National Daily

48 years of political development in Nigeria

At independence on October 1, 1960, expectations were high. The ecstasy across the country was in anticipation of a new dawn of statecraft and self rediscovery as a people with self-will to determine popular well-being and the development of the country. Forty eight years after, how far has Nigeria gone on the track of socio-political development, enquires SUNDAY ODIBASHI

THE desire for independence on October 1, 1960 was as controversial as the emergent politics that has trailed the polity thereafter. When Anthony Enahoro of the Action Group moved the motion in 1956, Sir Tafawa Abubakar Balewa unequivocally stated that independence in Nigeria can only be considered as soon as it was practicable. His position was that the North was not ready for it then.

Between 1960 and the contemporary dispensation, the Nigeria's political development has passed through different versions of democratic and governance systems and military autocracy. In the past 48 years the country has had 11 legal Heads of State and Presidents and one illegal Head of Government. Within the period under review, democracy has been practiced for 20 years while military dictatorship took the rest 28 years.
Nigeria, as a nation-state, has been ascribed varieties of names deduced from the activities of state actors. Between 1960 and 2008, Nigeria has been globally described as a developing nation, a pariah state, a rogue state and a failed state.

Since independence, Nigerian politics has painted a graphic picture of a struggle among the variegated ethnic groups for the sharing of the national wealth. It has been argued that “most Nigerians have come to believe that unless their 'own men' are in government they are able to secure those socio-economic amenities that are disbursed by the government”. Apparently, political appointments, contracts, or citing of industries, road construction, etc., have often been attached to the benefits of the various ethnic or tribal groups in power at the different tiers of government.

Most of the political practices between 1960 and 1966 were bequeathed to the Nigerian ruling elite at independence by the departing British colonialists.

The parliamentary system practiced during the First Republic provided that the Prime Minister, whose party control majority members in the Parliament, was the Head of Government and the Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Government of Nigeria, while there was a ceremonial President who had no executive power. With the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) having majority members in the Parliament, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was made the Prime Minster and Head of Government with executive powers while Nnamdi Azikiwe of the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) was appointed the President without executive.
Cabinet ministers were also appointed from the legislature and were collectively responsible to the government; they rise and fall with the government.

The federal constitution in operation since 1954, maintained three regions structure the Eastern, Western and Northern Regions, each with a Premier as the Regional Head of Government.

In 1963, the Federal Parliament enacted the Republican Constitution which empowered the Nigerian Government to take autonomous without submitting to the authority of the Queen of England as was with the 1960 constitution. The same year, the Mid-Western Region was created.

The constitution devolved enormous powers to the federating regions. The various regional governments had powers to evolve institutions of governance and mobilize resources within their entities for rapid economic growth and development of infrastructural facilities. Indeed, the task then was how to train sufficient manpower to service the labour needs of both the civil service and the growing production industries.

While Action Group (AG) led by Obafemi Awolowo held sway in the Western Region, the NPC led by Ahmadu Bello was prominent in the Northern Region and the (NCNC) led by Azikiwe in the Eastern Region.
Many are of the view that the ethnic conflagration in the struggle for regional and national power, transformed politics into warfare in Nigeria.

During the First Republic, Political parties emerging from cultural and regional associations were ethnically and regionally entrenched. It has been argued that it was in the context of the regional struggle for power and the ploy to weaken the power and influence of Awolowo and the Action Group in the Western Region which constituted vehement and uncompromising opposition to the NPC-controlled federal government that Balewa and the NPC mobilized the minority opposition parties in the Western Region and the NCNC to create the Mid-Western Region in 1963. The political animosity between the NPC and AG also led to the prosecution and imprisonment of Obafemi Awolowo by the NPC-led federal government for treasonable felony.

During the period under review, it was not fashionable for the political elite to subscribe to the disintegration of existing regions under their control.

Nigerian political life has witnessed the dominance of traditional aristocracy over the decades, historically not oriented towards the productive aspects of social life.

The emergent factions of the political class emphasize more of the distribution dimension of national life and because they are unable to increase production they depend on the manipulation of distribution for the benefits which they derive from the society and the state. The consensus across the country is that this has reflected in both public policy implementation and elections.

