By AZU AKANWA Tony Nnadi is the Secretary of Lower
Niger Congress (LNC), a group
working to have Nigeria restructured.
He holds the view that Nigeria has
been run into a cul-de-sac by the
insincerity of its leaders from certain sections of country. In this interview,
he says holding elections in Nigeria at
the moment, without resolving the
issue of the country’s ‘illegitimate’
Constitution, would amount to courting
violent disintegration. In several places that I have heard you
speak, you seem to give the
impression that the Nigerian
constitution is the problem of the
country. Why is this so? In recent MNN Bulletins, we have
taken the trouble to tell the whole
world why we would rather dissolve
the Nigerian union than remain in
enslavement in it. It is the same
reason for which Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and
others insisted that the apartheid
constitution in South Africa could no
longer be the basis for the governance
of that country. Likewise, we are saying that this
Constitution that is a product of
imposition and force can no longer be
the basis of Nigerian union. And if we
are not discussing to come to an
agreement; to come to a consensus in place of force, in place of imposition,
we would rather dismantle the
monstrous enterprise they call Nigeria. How easy do you think that would be? The thing has already divided itself;
the 12 states that passed Sharia law
have already opted out of the Nigerian
union. Boko Haram was merely an
enforcement arm. The Yoruba west is
a cohesive bloc that could be a country of 55 million people. We saw
them saying clearly when the
conference was on that “either we go
back to regional autonomy” or they
would pull out of Nigeria. Those who said it have the capacity to
take themselves out of the failed union
of Nigeria, because the single thing
that ties the people into place today is
this Constitution. To the extent that it
lied in its preamble that we the people have agreed to live by it, to that
extent, the Nigerian title document is
bad beyond redemption. We have waited since 1967 to
conclude the discussions that began in
Aburi, for us to recommit to Nigeria.
But they say over their dead bodies.
They say they are born to rule the rest
of us. That is why if we do not come to that agreement; to that recommitment,
we will immediately take steps to
retrieve our various portions. In the
eastern side, we call it the Lower
Niger. You saw when the Ijaw people
came with the map of 1885 before Okurounmu Committee, which showed
the territory we now called the South-
East and South-South together as one
territory now. It will be a country of
about 70 million people. That is the
Lower Niger. Of course the Middle-Belt, that has
been playing the role of willing tools
and attack dogs, are now on the front
line of being beheaded in the name of
Sharia. They are not Muslims and they
have said it that they would rather leave the union if the Nigerian union is
what will compel them to remain the
sacrificial lamb to be killed at will. Of course in that formation where you
see the map of Nigeria that is broken
into four, the caliphate is already in
place with people shooting and
pretending to be fighting terror in the
place, the matter is simple: the northern political leadership were clear
in what their mission is. Now Boko
Haram has come to enforce their
threat of making the place
ungovernable. We must remember
that the enforcement of making the country ungovernable started on the
day of election when corps members
were killed. From there they marched
on to a police station, burnt it down;
they marched on to army barrack, and
then the franchise became more and more popular all over. Looking at what is going on in Iraq
today – ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and
Levant), what is their mission? It is to
establish a caliphate. You saw all the
bulletins that Boko Haram gave. The
matter is simple. They want to Islamize Nigeria. Look at their method,
how is it different from the one we
watch on CNN from ISIL? They
behead people and do all kinds of
things that are not different. Many people will not agree with you on
that Boko Haram is abducting girls for sale,
and if anybody is thinking that Boko
Haram fell from the sky, no! It was 12
states that passed Sharia law.
Remember that their champion at that
time was Sani Yerima, who is now a senator. He was chopping off people’s
hands as governor of Zamfara State.
