By Muhd Kabir Dattijo
It seems you refused to tell the southern youths how the coinage ‘Unity of Nigeria is non negotiable”came to being. Before 1953 Sardauna and indeed all the northern leaders never wanted to be Nigerian. In 31 March 1953, Tony Enahoro, Awolowo protégée and a member of action group; a Yoruba Political party was instigated to introduced a bill for self government. Enahoro made an incriminating preamble indicting anyone who moves to counter the motion. The Enahoro motion sought to seek for self government in 1956.
Enahoro said in the preamble to his motion on the floor of the Federal House of Representatives that any proposal short of full political independence for Nigeria “has ceased to be a progressive view because Nigerian nationalism has moved forward from that position”.
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Sardauna was never intimidated with the preamble. He knew the attitude of an average southerner, to an average southerner, all northeners are illiterates. To them education starts and ends in the ability to speak English.
Sir Ahmadu Bello of the Northern People’s Congress, NPC, introduced an amendment motion substituting the phrasing “as soon as practicable” in place of the year “1956” as proposed by Enahoro.
Sardauna said, an undisguised reference to the superficiality of the “Nigerian nationalism” which Enahoro and his Southern compatriots were lionizing, “sixty years ago, there was no Nigeria but merely a collection of communities very different in outlook and mode of life”.
The North threatened to leave Nigeria over the quest for independence by the South. In anticipation that the NPC which had more numbers in the House was going to win the vote, the NCNC and AG members in the House of Representatives walked out of the House. An instigated their kinsmen against northern delegates. The meeting of the House was adjourned and members of NPC met very unfriendly crowd in Lagos which shouted and pelted on them stones, calling them derogatory names.
Despite all this, the AG led by Chief S.L. Akintola; dared the north and went to further instigate the northerners against their delegates in pretending to be on tour visits, this was viewed by Northerners as an invasion of another man’s territory. It was while Akintola and his group were in Kano that a riot broke out. Several people lost their lives while many were wounded. After the crisis, the NPC members issued an “eight-point-programme”, to the colonial government to the effects that until their demands were met, they would not return to the House in Lagos.
It may be necessary here to reproduce this programme so we can properly situate when “Nigeria unity is not negotiable” mantra became a sing-song. The North asked for the following: (1) That each region shall have complete Legislative and Executive Autonomy with respect to all matters except the following: External Affairs, Defence, Customs and West African Research Institutions;
(2) That there should be no Central Legislative body and no Central Executive or Policy making body for the whole of Nigeria;
(3) That there shall be Central Agency for all regions which will be responsible for matters mentioned in Paragraph (1) and other matters delegated to it by a Region;
(4) That the Central Agency shall be a neutral place preferably Lagos;
(5) That the composition and responsibility of the Central Agency shall be defined by the Order-in-Council establishing the constitutional arrangements. The agency shall be a non-political body.
(6) That the services of railway, air, posts and telegraphs, electricity and coal mining, shall be organised on an inter-regional basis and shall be administered by public corporations. These corporations shall be independent and covered by the statutes under which they are created by the board of experts with a minority representation of the regional governments;
(7) All the revenues shall be levied and collected by the regional government except Customs revenue at the port of discharge by the Central Agency and paid to its treasury;
(8) The administration of the Customs shall be so organised so as to assure that goods consigned to the region are separately cleared and charged to duty. Each region shall have a separate public service.
The southern leaders were scared of loosing the north so, they accepted all the conditions. They were aware that north has everything to live alone. They were aware that north has minerals resources and trusted manpower to govern itself. They were also quite aware of the presence resources in commercial quantity in the north.
They know Adamawa has iron, lead, zinc and limestone in gold, coal, columbium and limestone; Bauchi, tin, marble, limestone and columbium; Benue, uranium, clay, potassium, limestone and diatom in Borno, limestone, and gypsum; Gombe, kaolin, potash, iron, oil and copper ; Jigawa, serpentine, asbestos, gold, clay and graphite in Kaduna, kaolin and asbestos; Katsina, kaolin, columbium and tantalum; kano kaolin, bauxite, potassium, and silica sand; Kebbi, tantalum and marble; Kogi, quartz, granite rocks, marble, clay and gold; Kwara, salt and bounte; Nasarawa, clay, gold, silica, granite, marble and copper; Niger, cassiterite and barytes; Plateau, gypsum, phosphate, limestone, clay and silica in Sokoto, uranium; Taraba, potash and crypsum; Yobe, and phosphate, limestone and gold while Zamfara all in commercial quantity.
Zik has to personally approached Sardauna and has been qouted to have said: ”In 1953 the NPC under the leadership of my good friend, the late Sardauna, threatened to secede from the federation unless their 6-point proposals were adhered to. I had to use personal diplomacy. We had been personal friends since 1940. So, I saw Sir Ahmadu Bello and prevailed upon him that the unity of this country was greater than himself and myself and the other people too helped so that the North shifted grounds and agreed and so the country was saved”. He added
“Once we have a Federation, we are indivisible and perpetual. And that to secede would amount to treason.”
After the elections of the 1st Republic, while all the regions were autonomous with a weak centre, southern youths agreed among themselves to kill all the northern leaders. In January 1966 they executed the first animalistic senseless bloodshed in Nigeria that claimed the lives of Sir Ahmadu Bello Sardauna the Premier of the northern region, Sir Tafawa Balewa, the Prime minister of Nigeria, Col Pam, in Lagos, SL Akintola for been pro north and many others. The coup saw the abrogation of the regional government and the Southerner, Mr Johnson U. Aguiyi Ironsi became the first military head of state and the system instead of regional became unitary with a strongest centre. The 1979 constitution was given to us by Obasanjo, it was written by the southerners likewise the 1999. There was no imposition of any law by the north to Nigeria but the south refused to tell their sons that Nigerian Unity, Nigerian Federal system and Nigerian constitution were all given to us by the south. It will be stupid this time to allow the south to continue playing the other region testing yo see whether they gain more and proposed another where the gain washes away.
Tell them your son Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in 2014 put a clause to the discussion in the national Confab that the unity of Nigeria is non negotiable. Tell them Obasanjo too refused to restructure Nigeria in his 8 years instead he sought for presidency for life though unsuccessful.
Yours Dattijo