“In reality, Nigerian politics has always reflected struggle among the various factions first to dominate the wealth in their region of origin, and second to use this regional dominance as a springboard for the acquisition of some the nonregional wealth”. Inadvertently, many believe that political power has often been used to achieve economic dominance. Some have argued that “public wealth has remained the chief source of capital for Nigerian politicians”. They maintained that “State actors coming to power lacked investible funds to achieve their aim of economic transformation into the bourgeoisie proper. The only way they could effect this change was to use public funds for investment in their private enterprises and use governmental power and resources to create investment opportunities for themselves”. Several stakeholders in the Nigerian project construed this as the foundation on which corruption flourishes in the country.

During the First Republic public funds were believed to be committed to production, employment generation and wealth creation. This was believed to be so because of the regionalization of national wealth and the propensity of productive regional economies.

The Cocoa Marketing Board, Oil Palm Produce Marketing Board, Groundnut Marketing Board and Cotton Marketing Board were major sources of wealth to the Western, Eastern and Northern Regional governments. Revenue sharing formula was based on the principle of derivation, with the regions retaining 50 per cent. Some analysts have articulated that between 1960 and 1966, Nigeria practiced co-operative federalism with each region competing in production and creation wealth that will sustain the regional government.
Generated funds were said to be invested in Nigerian companies.

In the Western Region, National Bank, Agbonmagbe Bank, Merchant Bank, the Cooperative Bank of Western Nigeria and the National Investment and Properties Company (NIPC) were major beneficiaries of the Marketing Board funds. National Bank provided funds to Amalgamated Press which published AG papers.
The National Bank, Agbonmagbe Bank, Merchant Bank, and the National Investment and Properties Company (NIPC) were controlled by the Action Group. National Bank handled AG's accounts and offered it liberal overdrafts.

In the East, the regional government set up the Eastern Region Finance Corporation to serve as an intermediary for investing the regional marketing board's funds in an indigenous bank, notably, the African Continental Bank (ACB) said to be owned and controlled by Azikiwe, leader of the NCNC but later taken over by the Regional Government. The West African Pilot, Associated Newspapers of Nigeria and the Comet Press were main publicity arm of the NCNC and the Zik Group of Companies.

The Bank of the North was set up in 1960 through which funds were disbursed to businessmen linked to the NPC. More so, contracts were awarded to indigenous firms linked to the regional party.

It has been argued that “the regionalization of national wealth was not necessary for the attainment of those benefits which were general in nature; only a good government was necessary”. It had been argued: “ethnicity and regionalization serviced the interests of many, but it serviced the interests of some more than others”.
However, the federal government was responsible for raising the bulk of the country's revenue and for apportioning them. The federal government also controlled the Police, the Armed Forces and through them the maintenance of law and order throughout the federation.

The federal government was expected to provide direction and leadership for the economic growth and development of the country. But ethnic biases have been identified as a major impediment to decisions that will move the country forward. “The 1962 -1966 National Development Plan implied a transfer of greater federal resources to the North which got N58.2 million, the West N39.8 million and the East N24 million”. Moreover, development spending has also been observed to reflect ethnic prejudices which were inherent in the struggle for national wealth. “The Kainji Dam, estimated to cost N136.2 was located in the North to suit some power interests. In the view of one economist, enough power could have been generated at less than one fifth of the cost of the Dam by using natural gas. But the gas was located in the South”.

The crisis (operation wetie) that erupted over the declaration of Samuel Akintola's-led Nigeria National Democratic Party (NNDP) victory over the dominant Action Group in the 1965 general elections in the Western Region made the zone ungovernable. First Republic collapsed on January 15, 1966, following political pogrom in various parts of the country.

In what was termed a revolution, five young Majors of the Nigerian Army displaced the entrenched democratic governance. In the process of the violent change of government, the Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa, Premier of the Northern region, Sardauna Ahmadu Bello, Festus Okotieboh, and some top military officers of northern extraction, notably Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari, were assassinated. Because of the disproportional killings and the exclusion of politicians from the Western and Eastern Regions from death list, a counter coup was staged in July 1966, six months later by the Northern officers in the Nigerian Army. The 1966 episode was conceived not only as the dawn of praetorianism in the polity but the foundation for political and economic retrogression in Nigeria. Many have argued that “the ills of democracy can only be cured by more democracies”. Thus, the military is widely believed to have placed Nigeria's development anti-clockwise in all its ramifications.

Major General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi who assumed office of the Head of State, when the revolutionists could not sustain their action, was slaughtered in Ibadan with his host, Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, by a group of soldiers led by Lieutenant Theophilus Danjuma. Thereafter, Colonel Yakubu Gowon became the Head of State. Ironsi was widely condemned for promulgating a unitary decree to replace the federal constitution.

