By John Amoda

THE anti-historically impatient analysts may question the base line chosen for the identification of the issues addressed in these election reform series. There is good reason why the choice of the colonial as base is the relevant empirical base. The reason is that Nigeria’s transition from colonial condition to the post-colonial was evolutionary and that post- colonial changes in the structures and functions of our inherited institutions have been adaptive.

The Nigerian political class has in statecraft strategies been comfortable with toeing the conservative line. We have pictorial history of this conservative evolutionary change in the colonial such that the periodisation of societal change in terms of the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial actually hides the fact that change of the pre-colonial societies into the colonial has been revolutionary while the transition from the colonial to the post-colonial has been adaptive. This fact is evident when one visits the office of the CEOs of Nigerian public and private institutions.

There in pictures is the history of succession in office beginning with the picture or name of the last colonial occupier of the office. These pictures show the implementation of the policy of Nigerianisation of authority roles that is the parallel in the private sector of the policy of indigenisation of ownership of colonial instituted economic enterprises. Nigerianisation and indigenisation show that the post- colonial is the adaptation of the colonial. The critical challenge then for the analyst is thus one of determining the interests informing the policy of adaptative modification or reform of the colonial parent institutions.

Government is the critical colonial institution and its adaptation for post- colonial relevance remains the principal challenge of Nigerian statecraft. Why is government of such critical importance to the coherent, stability, security, wellbeing and prosperity of the Nigerian post- colonial society? It is so because the foundation of the colony was in the conquest of the pre-colonial states and governments by the invading forces of the colonising governments.

The aims of conquests are diverse. Some conquests have plunder as their aim. Others have control of trade and trade routes as their goal. Others have the taking of prisoners to be transformed into slaves as was the case in the trans-Atlantic organisation of prisoner-taking wars.

Some have as their purpose the settlements of foreign groups in conquered territories as was the case in the Americas, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Algeria. Some, as in the case of Nigeria, have as their aim the economic reconstitution of conquered societies for the production of supplies of goods of strategic relevance to the economy of the conquering metropoles. Conquest engineered for effecting European settlements in the conquered territories and for production of colonial exports entail the pacification of the territories after the initial defeat of native armies. It is in this phase of pacification that the framework and competences of colonial government are established.

Michael Mann in his Incoherent Empire addresses the significance of pacification in the process of empire building, for no consolidation of military victory for the purpose of empire-building is possible without effective pacification of the conquered. According to Mann, for conquering armies pacification is the severe military challenge; without effective pacification the conquered territories cannot be held, cleared of all military and militant oppositions to enable the occupation and economic reconstitution of the conquered. According to Mann:

“The main military problem come later, in consolidating victory on the ground and especially in pacifying the country afterward. How did earlier Empires manage such tasks? Their military policies differed according to whether they initially entered with the support of native allies.

If the British or Belgians- or the Romans- entered a region accompanied by native allies, then after battlefield victory, the fleeing enemy would usually be finished off by the allies, whose local clients would then help pacify the country. If the imperialists entered without allies, then they really needed far bigger forces for pacification- much bigger than the original invasion force. In fact, they usually economized and substituted ferocious “exemplanary repression” massacring the rebels they caught, as an example to others”.

Pacification policies for establishing White settlements in conquered territory were different from those for economic integration of the conquered territories in the imperialist economy. Such integration could be effected only when the conquered territory had been pacified. Pacification ensured that the conquered society was militarily secured. It was through it the society came to be contained by the state, for this was what military security of the colony consisted of, a garrisoned society. Establishing the colony as a garrisoned society entails the organisation of loyal colonial imperial army consisting of native levies with British officers in the case British empire building Instituting the economic reconstitution of the conquered societies generated resistance that were often armed. Such resistance had to be quelled and thus the army was called upon to secure the success of the economic program of the colonial administration. Thus the imperial army was instituted and developed as a pacification force. Within the militarily secured colonial economy the functions of the police for monitoring and prevention of crimes were carried out. Government developed with the capabilities of securing the colonial order through pacification and protecting the economy through the institutions of police backed up with the court system. Provisions of infrastructures were contextualized by the effective discharge of the functions of pacification that address military resistance to occupation and the policing functions that address the legitimation of the authority of government. These functions determined the structure and scope of government and contextualize the governance of the colonial administration and apparatus.