JUSTICIA on The Southerner Newspaper 

Sunday, October 12, 2025

A few days ago, amid the euphoria of the nation’s 65th Independence anniversary, I watched with interest, a video of the Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi reviewing the economic reform policies encapsulated in the Renewed Hope Agenda of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu Administration which he gave a healthy 80% approval.

The Emir is not known to be a friend of the President, neither is he given to flattering public office holders to gain their favours. Rather, he is known to use his sharp tongue to savage public officials if he believes they have derailed from the path of rectitude.

This has not always been good for him. He was fired from the Central Bank of Nigeria as governor for exposing the monumental pillage of awal oyel money under the watch of President Goodluck Jonathan by the powerful and pretty Oil Minister Deziani Allison-Madueke and her cohorts.

As Emir of Kano, it didn’t take long before he fell out with then Kano State Governor, Umar Ganduje. He was promptly deposed, his kingdom balkanized and banished to internal exile.

Some keen watchers of our local royalties would swear that he didn’t learn from the experience of his father who suffered a similar treatment under the powerful Premier of Northern Region and Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello.

The change of governors in the Kano Government House in 2023 saw Lamido being restored to the high profile traditional stool. So it was a little bit intriguing to see the Emir publicly acknowledging the achievements of the APC government.

The Emir who was born a year after Nigeria’s independence from Britain, however, scoffed at the number of people employed in the public sector. He was also worried about the high cost of food which has seen a gradual fall due to importation and the harvest season.

If the bandits, Boko Haram and other sundry terror networks had their way, Nigerians would have been served a similar dose of the genocidal solution being practiced in Gaza by Israel.

By driving the farmers off their lands, the terrorists, cattle herders and kidnappers, Nigeria was already on the perilous path to gradual death through hunger and starvation. This is perhaps why the achievements of the economic reforms could not have escaped the attention of keen observers, especially those who are eager to see this administration fail.

To sustain the reforms, the Emir suggested that more resources be devoted to agriculture to attain food security and curtail hunger. On the question of huge public sector employees, he gave no figures of the numbers or a comparative analysis.

The unspoken word points, unmistakably, to the overarching issue of restructuring the country, which is usually seen solely on how to create new structures like states or regions, and off course, how to make the local government areas work for the people.

As federation, unless the Federal and State Governments design mutually reinforcing economic programmes, the effort of the Federal Government alone will not take Nigeria to where it’s destined to be- one of the top ten leading economies in the world.

After 65 years of independence, it is obvious that we cannot afford to delay any more some of the hard decisions we must take to a give a new meaning to our independence and renew the nation. There are genuine fears about the future of the country it may not survive for another 65 years.

I believe Nigeria should live for eternity. But no matter how optimistic one might be, the reality is that, in the last 65 years, we have witnessed the birth of new nations and the death of powerful entities like the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and perpetually troubled ones like Sudan from which South Sudan was carved out and Eritrea which emerged from Ethiopia. Both African countries fought wars of attrition for over thirty years and the old order simply crumbled.

We have also witnessed the rebirth of Germany, the birth of the European Union, the miraculous rise of China as a super power, the end of Apartheid system and white minority rule in South Africa, the end of colonial rule in Africa, except Western Sahara and the wave of democratization in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

That Nigeria is still standing despite the debilitating wounds inflicted in the last 65 years on her by her own people appears to be a miracle. Paradoxically, there is no denying the fact that Nigerians are generally a resilient people even with the self- inflicted wounds.

Toughened by the furnace of bad governance under over three decades of predatory military rule, neo-colonial oppression, the evil winds of religious bigotry, and vestiges of feudalism and emerging from one of the bloodiest civil wars in post-colonial Africa, Nigerians should be hopeful after 65 years of independence that their national afflictions should be over.

However, the enemies of Nigeria and their sponsors have not relented. There should be no illusion whatsoever that these enemies of Nigeria both foreign and domestic have retreated or would retreat from this ignoble path. There must be a national resolve as in the struggle for independence, the war to keep the country one, the struggle against military predatory rule, and to sustain democracy that these enemies must be defeated.

To defeat them will require a deliberate and decisive action of all patriotic Nigerians coming together to fight them where ever they are and agreeing that every Nigerian must find a comfortable accommodation in their common homeland. That is when we can begin to say we have a genuine independence.

At the time of my birth, in 1960, Nigeria was engulfed in the euphoria of independence (pronounced ‘indipendensi’ in my Afenmai dialect of Edo). Although the full ramifications of what indipendensi meant may not have been clear to the people, most of who were illiterates and had played no role nor were they consulted about this historical development, people rejoiced all the same because independence from Britain meant freedom from the rule of white men who, they were told, represented God on earth.

Independence also meant that we were no longer a people who were always told who they are, what they are, or without any history or culture.

As the British lowered the union flag, the green white green was raised as a symbol of nationhood and sovereignty but only few realized at that point that neo-colonialism was the next stage of colonialism and that real freedom is not transferred but taken if as of right and if necessary by force.

Even as the union Jack was lowered, the people remembered many of the humiliations they had endured during colonial rule which was a continuation of slavery. Independence was expected to be freedom from the white men’s burden, their tax collectors, and sanitary officers who had been spreading corruption in the villages by seizing farm produce such as yam, cassava, palm oil, and even palm wine from villagers for failure to pay taxes and inflicting corporal punishment on those who dare to challenge their authority.

The tax man was particularly hated, for he could impose a tax on an under-age boy if his parents were not in the good books of the white man or the tax collector. And in most cases, people were not in their good books.

Nigeria’s Independence from Britain on October 1, 1960, went through a negotiated process. As the most populous country in Africa continent, endowed with vast natural and human resources Nigeria was seen as an emerging phenomenon. Nigeria had the most significant potential among the emerging African countries to lift the greatest number of black people out of oppression, give hope to black people everywhere and mitigate the enduring burden of the greatest crime in human history- slavery.