Today, Shekau is blowing off people’s
heads. What’s the difference? To that extent, they have a right to
self-determination in that territory to go
and do their Sharia since democracy
is what offends them. In the same
vein, we also have a right to live by
ourselves. They have made the Nigerian union impossible. If we make
the mistake of proceeding into an
election, they don’t need to win that
election in order to bring the sort of
violence they had in mind in the threat
of “ungovernable” and the blood of baboons mixing with that of dogs. But All Progressives Congress (APC)
that Muhammadu Buhari is flying its
flag insists that elections must hold It may look like APC to you, it does not
look like APC to me. It is a determined
march toward imposing
authoritarianism in the land, which
would lead to the extermination of one
part of the contraption. Our answer to all of it is that the dissolution of the
union is what we prefer at this time. If since 1967 till date, we cannot go to
regional autonomy which has been the
demand, because even the MEND is
all about regional autonomy – to
recognise your land as your own –
which the Constitution today forbids. They say my land belongs to a man in
Kano who is not willing to come to
discussion with me. It is our proposal; we are going to
pursue it because we have a right
under the United Nations instrument
governing the situation. You saw
Scotland go through referendum the
other day. People have made Constitutions for the three territories
that are not Sharia. In the eastern
side, those six languages there have
made their Constitutions – the Ijaw, the
Itshekiri, the Urhobo, the Annang, the
Efik, the Igbo – as we were in the 60s when Eyo Ita led his party to victory in
Eastern Nigeria. Then the Middle-Belt. With the Yoruba
bloc and the Lower Niger taken out, it
is all the balance of the country minus
the Sharia states, but including the
borderline cases of southern Kaduna
and others. The people who are going to make it happen in their territories
are going to insist on their right of self-
determination. Nobody is going to keep
them by force in the union of Nigeria,
election or no election. But President Goodluck Jonathan
instituted a National Conference. Is
that not enough? Of course, Mr. President understood
what the problem was because he
knew how the presentations were
made for there to be a conference.
Then he told them in writing at the time
of convening that the conference was designed to realistically examine and
genuinely resolve the long-standing
impediments to our cohesion as a
united country. If you read the speech
by which he inaugurated the
Okurounmu committee, you will see it. So, we have a situation in which the
President was clear to them that it is a
matter of how we live together that
was going to be discussed on the floor
of the Conference. What was the first
decision on the floor of the Conference? The same elements from
that part of the country, the North,
working with their allies, decided that
the matter of our unity was not to be
discussed at the conference.
Bottomline, nothing has been discussed. Therefore, we are saying that we are
not going to fold our arms and watch
those who have not discussed how we
want to live together, how education
and healthcare can get to the people,
just in an attempt to go to hold the head of the knife, drag us into the
situation we saw in 1964/65, that
became 1966 and therefore 1967 to
1970, where more than three million
got killed. If we go into this election, we are
thinking that up to 10 million would
have been buried before we go back to
what we would have done in the first
instance. We are going to confront the
politicians. We are already mobilising for massive civil disobedience if they
insist in going for elections because
we are rejecting that Constitution. We
are not looking at who the winner or
who the candidate is. We are looking
at what instrument they will use to govern because that is the job
description of the government. There is this argument in some
quarters that Nigeria has been a
terrorist state since the 70s, which
was stopped in a way with the coming
of Jonathan as President, and pushed
terrorist elements out of governance. Do you agree with that assertion? Well, to the extent that anybody who
saying it and taking it only from 1970
may have his own reasons may be
when he became aware of it. But I can
tell you from the documents we have
that it was created to be so from 1914, when the British lumped together
various territories they had conquered,
albeit under the pretence of treaties. You know they were doing things by
force, but would come later and bring
their documents for you to sign when
you are not in a position to refuse. So,
by a combination of brute force and
guile, they were able to secure a vast swat of territories which theyin 1914
called Nigeria. Are you then saying that Nigeria, as a
terrorist state, started long before
1970? Yes, the British started it and handed
over to Fulani in the North. The
bottom-line of it is that the Britain saw
Nigeria as its outpost. They have
come from Europe to take away what
they could find to take away peacefully here. But those who opposed them
they terrorised and subdued. Why did they so much want to put the
Fulani in charge? Why were they at
home with the Fulani? They were resisted in the South from
the onset by the likes of King Jaja of
Opobo, Oba Ovwieramen of the
ancient Benin Kingdom, King Pepple of
Bonny, Chukwemeka Odumegwu
Ojukwu’s grandfather. From that point, it was clear to them that the people of
the South were not going to accept
them, especially in view of the larger
scheme of the things they (the British)
sought to take away from the southern
part, and, as such, must be kept down at all times. Oil is at the heart of this
mayhem. Now, somebody may be talking about
Oloibiri as the place of the first
discovery of oil in Nigeria. It is all
falsehood; they had sold our oil for
about 50 years before Oloibiri. It was
the approach of independence that made them declare Oloibiri. It was when they started the pretence
that they tried to obfuscate the matter
of who owned the assets they were
taking away, then they started looking
for new identities of people who would
not be able to resist them the way a larger bloc of people would be able to
resist them in the east. In the whole
country, it was a clearly settled
intention on their part to create a
master-servant relation between the
North and the South. From your assertion, it would then
mean that the North was willing to play
that role? Yes, anybody talking of 1970 maybe
became conscious of the matter by
1970. If you doubt me, you look at this
statement by Ahmadu Bello, which he
made in the week of independence in
1960, because the British had created this master-servant thing that they left
in their hands, while the rest were
celebrating what they thought was the
exit of the British, Ahmadu Bello was
telling his lieutenants a different story.
