QUEST FOR SELF DETERMINATION BY ETHNIC NATIONALITIES: THE WAY FORWARD FOR PEACEFUL CO-EXISTENCE IN NIGERIA
Presentation of Prince Chukwuemeka I. Onyesoh, as Symposium Speaker at DEMOBIN INITIATIVE (DMI) SYMPOSIUM/BOOK PRESENTATION/LAUNCH ON AUGUST 3, 2018 AT ROYAL PALACE HOTEL, AGBANI RD, GARKI, ENUGU
Introduction
Nigeria presently exists as a unitary despotism created by a military decree, but branded a federation. The mischievous intensions are clear – to allow the federating units, the North, in whose favour the Constitution was intentionally skewed power, to effectively and permanently dominate the rest. The 1999 Constitution of Nigeria was never designed to give effect to the inherent principles of federalism, equality and mutual respect among the federating peoples of Nigeria. This is the background of the existential crises which permanently rocks the foundation of the Nigerian structure persistently. The result is the colossal state failure by Nigeria– extreme poverty of over 82 million, which currently ranks Nigeria as the capital of poverty world-wide, monumental corruption, gargantuan youth unemployment, one of world’s lowest human development and life expectancy- at-birth, very high rate of maternal deaths and infantile mortality; and gargantuan level of insecurity of lives and property.
2. Federation Defined
To understand how far Nigeria has derailed, it is important to review what a federation is supposed to mean, not in Nigeria’s demented home-grown sense, but in internationally accepted norms, as proposed by the conceivers and practised by society.
A federation . . . is a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing states or regions under a central (federal) government. In a federation, the self-governing status of the component states, as well as the division of power between them and the central government, are typically constitutionally entrenched and may not be altered by a unilateral decision of either party, the states or the federal polity. Each of the political unit, central or regional has its own charter of existence (TO THE RESCUE, pp. 83-90).
The most essential and inherent principles of federation are therefore federalism which guarantees the self-governing status of the federating units; equality and mutual respect between the peoples comprising it; unrestricted movement throughout its territories, with the right to set up home or business anywhere within its boundaries, together with provisions for all the other fundamental human rights.
In present day Nigeria these are exclusive privileges of an oligarchy which brutalizes the rest.
The contracting parties in a federation, whether cantons, provinces, states, regions or zones, not only undertake bilateral and commutative obligations, but in making the pact, reserve for themselves more rights, more liberty, more authority, more property than they abandon to the centre.
There should be neither a mix up of the federating units; or a multi-tier of federating units - states and local governments, as in the Nigerian strange mix. In Nigeria, the over 378 ethnic nationalities, which unfortunately share little or no values, except perhaps similar skin pigmentation, are the natural units. Unfortunately, they found themselves compounded into a federation without any consultation or consent and with little or no regard to individual group values, particularly those on life, as an inviolate gift of God to man.
Central in the relationship between the federal authority and federating units, is an emphasis in the self-governing status or autonomy of the federating units.
At the heart or centre of the autonomy of federating units is the concept of the right to self determination. This right therefore needs to be very well studied and understood, for there lies the multiplicity of Nigeria’s festering sores.
3. Self Determination Defined
3.1. Definition: Applied to a person, the English Collins Dictionary definition of self determination is the power or ability to make a decision for oneself without influence from outside. By extension the term has come to mean the free choice of one's own acts without external compulsion. But in Government, Politics or Diplomacy, it transcends to the right of a nation or people, to determine its own form of government without influence from outside.
3.2.In International Law: Self-determination is a core principle of international law, recognized as a general principle of law. It denotes the legal right of a people, derived from customary international law, to decide their own destiny in the international order; and this right is enshrined in a number of international treaties. For instance, self-determination is protected in the United Nations Charter and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (UN ICCPR) as a right of all peoples of the world. (Cornell University Law School view - (CULS).
The concept of self determination for nationalities in the engineering of political units had, as far back as the end of World War I, been promoted as an instrument of peace. During the 1920s and 1930s there were some successful movements for self-determination in the beginnings of the process of decolonization. Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland, the Irish Free State, Australia, South Africa, Egypt, Afghanistan Iraq, Lebanon and India achieved independence from this concept from Britain and France from the 1920s to the 40s.
3.3 .In the United Nations: After World War II, promotion of self-determination among subject peoples became one of the chief goals of the United Nations. The UN’s predecessor, the League of Nations, had, after World War I, recognized the principle; but it was in the UN that the idea received its clearest statement and affirmation.
