FEATURE ARTICLE

Dr. Tunde Arogundade
tarogundade@hotmail.com
Jos, Nigeria

Neo-Biafranism and the illusion of secessionism in Nigeria

udging from the level of venom in the dispute about secessionism (that is, the idea of one part of Nigeria breaking away to form an independent state) amongst Nigerians, one would think that the country is about to explode into splinters. Yet, although, all the major ethnic groups among the diverse communities that peopled Nigeria who were 'amalgamated' into one country by the British imperialists in 1914 have expressed the desire for secession, it was only once that one of these peoples ever attempted to quit. In 1967 the Igbos tried it but were brought back into line - at a great cost in human terms. Now, noises of secessionism fill the air and the din saps reason and inhibits cool reflection. This intervention clarifies the dispute about secessionism and hopes to bring some sanity into the debate that all too often easily descend into ugly 'tribalist' name-calling and unfounded accusations.

It is well enough known by now that the diverse nationalities cobbled together into one country at the turn of the nineteenth century by the British colonialists and which they christened Nigeria have never felt comfortable with each other. The three main groups - the Hausa, Ibo and Yoruba - have at different times nursed the wish to secede but it was the Igbo who, in August 1967, actually attempted to carry out the threat. That attempt was crushed by the federal military government led by Col. Yakubu Gowon who, though he hails from the former Northern Region, is really a member of the minority ethnic groups there. The Yoruba, the dominant group in Western Region, too, have always grumbled about their plight in the Nigerian federation, but have so far only mooted secessionism and never actually attempted it.

Although the Northern mobs carried placards announcing A Raba - i.e. 'Let's Secede' - in the anarchy of the 1964/5, the stark reality of resource limitation thenceforth has inhibited any further thought of secessionism in the Northern Region. Ironically though, it is the Hausa/Fulani dominated North that have, by a combination of cruel and paradoxical fate, come to champion the course of Nigerian unity, yet the northerners do not necessarily possess any putatively superior patriotism or altruistic reasons to eschew secessionism. Rather, their reluctance to contemplate secessionism, at least during the military epoch and since, has been based of the correct assessment by their leadership of the disadvantage that secessionism would mean for them existentially and materially.

Biafra's birth-pangs
The Igbo nation in the central area in the former Eastern Region was the dominant group among a myriad of smaller ethnic communities over whom they have ruled for generations. With the discovery of large oilfields in the riverine coastal fringes of Eastern Region in the late 1950s, secessionism became a viable option. So, more than any other factor, oil fuelled the Igbo secessionist ambition. To say this, though, is not to deny the importance of the social, cultural, and especially, the political causes that forced the Igbo leadership at the time to choose the secessionist path.

Chief among the reasons given by the Igbo leadership for their decision to quit Nigeria was the pogrom the Igbo suffered in the mid-1960s. In Kano, Kaduna, Zaria and other towns in the North tens of thousands of Igbo residents were killed in a most gruesome manner by Hausa mobs on the rampage. The immediate cause of this was the violence that attended the campaign of hate during the federal elections of 1965. This fed straight into the ground stream of cultural rivalry and religious differences between the different ethnic communities in several urban areas that sparked off an orgy of violence, first in the Western Regions, and then in the North.

That the Igbo felt genuinely hurt by that mass massacre of its indigenes resident in the north is perfectly understandable. The Igbo had made the north their home and had made a success of whatever they did in education, in the federal civil service, in private industry and the professions everywhere in Nigeria. For political reasons the idea had been promoted, on the eve of the British colonisation of the diverse people of Nigeria, that the Igbos were as culturally distant from the Hausa as an Earthling is to a Martian. Regardless, the industrious Igbos traversed the whole of the federation and were vulnerable to the machinations of the political elite of their host regions who were wont to whip up hateful propaganda against them at moment of political tension.

The mid-1960s was such a moment and the Northern Region of Nigeria had, at all times, a sizeable lumpenproletariat - an underclass of homeless and dispossessed, unskilled and unemployed (the dan iska) jealous of the Igbos' success and receptive of the anti-Igbo propaganda of their Mallams. Religion was amongst the catalyst of the North's hatred of the Igbo since they are predominantly Christian while the ruling political elite there were Muslims - a fact reflected in the nomenclature of 'pogrom' with its spiritual undertone - that describes the mass massacre of the 'infidel Igbo'.