I quote him now, from the Parrot newspaper of October 12, 1960, where
he was saying:”The new nation called
Nigeria should be an estate of our
great grandfather Uthman Dan Fodio.
We must ruthlessly prevent a change
of power. We use the minorities of the North as willing tools and the South as
a conquered territory and never allow
them to rule over us and never allow
them to have control over their future”. So, even at the point of Independence,
these matters had been worked out
into a constitutional framework in
which one region of the country – the
then Northern Region – was going to be
a permanent political majority. They did this even when they were in the
minority. How was it possible to create a
majority from a minority? British did it; they turned it around by
inflating the population figures for the
North in the 1951/52 census, which
they again reinforced in 1961/62
census that became controversial. They also wanted to reinforce it in
1971 and again it got rejected. It has
been falsehood and falsehood all
through, and you now had a situation
where that thing that Ahmadu Bello
was talking about became a battle script. If you look at the Constitution
by which Nigeria is being managed
today, you will see that we came to
that arrangement on account of the
implementation of that battle script of
Ahmadu Bello, because he was talking to his political descendants. You have a map of Nigeria and you
make a mental picture of three or four
divisions in it; you begin to place the
characters that played one role or the
other in the development of what we
now have as Constitution. Who did what coup? Put them where they
belong in that map and you will see a
clear picture of the roles of the ones
from the Muslim North, who are at the
apex, and the ones from the Middle-
Belt who were their attack dogs. Ahmadu Bello called them willing tools. These people are still playing that role
of willing tools in the hands of the
people who are the inheritors of the
political empire of Uthman Dan Fodio
which Ahmadu Bello was talking
about. Ben Nwabueze, who took part in the
drafting of that Constitution, confessed
the other day that Murtala Muhammed
and his agents had already written the
Constitution fully before the
Constituent Assembly was called. He confessed that the little adjustments
they thought they had made during the
Constituent Assembly were removed.
On the 21st of September 1978, when
Murtala Muhammed had already been
killed by his fellow military rulers, Obasanjo who became the new
enforcer completed the job for him. How do you situate the Biafra/Nigeria
war in all these? What they call the civil war was an
attempt by one side saying that you
cannot continue to kill us in an
arrangement we have not agreed
upon, and it was the first serious push
to be truly independent. Of course there was a gang-up between the
Northern Region and the Western
Region to choke the Eastern Region. A gang-up? If you thought it was an accident, you
look at that letter that Murtala Nyako
wrote to the 19 northern governors,
accusing Jonathan of genocide in their
place. In that letter, you will see that
instructively that he had described Jonathan as an element of Eastern
Nigeria, that was out to avenge the
killings of 1967/68 in their area. He
conveniently forgot the new name tag
they placed on Niger Delta, being
South-south and South-east. When it was convenient for him, he
describes Jonathan as an element of
Eastern Nigeria. Let me tell you what it
means. If you go back to the era of
Azikiwe, when he was fighting the
colonialists, he did all the fighting with Mokwugo Okoye, Osita Agwuna,
Mbonu Ojike, and of course with few
other people here and there. But when
the matter of transfer of power came
to be effected, it was an alliance of
that conservative North and a renegade wing of Yoruba South-west
that was given power. It was that
alliance that made it impossible for
Azikiwe to preside over Nigeria at
independence. It was same alliance that came to life
when Awolowo, having been premier
of Western Region, and with all his
knowledge and experience, subjugated
himself to working under Gowon, a
boy then with school certificate. Gowon only went to school after he
was thrown out in 1975. Awolowo
worked under Gowon for nine years in
order to beat down the East. Again, if
you have an imaginary map of Nigeria,
you will see who comes from where and to what purpose their alliance has
been put. Certainly that alliance cannot be
existing today? It is that alliance that has come up in
the name of APC today. Anybody may
be talking about democracy or free
and fair election. But what I am seeing
is the fifth re-enactment of that alliance
of two regions to undo the other region. I am not seeing any APC, I am seeing
the Sharia North with that wing of the
Yoruba west forming a majority in the
name of a political party to choke out
what they call the minority man from
Eastern Nigeria. And we are saying that the issue of how we live together
must be addressed before we go for
any election.