PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

Enahoro’s Historical Revisionism

At 84, Chief Anthony Eromosele Enahoro, is one of the few first generation nationalists still alive. He has been justly famous for being the member of the House of Representatives who moved the motion for Nigeria’s independence by 1956. He did so on March 31, 1953. The motion was shot down by representatives from the North who thought it was moved in bad faith.

I’ll return to this presently. Meantime, let's consider his recent interview published in Thisday's edition of September 27, four days ahead of this year’s Independence Anniversary. Nigeria today, he said in his reminiscences on 48 years of Nigeria's independence, is a far cry from what he and his contemporaries dreamed of during their struggles.

The chief was not talking about the sharp decline in the quality of life of Nigerians since independence. Rather he was talking about what has for long become his hobby horse – the restructuring of Nigeria along ethnic lines.

“We did not think that Nigeria as it is today” he said, in his interview, “is something that we should accept. Nigeria as it is today is not a nation... We thought that even if there was going to be a Nigeria, the component units should be the ethnic groups. There should be a Yoruba state, Ibo state, Hausa state, Ijaw state and the rest of the ethnic groups. That should be the basis of our unity. But all that has gone and we have become an English people. I personally still feel sore about it. But if that is what the people of Nigeria want, so be it. But it was not our dreams for Nigeria. It does not conform with our dreams.”

Notwithstanding his claim to the contrary, even the most casual examination of the context of his 1953 motion for independence and of the motion itself would reveal that he did not dream of Nigeria as a collection of ethnic states.

At the time he moved his motion, Nigeria was made of three regions, North, West and East. All three regions were multi-ethnic with one tribe being predominant; Hausa in the North, Yoruba in the West and Igbo in the East. The smaller ethnic groups in each region resented their domination and fought for regions of their own, not as separate ethnic entities but as collectives of so-called minority tribes. The regions they wanted were Middle-Belt from the North, Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers from the East and Mid-West from the West.

Enahoro was a principal advocate of the Mid-West. Indeed he, along with Chief Arthur Prest, founded the Mid-West Party in 1950 after he parted ways with Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe whose NCNC was then the country’s pre-eminent political party. Enahoro had worked first as a reporter in Zik’s West African Pilot and eventually as the editor of Daily Comet, a stable mate of the Pilot.

One year after founding the Mid-West Party, he merged with Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Action Group, the party that Awo had formed to challenge and eventually upstage the NCNC as the dominant party in the West. Enahoro quickly established himself as one of AG’s leading lights.

All that time he was not known to have been an advocate of ethnic states. When he moved his motion for independence, his long speech did not question the existing tripod structure of the country. Indeed even though his motion was a private member’s bill, subsequent developments showed that it was in reality sponsored by the AG. In other words he sponsored the motion less on personal conviction than out of loyalty to his party. At that time the party, like the Northern Peoples Congress in the North and the NCNC in the East, was known to be hostile to the splitting of the West along any line, ethnic or otherwise.

According to the Sardauna, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Northern Premier, and at the same time an NPC floor member of the House of Representatives, Enahoro’s motion came as a surprise to the Northern members of the House. “When I saw Enahoro’s notice of motion about self-governance,” said the Sardauna in his autobiography, My Life, “I saw him and asked him to withdraw it, as it would be very embarrassing to us if it were debated. He replied that though it was in his name, it was in fact a Party motion and that it would be better if I would discuss it with his leader, Awolowo.”

As a result, the Sardauna and his deputy, Alhaji Aliyu, Makaman Bida, asked to see Awolowo. The AG leader met with them alone. Sardauna said he told Awo that on a motion as important as the one in question he needed to consult his people first. Hence their request for the withdrawal of the motion. Awo countered by saying he too would need to consult his party.

