Why 1914 Amalgamation Agreement Could Not Be Reviewed By Founding Fathers
BY BARR JOSHUA D. EPHRAIM
The so-called agreement died when the British gave Nigeria independence and left. We should have renegotiated the union immediately, after independence. But as I said in earlier write-ups, our founding fathers were consumed with the passion for two things: 1) the struggle for independence and 2), what form of government the new independent state would operate.
They, therefore, settled for federalism which was already in operation, way back in 1958 as a structure of government. For the form of government, they settled for the parliamentary system, modelled after the Westminster’s type. Thereafter, the “dramatis personae” were busy on how to entrench themselves in their home regions. Since the three regions were dominated by each of the three major tribes, the actors were busy in protecting their “empires”, which, (with the help of the British), had been carved out in 1958.
The regions, And not the center, became centers of attraction for the political class and leaders. It was only when the military arrived that unitarism took over and the center became a center of attraction for the political class. Prior to that, the political class operated the regions in a democratic manner, and could manage the diversities fairly well, though not perfectly.
The use of the term “fairly” indicates there were still fears and actual discriminations of the minority ethnic nationalities by the three major ethnic tribes. But under the system, this could have easily been sorted out as you could see with the creation of the Mid-western region. But this natural process was truncated by the military. Freedoms were suppressed under the military as politics was kept in abeyance. People could not express themselves democratically as we were under various military dictatorship. The natural process of change was truncated or suppressed.
This long explanation is necessary, because people will ask: why the agitation for restructuring now? Why did it not take place earlier, at independence? The present bad governance makes it imperative and urgent to have the changes now, if the entity called Nigeria is to survive.
The over 300 ethnic nationalities have to discuss and reach consensus as to the continuous existence of the entity as one, spelling out the conditions needed for it and the invocation of true federalism to reflect the diversities, devolution of powers from the center to the federating units and restructuring the federating units by making the over 300 nationalities participate in their formation and not just through “elite consensus”.
Barr Ephraim, a lawyer and public commentator, wrote this piece from Kaduna