The loss of thousands of Igbo lives in the North was a social calamity that affected all families back home, and the sorrow and anger it provoked explained why it was the basis of the Igbos' resolve to secede from a federation that offered them only insecurity and death. Wagons upon rickety wagons of the now defunct Nigerian Railway Corporation took into the east loads of maimed bodies hacked to death in the North. The gruesome sight whipped up emotions. Sorrow understandably turned into anger and in the heat of communal emotion survival instincts overrode civic responsibilities. In that circumstance the idea of a 'Republic of Biafra' was an easy sell for the mass of the grieving Igbo people.

If the resolve to secede is explicable in this term, what is less readily acceptable to their fellow Nigerians and Nigeria's foreign well wishers is the absolute adamance and the recalcitrance of the Ojukwu-led Igbo delegation at the reconciliatory talks convened by the Federal Military Government in an attempt to assuage the undoubted Igbo grievances, if not their losses. The die seemed to have been cast well before the neighbourly intervention in the Nigerian crisis, so that at the Aburi Talks, impartially organised by, and under the auspices of, the Ghanaian government, the Igbo delegation was hell-bent on secession.

Arguably, if the Biafran project was justifiable in the light of the sins committed against the Igbos in northern Nigeria, it must still be asked whether secession was viable? The answer to this revolves around the secessionists' psychology on the eve of the birth of Biafra. Let consider this.

The Igbo secessionist struggle had been premised on a number of mistaken assumptions that predictably condemned the project even before it had left the drawing board. First, the Igbo had assumed the ability of the whole of the Eastern Region to survive as a geographic entity to be named the 'Republic of Biafra'. That proved to be an illusion.

Second the continuance of the Igbo political dominance over the minorities in the region had been assumed. Curiously, the Biafran leadership had miscalculated the intentions of the ethnic minorities in their midst and had wrongly assumed their compliance with the Biafran project. This was to be their undoing.

Third, the secessionists grossly and fatally misjudged the outcome of an armed struggle with the rest of Nigeria. That this miscalculation was deeply flawed is evidenced by the setback that flowed from it and which continues to affect Igbo's fortune in Nigeria to this day.

The fourth assumption is the correlation of the faith of the dominant Igbo nation with that of the dominated non-Igbo minority groups within the Eastern Region. That was an error of judgement. Although in retrospect, all these assumptions now seem clearly wrong, they were not seen to be so in the mid-1960s when the Igbos made a dash for secessionism at a moment of deep political crises, soon after Nigeria's independence in 1960, which the ruling elite was impotent to contain.

The Gowon regime inherited all the crises of a post-colonial social formation and more. With regard to the Igbos' secessionist ambition, it was Gowon's masterstroke to remove the first assumption, namely, that the Igbos would succeed in their bid to tear the Eastern Region out of Nigeria and drag its minority ethnic groups along with it to into an autonomous state. Within days of the declaration of the birth of the 'Republic of Biafra', the federal military government dissolved the three composite regions of Nigeria into twelve new states.

The move was designed to give autonomy to the ethnic minorities trapped in the former regions thereby inhibiting their connivance or collaboration with secessionist ambitions of the dominant groups. It was more than a welcome relief for the ethnic minorities who had lived in the shadow of Igbo hegemony, especially for those in the oil-rich delta region that fringed the Igbo-land proper including the Ibibio, the Tshekiri, and the Ogoni etc.

But states-creation robbed the Igbo secessionists more than a sizeable land mass. It also shunted them into a landlocked, oil-less Igbo state. Thus, in one deft stroke, the assumption that the Eastern Region of Nigeria could succeed in its effort to forge a geographic entity separate and independent of Nigeria was decisively quashed. With the first assumption removed the second i.e. the Ibo political dominance over the minorities in the region naturally collapsed. Above all else, states-creation meant that the Igbos were no longer in a position of political dominance over its neighbours. With hindsight we can confidently say that the ramifications of Gowon's states-creation strategy went beyond the threat of secessionism that gave rise to it.

For, henceforth Nigerian politics would never be the same again. Rather than remain a pawn in the politics of the 'Big 3', the minority ethnic communities throughout Nigeria have since been empowered and have become potential partners with their larger neighbours. They are now a force to reckon with. Consequently, the fourth assumption was thereby rendered ineffectual, for, the correlation of the fate of the dominant Igbo with that of the dominated non-Igbo minority groups is meaningless in the relative parity of all Nigeria's ethnic communities.

