By Laurence Ani:
For the generation straddling the pre- and post-civil war years, the story of the struggle for Nigeria’s independence is a compelling history learned and internalized at childhood. Of course, it wasn’t surprising that the leading political figures of that era became exemplars of courage, and would later, in varying degrees, be memorialized in monuments or other national symbols.
With 18 years as the median age in Nigeria, it means that over a third of the country’s estimated 200 hundred million population are persons born after its independence. The country is thus increasingly gripped by the reality that many older nations have had to grapple with: contending with younger generations that may not be particularly enamoured of a past valourized by the older generation.
Indeed, there is a searing irony in the fact that the generation born in pre-independence Nigeria, which constitute the bulk of today’s most influential politicians, cannot honestly be said to embody those values that endeared the country’s founding fathers to the masses and earned them cult-like following.
When people pine for pre-independence style politics, it is not simply a cloying idealizing of “the good old days”. There are truly many proud touchstones associated with Nigeria’s pre-independence politics. It was, after all, an era that saw a Fulani man elected as mayor of Enugu, and when a party led by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, an Igbo man, very nearly secured a majority in the Western Regional Assembly.
As incredulous as it may sound, the first mayor of Enugu was a Fulani man named Umaru Altine and his accession to that office was not a product of affirmative action. Nor was it a quixotic pan-Nigerian decision. He actually won an election, and the fact he did is testament to the cosmopolitan worldview that characterized the country’s politics at the time.
Mallam Altine’s ascendancy is strong proof that one’s tribe and creed scarcely mattered in the political decisions Nigerians made sometime in our history especially in the 1950s and early ‘60s. That was some six decades ago, yet it seems like centuries apart compared to the Nigerian situation today with all its ethno-religious chasms. Pondering the events that scuttled those halcyon days fills one with a sense of disappointment and memories of what might have been had the noble virtues of nationhood not succumbed to base instincts.
Besides winning the mayoral contest by a landslide in 1954 Altine also won reelection in 1956, doing so as a member of the NCNC, a nationalist party founded by Sir Herbert Macaulay and Dr. Azikiwe, and also as an independent candidate. Azikiwe was the party’s helmsman during Altine’s electoral triumph and it is instructive he gave his support to a “settler” from Sokoto and not to a fellow easterner. That action was emblematic of the broad cultural worldview internalized by that era’s politicians and voters alike.
But it wasn’t just in regard to their broad-mindedness that the independence era politicians outshone contemporary Nigerian politicians. The troika of Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Sir Ahmadu Bello (the dominant figures of Eastern Region, Western Region and Northern Region politics) were beacons of selflessness. They understood, quite clearly, that public office essentially meant service to the people. So, they never deployed public resources in a manner that betrayed a desperate search for validation. Embezzling of public funds was mostly an exception rather than the norm. Whatever little income earned was deployed in the interest of the public.
It is instructive that Awolowo established the Western Nigerian Government Broadcasting Corporation (which reputedly birthed Africa’s first indigenous television station) with proceeds from the sale of cocoa. There was, in fact, a footage of his speech formally declaring the station open in 1959 that was emblematic of that era’s politicians’ simplicity. Awolowo’s speech, devoid of the vainglorious waffle typical of latter-day politicians was dignified and straight to the point. Today, the import of the event would be totally muffled by loud drumming and grandiloquence.
Equally significant is the fact that Azikiwe, as premier of the Eastern Region, built the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1955, with proceeds from oil palm. There was no pomp or a whiff of hubris when the institution formally opened at the dawn of independence. Nor did he ever contemplate naming the institution in his honour, as would be the case in today’s politics characterized by unrestrained narcissism. The same could be said of other Independence era politicians regarding the many groundbreaking projects they had conceived.
The altruistic inclination of the independence era politicians is further underlined by Ahmadu Bello’s decision to remain as premier of Northern Region after his party, the Northern People’s Congress, had won majority seats in the parliament in 1959, passing on that right to his trusted acolyte, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. He was not so much thrilled by the frippery of such exalted office as he was by his resolve to bring the Northern Region to a standard comparable to the Western and Eastern Regions.
It is quite conceivable that the younger generations’ cynical attitude towards Nigeria’s independence heroes is coloured by their perception of contemporary politics, as mostly consisting of self-centered old men with an insatiable sense of entitlement and a chokehold on public office. Forget the elderly sage-like pictures of Azikiwe and fellow nationalists ossified in the public mind, the independence era politicians were young men and women who were just ahead of their time. At independence, Azikiwe was only 56 years old; Awolowo was 51, while Bello had just turned 50. Anthony Enahoro, the man who moved the first motion for Nigeria’s independence – albeit unsuccessfully – was 37; and Remi Fani-Kayode, whose motion would later prove successful, was 39. So, the “youth” were never deemed too young to run in the pre- and independence era Nigeria. Indeed, Balewa became the country’s prime minister at 48.
But even when Nigerians pine for the 1950s and 1960s-style political renaissance today, the shocking levels of descent to sectionalism often makes such seem like hypocritical. This is evident in the rabid tribal rhetoric spewed daily in the press and social media. The youth may rail against the identity politics that somewhat confined political parties to their regional strongholds. But only a few today would truly not be tainted by this albatross: why do we rationalize acts of injustice perpetrated by our kinsmen and yet denounce similar actions when we are at the receiving end?
At the root of this widening national fault lines is a feeling of discontent and alienation fueled mostly by the absence of inclusiveness in governance. Bridging such divide is a necessary first step to rebuilding trust and national cohesion.
It may be 62 years after independence, but the heightened political consciousness felt across the country ahead of next year’s general elections is redolent of that era’s febrile political climate. The hope is that this new political reawakening among the electorate will instill a sense of propriety in politicians as it was in the independence era.
May the labour of our past heroes in Nigeria not be in Vain