Biafra: A post-mortem

Imagine Pat Utomi, who wants to be president of Nigeria and Professor Charles Soludu, who had been governor of Central Bank of Nigeria supporting Biafra. - Justice Mustapha Akanbi, former President, Court of Appeal, (Sunday Sun September 17, 2017 page 37)

Unknown to many people, the mother of Major-General Ike Nwachuku, an old man who is about 75 years, was a Hausa Muslim from Katsina state, which is part of what some anarchist call “Core North”. This is the point. In other words, if a Hausa Muslim woman could marry an Igbo man 75 years ago, is it not irresponsible for any Nigerian to prepare for war simply because he is too parochial to tolerate any Nigerian other than his kinsman in the 21 century. My intellectual hero, Dr. Bala Usman, explains it better:

“They (South Africans) wanted to support what they regarded as prodemocracy but when they went there, they were asking for the dissolution of Nigeria at the time South Africa was looking up to Nigeria to come and unite Africa. So the people kept telling Nelson Mandela that, “take it easy with this people who are telling you to come and try Abacha, don’t get involved. Even though Saro-Wiwa was executed, this man was a secessionist, Madiba - be careful.”

When they went for this conference Wole Soyinka and others arranged it - the South African government and others arranged it - the South Africa government kicked them out. They said they were about 130 groups, each of them claiming all sorts of nonsense and when they asked them what future was there for Nigeria, they said there was none. For them it was a shock. When I was there in South Africa, this is what they were asking me: “What sort of people are these; they say they are progressives but they want to break up their country and they are talking of tribes when we‘re trying to unite the country.”

My hero went further to argue that even “the blood thing” we emphasize is a farce. Said he:

“The tribal groups themselves were formed through history. You use your territorial structure to build things for those who are living there, the inhabitants. People who live in an area doing such occupations that link them up have a common interest. This goes beyond what you call blood. In any case, even you and your mother don’t have the same blood. People don’t seem to know that. Don’t they know that if you are group A, and somebody has AO, or one other group, you can’t even transfuse? But you can bring a stranger - a Chinese or bring an Eskimo who has the same blood group as G.G. Darah, they can transfuse. There are so many areas in which this blood they talk about is nonsense. What you have is common interest, common livelihood. So they preach this type of politics and the idea of the politics is basically antidemocratic. Nigeria is probably among the few countries where the pro-democracy movement has become the most antidemocratic movement because its position is that politics is primarily a matter of fighting for the interest of your tribe under the leadership of your tribal leader.” (Weekly Trust May 11-17, 2001.)

If you are one of those who believe that restructuring Nigeria into ethnic regional units, listen to the limitations of such outdated argument, from Dr. Bala: “Do those so vehemently asking for restructuring of Nigeria into a federation or confederation of ethnic regional units know the ethno-geographical realities on the ground, the fishing grounds, the creeks, the pastures, the marshlands, the markets, the town and cities of their country? Where do you set the historical baseline, with regards to the demarcation of the boundaries in order to sort out amicably the conflicting territorial claims? Do you take the present ethnic-geographic situation as given and work on that. Or do you go back to an earlier period? Which year should be the historical baseline? 2000 A.D? 1960 A.D? Or 1000 A.D? Or even earlier…Is this the way we want to enter the 21stcentury, driving each other around, and killing one another, fighting over our grandparents ancient claims over land in the 11th, 18th, and 19th centuries.”

When the federal government revealed the role of foreigners in using the proBiafra agitators to destroy Nigeria, I was not surprised. Dr. Bala Usman told us about the grand design to destroy nation - state in Africa, as far back as 2002. He argued: “The violent communal conflicts in these states are the out-come of psychological, ideological, political and economic processes which are nationwide, continent-wide and even global. The attack and denigration on the nation - state in Africa and of its sovereignty and territorial integrity by Africans, funded and encouraged by countries which fiercely promote and defend their sovereign rights, their interests and even the borders of their nation - states, generates, in many parts of Nigeria an atmosphere which encourages violent ethnicity and conflicts, in defiance of the fundamental democratic principle of peacefully resolving all conflicts; even though these European and North American countries and their African Proteges, campaigning against the nation state in Africa, are very loud in their claims about love for democracy and peace.”