It cannot be overstressed that Gowon's states-creation policy was by far the most fundamental legacy of the military era in Nigeria's history. Not only has it proved most effective as a counter measure to forestall secessionism, it also has been successful in altering the relationship between the dominant ethnic groups and the minorities in their midst. Consequently successive regimes since Gowon have adopted and extended it so that the 12-States originally created by Gowon has been extended first to 19 by Murtala Muhammed in 1976, then to 30 and 33, by Babangida (1985-93), and to 36 by Abacha.

The relative stability brought about by states-creation had not been without its costs, though. Right from the start states-creation added a new factor to the delicate ethnic algebra of the Nigerian federation. With nearly three hundred linguistic groups each aspiring to statehood a Pandora's box had been opened. Also, because states-creation was accompanied by the violence of the Nigerian civil war to prevent secessionism, the Igbos have borne the brunt of Nigeria's integration. They suffered badly during civil war and they continue to pay dearly for the legacy of that war.

The Nigerian civil war lasted thirty months (1967-1970) and without a doubt the 'Biafran rebels' fought a gallant battle but ultimately they lost the war. The assumption of victory in an armed struggle with the rest of Nigeria was a mistake that derived from some vague psychology of liberation struggle. With little more than the notion that right was on their side, the Biafran leadership decided to plunge the Igbo nation into a war that would cost them their former privileged position in Nigeria.

As a result of the war the Igbo lost almost all their top brass in the Nigerian army officer corps, and in their exodus from other regions, the Igbo lost their positions in all other facets of Nigerian social and economic life. And, in spite of the Gowon's generous policy of the 3Rs: rehabilitation, reconciliation and reconstruction, the Igbos would never regain the former leadership role that they once held in the federation. And this ironically brings us to the situation we are today.

Secessionist illusions
A lot of nonsense has been uttered, written or implied about secessionism in Nigeria. The idea is that a better future awaits a region that manages to breakaway. Ojukwu is the father of this illusion. For him and other Biafran romantics, a separate nation carved out of Nigeria is a promised land where all the Igbos' hopes and wishes will be fulfilled. It is a dangerous illusion. Secessionism is not just a bad idea it is a dangerous one (as the Biafrans found out at their peril). Secessionist is certainly inimical to Igbos' economic and political interests. The more enlightened Igbo individual knows too well that they are better off in Nigeria where their skills, talent and energy, if they do not exceed, at least they equal those of their rivals.

Yet, judging by the clamour expressed in private and increasingly in public also, especially on the Internet, the idea persists that the Igbos will fare better outside Nigeria. It would be more than a shame if the Igbo people yet again are misled to believe in a course so rive with potential tragic consequences. It has been reported that the Nigerian communities of Igbo indigenes have set up a 'Biafra House' in Washington DC (USA) that Chief Ojukwu officially opened in 2001. Similar ones are planned for other countries, we are told.

Under the current democratic dispensation expression of Igbo nationalism enjoys free reign along with others including the proposed Republics of Oduduwa, the Arewa and the Ogoni and more. Separatist pressures brewing within these centripetal forces of sub-nationalisms thus put a strain on the Nigerian federal system. It is an irony of liberal democracy that it tolerates all views including those that seek to undermine it.

It is doubtful though whether the resources and the will exist to actualise secessionism in any part of Nigeria this time. States-creation, as we have seen, has taken the sting out of all secessionist threats. The remaining pockets of cultural communities left with a few larger ethnic nationalities that are dominant in any particular state will not easily swap one master for another, no matter how relatively geographically close they may be.

For the neo-Biafrans new hopes of a separate nation is even less realistic than their first attempt. The prospect of a landlocked Igbo enclave surrounded all around by hostile 'tribes' is not exactly relishing. Those who clamour for secessionism clearly haven't done their arithmetic. They would need to factor into their calculation a lot more than a record of one gallant but failed attempt, or the willingness of a handy hero to lead his nation out of Babylon.

Ojukwu's admirers hold him out to be a hero of his people. His heroism consisted not only of his courage in attempting to lead the Igbo nation out of the Babylon called Nigeria, but also for the personal sacrifices that he is said to have made in the course of the liberation of his people. He is further regarded in some quarters as a principled Igbo nationalist and a model for the ever burning desire of the Igbo people to pursue their collective destiny beyond the confines of Nigerian boundaries. Since Ojukwu's admirers are in the main young people who have merely heard, read or have been told (as opposed to having experienced first-hand) about the 'Biafran War', then, their views on the matter have tended to be romantic - as indeed all stories of nationalist struggles everywhere tended to be received by younger generations.

