonialism in Nigeria and indeed in Africa. I will discuss some of these factors but let me first attempt to address some rather awkward and controversial issues:

Did Nigeria truly attain ‘Independence’?

We never ask, we assume we know what ‘independence’ in this parlance means. I ask YOU: ‘independence’ from what? In real terms we say that we achieved self-governance from the United Kingdom [UK], which colonised ‘us’ and ‘gave’ us ‘independence’. That is what we were taught from primary school. That is what we’ve always known. That our colonial ‘masters’ United Kingdom, granted us ‘independence’ but is that true?

Nigeria is on paper, an ‘independent’ Republic and sovereign Country. We however did not wrest control of the ‘geographical expression’ called Nigeria. We ended up negotiating for it and in so doing, only secured what I describe as the proverbial ‘poisoned chalice’ – a deal that suited our Colonial Antagonist. I always wonder why our People tend to see the Colonialists as ‘genteel’ and well-meaning to us-ward the ‘colonised’. Where did we get the idea that a Country that saw your human resources as cannon fodder for their factories and agricultural industries, and when they could no longer openly enslave you and your resources, decided to ‘enslave’ your entire land for which they forcibly carved unnatural boundaries, artificially dividing ethnic groups and African Kingdoms, separating the people and their homes and in this process, massacred your ancestors, Africans in the hundreds of thousands to millions; going so far as to alienate your ways of life – temporal and spiritual; decimated your traditions and customs and in fact labelled them mainly as ‘repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience’ and for the rest, consigned them to secondary or unofficial regulation-status but made their imported foreign rules as our standard and official Laws up till date – as humane and ‘civil’ and working for our ‘development and growth’. In fact it has been argued that every October 1st is a celebration of our neocolonialisation – for the successful transition of colonialism into its new format but christening it ‘independence’.

Talking of ‘independence’, the ‘geographical expression’ known as Nigeria has a unique if chequered colonial history. It was colonised in recent recorded history, twice: by the Fulani Empire spreading from the Futa Jalon Mountains in Guinea spreading across the whole of West Africa spreading into the Nigerian ‘Space’ led by Uthman Dan Fodio in the North conquering the great Hausa Kingdom and all the lesser Ethnic Nations across the North cutting great swathes across the Savannah and going so far as to stretch all the way from the Northern borders of what is now Nigeria all the way to the borders of the ancient Kanem-Bornu Empire and spreading all the way down to the Middle Belt Regions of Nigeria and into the Northern Regions of the former Oyo Empire having taking Ilorin [Kwara] and all the areas surrounding it and

keeping an uneasy peace as it sought vainly to conquer the Peoples of the Middle Belt. The Jukuns and the Tivs, for example, were a major stumbling block and they had little or no purchase in subduing the warrior Ethnic Nations of the Middle Belt. The dream of the Fulani was to ‘dip the Qur’an into the Atlantic Ocean’ – a dream of Dan Fodio it has been reputedly said. It was a political and therefore ‘colonial’ conquest of the indigenous Nations in those areas wearing the toga of religion [‘Jihad’].

The Fulani Empire’s military advance into Nigeria today was only eventually halted in its entirety by the other ‘colonial parasites’, the United Kingdom which was arguably the major World Power at the time, during its own march across the land in its bid to colonise and annex the whole of the area which the UK or British Empire eventually called ‘Nigeria’. They too wore the ‘toga’ of religion in their claim to ‘civilise’ the ‘Natives’ in their own land. Our political history will easily reveal, during the period of colonisation from the late 19th Century, under the pervading influence of the first Governor-General of Nigeria, Lord Frederick Lugard, 1st Baron Lugard, a sado-masochist and mass murderer who had plied his brutal and totalitarian ‘trade’ in the Eastern parts of Africa, where he was Military Administrator of Uganda between 1890 – 1892, before he was set ‘loose’ on the Peoples of the Regions that became Nigeria and was the greatest singular factor for the successful establishment of colonisation in Nigeria, up till 1960 under several Governors who replaced him; that the local inhabitants especially in the Southern Regions, agitated for ‘independence’, that is ‘self-governance’ and removal of the socio-political presence of the Colonialists from Nigeria. The agitation for independence took several decades to reach the compromise with Colonial UK. Lugard was especially against the education of what he called ‘Natives’ and detested the educated Southerners who he saw as a threat and sought to subjugate.