The UN Charter clarifies two meanings of the term: First, a state is said to have the right of self-determination in the sense of having the right to choose freely its political, economic, social, and cultural systems. Secondly, the right to self-determination is defined as the right of a people to constitute itself in a state; or otherwise freely determine the form of its association with an existing state. Both meanings have their basis in the UN Charter (Article 1, paragraph 2; and Article 55, paragraph 1).
The right of nations to self-determination is therefore a cardinal principle in modern international law, binding, as such, on the United Nations (UN) as authoritative interpretation of the UN Charter’s norms. It states that
“. . . nations, based on respect for the principle of equal rights and fair equality of opportunity, have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no interference.”
The determination of the “people” referred to in the UN Charter, UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) (both multi-lateral treaties amongst consenting UN member states) when the covenants declare, “All peoples have the right of self determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development,” is limited by the UN Charter in Article 2:
The Organisation and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following principles articulated in Articles 1 and 2. Article 2 therefore limits the power of UN as stipulated in sub-sections (1) and (7) as follows:
(1) The Organisation is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
And (7) Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII.
Experience, however, has shown that UN does not promote or defend individual or group rights to self determination until a major crisis of genocide, involving loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, with IDPs/refugees counted in millions, like in Rwanda, Sudan, Serbia or Yugoslavia, before its Security Council rouses from its diplomatic slumber and authorizes intervention, trials and convictions of perpetrators of such crimes against humanity. In spite of the present degradation of Nigeria its leaders still junket round the world, as if nothing is happening.
4.The African Charter on Human and Political Rights (ACHPR) on Self Determination
Finding the UN ICCPR as a veritable instrument for stabilizing unions in Federations, but not sufficiently promoting/protecting individual and/or group rights, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), now African Union (AU), on 27th June 1981, adopted its on charter to regulate civil and political rights in the African continent. This is what is now known as the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) (also called Banjul Charter on account of the summit’s location). Other world’s continental unions like European Union, Organisation of American States, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, East Asian Community, have their own versions of UN ICCPR.
4.1.Self Determination Provision in the African Charter on Human and Political Rights (ACHPR)
The ACHPR Article 20 is intended to promote and protect the Right to Self Determination of constituents of member states, and provides as follows in its sub-sections:
(1)”All peoples shall have the right to existence. They shall have the unquestionable and inalienable right to self-determination. They shall freely determine their political status and shall pursue their economic and social development according to the policy they have freely chosen.”
(2)”Colonised or oppressed peoples shall have the right to free themselves from the bonds of domination by resorting to any means recognized by the international community.”
(3)”All peoples shall have the right to the assistance of the State Parties to the present Charter in their liberation struggle against foreign domination, be it political, economic or cultural.”
Nigeria signed the ACHPR instrument on 31st August 1982, ratified it on 22nd June 1983 and deposited it with the Charter Commission headquarters in Banjul, Gambia on 22nd July 1983.
4.2. Domestication and Non- Inclusion of AFCHR in the Constitution: The Federal Government of Nigeria, in apparent pretence of meeting the demands of Article 1 of the Charter, which stipulates that parties to the Charter “shall recognise the rights, duties and freedoms enshrined in the Charter and shall undertake to adopt legislative or other measures to give effect to them,” enacted the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act, Chapter A 9 (Chapter 10 LFN1990) (No.2 of 1983) 10 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 1990 and labeled the law as an Act to enable effect to be given in the Federal Republic of Nigeria to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights made in Banjul on the 19th day of January, 1981 and for purposes connected therewith. The Ratification and Enforcement Act in itself is deficient in conferring such social and political rights on citizens of Nigeria unless the relevant Section 20 dwelling on the Right to Self Determination is entrenched, as an article or section, in the Nigerian Constitution. This is, perhaps, why the Nigerian oligarchy incorporated almost all the fundamental rights articles of ACHPR in various sections of the 1999 Constitution, namely, ACHPR Articles - Rights in Sections 2-Freedom from Discrimination, 3-Equality before the Law and Equal Protection of the Law, 4-Right to Life, 5-Prohibition of Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment, 6-Right to Personal Liberty and Protection from Arbitrary Arrest, 7-Fair Trial, 8-freedom of Conscience, 9-Receive Information and Free Expression, 10-Freedom of Association, 11-Freedom of Assembly, 12-Freedom of Movement, 14-Property, 18-Protection of the Family and Vulnerable Groups, were respectively reflected in Sections 42, 45, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 40, 41, 43, 44 and 37 (excluding in Section 37 the vulnerable groups – women, the aged and the disabled) but deliberately failed to include in the Constitution the ACHPR Articles on Social and Political Rights as set out in its Articles 13, 15 to17 & 20 to 24 and the Protection of Vulnerable Groups set out in Article 18 of the Charter. Therefore to make the peoples’ right to self determination inviolable, it is required that ACHPR Article 20-Right to Self Determination should be entrenched in the Nigerian Constitution. That would elevate those social and political rights to constitutional and justiciable rights. It is no accident that the Nigerian oligarchy who decreed the 1999 Constitution into being, neglected and/or omitted the incorporation of social and political rights of its citizens into the Nigerian Constitution. In feudalism, which is normal and customary among Fulani societies, their oligarchy concedes very little or no social and political rights to their serfs/slaves. The exclusion in the 1999 Nigerian Constitution is therefore devised to serve the interest of the northern feudal oligarchs who dominate Nigerian politics. Without our knowing it, we are all enslaved by the oligarchy, since the right to secede from a union emanates from the right to self determination, whether such right to secede is expressly stated or not. The right to secede is typically implicit in the right to self determination.
