By Douglas Anele

It is time once again for the ruling class to celebrate Nigeria’s independence. Indeed, activities to that effect commenced last Sunday when President Goodluck Jonathan attended an interdenominational church service that day, although the event got to its omega point yesterday, October 1, when the country became 51 years old.

Evidently, for the average Nigerian to get to 51 years in this country is an achievement, considering the fact that latest estimates of life expectancy for men and women are below 50 years.

But in the life of a country, 51 years are relatively insignificant. One of the good things about events like this is that they allow thoughtful individuals to ask fundamental questions about issues of vital national concern. For example, what exactly is the meaning of independence? In whose interests is the attainment of political autarky?

To what extent has the vision of the nationalists who fought for decolonisation of Nigeria been actualised in the country’s historical evolution up to the present time? Questions such as these bring to the fore recurrent issues of statehood and the fundamental principles that must undergird acquisition, allocation and distribution of political power among various segments of the citizenry.

It is an indisputable historical fact that the colonial mosaic called Nigeria was created by the British and that the diverse autochthonous peoples of Nigeria were brought together politically mostly through violent means by the efforts of British adventurers, administrators, traders, and missionaries with the enthusiastic support of the British government. As a matter of fact, the name “Nigeria” was coined by Flora Shaw, a one-time colonial correspondent of the Times of London, who later became the spouse of Lord Lugard.

Needless to say, Lugard was instrumental to the making of modern Nigeria as we know it today, because after the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria and the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria were amalgamated on January 1, 1914, he was appointed the first Governor-General of the newly-created geopolitical amalgam.

But what motivated the British to create Nigeria? An important fact often downplayed by some commentators on the “national question” is this: although in a fundamental sense Nigeria is the brain-child of British imperialism, the amalgamation, according to J. F. Ade-Ajayi, was guided and to a large extent dictated by existing geographical, economic, cultural and, we must add, political ties.

This means that the cliché attributed to the late Obafemi Awolowo to the effect that Nigeria is a mere geographical expression, is inaccurate, because it ignores the reality of all kinds of interactions spanning millennia between the various peoples that constitute pre-colonial Nigeria. The amalgamation which Lugard superintended was definitely not demanded by the indigenous peoples nor was it meant to serve their interests.

It was motivated solely by British economic interests, since a unified Nigerian state, says K.B.C. Onwubiko, allowed Lugard and his cohorts to pool together resources of Northern and Southern Nigeria and to develop commerce in the former by providing it with an outlet to the sea.

Thus, the interests, concerns and development of the indigenous population was absent in the imperialist equation of British colonialists who needed to put institutions and mechanisms in place, after the notorious “scramble and partition of Africa”, for optimum exploitation of their new creation. Keep in mind that the formation of Nigeria happened at a time when European powers regarded their West African territories as their “possessions” existing mainly for the economic, social and political well-being of the “mother” country.

It was a period of economic exploitation and of social and political humiliation of the people that later became Nigerians. In a nutshell, then, the amalgamation is of the British, by the British, and for the British. On the question of the meaning of independence as understood in this context, it can be said that a country is independent when all the institutions of state and governance are under the control of the citizens of that country.

In effect, this means that from October 1, 1960, British colonial administrators handed political power completely to Nigerians. And, considering the unseverable nexus between economics and politics, it can be argued that simultaneously responsibility to chart the economic direction of the state was transferred as well.

Therefore, ideally the attainment of independence by any geopolitical entity is meant to be a platform for its political leaders to harness available human and natural resources for the welfare of the commonwealth without taking dictations from another country, because sovereignty rests with the people themselves.

In Nigeria, it is apparent that, although the colonial authorities have relinquished power to Nigerians, the manner the transfer was actually executed was meant to safeguard the economic interests of Britain, judging by the skewed political engineering by the colonial master years before independence was granted which favoured the North and the British-assisted emergence of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa as the first Prime Minister instead of world-class leaders like Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo.

Again, internal colonisation engineered by the Northern-dominated military on the basis of flawed historicist arguments about the “natural right to rule” has steadily alienated large sections of Southern Nigeria who feel that they have been deliberately occluded from the highest political office having lost the Biafran war.

More specifically Ndigbo in Igboland, unarguably the ethnic nationality that has contributed the most to economic and social development nationwide, are deliberately but subtly excluded from core leadership positions in the country.

Of course, most Igbo politicians and so-called opinion leaders are complicit in the politically-degraded status of the Igbo in the scheme of things because of avarice. But then, their compatriots outside Igboland still harbour suspicion about the gregarious spirit of the average Igboman. Be that as it may, as I indicated earlier, the rationale for political independence is optimum exploitation of a country’s resources for the good of all.

But in our own case, political autarky has produced a class of vicious cabals who think that Nigeria exists to minister to their insane greed for primitive accumulation. The cabals, supported by multinational companies and shady Lebanese and Indian businessmen, have through their nefarious activities jeopardised our feeble evolution towards sustainable development.

Yomi Akinyeye, a historian at University of Lagos, claimed that Nigeria’s independence, like the birth of a baby with no apparent defect, was greeted with great jubilation and high expectations. But now, 51 years after, serious genetic defects have manifested and the high expectations have taken on the aspect of “hope deferred”.

To be continued.