Igbo and the governance of Lagos
on August 11, 2013 at 3:14 am in
Special Report
By Kayode Samuel
Three fashionable fallacies lie at the
root of prevailing Igbo outlook to Lagos,
the former federal capital. The first is
that Lagos is a no-man’s land with no
indigenous population.
The second is that Federal Government
money was used to build Lagos into the
huge metropolis that it has now
become. This argument goes further to
claim that since the “federal money”
allegedly belonged to all Nigerians, the
political control of Lagos should, willy-
nilly, be open to just about anyone and
everyone who claims to be a Nigerian.
The third fallacy is that Lagos is a
hunting ground, a jungle city where all
being “joiners”, the predatory instinct
must rule. By this pernicious thesis,
Lagos is a place in which regardless of
one’s roots – or the lack of it – one can
seize the trophy. It is an el-Dorado
where anything goes and in which
everything, including political authority,
is up for grabs since the place does not
belong to anyone anyway!
These are erroneous claims, now being
given new life in the current debate on
Igbo participation and representation in
the politics and governance of Lagos.
Granted, the continued perpetration of
these fallacies is not restricted to Igbo
elements. Others, including some
Yoruba (especially those that Lagosians
refer to as ara oke– upland people), are
equally guilty of the first if not all of
these fallacies.
But the current debate marks the first
time that an institutional claim to the
governance of Lagos would be made by
a non-Yoruba group. The
commentators, Joe Igbokwe and
Uchenna Nwankwo, among others,
have done well in marshalling the
arguments from the Igbo perspective.
Spokesmen of Eko Pioneers, a group of
Lagosians, have answered back from
the other side. It is a debate that
should be encouraged rather than
stifled.
The fallacies are, of course, easily
dismissed. The Yoruba identity of Lagos
is not in doubt, regardless of its
ethnically mixed composition. If the
“no-man’s-land” claim were to be true,
then Lagos must be the only metropolis
anywhere in the world without an
indigenous population.
Concerning the use of “federal money”
to develop Lagos, four points need to
be made. First, Lagos was a thriving
metropolis even before the British
created Nigeria, its prosperity being
due more to its strategic location rather
than its administrative designation.
Second, it is doubtful that the people of
Lagos were consulted before their city
was made the Nigerian capital, or that
they were forewarned that being
conferred with such a status would
mean that they would lose their city to
stranger elements.
Third, rather than invoke the “federal
money” argument to dilute a people’s
right to control their land, the rest of
Nigeria, and, in particular, the Igbo,
should be grateful to the people of
Lagos for availing them of a conducive
environment in which lives and
property are relatively safe and in
which the throats of settlers are not
routinely slashed by sponsored zealots
as happens elsewhere in Nigeria.
Fourth, and perhaps most tellingly,
only a fraction of what is now Lagos
State was ever under the central
government. Strictly speaking, only
four of the present twenty local
government areas in Lagos State –
Lagos Island, Eti Osa, Lagos Mainland
and Surulere – were in the then Colony
of Lagos.
The rest belonged, first to the
Protectorate of Southern Nigeria and
subsequently to the Western Region,
before the state creation exercise of
1967. Lagos was also not the only city
on which federal money was spent.
(Calabar was once the capital and so
should also qualify as a recipient of
“federal money”.)
As for Lagos being a hunting ground,
the self-defeating logic of this
argument is clearly brought home to all
of us – aborigine and settler alike – by
the frightening crime statistics in the
state.
Perhaps before I go further it is
appropriate that I state my
qualifications for pronouncing on this
matter, aside of course from my rights
as a citizen of Nigeria. From my father’s
side, I am a Yoruba of Awori descent
with strong Egba links. My mother
however happens to be Igbo from
Owerri in Imo State.
Based on these affiliations, I can claim a
fair measure of familiarity with the
issues in the current debate on both
sides. I understand the feelings of
Lagosians on this matter. I am also fully
apprised of the passions and pressures
that drive Igbo into internal economic
exile and which impel their push for a
place in Lagos.
While I empathize with the Igbo
condition, I share the interest of all
trueborn Yoruba people in maintaining
and possibly deepening the Yoruba
character of Lagos. And no one should
have to feel apologetic about that.