“The next day,” said Sardauna, “Awolowo came with a curious proposition. He said his Party had agreed to put it off until the next meeting – the one likely to be held in August – provided that I would guarantee that at that meeting we, the NPC, would not oppose it. This was, of course, entirely ridiculous and we could not entertain it. Battle was therefore joined. Awolowo went off to make a plan with Azikiwe, but our simple little devise fortunately defeated the whole project as you will see.”

The “simple little devise,” was, first, the Sardauna moved an amendment to substitute Enahoro’s independent in 1956 with independence "as soon as practicable”. Second, he exploited a division within the NCNC at the time to mobilize the House against the original motion.

The important point to note here is that neither the AG nor the NCNC consulted with their constituencies before making their demands for independence "now.” Here Awolowo’s indignant remarks about Sardauna’s insistence on consultations with his own constituency first before committing himself were most telling.

“Our Northern brothers” Awo remarked on the floor of the House “should not bother themselves about the conference of the whole country, the conference of the masses and so on and so forth. Who are these masses? The generality of the people are not interested in self-government or in government generally. What they are interested in is their food, shelter, clothing, to get married, bear children, and drink plenty of palm wine, and if they have money, to drink some gin as well. It is the Walin Borno, Sardauna Sokoto, Awolowo, it is Mbadiwe, - these are the people who are interested in self-government.”

As the Sardauna observed this was “a little astonishing from a man who prided himself on his democracy.”

The pertinent question here was since Awolowo, and by extension, Enahoro, did not think it was important to consult the masses on something as important as self rule, how did they know how Nigerians wanted their country structured at independence? How, in the first place, did they even know that Nigerians considered themselves ready for self-ruled “now” and not at sometimes in the future?

If anything has stood between Nigerians and their progress it is this arrogance on the part of their leaders that they alone know what’s best for the country. This is obviously why Enahoro can be so fickle minded about the structure of Nigeria.

In his new advocacy he has completely ignored the fact that he has failed to even organise a conference of ethnic nationalities to debate how to re-structure Nigeria in his own newfound image. This failure is clearly evident from the seemingly irreconcilable rifts within his Pro-National Conference Organisation (PRONACO) about its mode of operation and finances. This failure, which has occasionally degenerated into violence, also speaks volumes about the stability and viability of his confederation of ethnic states.

In his new advocacy of ethnic states, the Chief has also apparently chosen to ignore the fact that the struggle for independence was not conducted on ethnic platforms. Rather, it was conducted by those who saw themselves as Nigerians first and Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Ijaw, or whatever, a distant second. Enahoro, himself, did not move his motion for independence as an Ishan. He did so as a Nigerian who even had aspirations of a future pan-African government.

Besides, neither Enahoro nor any other advocate of ethnic states has ever established any objective basis for such a structure. The most well known attempt at doing so was Awolowo’s Thoughts on Nigerian Constitution published in 1966, i.e. six years after independence.

In that book, Awo suggested not one state per tribe but 7 states for the Hausa whose population he put at 13,576,305. For the Yoruba in the West whose population he put at 11,653,892, he suggested 19 states plus another three for the Yoruba in Lagos whose population he put at 1,246,258, making a total of 22. For the Igbo whose population he put at 7,875,683 he suggested 14 states. For the so-called minority ethnic groups he suggested a variety of states that ranged from one for the Urhobo to three for the Ijaw considered by many as the largest minority tribe in the country. He even lumped the Tivs, considered one of the largest minority tribes in the North, with their neighbouring Jukuns, into one state.

Clearly this was highly arbitrary. However, it could not have been otherwise because historically ethnicity is a constantly evolving phenomenon. In any case to single out one factor out of many that define a society as the only basis of building a nation cannot be more arbitrary.

It is a big tragedy that someone who was once celebrated by Nigerians as a prime mover of the motion for their independence would turn around in the twilight of his life to become an advocate of its disintegration – for, make no mistake about it, this is the meaning of Chief Anthony Eromosele Enahoro's confederation of Nigeria’s ethnic groups.