MANY people have written and are still writing about Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. The debate will go on. Even those who never met Ojukwu would claim that they slept in his house. Chief Ojukwu was different things to different people. His fellow soldiers saw him as an ambitious man.

Those outside the military saw him as an intelligent officer who was ready to defend the cause of his people.

If we take this definition of defending his people as an index of nationalism, then Ojukwu was the only nationalist known to his people. It is very clear to everybody that Nigeria was a creation of the British people as a geographic expression without the elements of nationalism. What we call Nigerian nation did not exist, it has never existed, and it is very questionable whether the Nigeria we know today is indeed a nation for which sacrifices could be made. It is not enough to preach ‘one Nigeria’ or ‘unity’; in fact, the sloganisation for unity underscores the absence of unity. General Yakubu Gowon said in his famous quote: “To keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done”.

Have we, in fact, kept Nigeria one? Has any government in this country succeeded in addressing the problems of Nigerians? What we have always had has been the government of the elite, for the elite and by the elite. The common man has not mattered in the equation to define Nigerian nationalism. Even Gen. Gowon agreed before the war that there was no basis for Nigeria unity.

Each of the leaders at one time or the other had contemplated pulling out of the union. As at the time the census of 1952 was taken, it was clear from my analysis that .034% of Nigerians, mainly the elite, knew that there was a country called Nigeria. The nationalist agitators who were not necessarily nationalists, were mere agitators fighting to displace the colonial masters. Indeed by 1960, we successfully displaced the colonial masters.

But what did we have? Twelve days after independence, Ahmadu Bello said in an imperialistic tone: “This nation called Nigeria shall be an estate to us from our great-grand father, Uthman Dan Fodio. We shall vigorously resist a change of power.

We shall manipulate the minorities of the North, and we shall regard the South as a conquered territory” – Parrot Magazine, October 12, 1960. This is not a statement of a Nigerian nationalist, but the statement of an Emperor trying to colonise the rest of Nigeria in the absence of the British.

Ojukwu joined the army, obviously like some of us who wanted to join the army in our youthful days, to check the excesses of certain parts of Nigeria. In the administration of the nation there was sectionalism; in appointments and in scholarship awards we noticed sectionalism everywhere.

In admission to universities, there was sectionalism everywhere. Indeed in everything we did, sectionalism and tribalism were more pronounced than nationalism. The Nzeogwu’s coup was geared towards frustrating the plan by certain people to hijack the Nigerian nation.

It was clear to everybody that there was no nation. And in the caricature of a nation created by the British, each state tried to out do the other. Indeed the constitution conceived by the British for us between 1952 and 1954 would have been a centralised administration. But after the massacres in Kano, after the demonstration by the leadership that this country couldn’t be one nation, we were handed a constitution which proclaimed East for the Easterners, West for the Westerners and North for the Northerners.

In fact, Nigeria had four constitutions, one constitution for the North, another constitution for the West, and a third constitution for the East, plus a federal constitution; and when the Mid-West was created, there was another constitution for the Mid-Western Region.

This in effect suggested that we had a confederation. But events that led to the Civil War demonstrated unmistakably that this nation was not a nation, and the spirit of Nigerian nationalism had died.

Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, who ventured to demonstrate that he was a Nigerian and could win election anywhere in the country, won election in the Western Region.

But because he was not from the Western Region, he was told in unmistakable terms to go back to his own state, which eventually he did. And in doing so he displaced Eyo-Ita who was then the leader of the government business and Eyo-Ita never forgot the fact that he was removed from his role as leader of government business in Enugu because he was not an Ibo man.

The manipulation of Nigeria by the Northern Peoples Congress, NPC, and their allies, the crises in Western Region manipulated by the NPC) and Akintola’s party, and the manipulated elections as well as the manipulated census, so orchestrated to give the Northern people the majority in this country, shows that the spirit of one Nigeria did not exist ab initio. Nzeogwu intervened because if he did not, there was a major plot to take over Nigeria.

The question as to whether Ojukwu was a part of the coup remains a historical debate. But having been appointed the Governor of Eastern Region, it was the responsibility of Chief Ojukwu to protect the lives and property of the Ibo people who were being massacred in thousands.

He was also confronted by an influx of Ibo refugees from the North, displaced because they did not belong to the North. This is not an index of nationalism. Before the war started, I was among the University of Nigeria staff that paid a courtesy call to Ojukwu’s office to be briefed of what was really happening.

We left Ojukwu’s office at 2am. Ojukwu admitted that Nigeria must remain one, but he was not sure what was happening to Ogundipe, who ought to have taken over from Ironsi. I recall vividly that I volunteered to go to Lagos and Amah Orji, a Pharmacist at the University volunteered to go with me.

The report which we submitted to Ojukwu is still in my possession. Ojukwu was prepared to have one Nigeria, but as a soldier he insisted that military rules must be adhered to. That he would not bow to a junior officer who seized power. At this point in time Ogundipe had been threatened and offered the post of High Commissioner in Britain. It was then left for Ojukwu and Gowon to sort out things for Nigeria.

Prof. ByB.I.C. IJOMAHwrote from the Centre of Policy Studies and Research.