The non-inclusion of the right to self determination in the Nigerian Constitution therefore subordinates such right to provisions in the 1999 Constitution since it is not a constitutional right. The oligarchy and their collaborators in the South and Central Nigeria, basking in the euphoria of having won the Civil War, though they had clipped only the wings of defeated ex-Biafrans by entrenching fetter-like provisions in the opening Chapter and Section of the Constitution, apparently to ensure no escape from whatever they might wish to do with defeated ex-Biafrans in Chapter 1, Part 1, Sections- (1) and (3), without realizing that it is the undoing of everybody outside the oligarchy. By excluding the Self–Determination Article of the ACHPR from the 1999 Constitution, it became obvious that the oligarchy which decreed the Constitution into being wished to ensure the denial to the rest of Nigerians, the rights to self determination granted them by Article 20 of the Charter.
Chapter 1, Part 1, Section 1.-(1) of the Constitution unequivocally declares that:
This Constitution is supreme and its provisions shall have binding force on all authorities and persons throughout the Federation of Nigeria.
And 1.-(3) dismisses all Laws as subordinate to the Constitution, including the ACHPR Ratification and Enforcement Act, tersely as follows:
If any other law is inconsistent with the provisions of this Constitution, this Constitution shall prevail, and that other law shall to the extent of the inconsistency be void.
4.3. The Indivisibility and Indissolubility of Nigeria: In Section.-(1) of the Constitution, the oligarchy appeared to have shackled all agitations for separation and/or meaningful restructuring of Nigeria.
“Nigeria is one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign state to be known as the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
5. The Falsity of the Nigerian 1999 Constitution
5.1. The preamble to Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution tells a lie when it sets out with the following opening statement:
“We the People of the Federal Republic of Nigeria: Having firmly resolved: . . . DO HEREBY MAKE, ENACT AND GIVE OURSELVES the following Constitution.”
The truth is that the 378 ethnic nationalities of Nigeria, never met to consider and adopt any Constitution as free peoples. The Hausa-Fulani Army Generals foisted the Constitution on the rest of Nigeria without subjecting it to any democratic process of approval and ratification by the 378 peoples or their duly elected representatives. General Abdulsalam Alhaji Abubakar, Head of State & Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, signed Decree 24 of 1999 and attached the Constitution as a schedule of that Decree. He merely represented the oligarchy; certainly not the 378 peoples of Nigeria who neither participated in the drafting or approval of same.
5.2. The Federation of Nigeria was no longer in existence, the Army Generals having abolished it in 1966. The Generals created the 36 states which they named as the federating units. In a federation the units create the federation and not the other way round. That is artificial and has resulted in a mere concoction of a federation and the mix-up with local government areas, which are typically creations of federating units, and not federating units in any way.
5.3. Nigeria dissolved and divided parts of the Nigerian federation in various acts of impunity – (a) The convoluted and complicit donation of Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon. Nigeria was by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Statute in its Articles neither bound to submit to ICJ jurisdiction nor accept its judgment, and therefore merely used ICJ judgment as a mere ruse to conceal its fulfillment of Gen. Gowon’s wartime undertaking to trade the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula for Cameroon’s cooperation in effectively blockading Biafra throughout the war. (b) The condonation of the proclamation of 12 Sharia Republics in Northern Nigeria violates the indivisibility and the indissolubility of Nigeria. Sharia law disregards both any other law including even democratic constitutions and government (To the Rescue pp.290-298).