The reluctance of their Northern counterparts is well known – even legendary. They did not want ‘independence’ from the Colonialists at all. It was the UK that persuaded them to remain promising them that they will ensure that obtain favourable terms. The Southern agitators were apparently happy to make significant concessions to accommodate them in the affairs of the newly self- governing independent Country to be. With information available today, that position is now in doubt as the Colonialists were not averse to using manipulation and blackmail to achieve its aims. It should be noted that in dealing with the North, although the UK realised that the Fulanis had subjugated the Hausa Kingdoms and other peoples of the North and created Emirates over the local people’s lands, unlike in the South, they did not

dismantle the Fulani institutions established over the local peoples but used it to administrative advantage in applying their ‘divide and rule’ policies. This contradicted their claims that they sought to ‘civilise’ the Colonised and introduce them to God through the Bible. They did not evangelise the North or send missionaries in any significant if at all as part of their colonisation drive.

The British Empire ran their Colonies according to strategic administrative and manipulative advantage, which was only natural. It remains controversial up till today but it is clear that in setting structures to leave Nigeria, the UK decided to leave the North with certain advantages and this included manipulating fraudulently the National Census they undertook and the Independence Elections which they organised. The Empire also ensured that it applied its divide and rule policy to maximum effect in the South breaking up the South into West, East and separated Lagos as a Federal Capital Territory but leaving the North [which incorporated the Middle Belt as ‘North Central’] intact. The devastating consequences and effects of this policy is arduously felt across the South of Nigeria up till today. In politics today, the West and East find themselves daggers drawn for inexplicable reasons they cannot really identify and refuse to assess and hold on to real or mythical generational angst.

The elephant in the room so to speak and what has been completely ignored was the 19th Century invasion by the Fulanis and the consequences. In the Region the British self-styled ‘the Middle East’ [it has no geographical basis just like ‘South-South’ – a geographical misnomer], the issue of the Palestinians and the invasion by the Israelis who systematically have been obtaining vast swathes of Palestine at the expense of the locals is on the News almost on a daily basis. The suffering of the Palestinians is carried in the news showcasing the sheer unfairness and brutality of it all with the daily murders and even pogroms. A lot of propaganda is bandied by the two main groups especially by the Israeli to justify their act of occupation and systematic annihilation. It is what it is. The Israeli claim the land was promised to Abraham by God, they cry. There is no evidence of their direct relationship with biblical Abraham but that is another story.

Back home, no one hears the silent tears and cries of the Nigerians in the North whose lands have been occupied for more than 150 years – especially the Hausas. Why has there not been a call to resolve the Fulani Empire invasion of the Northern Regions of Nigeria up till today to ensure balanced Independence OR is African colonisation an acceptable norm that must continue in perpetuity? Is this in accord with the Rule of Law? Is this act of colonisation not repugnant to ‘good conscience, equity and natural justice’? The recent spat between two Fulani fighting over the Emirate of Kano, a strong enclave of the Hausa Kingdoms – brings this stark contradiction into focus. Do the protagonists actually ‘own’ the land by origin, over which they are claiming titular bragging rights? When would the issue of ‘independence’ from the Fulani Empire’s colonisation through its imposed Emirates across the Northern Region of Nigeria be discussed and solutions reached for the benefit of the original owners of the land – the indigenous Peoples of those areas? Is this unresolved situation not fuelling the almost daily terrorist acts of ‘unknown gunmen’, ‘boko haram’ and ‘Fulani herdsmen’ in no particular order, wiping out indigenous Nigerians and their villages especially up North and which has been called a crime of ethnic cleansing?

Why have successive Nigerian Governments since ‘Independence’, failed to address, tackle but ignored this artificial situation, which has not improved one bit but is steadily getting worse? I will attempt an answer to this crucial question on my second foray into this rather thorny inchoate and recondite subject.