For one thing, the 'personal sacrifice' that Ojukwu is said to have made to the secessionist struggle is questionable to say the least. He was alleged to have deployed for the war efforts the considerable inheritance left by his millionaire transporter father amounting to some eight million pounds (Sterling) or more. A considerable sum indeed, especially at its 1960s value. But even if it were indeed true, that did not amount to personal sacrifice. The claim must be set against the loss of lives of millions of dedicated Biafrans who fought to the bitter end rather than abandoned the course as Ojukwu did when the going became really tough.

If anyone is entitled to a heroic symbolism of the Biafran imbroglio it is Phillip Effiong who made the ultimate sacrifice for the Igbos' course. For, it was Effiong who delivered the instrument of surrender to the victorious federal forces and was quickly dispatched to Lagos to meet his fate at the hands of the Supreme Military Council. Meanwhile Ojukwu had abandoned the course and escaped to Guinea. If another tragedy is to be averted current supporters of Igbo secessionism need to know the basic truth and refrained from the bandwagon of Ojukwu vainglory and hero-worship.

If the past effort at secessionism turned out to be a tragic farce the current threats portends comic tragedy, for, unlike the earlier attempt, this one hardly carries any prospects of success. In the current circumstances, all talk of secessionism in Nigeria is an illusion, for no region can muster the resources for a realistic secessionist enterprise, least of all the Igbos. Secessionism therefore is an empty threat, but it has a useful social function: it is a vent for the frustrations and anger over the power imbalances in a lope-sided polity. It is a catharsis that easily gives sway to an illusion.

The debate on secessionism sparked off by Ojukwu's pronouncements is interesting for the response it has provoked. Some find it surprising that not a few Igbos are willing to take lessons from that man again. Opinion would differ on the role to accord Odumegwu Ojukwu in the annals of modern history of the Igbo people. Some, hanckering for a hero, would wish to deify him. Others, too old and wise to be led by the nose, may well deny that Ojukwu can guide the Igbo to a destiny loftier than its current state. That Odumegwu Ojukwu still regards himself the champion of the Igbos' course is evidenced by his occasional pronouncements on central issues of concern to Igbos in a Nigeria that he seems to love to hate. Seizing the opportunity of Nigeria's 41st Armed Forces Remembrance Anniversary on January 2001, Ojukwu reviewed the plight of the Igbos in modern Nigeria and revisited Biafra.

Neo-Biafranism
According to Ojukwu: 'if Nigeria is not better, then Biafra is a worthy alternative…Certainly when you compare death and Biafra, I will choose Biafra. When you compare strangulation to death and Biafra, I will choose Biafra…When you compare lack of reconciliation and marginalisation and Baifra, I will choose Biafra. When you compare lack of economic enterprises in one part of the country and discrimination to Biafra, I will prefer Biafra.' He added that Nigeria under democratic rule makes little difference [to the Igbo people] and he opined that: '…We've gone through the year 2000. Like everybody else in the world, we all had great expectations of that year. Ours was even more because it was the first year of a true democratic practice, …if you judge the year gone by, I believe we have to look at it in a normal form, which is economic well being: social well being and in political well being. The year in actual fact was eaten up by internal squabbles. The year 2000 was eaten up by posturing on the part of our various leaders. In year 2000, probably more people had been killed on the streets of Nigeria than we have ever had under any form of government…'. And on the idea of a national sovereign conference Ojukwu says he is prepared: 'to lay on the table an Igbo charter where I would say to Nigeria these are the sine qua non of our membership of the Nigerian federation. Take it or leave it' (culled from a report of an interview with Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu, posted on a Nigerian site on the Internet).

As they stand, there is little in terms of originality in the transcript of the interview with Ojukwu quoted above. Even the bits that could be regarded as possibly offensive has obviously been carefully rendered to avoid any legal ramifications from the federal authorities for incitement or sedition. Yet, disguised or not, the popular media put a secessionist spin on it and consequently has generated much commentary and debate in many quarters. Even President Obasanjo could not ignore it, but he underplayed and dismissed the secessionism brahouha by 'rascals' as a minor mischief making. (Incidentally, a very astute and successful publisher friend of mine has collected into a book several pronouncements by President Obasanjo. He assures me that it is going to be a best-seller).

