Professor Godini Gabriel Darah (GG Darah or simply “Comrade”, as we fondly called him) was one of our fire-spitting Marxist lecturers and staff advisers at the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Ile-Ife aka “Great Ife”. Respect, sir! But how “great” is “Great Ife” today when it does not even rank among the top 10 universities in the country? It seemeth the university authorities have been sleeping and snoring, living in past glory! OAU has repeatedly failed, year-in, year-out, to measure up among the country’s first-tier universities. What’s the matter is, however, a topic for another day!
Comrade Darah’s “Tinubu’s regionalism gamble” is my concern here today. In it, the professor of Oral Literature and Folklore who hails from Delta State displayed the crab mentality that is as intriguing as it is unfortunate. If you put a hundred snails in a container, you will need a strong lid over the container with another heavy metal or stone on top to still find the snails in place the next day. But put a hundred crabs in the same container and leave the top open (with no cover whatsoever), you will find all the crabs intact the next day without any fuss! As one tries to make an escape, the others pull it back! Crabs are a typical demonstration of the “Pull Him Down” syndrome!
Maybe I should first let you read Professor Darah; when we return, we shall make a few comments. Darah wrote: “Pandef, Pandef, beware of false prophets masquerading in electronic garments. There is sour mutilation of historical facts in the narrative on ‘How Tinubu Is Reversing The Damage Ironsi Did To Nigeria’ attributed to Reno Omokri.
“During British colonial rule, Regions were created in 1939 and their elected governments were in office from 1951. The Regions were three in number: Eastern, Northern, and Western. There was gross inequality and injustice in the regional system. For example, the territory of the Northern Region was larger than the combined territory of the Eastern and Western Regions.
“This lopsidedness triggered agitations for more political restructuring. Furthermore, hundreds of minority groups were lumped with more populous and hegemonic ethnic groups. The situation in the Northern Region was more bizarre as about 300 ethnic groups were put under the political yoke of the Fulani-controlled Islamic Sokoto Caliphate.
“From the 1940s agitations for more regions or states rattled the colonial regime. The agitation of the oppressed minority groups for autonomy dovetailed into armed uprisings in the Benue-Plateau areas, leading to federal armed campaigns to quell them. At the 1957-58 constitutional conferences in Lagos and London, the demand for the creation of states caused stalemates.
“The British responded by setting up Henry Willink’s commission on the fears of minorities and how to allay them. The commission toured all of Nigeria and received bundles of memoranda from freedom-seeking minorities. The commission’s report did not support creation of new administrative units with the excuse that doing so could derail the march to Nigeria’s independence scheduled for 1960.
“But the agitations continued unabated after independence, culminating in the creation, by plebiscite, of the Midwest in 1963. The emergence of the fourth Region fired more insurgent demands. The military governments from 1966 inherited this unresolved problem. Gen Aguiyi Ironsi’s quibbling approach fuelled more intense agitation. Gen Yakubu Gowon, from the ‘ulltra-minority’ Ngas ethnicity in Plateau province, could not ignore the matter. Thus, on May 27, 1967, he created 12 states, six each in the northern and southern halves of the country…
“Therefore, from 1967, the idiom of federalism shifted from regions to states. There are now 36 states. The 2014 National Confab recommended 18 more in furtherance of a more balanced federal system for the 389 ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. Perhaps, with the exception of the Igbo and Yoruba separatist extremists, the option of returning to regionalism is not on the agenda of the other 387 ethnic nationalities.
“Therefore, President Tinubu is swimming against a raging historical flood with his “panel-beater” method of “smuggling” the issue of regional governance into the national political discourse. His efforts are likely to end up in fiasco because the existing States will not meekly accept the option of “impeachment” and unconstitutional replacement which President Tinubu’s regional gamble portents”. That’s GG Sarah’s clarion call or battle cry addressed to PANDEF (Pan Niger Delta Forum), which is like the AFENIFERE, OHANEZE, NORTHERN ELDERS FORUM, etc.
It is true there is no standard objectivity since “objectivity” is moderated by the individual’s subjectivity. This was writ large in Professor Darah’s “Tinubu’s regionalism gamble”. The summary is that he does not want a return to regionalism. He is okay with the present 36-State structure that gives the advantage to the North – 19 in the North and 17 in the South. If more States are created “in furtherance of a more balanced federal system for the 389 ethnic nationalities in Nigeria”, Prof. may not object, the clamour that we scale down the cost of governance notwithstanding!
Funke Egbemode once aptly referred to the States as “begging bowls” that throng Abuja monthly for allocations from the Federation Account. Many of the States as presently constituted are not financially viable. The weight of the cost of governance is killing. Part of the argument – “insurgent demands” to Darah! – for regionalism is not fuelled by those Prof. called “separatist extremists” but by people who feel the country as a whole – all the four Regions – made better progress under the regional system of government in the First Republic and that a return to regionalism would reduce the cost of governance, cut wastages and accelerate the pace of development all over the country.