The Igbo, perhaps more than any other
Nigerian group, are in a vantage
position to appreciate a people’s
attachment to their soil and the
unbreakable linkage between a people
and their land and language.
A critical aspect of that linkage is the
exercise of cultural and political
authority over a land space to which
one has aboriginal claim. More than
any other group in Nigeria, save
perhaps the Fulani Bororo, the Igbo
move around the country a lot for
considerations of geography and
economics.
Unlike the Fulani, however, the Igbo
often become sedentary in large
clusters in the lands they move into,
including Lagos. This naturally raises
an interest in participation in the public
affairs of their places of domicile. Yet, a
legitimate interest in participation
cannot translate into a contest for
control, which is the way the current
claims are being canvassed and
construed.
Pan Nigerianism
Advocates of the Igbo claim to Lagos
often refer to the putatively halcyon era
of pan-Nigerianism spanning the 1930s
to the 1950s. It was a time, we are told,
when all Nigerians lived as one and
when it did appear that all ascriptive
barriers had dissolved in the ferment of
nationalist politics. This period has
become a favourite reference point for
people with all kinds of agenda. But
was the reality not indeed less
glamorous? There was, no doubt, a
fortuitous convergence in those times.
An emergent commercial and educated
elite needed to come together in the
nationalist struggle to send the British
away and so the city of Lagos, which
was the hub of that struggle, seemed
to have become a melting pot
overnight.
Yet, the hometown unions remained
strong and affectations to unity were
soon exposed as only skin-deep as the
struggle to ensure the departure of the
British transitioned into the struggle
over who would succeed the departing
oligarchy. This is the reality that we
continue to live with to date. And it
would be asking a lot to expect that
Lagos should offer itself as the guinea-
pig for experimenting with the
possibility of a new pan-Nigerian vision.
Especially since there is as yet nothing
on ground to suggest or guarantee that
such a gesture would be reciprocated.
As things now stand, the Igbo in Lagos
must decide what they really want from
the state: participation, or
representation, or control. Currently,
their spokespersons seem to be using
the three terms interchangeably,
raising the spectre of a hostile take-
over. This approach is bound to be
resisted by a people barely recovering
from the debacle of the June 12
annulment and the devastations of the
Abacha persecution in which they saw
the Igbo – with some admirable
exceptions – as having played a less
than salutary role.
The attitude and outlook of a majority
of Igbo political elite and indeed
common people to the June 12 crisis
was mercenary if not malevolent. Many
Igbo seemed to have approached the
crisis with a revanchist agenda borne of
deep-seated animosity and ill-will. How
so?
Civil war
It is a well-known fact that some Igbo
still blame the Yoruba for having
“pushed” the Eastern Region into the
civil war only to back out at the last
minute. This line of argument further
raised and reinforced the unfounded
stereotype of Yoruba people as
unreliable. It has been peddled for so
long that many have come to believe it.
As Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s
Minister of Propaganda once famously
said, tell a lie persistently over a long
time and people start to believe it to be
the truth. Anyway, hostile interests
within and outside Nigeria that have
reason to fear the rise of a southern
solidarity of the type that was
emerging with the UPGA party of the
1960s have also invested strenuously
in promoting and perpetuating this lie.
Yet, without seeking to diminish the
harrowing and often heroic sacrifice
that the war entailed on the Biafran
side, the truth is that the Nigerian Civil
War was largely the consequence of a
North and East alliance of brinkmanship
whose cardinal objective and principle
was the isolation of the West. It is said
that the falling out of friends is often
the most vicious. So, Igbo political elite
are in no position to seek to build a cult
of victimhood around themselves or to
sermonize about the politics of bad
faith that led to the war.
Beginning with the NCNC-NPC coalition,
through the Action Group crisis, to the
declaration of a state of emergency in
Western Nigeria, the creation of the
Mid-West Region, all through to the
treasonable felony trial, many Igbo
political leaders of the time seemed to
have deliberately lent a hand or at least
acquiesced in stoking the northern
brazenness that eventually resulted in
the pogroms and the war. Nor should it
be forgotten the games that were
played with the status of Lagos, with
the establishment of a Federal Ministry
of Lagos Affairs under northern
headship but with copious NCNC
concurrence.