Deconstructing Ojukwu
For us, two themes in Ojukwu's pronouncements above are poignant. The first is the allegorical language in which Ojukwu has couched his threats of a new Biafra. The other is the reference to the controversial idea of a national sovereign conference that has preoccupied Nigerians since the termination of military rule in 1999. Now, 'death' occurred twice in the opening sentences of the passage quoted above, followed by 'strangulation' as an allegory for the historical experience of the Igbo nation in the Nigerian federation.

At one level, this calls upon the memories of the 1965 'Igbo pogrom' in the North, and the Kaduna riots of 1999, as well as the other periodic killing of southerners and non-Muslims in northern towns. At another level, 'death and strangulation' also recalls the killing, by hanging, of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the 'Ogoni 8' by the Abacha regime in 1994. 'Strangulation' symbolises the cutting off of the Igbo mainland from the Igbo people in the diaspora. Therefore, though heavily disguised for legal and political reasons, Ojukwu's utterances only thinly mask the anguish that which the Igbos feel in modern Nigeria.

In all fairness, at a more general level, Ojukwu's half-threat that secessionism would be considered if Nigeria continues to wallow in wretchedness possesses some logical appeal. It may even be interpreted as implying some vague patriotism. After all, his motive is a wish for a better Nigeria. However, since the complaints that Ojukwu lodged against Nigeria affect all Nigerians and not just the Igbos, therefore, secessionism cannot be a solution to a problem that is essentially Nigerian. To propose secessionism to a problem that is national in character is to abandon hope, and it is a first sign of bad faith.

Again, too be fair, to threaten secessionism is not necessarily the same thing as actually to attempt it. And to attempt it is not necessarily to achieve it (as Ojukwu knows only too well). Secessionism becomes a threat only if its proponents have the resources potentially to actualise it. In federal and confederal states, the component part that feels itself the underdog often threatens secessionism. But historically, only very few have actually achieved it. Indeed Pakistan is the only country that I know which has successfully attained statehood through a secessionist struggle.

In sum, Ojukwu's secessionist pronouncement panders to cheap publicity, and it courts self-importance by playing on genuine Igbo grudges. But since all the composite communities in Nigeria hold one grudge or another: the Ibos claim that they are marginalised, the Yoruba begrudge the Hausa for allegedly keeping them out of the real centre of power, and the myriad minority ethnic groups all complain that they don't get a look in etc. Therefore, the Ibos don't necessarily have a case any stronger than the others.

'Marginalisation' and other complaints
Like secessionisn, allegation of marginalisation rolls off the lips of all Nigerians indiscriminately. Historically though the Igbos has a prior claim to it as a concept peculiar to political discourse in post-colonial Nigeria. The Igbos have continuously complained of marginalisation since the end of the Nigerian civil war. But since the country itself has been under military dictatorship almost continuously throughout that period, then, the Igbo's complaint has mostly been unheeded.

One reason for the marginalisation of the Igbos during the era of military misrule is the shortage of Igbo senior army officers - itself a consequence of the tremendous loss of senior Igbo officers' lost during the war. Since the war Igbos fortunes have ebbed and flowed according to the dictate of the northern ruling oligarchy. It is in this connection that the reference, in Ojukwu's pronoucements cited above, particularly on the issue relating to a national sovereign conference, is pertinent. The idea is to get all the diverse communities together to thrash out the modalities of their joint participation in a federal system that would be just and fair to all.

This, in the view of many, but by no means all, is imperative since in the past and certainly at present, operation of the system is faulty and in need of an overhaul. All the composite nationalities in Nigeria, bar one, have complained that the system is dysfunctional, corrupt, inefficient and unjust, because it is lope-sided and skewed in favour of a particular region - the North. The North, of course, sees things differently and has continued to resist the idea of a sovereign national conference. The conclusion is inescapable therefore that the resistance from that quarter belies the fear of loss of the unfair advantage that 'the Northerners' enjoy.

Thus, though, the perceived imbalance is the main source of the grievance that the new democracy is supposed to address; yet democracy has bred a new cynicism. Many doubt whether any real change in the locus of power in Nigeria will be ever be effected. The hopeless cynicism is even more pronounced under the democratic regime than in the military epoch.