Some have observed that Gowon pretended to return the country to federal system of government; Unitarianism was the thrust of his politics and leadership.

Many are of the view that military autocracy marked the point of consolidating injustice, legalizing corruption and oppression in the country. The military is widely upheld to have caused and fought war, ruined the economy and devastated the polity.

It has been articulated that Gowon, becoming the Head of State, irked Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, who had lingering animosity with Gowon. This was said to have stalled all efforts to prevent the Nigerian civil war of 1967 to 1970.

Gowon, in search of funds to prosecute the civil war, was said to have resorted to use the military might to nationalize all the investments of the regional governments. His main purpose was not to make them more effective or efficient but to generate more funds for the federal government. He further created twelve states from the existing four regions purposely to weaken the power of the regions and make Ojukwu suffer loss of control over the Eastern region. Analysts observed that these constituted the nucleus of the disaster that struck the Nigerian economy and politics. Gowon was however fair to ensure that the North and the South had equal number of six states apiece.

When Gowon was perceived to have reneged on restoring democracy in the country as agreed by the Supreme Military Council which displaced the parliament in law making, in addition to the purported ceding of The Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroun during the war, his tenure was terminated on July 29, 1975 and General Murtala Mohammed took over.

Murtala Muhammed had a brief but very active tenure. Some controversial national issues were decisively reviewed, the population census result, for instance was cancelled. Mohammed's creation of 19 tilted the number of states in favour of the North, making him the author of disequilibrium of the polity.

General Olusegun Obasanjo, having been part of the Muhammed's military regime, ensured the return of the country to democratic governance in 1979. Obasanjo also made Local Government be constitutionally recognized, for the first time, in the 1976 local government reform.

The Second Republic was a rebirth of the First Republic with five dominant political parties and a switch to the presidential system of government.

The National Party of Nigeria (NPN) was more of a mass party and eventually won the 1979 Presidential election and Alhaji Shehu Usman Shagari became the President between 1979 and 1983. The President had executive power and was the Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces.

Shagari initiated Austerity Measures as his reform programme of national development but the gross corruption perpetuated by the ministers ruined the chances of the success of the government. Some have argued that Shagari lost control of the Ministers who plundered the nation's treasury without restrain.

It was observed that the military introduced new approach to corruption; before the advent of the military, funds were merely moved from government to investments and back to government. But the military brought a culture of stealing, looting, siphoning and transferring to foreign banks and foreign economies. The Nigerian economy and polity became raped in the process.

General Muhammad Buhari was unique for his approach to war against corruption and drive for national discipline. Having become the Head of State after the December 1983 coup that ousted Shagari, with “no nonsense Brigadier Tunde Idiagbon' virtually all the governors were in gaol, including President Shagari and Vice President Alex Ekwueme. While the President and the Vice were released after several months, the governors were tried with several of them sentenced to numerous years of imprisonment and parts of the looted wealth recovered.
General Ibrahim Babangida introduced two-party system when he came on board in 1986. He maintained the presidential system but created two parties by fiat the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the National Republican Convention (NRC).

The two-party system was believed to manage the crisis of ethnic and religious politicization.
The annulment of the June 12, 1993, Presidential election on June 23, purportedly won by M.K.O. Abiola of the SDP against the duo of Bashiru Tofa and Sylvester Ugo of the NRC and the attendant crisis were widely believed to have devastated Nigeria's march to democracy after wastage of enormous national resources.

Babangida administration was remarkable for encouraging the rapid growth of human rights organizations which led the vanguard of the struggle to wrest power from the military junta. Between 1986 and 1999 the Nigerian state had been internationally known as a rogue and pariah state.

The return of democratic governance in 1999 by General Abdusalami Abubakar after the death of General Sani Abacha in 1998 was conceived as response to the popular agitations of the people.

The predominant paradigm between 1999 and 2008 had been that Nigeria is a failed state. The contemporary democratic dispensation took off with three political parties in which the Peoples Democratic Party has been dominant; and has now grown to 50, causing remarkable confusion even for the managers and coordinators of elections.

Nigerians have continued to be worried why President Olusegun Obasanjo and the PDP failed to utilized the enormous and excess revenue from crude oil to improve the living standards of the people. It ahs been stories of accelerating unemployment, rising prices of petroleum and food products, security threat, youth restiveness in the Niger Delta, etc.

President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's approach to governance has been seemingly restoring hope in Nigerians but with some reservations.