By allowing Nigeria to be so divided and/or dissolved as in (a) & (b), Nigeria violated Section 2(1) of its Constitution and by the legal maxim, Quod approbo non reprobo, cannot accept and reject divisibility/dissolubility the same time (TO THE RESCUE, pp.83 – 93).
5.4. Delegitimization of Liberation Struggle: Regional political parties are typically the bedrock of liberation struggles world-wide. In most countries in which self determination agitators have achieved meaningful autonomy with or without violence, regional political parties usually led the agitations for separation, which led to regional autonomy. For example, it has been in Canada - Parti Quebec; in Scotland – Scottish National Party; in Northern Island - Sinn Fein and Ulster Unionist Party of Northern Ireland; and in Spain – the Convergence and Union party.
But in Nigeria regional parties are proscribed by the combined effects of sub-sections of Sections 221, 222, 223 and 228 of the Constitution which deny regional parties registration and consequently, fielding candidates for any election.
The oligarchy therefore thought they completely shut the door on freedom-seeking Biafrans after awarding to themselves disproportionate shares of numbers of States and Local Government Areas. The South West, the Middle Belt and northern minorities, who won the Civil War for Nigeria, basking in the euphoria of having done that, deluded themselves into believing that by so doing, and by having obtained separate states for their own people, to the exclusion of ex-Biafrans (now defeated), they have achieved most of the major principles of a federation - equality and mutual respect between the peoples comprising it. The present stress being undergone by Nigeria - the killings, genocide, ethnic cleansing and the wide-spread clamour for restructuring - tells the rest of the story.
6. The Salutary Effects of the Right to Self Determination (Abstractions from pp. 137-168 of TO THE RESCUE):
Entrenching the right to Self Determination in national Constitutions is incomplete without the right to secede. The essence of including the right to self-determination in national Constitutions is not necessarily to cause the disintegration of any polity. On the contrary, such a provision, including the right to secession, invariably helps to foster genuine unity and strengthen longer lasting and peaceful unions by curbing the excesses of the majority, thus ensuring minority rights.
Thus, instead of encouraging separation, the provision for self-determination compels mutual respect among the various peoples of a union, thereby inspiring the different peoples to work harder on strengthening it. Equality and mutual respect between the federating units of a political entity are two of the inherent principles that sustain most successful federations. Failure to acknowledge the two, in any such union, results in the kind of acrimony pervading the relationships between the federating units in countries like Nigeria.
Self-determination and secession provisions in the Nigerian Constitution would have humbled the excessive arrogance of the Hausa/Fulani who regard Nigeria as Jihad booty or their great grand father's estate. That would have enhanced genuine and long-lasting unity as a federation of free peoples. Nigeria's often-mouthed unity is restive and suspicious, being merely compelled by anachronistic provisions in the 1999 Constitution. The North’s insistence on a united Nigeria is therefore fake and merely based on the need for revenue from and use of the crude petroleum in the South, free access to southern sea ports, a bigger market for their agricultural products and more territory over which they can wedge their Jihad and thereby compel more converts to their religion as the Emirs disclosed to the West African Students Union as far back as in 1942.
The present overbearing attitude of the Upper North compares precisely with the over-bearing influence which the Russians exerted on the affairs of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) which, in part, precipitated the break-up of the former Soviet Federation. Similarly, in Sudan, the northern Sudanese Arabs who controlled the country drove the minority Southern Sudanese into two civil wars, altogether for 39-years, at the end of which South Sudan achieved independence. Prior to the 2011 independence of South Sudan, the Sudanese Arabs had declared Sharia over all of Sudan including the non-Moslem South. This is just like northern Nigerian fundamentalist Moslems have, from the very beginning of Nigeria in 1914, surreptitiously worked at implementing Sharia all over Nigeria, even though gullible Southern political elite have, in the past and present, failed to see through the smoke screen.
The right to self determination and secession therefore promotes and protects minority rights in federations.
6.1. Minority Rights:
6.1.1.Canada: The Canadian example of the central government bending backwards to accommodate the fears of the French Canadian Catholic minority of Quebec province, who constitute less than 25% of the Canadian 35 million population (the rest being English-speaking Protestant-Pentecostals), illustrates that agitation for and granting of the right to self determination and secession, does not necessarily lead to secession. The Canadian Constitution provides for the right to secession; but twice, 1980 and 1995, Quebec province, voted down secession after the rest of the country had sweetened the terms of their remaining Canadians. That included their French language as a parallel official language with English. The present Prime Minister (PM) of Canada, Justin Pierre James Trudeau, son of former PM, Pierre Trudeau, is 12th Quebecer PM out of 23 PMs of Canada since 1867, the Canadian Dominion was formed - a far cry from the monopolization of the presidency of Nigeria by the oligarchy.
