This is a must read and inciting article. Too long to upload here but I urge all to click on the link to read more. Surely I do not know why our current leaders keep telling us we cannot break up when all indices seems to tilt towards this. Please drop your thoughts for those of you who will be patient enough to read all of this.[b]

Sardauna of Sokoto and Obafemi Awolowo used to be good friends. They visited each other a lot and Sardauna was very keen to implement Awolowo’s policies only if he told him before hand. Once NPC won the December 1951 Northern regional elections, it was AG which had won the Western region’s elections two months earlier that it congratulated and extended alliance to at the Central House slated to open in February 1952. The North was never interested in partnering with Zik, NCNC, or the Igbos.

While Zik and the Eastern region where embroiled over the Prof Eyo Ita and the six sight tight ministers, Awolowo and Sardauna continued to strengthen their alliance. The first branch of AG outside the Western region was formed in Kano on 4th October 1952. Awolowo assured the jittery Northern rulers that the move was not a threat and he went on to deliver several lectures on government by federation in which he did not criticise Northern leadership at all. Arriving in Kaduna, together with Alhaji Gbadamosi and Alfred Rewane, he went to see his new friend, the Sardauna.

When Wazirin Bornu, Mallam Ibrahim Imam who was both General Secretary of NPC and the member from Bornu province introduced a Decency Bill which would make wearing clothes compulsory in the North, the colonial civil secretary who was also the president (speaker) of the Northern House shut it down. On hearing this, Awolowo at the next sitting of the Central House in Lagos raise it as a motion of national importance. The Daily Times of 23rd March 1953 reported Awolowo saying on the floor of the House: “The British ought to be ashamed of themselves because people still go naked after sixty years of their rule.” Since then he made sure he asked for trainloads of clothes in the South to distribute anytime he was going up North.

When the embattled leader of Eastern House, Prof Ita whom Zik wanted out at all cost arrived in Lagos for the opening of the Central House in 1953, he went to seek help from Awolowo who then took him to see Sardauna. They jointly condemned Zik’s role in the crisis. Immediately Ozumba Mbadiwe, NCNC’s House leader rose to defend Zik and his party on the floor of the House, most members of the AG and NPC walked out in unison. The North and West partnership was indeed strong.

Then came the blow.
During Awolowo’s October 1952 trip to the North, Sardauna told Awolowo that he was a man of enormous power and prestige in the eyes of his people because of his illustrious ancestry. There were a lot of things which the West was doing that were worthy of emulation. But these things were brought to his notice via newspaper reports. His people seized on the news and demanded the same things. Daily Times of 7th April 1953 reported Sardauna saying on page 7: “They become unduly embarrassed because they were forced into the position of copyists or imitators.” That a man of his stature appeared to be a copycat in the eyes of his followers was disrespectful and demeaning. To buttress his point, Sardauna mentioned the West’s scholarship scheme which when the news came some Northerners agitated for the same scheme too. Sardauna stated further: whereas if Awolowo had taken him into confidence he would adopt them and initiate them simultaneously with the West. And if it was a policy they do not want at all, they would still support them for the West alone should the approval of the Central Government be needed. Awolowo sat stone-faced wondering whether he was listening to intellectual theft or basics of collective nation building. Sardauna then concluded that both should set up a machinery were there would be regular consultation. At the previous sitting in Lagos, Sardauna announced to the country that: “the North is like a horse, if you are gentle with it, it will carry you far.” But Awolowo was not interested in partnership of horse-riding; human dignity counts more than anything to him. In responding to Sardauna’s proposal, Awolowo said for any collaboration to be “permanent and effective,” there must be identity of outlook on some fundamental principles and objectives. “The British rule in Nigeria, like any foreign rule, was unnatural, unjust and inherently incompetent. It should therefore be terminated not later than 1956.”