There is, therefore, no “sour mutilation of historical facts” in the statement that the four Regions made landmark progress under the regional arrangement of the First Republic. That arrangement was also more “federal” than the present military-imposed 36-State structure that makes a mockery of federalism. Whereas Prof. used regions and states interchangeably, there were no states in Nigeria before the military take-over of 1966; all we knew were regions. And regions and states are not the same thing in the Nigerian context at least.
Now, Prof. was right when he said, “During British colonial rule, Regions were created in 1939 and their elected governments were in office from 1951. The Regions were three in number: Eastern, Northern, and Western. There was gross inequality and injustice in the regional system. For example, the territory of the Northern Region was larger than the combined territory of the Eastern and Western Regions. This lopsidedness triggered agitations for more political restructuring. Furthermore, hundreds of minority groups were lumped with more populous and hegemonic ethnic groups. The situation in the Northern Region was more bizarre as about 300 ethnic groups were put under the political yoke of the Fulani-controlled Islamic Sokoto Caliphate. From the 1940s agitations for more regions or states rattled the colonial regime. The agitation of the oppressed minority groups for autonomy dovetailed into armed uprisings in the Benue-Plateau areas, leading to federal armed campaigns to quell them”.
The “gross inequality and injustice” Darah spoke about were not in regionalism as a system but in the way it was skewed to favour some at the detriment of others. And when the “agitations” this engendered were to be addressed by the coalition government of Nnamdi Azikiwe and Tafawa Balewa in 1963, a new region was neither created out of the Northern Region where there had been armed uprisings nor from the Eastern Region where the Ijaws were becoming restive (witness Isaac Adaka Boro’s short-lived revolution that followed); but it was from the relatively more peaceful Western Region that the Mid-west, where Darah hails from, was excised simply to weaken the West and prepare it for take-over by opposition forces, which eventually led to political upheavals in that region and the collapse of the First Republic.
Prof. simply said the Midwest Region was created “by plebiscite” in 1963; why was there no such plebiscite in the two other regions – the North and East – “in furtherance of a more balanced federal system for the 389 ethnic nationalities in Nigeria”? Darah conveniently side-stepped the fact that the creation of the Mid-west Region was, more than anything else, a North/East conspiracy to weaken the Southwest and marginalize the Yoruba in the politics of the First Republic.
The creation of 12 states on May 27, 1967 by the then military Head of State, Yakubu Gowon, was portrayed by Prof. as a further attempt to address the agitations for a more balanced federal system; also conveniently ignoring the fact that it was a deft military strategy to cut the ground from under the feet of “rebel leader” Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu and his secessionist agenda, which declaration came three days later on May 30, 1967.
So enamoured is Prof. with state creation that he gloated that “therefore, from 1967, the idiom of federalism shifted from regions to states…” It is not the “idioms of federalism” that shifted, it is federalism itself that gave way to military control and command structure where orders are rammed down the throat of everyone from an omnibus, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent Centre. What we operate at the moment is not federalism. Examples of federal states are there all over the world for us to compare and contrast with the caricature and contraption that we have here.
Darah said only the Igbo and Yoruba “separatist extremists” still savour the option of returning the country to regionalism while the other 387 nationalities are content with their “begging bowl” status as States. He needs to tell us where and when he conducted his survey or opinion poll! No matter how much we may camouflage or pretend, the words that we wield have a way of creating an expressway into our inner recesses. So the Igbo and Yoruba agitators are not “nationalists” or “freedom fighters”! They are not even ordinary “separatists” but “separatist extremists”! Call them “separatist terrorists” if that suits you better!
I am sure Darah himself qualified as an “extremist” in his days at Ife, if I remember correctly! Times and tides have changed, though! Comrade’s language today is that of the Establishment. However, there is nothing wrong in being an extremist or separatist. History is replete with extremists who have changed the course of history. Darah taught his students some of those extremists at Ife. Chairman Mao, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Karl Marx, Engels, Lenin, Cabral and a host of others. For decades, Nelson Mandela and his comrades were branded as extremists and terrorists. So also were Samora Machel, Robert Mugabe and a host of others. To be decorated with the badge of extremism like these our illustrious forebears is, therefore, an honour and not a reproach.
The crab mentality demonstrated by Darah is prevalent among the country’s ethnic minorities. Nigeria appears as their only sure bet. Can they stand or weather it alone? Do they have all it takes? What replaces for them the nebulous prestige of coming from the “Giant of Africa”? So, any ethnic group that exudes the confidence to run solo must be shot down. Whereas that is understandable, it is not a solution. Self-determination is a right recognised by the UN charter. Some have gone ahead. Others will surely follow. No crab will hold the Igbo and Yoruba down forever!
* Former Editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-chief, BOLAWOLE was also the Managing Director/ Editor-in-chief of The WESTERNER newsmagazine. He writes the ON THE LORD’S DAY column in the Sunday TRIBUNE and TREASURES column in NEW TELEGRAPH newspaper on Wednesdays. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.