Similar treatment
But not to digress. With the defeat of
Biafra, many Igbo in secret (and
sometimes not too secretly) wished
that the Yoruba too should receive a
similar treatment someday soon. That
day seemed to have arrived with the
June 12 annulment and the crisis it
unleashed. For some, the June 12 crisis
appeared to have presented the Igbo
with a perfect opportunity to get back
at the Yoruba and permanently cut
them down to size.
In executing their now famous exodus
from Lagos at the time, many Igbo had
said that they feared (hoped?) that
another war was afoot, this time with
Yorubaland as the theatre. Igbo political
elite seemed to have offered
themselves all too eagerly to bringing
about such a confrontation. The role
played by the likes of Sam Ikoku, Uche
Chukwumerije, Walter Ofonagoro and
Clement Akpamgbo, to mention a few,
in adding fuel to the fires of the crisis
would for a long time be remembered
in the annals of infamy.
No doubt, the annulment and the
ensuing crisis sorely tested the political
maturity of Yoruba people and their
elite. Fortunately, the Yoruba refused to
bite the bait and managed to come out
of the annulment crisis without a
shooting war. There were, of course,
several battles and notable casualties
along the way. But, in the end, there
was no war of the scale that had been
feared – or hoped! How this was
accomplished remains a tribute to the
leaders of the pro-democracy struggle,
a struggle that is yet to come to an end
and of which Lagos remains the
epicenter.
Igbo in governance
Feelings still run deep and memories of
what many saw as malevolent
undercutting could remain for long. It is
partly in this context that many
Lagosians situate current calls for
expanded Igbo presence in the
governance of Lagos. Many will
shudder to contemplate the fate of the
June 12 struggle if during that struggle
political power in any part of the South-
West had been in the hands of people
hostile to Yoruba interests. What extent
of damage would Chukwumerije have
wrought if he had just one kinsman as
an ally sitting in a sensitive local
government chairmanship or
governor’s office in the South-West in
those terrible days?
Still, the work of building a united
Nigeria must continue as we cannot
afford to dwell for too long on past
injuries and grievances. The Igbo input
into this great work can be both
positive and progressive, but not
necessarily involving their ruling Lagos.
Indeed, I think they have their work cut
out for them. My view is that the Igbo
are barking up the wrong tree in this
whole matter over who rules Lagos.
What do I mean by this?
The Igbo are such a leading and
(hopefully) enduring part of the
commercial landscape of Lagos. At this
point in time, what they should be
doing is lending their voice and energy
to advocating for a reversal of what
appears like a deliberate federal
abandonment of the former capital,
which has made doing business in
Lagos all the more difficult.
The movement of the seat of the
Federal Government to Abuja was
ostensibly meant to un-clutter the
environment of governance and
deepen our country’s unity by giving
everyone a sense of belonging in the
nation’s capital.
But the move soon fell victim to
elements whose knack it is to snatch
defeat from the jaws of victory in every
good policy. The movement has been
implemented as a punishment for the
Yoruba and possibly as a reprisal for
the central role that Lagos played as
the seat of the pro-democracy
opposition. Against this background,
the attitude of many Lagosians to the
Igbo quest for control is that they
should commence it in Abuja and its
area councils. After all, they say, Abuja
is the only Federal Capital Territory that
we have.
Federal presence
But speaking seriously, Igbo claims to
an expanded role in the governance of
Lagos cannot be pursued in an
atmosphere of intentional federal
abandonment of Lagos. Governor Bola
Ahmed Tinubu of Lagos State has been
making a case for renewed federal
investment in Lagos, given the peculiar
heavy demands on the state and its
role as home to all. Rather than
fantasizing about taking over the
Alausa seat of government or
occupying commissionership positions,
the Igbo in Lagos should lend their
weight to the push for special federal
recognition for the needs of Lagos, to
further enable the state continue to
play its role as a safe, liberal and
prosperous home for all.
Samuel, a former columnist with
Vanguard, had caused this article
to be published (in two parts) in
Vanguard of 3 May 3 and May 10,
2002.