Mooted secessionisms
On the current equation it is arguable that of the three dominant ethnic communities in Nigeria, the Igbo stand to lose most in a break-up of the federation. For, unlike the Yoruba, the Igbo have seen their power base in the old Eastern Region effectively decimated. Successive states-creations have empowered the minority ethnic groups within that region to throw away the Igbo yoke. As for the Hausa it would simply be fool-hardly even to think of seceding. Indeed, to them, Hausa equates Nigeria. And that, in fact, is one of the problems.

In this respect the Yoruba possesses a logistical advantage in that it retains its access to the sea so that in the event of a break-up, the Yoruba would not suffer the fate of land-locked enclave that awaits its two big rivals. This though only partly explains why the Yoruba have always been ambivalent about seceding from Nigeria. But their ambivalence is not necessarily a reflection of their stronger fate in the Nigerian project. Rather it is a product of their realists' approach to ethnic politics in contemporary Nigeria.

As a nation the Yoruba is probably the most cohesive of all the major cultural communities that Nigeria embraces. Access to the sea offers an advantage in any national economy - an advantage which the Northern Region never had, which the Eastern Region lost, but which the Yoruba retains even after states-creation. Although lacking oil, which was a major factor in the Biafran secessionist calculations, yet the Yoruba command ample human, natural and cultural resources enough to make a secessionist bid viable. Why then have they not seceded? Perhaps it is because the Yoruba have confidence enough in themselves that they are more than a match to any of their rivals in any fair competitive political struggle.

This also explains why they have been cautious in aligning themselves politically with any of the other ethnic communities. Because the Yorubas have tended to be inward looking in their dealings, at least in politics, with the Hausa and the Igbos, they have rightly been charged with ethnic chauvinism. And their hesitation has tended to colour the outlook of their political parties so that they appear ethnocentric and anti-federalist. Added to this is the tendency of the Yoruba to resort to violence of the type that has been unleashed since the assassination of Chief Bola Ige, Nigeria's Minister for Justice. This is foreboding for those who remember the anarchy of Wetie (i.e. the arsonists' free reign) in the Western Region in 1964-65 that preceded the collapse of Nigeria's First Republic. History will recall the Yoruba as a people who loves always to shoot itself in the foot.

The Hausa hegemony
By contrast the Hausa, since the end of the Nigeria civil war (1976-70), have come to dominate the country so thoroughly that their hegemony is complete. Successive military rulers from the North for over three decades have helped to create the impression that the North equates Nigeria. However one looks at it the Northerners have never been out of power ever since the Nigerian nation was created by the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Provinces in 1914.

Conspiracy theorists attribute motives to the British colonialist, who fearing an anti-British disaffection from the more educated southern 'tribes', schemed to favour the North in their transfer of power after independence. On this premise the current domination of the North over the whole of Nigeria is the continuity of the scheme set in place by the British imperialists. Another perspective is that of real politic attributable to the Sadauna of Sokoto, who was perspicacious enough to flood the Nigerian army with northerners, to counteract the dominance of the Igbos and the Yorubas in other spheres of Nigeria's public life. On these premises the successive military rulers from the North have come to fulfil the destiny mapped out for the North by first, the British, and later, by the North's revered spiritual and powerful political leader, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sadauna of Sokoto.

From these two perspectives the claim of the de facto rule of the North remains valid even if a non-Hausa happens to be at the realm of government. Thus, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa - a thoroughgoing Hausa/Fulani, was installed Nigeria's first Prime Minister (1960 - 1966). Next came Col. Yakubu Gowon (1966-75), a non-Hausa but still a 'northerner', who quickly stepped in after Aguiyi Ironsi - an Igbo (January-August 1966) to fill the power vacuum created after the 'Majors' coup' of January 15, 1966. Gowon was sacked by General Murtala Muhammed - an Hausa/Fulani (1975-76) and was succeeded by Obasanjo (Mohammed's second-in-command).

Obasanjo - a Yoruba (1975-1979) handed power back to 'the North' in an election that was controversial enough to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the presidency of Shehu Shagari - an Hausa/Fulani (1979-83). Buhari - an Hausa (1983-85) snatched power from Shagari who retained it until it was seized from him by Babangida - a northerner (1985-1997). From Babangida power passed back to Abacha - an Hausa - via Shonekan - a Yoruba. Gen. Abubaker Abdul Salam - an Hausa (1998-9) completed the north's military stranglehold over Nigeria.