Nigeria’s deftly controlled march to self-rule was seen as a beacon of hope for Africa and the African Diaspora in the wake of the Civil Rights movement in the United States and Liberation movements in Africa.

As a country with abundant human and natural resources, and diverse ethno-religious and cultural groups, it was thought that properly harnessed; Nigeria’s success could inspire other success stories across the post-colonial emerging African states and spur the liberation movement in Southern Africa.

That turned out to be wishful thinking as the political leaders who fought for independence were already shelving their nationalist garb for ethnic robes.

The euphoria of independence was short-lived and had also blinded non-state actors, social movements, and trade unions to the minefields of colonialism and Neo-colonialism, which the British had craftily designed and put in place to slow the pace of the socio-economic transformation of independent Nigeria. It was clear to discerning minds early enough that the system was weakened by internal rivalries and division among the key political leaders and politicians of that generation, and their supporters.

Although the leaders had fought valiantly to mobilize Nigerians to pursue the common objective of freedom from the rule of the white man, this did not translate to nation-building at independence. Instead, the leaders retreated to their ethnic enclaves, stoking primordial sentiments and constructed ethnic cleavages.

There was no consensus on the need to build a nation and the form the nation should take.

There was no strong attachment to the concept of a nation and even the desire for national unity.

It was evident in the early sixties that the promise of independence—supposedly given on a platter of gold—was a ruse and a poisoned chalice. While pretending to befriend Nigeria, the British created landmines that would defer the socio-economic development transformation that was the general aspiration of Nigerians.

The so-called pre-independence constitutional conferences were just a smokescreen, as the British had already decided the future of Nigeria after independence. They had perfected the rigging of the 1959 elections, and had been funding their preferred parties that would form the first Nigerian government. According to their original design, complete independence would be delayed till 1963 (to make Nigeria a Republic) to enable them ease out troublesome politicians and those who did not share their neocolonial vision, with the balance of forces programmed to favour the North, with the East as a nominal player at the margin. The West was to be kept at bay and curtailed.

Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, leader of the majority party in the Federal Parliament, the Northern People’s Congress (NPC), was appointed Prime Minister. Nnamdi Azikiwe, leader of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), was appointed the Governor-General to represent the Queen, who was said to have been gone but still hanging on through Azikiwe as her proxy. It would be until 1963 before the Queen finally ceased to be the Head of State and Azikiwe became a ceremonial President.

This arrangement, akin to putting two captains at the helm of a ship, was seen by discerning minds as a land mine. Land mines explode unless they are defused, which is a dangerous game.

In May 1962, just two years after independence, the rivalry between Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his deputy, Chief S.L.A. Akintola, in the Action Group party had snowballed into a major crisis. A state of emergency was imposed by the federal government headed by Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to clip the wings of Chief Awolowo, the opposition leader in the federal parliament. Chief Awolowo and several opposition leaders were imprisoned on trumped-up charges of plotting a coup to overthrow the federal government.

With Awolowo out of the way, Balewa allied with Chief Akintola’s faction of the Action Group to restore Akintola to power during the ill-fated 1964 elections which returned Balewa and Akintola to power. The election was a farce, haven been largely boycotted. Many of the winners of the election were returned unopposed because of violence and elections were not held until March 18, 1965 in some constituencies in the Eastern Region, Lagos, and the Midwestern Region (which had been created out of the Western Region in August 1963).

Sporadic violence had broken out in the Western Region, and discontent began to manifest nationwide. The internal contradictions built in by the British to undermine the First Republic even before independence began to bear fruit. On October 11, 1965, 160 civilians and seven police officers were killed in political violence in the Western Region. On January 12, 1966, people were killed in Ilesha in the present Osun State.

The 1963 census, was a fiasco as the British controlled and manipulated it to sow to create a distorted national demography, set the stage for polarizing the nation, and distract the people from focusing on their immediate desire to make independence meaningful realistic. The electoral process which was a veritable mechanism for leadership selection was rigged against the Nigerian people right from the pre-independence election organized in 1959 and the general election of 1964.

The British felt that even if Nigeria’s first post-independence government was not communist, it was safer to limit the choice of who should take control to Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe or Sir Ahmadu Bello. Awolowo was out of the question. The public sphere, which was supposed to be open to all Nigerians to articulate their national aspirations, build consensus on crucial national developmental choices and embrace democratic values, was suffocated.

The erstwhile Nationalist fighters mobilized the masses process as tools for the grim enforcement of the desperate ethnic agenda rather than nation building. All these political dynamics were consistent with the British strategy of ‘divide and rule’, which had seen the division of Ireland in 1921 and India 1946, and had become the bane of former British colonies across the globe.

In reality, the interests of the British were at variance with the interests of the Nigerian masses generally. Haven failed to control Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana in 1956, humiliated in Egypt by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser during the Suez crisis, and the Mau Mau guerrillas determined to deny them their most significant estate in East Africa, losing Nigeria with its newly discovered oil and vast natural resources could not be contemplated.

It was certainly not in the British interest for a strong and united Nigeria to emerge in Africa.

The collapse of the First Republic was mainly due to widespread disenchantment with the misrule of politicians and popular resistance in the western region in the aftermath of the rigging of the regional elections in 1964 by the regional government of Chief Akintola, with the support of the federal government at the behest of Britain.

The same fate befell the popular resistance in the country’s Middle Belt in the Tiv crisis. Rather than address the legitimate demands of the people, in both cases, the federal government resorted to using military force. By using the military to crush opponents, the Balewa administration had unwittingly invited the military into the politics and governance of Nigeria at a high cost to the nation, civil society, democracy, and national unity.