6.1.2. The United Kingdom Leadership: The Scottish Independence agitation and vote, is yet another testimony of the salutary effect of the Right to Self Determination, including secession.
The reactions of the dominant British political leaders and the central government in Great Britain are unlike in Nigeria, where the oligarchs would have used their controversial population figures to insist on their fatuous “indivisibility and indissolubility” and, perhaps, threaten another Jihad, otherwise genocide, against any separatist group, as they did to Ndigbo in 2017 in the Kaduna Declaration 'Quit Notice to Igbos.' Furthermore, President Buhari’s soldiers extra-judicially murdered over 150 unarmed youths in 2017 (in addition to 270 previously executed in 2016) agitating for self determination rights before the President put on a terrorist tag on the pacifist agitators and proscribing them. The same Presidency has been defending the cattle rights of terrorist Fulani herdsmen who annually cost Nigeria thousands of casualties in massacres and perhaps trillions of Naira in property destroyed.
Unlike AREWA and Northern Nigerian political leaders, the governments of United Kingdom and Scotland, when they found that there was no legal framework in the British legal system for such the Scottish independence vote, went out of their way to initiate and establish an Order-in-Council to enable the vote.
6.1.3. The Ethiopian Example on the Right to Secession:
The Ethiopian example on the right to self determination is yet another good case-study. Ethiopia included the right to self determination, specifying the right to secede, in section 39(1) of its 1995 Constitution; in these unmistakable and clearly spelt out terms:
“Every Nation, Nationality and People in Ethiopia, has an unconditional right to self-determination, including the right to secession.”
That proviso has however not encouraged any attempt or talk, by any group, to invoke that right since 1995 when the new Constitution was adopted. That Constitution was negotiated; realistically agreed upon by the various ethnic nationalities in the country. That was after a fractious 17-year civil war that lasted from 1974 to 1991; unlike in Nigeria, where the victorious northern generals, in 1979 (carried over to the 1999), imposed a unitary Constitution on the country and perversely branded it otherwise.
There has been relative peace among the ethnic and diverse groups in Ethiopia obviously on account of the inclusiveness of the Constitution given to Ethiopia by Ethiopians; not contrived by a section pretending to act for all the peoples.
There are 80 officially recognized ethnic groups in Ethiopia's diverse population of 73.750 million (2007 census). The four major ethnic groups are Oromo, 34.49% of the population, followed by Amhara - 26.89%, Somali - 6.20% and Tigray - 6.07%. The common ground between the four, including the Sidama - the 5th largest ethnic nationality with 6.02% of the population, is that all belong to the Afro-Asiatic language family. Thus the language of close to 80% of Ethiopian people therefore derives from the Afro-Asiatic language family with varying branches, probably dialects. Ethiopia therefore has one thing Nigeria lacks - a unifying national identity - the Afro-Asiatic language family.
6.1.4. The Nigerian scenario: Nigeria has a chance to survive in peace by renegotiating its charter of existence, but it needs to work harder than Ethiopia since it completely lacks a unifying national identity.
7. Perception Mistakes of the Past and Present Igbo Leaders:
Igbo leaders from as far back as the early 1940s never stopped to bother about the major tendencies at play in the Nigeria they were very enthusiastic on uniting as the biggest country in Africa so as to, perhaps, enable them lead Africa. They never bothered to master the idea that Islamic fundamentalism is a dominant influence in northern Nigeria and that Igbo people would have fared better on their own or in a very loosely federated Nigeria in which the right to self determination with the right to secede, is entrenched in the Constitution.