Babangida was the most notorious of the northern leaders. By the time he came to power in a bloodless coup (August 1985) the most Nigerians felt that 'the Northerners' have so thoroughly dominated the Nigerian armed forces, and have tightened their grip on the army so much that many felt it would suicidal to attempt to prise their fingers from the trigger. Also, it was felt the north has perfected the art of coup-making so well that there was a widespread fear that when it chooses to return to power there will be little anyone can do to stop it.

Babangida relunctantly bowed out after nine years of a fruitless transition programme and Sani Abacha - Babangida's henchman - swept Shonekan aside and installed himself president. Abacha's brutal tyranny temporarily at least terminated the long cycle of northerners' rule over Nigeria. Babangida lavished much effort on a putative transition programme that many believed he deliberately failed to deliver for fear that power would slip from the hands of the North.

He annulled an election that would have put a non-northerner in power and deigned to compensate the Yoruba with a handpicked and more pliable candidate of his own choice. Ernest Shonekan, a Yoruba entreprenuer, headed an Interim National Government - ING (August 24 - Nov. 13, 1993) for six months and was removed by General Sani Abacha whose three years reign of terror (1996-98) came to symbolise the era of military misrule par excellence.

During Abacha's tyranny, the Hausa language, culture and ethics, became the norm in Aso Rock (the presidential quarters) and in the government offices in Abuja. Contract chasers and all sorts of social leeches and sycophants mill around the corridors of power in search of favours. All had to conform to an Hausa/Fulani dress code if they were to assure themselves of success. A major thoroughfare in Abuja central was devoted solely to the exclusive use of President Abacha on the rare occasions that he ventured out of his Abuja bunker.

More puzzling for any sane observer is the fact that Abacha shares the glory of the legacy of erstwhile notables of the stature of Herbert Macauly, Nnamdi Azikwe, Ahmadu Bello, Awolowo, etc in having major streets in Abuja named after them. That Abacha has been elevated to the status of these great men defies all logic which no one seems ready to question much less challenge. In short, majority of Nigerians regards the record of the north's rule over Nigeria as not at all impressive. Most have a memory of better days gone past but little hope of halcyon days ahead. This is the mood that breeds secessionism - of which the Biafrans have been the most courageous to have undertaken.

The deepest political crisis Nigeria ever experienced was that which attended the annulment on June 12, 1995 of the election that returned Chief MKO Abiola (a Yoruba) as the president. For trying to claim his mantle General Abacha held Abiola in prison thereby creating an impasse that ultimately resulted in the death of both. With intense covert international intervention Obasanjo was released from jail to lead Nigeria a second time. Obasanjo's presidency is widely regarded as a fiat of the northern oligarchy.

It has been argued that he holds power on their behest while the north regroups, and that he holds the presidency on behalf of the northerners who would sooner or later take back what they have always thought to be theirs. These unkind and perhaps unfounded assertions are widely held and not just amongst Obasanjo's own ethnic group - the Yorubas. The attitudes, and certainly the occasional statements made by some northern politicians, seem to confirm this.

Neo-Biafranism: a cost/benefit analysis
In the 1950s and 60s the Igbos were perhaps the most prominent group in Nigeria. By virtue of their education, enterprise and industry the Ibos appeared destined to lead Nigeria but were encumbered by the politics of federalism which frustrated their ambition. Those frustrations partly led to the aborted secessionist attempt that has resulted in the reversal of their fortune vis-à-vis their rival ethnic communities in Nigeria. But it did not take the Igbos long before they made their presence felt in all parts of Nigeria again.

Thanks to Gowon's reconciliation policy, the Igbos quickly regained their previous leading positions in the national economy, if not in politics. In the East they dominate commerce and retail trade from Onitsha to Aba and beyond. In Western Nigeria the Igbos maintain a healthy presence in spite of fierce competition from the indigenes. Lagos is half owned by the Igbos and a large number has acculturated sufficiently to inter-marry with the indigenes, while a few lucky ones are powerful landlords in Nigeria's most egalitarian metropolis. The Igbos presence in the North is not insubstantial. In the economies of Kano, Kaduna and Jos, not to talk of Zaria, Katsina and Bauchi, the Igbos are a force to reckon with.