Dr. Bala Usman seizes every opportunity to argue that the Europeans conquered Africans not because of maxim gun but because of disruptive disputes. It is a fact that the British used Hausa slaves to conquer Hausa land. How many Europeans participated in the conquest of what is known as Nigeria today? Dr. Bala again: “The blockages, obstacles and barriers to migration, settlement, citizenship and economic interaction which the Sokoto Caliphate, Borno, Benin, the Niger Delta States, Oyo, Eko, and most of the other political systems of the late nineteenth century in the Nigerian area entrenched, weakened their capacity to rise up to the threats of European imperialist penetration and invasion. They were subjugated by the British, not primarily because of the maxim gun, but because of the disruptive disputes, chronic conflicts and civil wars within them, which had their roots in this inability to overcome these blockages, barriers and obstacles to the building of broader bases of citizenship and of incorporations and of economic production and commerce. Contemporary political fabrications like the “Yoruba Race”, “The lgbo Nation”, ‘The Hausa-Fulani”, ‘The Ijaw Nation” or the “Ogoni Nation,” etc, cannot hide this basic reality of the conditions of the peoples and polities of the Nigerian area in the late nineteenth century. They are exercises in fiction intended to evade the recognition of the seriousness of the problems and challenges our grandparents faced in the last century, and which we face in the closing years and this century, at a new level.”

Surprisingly, not even progressives are immune from the ethnicity project. Listen to Dr. Bala on his experience with Wole Soyinka: “Wole Soyinka was my assistant in the PRP when I was the director of research but I couldn’t get him to do serious work. When we published political education in Nigeria, he came to the launching. We documented the Bakolori killings we documented the Black Maria issue and the Shugaba episode to show what the NPN government was doing to Nigeria. Wole (Soyinka) came to the launching and he flew out to Canada virtually the same day. And we asked him “Wole, please get this thing widely circulated either by publishing it again, re - editing it or distributing it because what is happening there in Bakolori will happen all over Nigeria.” Wole didn’t do anything. When the time for another election came, he sent us one gramophone record which he said we should distribute and we did, singing against NPN. Then one day that Bola Ige was rigged out, because Wole was his campaign manager, the second day, he wrote to me (I’ve got the letter) and said he had realized what I was saying a year ago.” (Weekend Vanguard, April 13, 1996.)

Dr. Bala Usman did not spare Northern elite for their incompetence in defending themselves, talk less of defending the weak. He said: “The frustrating thing is that the Northern establishment and the Northern elite are so inept. The newspaper thing I was talking to you about. They can’t even maintain the media. This Afenifere thing is a media thing. They can’t even maintain a newspaper. And they don’t even know, we are backward. The gap between Edo State and Yobe is like between Congo Brazzaville and Belgium in 1990. They just go and wear fancy hats and go about saying they are northerners. The problem with them is my frustration. You can’t even talk seriously with a lot of them. But unfortunately for them, a generation has developed and you find them all over now - people who are trying to do the things on their own. (Weekly Trust, October 15-21, 1999)

What is the future of Nigeria? I have been looking for concrete arguments on

the future of Nigeria but could not find any because many intellectuals, surprisingly, are busy arguing about restructuring. Don’t blame them. People who have limited vision always end up parroting the agenda of others. Not Dr. Bala Usman. Listen to him.

“One possibility is that, if current trends continue, without any decisive political and economic changes, by the year 2010, Nigeria’s place in the global economy shall be one of a raw material exporter, largely minerals, with an enclave economy, marked by low intensity conflicts and an amorphous sovereignty, contested between various warlords, trading barons and political merchants, and governments. We shall have a situation here, somewhere between present-day Somalia and Columbia… the second possibility, if the IMF and the World Bank succeed in imposing the sort of monetarist, civilian, or military dictatorship they want, either through elections, coups or rebel movements Nigeria will be characterised by possessed commodities, and assembled goods, exporting economy, highly regimented, wrecked by severe inequalities and occasional outburst of civil conflicts. We shall be somewhere between presentday Mexico and Egypt… the third possibility is, if the classes and groups who produce the goods and services in Nigeria, develop political parties and take over power and link up with others across Africa... there are of course many other possibilities to consider.” (Tempo Newspaper 24th July 1997)

Ironically, it was an Igbo printer who sharpened my understanding of Dr. Bala Usman. I took a document I compiled about Dr. Bala Usman to him for printing at Jama’a Road, Kaduna . As I was trying to negotiate the cost of the printing, he just laughed and said “Oga, if you like I can print it free for you, it is about my man, Bala Usman”. When I asked him how can a man he never met be his man, he replied: “I like him because his thinking is different from the thinking of Nigerians”. But he is not alone in this “Bala Usman business’’. The only time I heard my boss, Malam Kabiru Yusuf, Chairman Media Trust, saying “yes sir, yes sir” to somebody was when Dr. Bala Usman visited our Media Trust office in Kaduna. It was obvious, the visit was unscheduled, as Malam Kabiru was looking surprised and confused. We were laughing at him, saying, as the Hausa people would say, “Baba da babansa” (daddy has a daddy also). For details, ask Dr. Farooq Kperogi!