Northern leaders never hid their preference for such an arrangement. Chief Awolowo’s 1947 book, “Path to Nigerian Freedom” revealed that at a conference of Northern emirs in 1942, a letter written to them by the West African Students Union, WASU, in London came up for discussion. The letter, Chief Awolowo disclosed, touched on many problems affecting Nigeria as a whole; and the WASU appealed to the Northern emirs and their peoples for cooperation with leaders and peoples of Southern Nigeria in tackling them in order to ensure peaceful coexistence between the two sections of the country. According to Chief Awolowo, the emirs’ comment on this appeal for cooperation, as contained in the official report of the conference, is as follows: "Security operatives holding this country together is not possible except by means of the religion of the Prophet [Mohammed]. … If they [the South] want political unity let them follow our religion." (Awolowo, Obafemi, Path to Nigerian Freedom, p. 51) In other words, the condition given by the emirs for peace and unity in Nigeria was that Southerners must become Moslems and all come under the Sokoto Caliphate. As a consequence of these and other cogent observable factors, Chief Awolowo then warned that if Northern and Southern Nigeria must continue to live in one country, post-independence, special provisions must be made in the Nigerian constitutional framework to contain the huge cleavages between the two sections of the country. Dr. Azikiwe, Igbo foremost politician of the time, seems to have paid no hid to this development. Sometime in the early 1950s this same issue resurfaced in a conversation between the one-Nigeria enthusiast and pan-Africanist, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (Igbo) and Alhaji Sir Ahmadu Bello (Fulani religious cum political leader). Azikiwe had urged Ahmadu Bello to forget their differences and join him in building a united Nigeria. In his famous riposte, Ahmadu wasted no time in reminding Azikiwe that he had no values to share with him:
“No, we cannot forget our differences. We will rather recognize them. I am a Moslem. You are a Christian. I am Fulani. You are Igbo. It is only in recognizing these differences that we can manage being together.”
Ahmadu Bello, as the premier of the Northern Region and leader of the NPC, the party that led the Federal Government of Nigeria, was the most influential politician in Nigeria from 1959 till his death in 1966. The Prime Minister of Nigeria (1959-1966), Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, was his party deputy and merely toed his party leader’s line.
Furthermore in 1947 Dr. Azikiwe led his party’s (N.C.N.C.) delegation to London to protest against the Richard’s Constitution in which he saw too much powers ceded to the regions as a device for causing the disintegration of Nigeria. The Constitution came into effect in January 1946. Zik preferred unitary Nigeria and therefore opposed federation. In other words, Dr. Azikiwe was opposed to the concept of the right of the ethnic nationalities of Nigeria having a right to reasonable autonomy to mind their affairs.
In the 1954 Constitutional Conference, Azikiwe again, single-handedly opposed the inclusion of the right to secede for the federating units in Nigeria’s 1959 independence Constitution. According to him the country was “not a league of forced nations and it would be ruinous to include that right.
Despite all that had happened around the world from 1918 to 1979 on the right to self determination Dr. Azikiwe confirmed his opposition to the right to self determination as lately as 1979, in an interview he granted to Mohammed Haruna, political correspondent of the New Nigerian newspaper and published in three editions of the paper between March 8 and 10, 1979. Zik spoke as follows to the newspaper, as the presidential candidate of the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP), one of five registered by the military regime of Murtala/Obasanjo, which contested the elections that ushered in the Second Republic in October 1979.
“ In 1945, the Richards Constitution was promulgated. I opposed the division of Nigeria into three parts. I felt that regionalism was not in the interest of Nigeria and that it would lead to provincialism.
It means that we began to think in terms of our region and not one Nigeria. Then, I coined the concept of one Nigeria and the slogan ‘One Nigeria’. But is that not what we fought for in the civil war and is it not the basis of our new constitution? Well, if in 1945 my contemporaries felt that I was wrong and in 1949 conference at Ibadan, this Richard’s Constitution was endorsed and my party submitted a minority report which was brushed aside and 30 years later, the concept is found to be correct, don’t you think it is unfair to judge those of us who fought 30 years ago for one Nigeria with those who oppose One Nigeria?”
Yet, the concept of the right to self determination for nationalities in the political engineering of federations was not a new concept, even by then. As far back as 11th February 1918 Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of U. S. A. in an address to US Congress in Joint Session, whilst analyzing German and Austrian Peace Utterances towards the end of World War 1 (July 28, 1914-November 11, 1918), made his famous self determination speech after he announced his Fourteen Points on 8th January 1918, as follows:
“National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. Self determination is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of actions which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their own peril.
Azikiwe confirmed he ignored the concept of the right to self determination to his own peril and that of his people.
Furthermore, in the Atlantic Charter, signed on 14th August 1941, by Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of United States of America, and Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, pledged The Eight Principal points of the Charter and defined the 8 points to include “restoration of self government to those deprived of it; no territorial aggrandisement; no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people . . .”
As already stated in 3.2 above, most of the decolonization that took place in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 50s flowed from the recognition given to the right to self determination as fundamental principle in nation building.