Arithmetics of secessionism
Perceiving a great opportunity at a time that the Yoruba were sceptical of the efforts at building Nigeria's new capital city, the Igbos bought large parcels of land in Abuja and saw their investment sky-rocketed unimaginably. In Abuja the Igbos, more any other ethnic group, control the property market, retail trade and commerce. They dominate the hotel business and the interstate mass transport industries. The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) was conceived as a no-man's land and is regarded as such by all, but it would not be far wrong to say that the Igbos owns Abuja. In spite of Okukwu's call to secede we may infer that to the extent that the Igbos have sunk into Abuja their social capital, to that extent they have a stake in preserving Nigeria's integrity.

One wonders then what the industrious Igbos stand to gain in a separate nation of their own. With a fraction of Nigeria's 122 million people, a shrunken Biafran state with little or no natural resources except the largely untapped, and increasingly unwanted coal in the over celebrated and underdeveloped Enugu coalfields, Biafran can hardly boast of a superlative economic prospects. Since coal was discovered there in the 1930s it has contributed little to the regional or the national economy. By the 1960s the discovery of oil in the non-Igbo delta area has made the 'Ibo's coal' redundant and has remained irrelevant since. Surely an independent Biafran state cannot be a better place for the energies of the modern Igbo-man.

To sum up, rather than chasing the Biafran rainbow, the Igbos are better off staking their claims in Nigeria like the rest of us. The adventurous Igbo mind is better suited to a larger space than the claustrophobic confines of a segregated Biafran enclave. With his rugged individualism, fearsome competitiveness and self-confidence, the Igboman is more than a match to other Nigerians given a level playing field. To be sure, the stereotype of the Igbo personality did contribute to their contemporary fate.

But all Nigerians poke fingers at each other and not just at the Igbos exclusively. Simultaneously feared and admired, the Igbos cut an image that their less endowed compatriots love to hate. The diverse ethnic groups in Nigeria seem bound together by a love/hate relationship typified by the depth of mistrust for the Igbos by the Yoruba, and which brings out the dagger instincts in the Hausa against all the rest. The Igbos have more than what it takes to overcome all that. And abandoning ship is not what it takes.

Recapitulation
Ethnic separatism in Nigeria is regressive and balkanisation is neither good for Nigeria nor for Africa. Complementarity and resource diversity offers economic advantage in a global economy that willy-nilly affects all nations. We ought to join the world in striving for universalism of all noble human ideals - justice, equality and equity for all - and eschew particularism that breed hostility and inequality. Secessionism sends us all back to our villages and hamlets. It is against the grain of globalism.

Surely, the sub-nationalist politics of southern Nigeria start from a recognition fact that the fulcrum of political power has shifted to the North and trickled to the Mid-Belt leaving the South at their mercy. But that must not lead us to tribalistic politicking. The challenge for us is to demonstrate that in a competitive politics that is fair and square the East the West (the Igbo and the Yoruba, if you like) can out play the North. To do this, we need first to find a way to loosen the grip of the Hausa/Fulani on the trigger, and then to wrestle power from the north in a decisive showdown at the polling booths.

To achieve this, the south needs to deploy superior political strategy that transcends the ethnic myopism bred of the age-old Igbo/Yoruba cultural rivalry between 'them' and 'us'. In short, the new politics of contemporary Nigeria must aim to outwit all feudal oligarchies be it in the north, south or the middle-belt. The Nigerian situation is not entirely hopeless even though it has proved difficult to eject the hegemon from the powerful institutional positions in which it has entrenched itself since the era of the military in Nigerian history.

Nonetheless, majority of Nigerians is determined to nourish their fledgling democracy. With the presidential elections of 2003 at the horizon the ethnic rivalry of old looms large. Ojukwu's pronouncements on Biafra are ill judged, and his call to secessionism fuels ugly speculations and social anxieties. He and other Igbos left out in the booty of the thirty odd years of military misrule consider themselves losers in modern Nigeria.

Some Igbos consider other groups the winners in the Nigerian revolution set in motion by the '6 Igbo Majors' who masterminded Nigeria's first military coup which started the chain of events that paradoxically went awry for the Igbos. Rather than condemn the fledgling democracy Ojukwu and his ilk should join others in their efforts at building a better Nigeria. The new and fragile democracy presents a challenge of genuine nation-building that calls for the efforts of all Nigerians. A call to abandon ship once again does neither Nigeria nor the Igbos any good.

Let us hope that Okonkwo (or is it Ojunkwo) will not attempt social suicide again.

Dr Tunde Arogundade is formerly Senior Lecturer in Global Politics at the Open University, UK. and is currently Senior Research Fellow, NIPSS, Jos, Nigeria