About 400 distinct languages in Nigeria have been
identified by linguists. Almost three quarters of
these languages are found on the Jos Plateau,
Southern Zaria of Kaduna State, Bauchi and
Adamawa hills and upper Benue River Valley as
well as the Cross River valley and Middle Niger
River valley.
The area so described approximates the Middle
Belt region of Nigeria. This is the region of
Nigeria’s ethnic minorities. There are of course
ethnic minorities in the Southern part of Nigeria
especially in the so-called South-south region.
Apart from these minorities who together constitute
substantial component of Nigeria are the so-called
majority groups like the Igbo, Hausa, and Yoruba.
This group were regarded as the tripodal
foundation on which the Nigerian house stood. The
federal architectural design for the Nigerian house
was built on the fact of this triune nature of
Nigeria.
For a long time this was the accepted reality until
the so-called minorities in the three regions even
before the exit of the British began to agitate for
their own home rule or for special institutions to
be created to facilitate their quick economic and
educational development.
The Action Group of Chief Obafemi Awolowo was
the first to recognize the potency of this ethnic
force by embracing the creation of states as the
party’s strategy of winning power at the centre.
Chief Awolowo recognized that the only way he
could come to power was through a coalition of
the various minority groups presumably under the
leadership of his largely Yoruba party. The
constitutional angle to this strategy was fiscal
federalism, meaning a loose federation in which
each federating unit managed its financial
resources but contributing enough to the centre to
run common services like defence, aviation,
communication, transportation and currency and
no more.
The other two main parties, the NCNC (National
Council of Nigerian Citizens) led by Dr Nnamdi
Azikiwe and the NPC (Northern People’s Congress)
led by Alhaji Ahmadu Bello were opposed to
creation of states for their own strategic reasons.
Ahmadu Bello did not want the North, his base of
power split. Azikiwe for the same reason wanted
the East to remain undivided.
He also was opposed to the federal structure of
government preferring a unitary constitution as a
way of overcoming ethnic divisions in Nigeria.
Even though Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello were
ideological enemies, they however were staunch
supporters of fiscal federalism.
Federalism was of course more realistic and
Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello wanted control of the
agricultural wealth of their regions whereas Azikiwe
who led the agriculturally poor Eastern Region
wanted Unitarian structure so that the East could
benefit from a collective pool of the national
wealth.
This was the political setting that took us to
independence in 1960. The story of how the
northern and the eastern political forces combined
to finish off Awolowo and to send him to jail
exploiting the division in the Action Group is well
known.
During the Action Group crisis and the weakening
of the Western Region, the Mid-west Region was
created in 1963 from the West while unlike what
Awolowo advocated which was, contemporaneous
creation of state’s in the three regions, the
remaining regions remained intact.
The civil war gave Awolowo opportunity to see the
creation of states as part of the strategy of winning
the civil war and perhaps to realize his long held
view on state creation. Thus the 12 states
structure under Yakubu Gowon gave the minorities
in the Eastern Region and in the North something
to fight and to die for. Unfortunately, instead of
keeping this 12 states structure, each succeeding
military ruler has further divided the country into
small and unviable states arbitrarily and without
rhyme or reason and sometimes to satisfy the
desires of those in power.
We now have 774 local government areas and 36
states not counting Abuja which is a state but not
in name. The result of this is that almost 80
percent of national resources are used in
administrative costs of payment of salaries and
allowances and humongous payment of federal
legislators. There is no money left to maintain
nationwide infrastructure of roads, rail, and other
infrastructure such as ports, air ports and other
means of communication and aviation.
Money so spent on administration would have
provided jobs for our teeming population of youths
who have now been mobilized into ethnic armies
and movements by charlatans looking for what to
eat. School dropouts are issuing statements on
behalf of nations like the Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa
while responsible people for fear for their lives are
keeping quiet.
There is nothing wrong in being patriotic and
embracing one’s ethnicity but not to the extent of
hating and denigrating fellow countrymen and
women. It is my considered opinion that it is the
dwindling opportunities for employment that is
fuelling the ethnic fissiparous tendencies in the
country. It is idle hands that the devil finds work
for.
It is the frustration that nothing is working and
nobody is trying to find solutions to pressing
problems that is making people to go back to their
ethnic comfort zones. The question is where are
the Nigerians and how do we build a country we
can all call our own? Karl Marx is right when he
said economics is at the basis of all relationship.
You are a good father when you can provide for
your family. A country is worth dying for when that
country can provide for you and for your
descendants. We all want to live and provide for
ourselves in a country which has a future for our
families. In the absence of this, we look for
alternatives. The lack of opportunities and the level
of poverty in the land is driving us to the edge of
the precipice.
Looking at Nigeria in historic perspectives shows
us that we are not as different from each other as
we think. Going from the South-west, the Yoruba
has always shared historical ties with the Nupe,
Borgawa,, Kanuri, Igalla, the pre-Fulani Gobirawa in
the north and the Edo in the south. The Edo had
historical relations with the Igbo in the western
periphery of their land. The Edo have some
relations with the Nupe just as Igalla have with the
Nupe.
The entire Benue valley was influenced by the
Jukun. Sometimes Jukun influence spread to the
Hausa states. Hausa land looked eastwards to the
Kanuri for enlightenment. In other words there
were chains connecting all our people in the
distant past before the advent of British
colonialism. We may be speaking different
languages today but most of the languages spoken
in Nigeria belong to the Kwa group of the Niger-
Congo family of languages.
The material culture of the Nigerian area as seen in
the Nok, Ife, Ugbo Ukwu, Benin, Idah, and Bida
leaves no doubt about the cultural sameness and
uniformity of the Nigerian area before the advent of
the British. The concentration of unique African
culture of dance, song, cuisine, couture and
civilizations in the area at the central Atlantic and
at the trigger of the African continent imposes
some kind of mission on this area in the
leadership of the African people.
If all this is true, why then do we have the
problems of forging a nation out of the multitude of
tongues it has pleased the Almighty to endow us
with?
What we need to do is re-engineering of the
country to make it workable. The centre is too
strong. We must devolve power to the regions
whatever the number of them we collectively agree
to have. We must free the resources of this country
from over-administration and channel them to
physical development and industrialization so as to
create jobs for our people.
We must embrace the principle and practice of
fiscal and cooperative federalism. If people have
jobs and they can fully realize their potentialities, it
will not matter to them who is president or prime
minister. In any case, the arena of politics should
be shifted to the regions while the centre will
simply manage affairs collectively assigned to it.
We spend too much time on politics and little time
for development. It is not so in serious countries
like Japan, Germany and Canada to mention a few.
Whatever we finally agree to do in this country, we
must realize that the forces and facts of history
and geography have made it impossible for us to
separate.
We cannot change our neighbours so it is futile to
be talking about separation.
If we are not happy about our current political
structure, we must agree to reconfigure it and this
must not be done by threats and blackmail. We are
and remain Nigerians.