At independence in 1960, Sir Ahmadu Bello had articulated the Fulani world view of their intension to dominate Nigeria in his famous declaration reported in the now extinct Lagos newspaper, The Parrot of 12th Oct. 1960.
“The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate from our great grandfather, Othman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We must use the minorities in the North as willing tools, and the South as conquered territories and never allow them to have control over their future.”
Ahmadu Bello’s Deputy party Leader and Prime Minister of Nigeria was implementing that program to the letter until he was interrupted by the Jan. 1966 coup. The oligarchy countered; mobilized the rest of Nigeria, went to war and resumed the program. Today Nigeria is over 70% Islamized, with the rebellion of 12 Islamic Republics in the Upper North under Sharia and Nigeria being full-fledged membership of most world Moslem organizations, while Nigerian non-Moslem leaders, including even Church leaders of the rank of Cardinal of a major denomination, live in denial, deluding themselves that Islamisation of Nigeria is not possible.
Most Igbo leaders of today are so pathetically ill-informed on critical issues on Nigeria that whenever I interact with them, I weep for our people
Can someone tell me what Cattle Fulani herdsmen Islamic militants are doing to Nigeria unimpeded by any authority? Or explain to me what the Inspector General of Police is doing to the Senate leadership; in Benue State, in Taraba state, in Plateau state, in Ekiti state, even here in Enugu, where the herdsmen are fully deployed waiting for orders? 54 communities captured and occupied in Plateau State with their ancestral indigenous natives living as IDPs in refugee camps and the 54 communities renamed in Fulbe? Abduction, rape, forced conversion to Islam and marriage without parental consent of Christian under-aged girls everywhere in Nigeria, is no news since it happens daily! Killing all over Nigeria, even Christian priests in Churches and burning of thousands of Churches, over 500 in Benue state, next door to Enugu state, what is the meaning?
8. CONCLUSION - THE WAY FORWARD FOR PEACEFUL CO-EXISTENCE IN NIGERIA:
Be Informed: Nigeria must first study and understand what is going on. It is simply put, efforts to Sharianize Nigeria. To throw more light on the subject matter I am merely reproducing extracts from pp.290 and 291 of my book, ‘TO THE RESCUE:”
8.1.1. Sharia Defined: Sharia is the moral code and religious law of Islam which guides all aspects of Muslim life including daily routines, familial and religious obligations, and financial dealings. Sharia deals with many topics addressed by secular law, including crime, politics, and economics, as well as sexual intercourse, hygiene, diet, prayer, every day etiquette and fasting. Sharia Law is derived primarily from precepts set forth in the Quranic verses (ayahs) and the examples set by the Islamic prophet in the Sunnah (Hadith – the sayings, practices, and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad). Where it has official status, Sharia is interpreted by Islamic judges (qadis) with varying responsibilities for the religious leaders (imams). For questions not directly addressed in the primary sources, the application of Sharia is extended through consensus of the religious scholars (ulama) thought to embody the consensus of the Muslim community (ijma). Islamic jurisprudence will also sometimes incorporate analogies from the Quran and Sunnah through qiyas, though many scholars also prefer reasoning ('aql) analogy.
Differences in opinions over “questions not sufficiently addressed by primary sources” between different groups of ulamas (religious scholars) quite often, result in sharp differences/cleavages and frequently lead to violence between the sects led by different ulamas. The introduction of Sharia is the long-standing goal for Islamic movements globally, but attempts to impose Sharia have been accompanied by controversy, violence, and even warfare.”19
The contradiction between secular law and Sharia Law is further emphasised in the declaration that “The concept of crime, judicial process, justice and punishment embodied in the Sharia is different from that of secular law. The differences between Sharia and Secular Laws have led to on-going controversy as to whether Sharia is compatible with secular democracy, freedom of thought, and women's rights.”20
8.1.2. Sharia antithetical to Common Law & a Threat to Secular Democracy: Sharia Law, deriving from fundamentalist religious laws, quite often imprecise and leaving a lot of discretions to ulamas that are quite often not so well grounded in Civil and Common Laws (or if they are, put Quranic injunctions over and above any other Law), is antithetical to Civil and Common Laws and therefore inconsistent with secular democracy. In most secular democracies of the world, Sharia has proved unmanageable with Common Law. Controversies in managing the two have resulted in Muslims being involved in over 90% of all the wars/violence in the world.” Nigeria is a living example. In Ghana they constitute a clear minority of 25% and as usual, cause not as much problems. Most of Ghana’s Moslems are not fundamentalists, as in Southwest of Nigeria. Moderate Moslems are a lot more peaceful.
