The stated intention of the administrative act of amalgamation of northern and southern Nigeria by Frederick Lugard—and I use the expression “stated intention” deliberately—could be found in the speech Lugard himself gave on the day of amalgamation, that is, January 1, 1914.  According to the Governor-General of the newly-invented Nigeria, this administrative act would enable a unified railway policy. 

In a speech that betrayed the strategic thinking of British colonialists, Lugard declared that amalgamation would facilitate transportation by rail of cherished raw materials like cotton and groundnuts from the north to the port city of Lagos for onward exportation to Britain to drive on-going industrial revolution.    Despite the obvious, Lugard laboured to persuade his captive but not captivated audience that such a policy and provision would enhance the economic profile of the peoples of the colony.  Let us listen to him in his own words.

“Today Nigeria enters on a new stage of its progress, and we all join in the earnest hope that the era now inaugurated will prove, not only a new departure in material prosperity, but also that the coming years will increase the individual happiness and freedom from oppression and raise the standard of civilization and comfort of the many millions who inhabit this large country.  To these sole ends the efforts of my colleagues and myself, with God’s help will be devoted” (the full speech can be found in R. Olaniyan, ed., The Amalgamation and Its Enemies (Ile Ife: Obafemi Awolowo University Press, 2003, Appendix B, 232-36).

Lugard’s carefully chosen words should be carefully noted.  He evoked “a new stage”, “hope”, “material prosperity”, “individual happiness”, “freedom from oppression”, raised “standard of civilization and comfort of the many millions who inhabit” the vast country called Nigeria.  That was then.  But now, five years after was has been described by Richard Bourne as Nigeria’s history of “a turbulent century”, there is an increasingly expanding wide gulf between expectation and experience.  Hope appears to be elusive.  Prosperity, happiness, freedom and comfort are distant from our personal and collective psyche because this amalgam held together at gunpoint has been consistently mismanaged by constitutions of deadly defects, especially the current constitution which, history shows us, is a military decree, and by a succession of incompetent military and civilian managers.

The disturbing trend of insecurity, the mismanagement of our prosperity and diversity lead us to lament on how the various ethnic, regional and religious communities have been relating with each other within the geographical space called Nigeria since 1914.  We need to be taught  a lesson on how Nigerians of varied ethnic, regional and religious affiliation ought to relate with each other. We need to be able to convince ourselves that it is possible to transcend the stubborn myth of ethnocentrism which has impeded the birth of a Nigerian nation. 

It is instructive to note the term that was used to describe this step of British strategic interest, of administrative and budgetary convenience.  With amalgamation, the British outsmarted the French who were also interested in colonizing Nigeria. But the invention of Nigeria by amalgamation was not the creation of a nation, and, more than a century later, Nigeria is yet to be a nation. 

A nation is an association of peoples with shared core values, with a constitution that establishes institutions meant to secure the land and protect members of the association that the nation is as they embark on their pursuit of those shared core values, in their quest for personal and collective fulfillment.  But that was not the result of amalgamation.  The amalgamation of northern and southern Nigeria was not the unification of the vastly disparate peoples of breath-taking religious, ethnic and cultural diversity living around the Niger.  It was, without the consent of these peoples, creation of an amalgam of peoples.  Amalgamation was the culmination of an aggressive imperialist-driven enterprise that began with the annexation of the kingdom of Lagos in 1861, the year a Treaty of Cessation was signed between Britain and Oba Dosunmu of Lagos.  Amalgamation was a seal on the complete conquest of the land around the Niger which took place with the conquest of the Sokoto Caliphate on March 15, 1903, the day Lugard’s troops marched into the city of Sokoto to subdue remnants of loyalists of the fleeing Caliph, the title of the monarch of Sokoto before Lugard changed it to Sultan.

A stable and prosperous Nigeria would be to the advantage of all Nigerians, irrespective of economic or social status, ethnic or religious affiliation.  We are in dire need of far-reaching constitutional amendments that will facilitate justice, national integration, stability and prosperity.  A polity without a good constitution is like a football match played without rules.  It will degenerate into a street fight, a full-blown civil war.  By holding the current constitution, the 1999 constitution, in our hands, we hold a bomb that can explode at any time, a constitution that is a recipe for the injustice of an imperial government at the centre whose heavy weight crushes state governments, and state governments that have in turn annihilated local governments. 

While it is repeatedly said that Nigeria’s problems are corruption, poverty and insecurity, my conviction, based on my reading of the history of Nigeria, compels me to dissent.  Those three—corruption, poverty and insecurity—are symptoms of our problem.  Our problem is a lopsided constitutional arrangement.  Our problem is the absence of a truly federal constitution.

In our history of dashed hopes, bloodshed and apprehension, we have, since independence, been staggering from one crisis to another: from the needless crisis of the First Republic to the mindless bloody intervention of the military, the unjust killings of January 15, 1966, the unjust killings in May 1966 of Igbo residing in northern Nigeria, the unjust killings of July 28 and 29, 1966, further unjust killings of the Igbo during the war, the massacre in Asaba  by Nigerian troops, and the torture and killing of ethnic minorities in Ikot Ekpene by Biafran troops. 

We have witnessed the politics of profligacy in the Second Republic when Nigeria was awash with petrodollars and our public office holders conducted themselves as if the land and its riches belonged to them and not to the people who own the land.  Then came the second military intervention from December 31, 1983 to May 29, 1999 and its attendant massive violation of fundamental human rights. Twenty years after the second exit of the military, we witness the return of prodigality into politics, the Boko Haram insurgency in the north east, and murderous herdsmen whose apparition was first sighted in the middle belt, and who are now said to be sighted in every part of Nigeria, kidnapping for a ransom has become a lucrative business, while Nigeria can only be said to be making tentative steps in democracy.  In fact, what was once a faint appearance of democracy would seem to have completely faded in a land of detention of dissenting voices without trial.  In none of these instances can one confidently and reasonably assert that the principal actors acted in the interest of the people of Nigeria.

The fact is glaring that Nigeria is facing formidable developmental challenges.  She needs a constitution that facilitates national integration in view of authentic development of her diverse population.  But we do not have such a constitution as we speak. There is a constitutional vacuum, not because there is no constitution but because there is no constitution that the people can call their own.  The current constitution, which came into effect in 1999, is an identical twin of the 1979 constitution.  Both are products of the power equation of an oligarchy of soldiers and civilians, an oligarchy that pretends to be patriotic, enlightened and altruistic.  This constitution has become a veritable instrument of power tussle engaged upon by the political elite, a tussle engaged upon to determine who monopolises Nigeria’s riches to the detriment of our common humanity and our common citizenship.  We need to think and act democratically so that this country can become humane and habitable.  That task is urgent, and time is not on our side.