The Islamic fundamentalists’ attitude to secular democratic institutions is further exposed in their war cry “Allahu Akbar.”
8.1.3. Allahu Akbar: The war-cry, “Allahu Akbar” is invariably mistranslated in the Western media, including Nigeria, as “God is great.” But the actual meaning is “Allah is Greater Than Your God or Government.”It is the aggressive declaration that Allah and Islam are dominant over every other form of government, religion, law or ethic, which is why Islamic Jihadists in the midst of killing infidels, so often shout it. One primary purpose of this war cry is to 'strike terror in the hearts of the enemies of Allah.” (TO THE RESCUE – P.515)
8.1.4. Nigeria is therefore a mere slave camp in which the slaves do not even realize or accept what they are; but deceive themselves that they are free citizens in a constitutional secular democracy.
8.2. Peacefully Demand Liberation:
Oppressors have no conscience; neither do they listen to appeals. They therefore show no mercy, particularly when oppression is flavored with religious fundamentalism. Therefore the only road to freedom is to peacefully insist on liberation. Organize thoroughly and never give up until liberation is fully accomplished.
The late American Civil Rights Leader and Nobel laureate - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. elaborated extensively on this unconscionable disposition of oppressors in his 1963 letter from Birmingham jail to his fellow clergy-men from Alabama, in the heat of civil rights agitation in USA, in following words:
“Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed." 10
Rev. King was writing on American whites with whom the Blacks had no ideological divide. Both instead, were fellow Christians. In Nigeria, between Islamic fundamentalists/Jihadists; and non-Moslems, the fundamentalist Islamic doctrine is a dividing line - indeed a very wide and unbridgeable gulf, in spite of all pretences to the contrary (TO THE RESCUE, pp. 527-8).
The present demand for restructuring by Southern and North-Central Nigerian leaders is like putting the cart before the horse and is historically contradicted by Canadian, Scottish, Ulster, South Sudanese, South African and all known experiences in agitation for the right to self determination. It is either there is war or very serious agitation for independence, for meaningful restructuring to take place, like it happened in the countries referred to above.
I vehemently oppose war as much as Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower did express in his popular quote below:
“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.” (TO THE RESCUE, p.429)
Eisenhower was the five-star General of the US Army, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe which defeated Germany during the World War II; first Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) (1951-1952); and between 1953 and 1961 was elected and re-elected the 34th President of U.S.A.
I lived through war for 30 months in Biafra and would not wish it, even to my worst enemy.
With Jihadists who are ready to obliterate everything - lives and property – war is out of the equation, leaving only pacifist agitation for independence as the only option left in other to achieve meaningful restructuring for all those who desire liberation from the present slave camp – Nigeria. Docility is the bane of the Nigerian elite, who in their comfort zones, are so afraid of their skins to take any chances. As it is generally known, to make an omelet, egg must be broken one way or the other.
Considering the past and current violent experiences of Nigeria and Hausa-Fulani proclivity for violence with no value attached to life, I stand with the resolutions passed on Friday July 28, 2018 in Enugu by Alaigbo Development Foundation (ADF) that either Nigeria is restructured into six autonomous regions, which ‘shall freely determine their political status and shall pursue their economic and social development according to the policy they have freely chosen;” and also be completely responsible for its inviolable internal security; OR each ethnic nationality or identifiable groups, should be allowed to go its separate way and form their own independent nation-states.
Let us be guided by the sayings of sages who liberated their peoples: Mahatma Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi of India:
"The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. He frees himself and shows the way to others. Freedom and slavery are mental states.”
Nelson Mandela of South Africa:
"An oppressive system cannot be reformed. It must be cast away."
The Southern and North-Central leaders are therefore advised to mind in their position of entrapping themselves in such half- free and half-in-chains proposals which Mahatma Gandhi dismissed as wearing enslavement as ornament for the oppressors, in another of his popular liberation quotes:
"When a slave begins to take pride in his fetters and hugs them like precious ornaments, the triumph of the slave-owner is complete."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Onyesoh Chukwuemeka I. Prince: TO THE RESCUE – The Right to Self Determination, the Pathway to a Genuine Federation of Peoples with no Shared Values, Forum for the Promotion of National Ethos and Values (FPNEV), Enugu, Nigeria, 2017, pp. 116-203, 228-237, 289-365, 430-484, 490-540, 581-585 & 590 – 599.
All of the above presentation available in my blog: www.emekaonyesoh.blogspot.com.ng