Sardauna began to make several excuses about the unreadiness of the North to cope with the challenges of doing it alone. Awolowo replied: “the North should not underrate their own ability.” When it was proposed at the Constitutional Review Conference in Ibadan that Nigerians not the British should be central ministers, the North opposed it on the ground that Nigerians are not yet competent. But now there were four ministers of Northern origin doing an excellent job at the central level, Awolowo told him. Sardauna’s reply was iconic. He said the reason for such an earlier position was because when they went for executive council meetings in Kaduna, they do not “thoroughly discuss the subjects on the agenda and take a concerted line of action,” whereas the white officials always did which made it appear they were superior to them. And when he visited Awolowo in Ibadan, he observed that they too thoroughly exhaust the agenda before going to meet with the colonial executives and that did not make them look foolish at the meetings. That night, Sardauna gave Awolowo two unnamed “valuable” presents as tokens of “the dependability of his words and bond of his friendship.”
And so after the joint walkout over Zik’s treatment of Eyo, Awolowo decided to take his friend into confidence. He told him in the visiting ministers’ room of the Central House, that the AG had tabled a private bill for self-government to be debated before the business seating closed. Sardauna left to hold consultations with the emirs and other members of the Northern delegation came back and rejected the idea. He even asked for the bill’s withdrawal. Awolowo said never, ever. “To withdraw the motion would be a political suicide for the Action Group. It would be a strong weapon in the hands of the NCNC to discredit us by showing us up to the politically conscious element in the South that we are imperialist stooges.” Furthermore, said Awolowo: “the white officials would never take us seriously again.”

The motion was introduced by Enahoro, 4 AG central ministers resigned their posts in order to debate it. The House erupted in pandemonium. “The mistake of 1914 has come to light” Sardauna said resignedly. The Northern legislators where humiliated, their turban stripped off outside the House and at every stop till they reached home, their train was mobbed with sticks and stones. The North became radicalised and demanded secession from Nigeria or a very, very loose association with the South. Zik who was at the gallery on that fateful/historic day, set aside his differences and went straight down to hug Awolowo. The cameras had a field day. They started an East-West pact that had never happened before even though they were both Southerners. It lasted only 7 months. NCNC then went to form an alliance with the North.

Why were the Southern regions eagerly seeking an alliance with the North? Because at the Ibadan Constitutional Conference, the North argued that given their size and population, they were entitled to half of the seats in the upcoming Central House. They were right.

The North was three times the size of the Western and Eastern regions put together. As regards population, they were more numerous too. Bola Ige once disputed this claiming throughout West Africa population decreases as you go upwards toward the desert. But unlike all other countries, as you go upwards Nigeria increases more sideways that upwards. Also the annual tax receipts per head from the North were far more than South’s. The North therefore held the majority vote in the House. And so however brilliant or beneficial your policies were, to have them authorised by the Central Government, you needed the votes of those the South were still sending clothes to cover their unclothedness. Even today, Southern senators sit shamelessly in the same chamber with incorrigible paedophiles and child rapists discussing ‘progress’ for the nation.

The amalgamation of 1914 was not the mistake, Lagos and the Yorubaland were amalgamated to Southern Protectorate in 1906 without furore. The mistake was in Lugard allowing the North to keep their traditions and ways of life. Education and civilisation came to the South due to the uncompromising efforts of the Crowther and the other Christian missionaries backed by the British government.

Whereas after the conquest of the North through the 1903 Sokoto and Kano wars, the emirs came to Lugard and said we will give you no more trouble in so far as you prevent those missionaries already gaining grounds in Bida and Lokoja and beyond from corrupting our ways of life. In return we will give you an unflinching loyalty. This suited Lugard just fine as he confirmed on 22nd March 1903 during his installation of Muhammadu Attairu II as the new Sultan of Sokoto. The colonial regime never spent much in collecting taxes in the North anymore. The emirate did. Using native enforcement schemes, they dutifully brought the collected taxes to the colonial treasury every month in huge numbers. In the East for instance, up to the 1951 -1953 census, the women resisted being counted because they saw it as a step towards making them pay taxes like their men. Moreover, in Lagos, Herbert Macaulay was campaigning furiously for the government to increase Eshugbayi Eleko’s £300 per annum “compassionate allowance” when the 6th August 1862 Treaty of Secession put his salary at a percentage of the total exports from Lagos.

That would have been £5million out of £16 million export revenues from Lagos then. Yet the Sultan of Sokoto was paid a total of £9000 annually from the colonial coffers even higher than £8000 being paid to the Sir Hugh Clifford, the colonial governor of Southern Nigeria. The respect for a people starts from the respect showed their rulers..............[/b]



Read more http://newswirengr.com/2014/07/10/opinion-why-we-should-split-nigeria-now/?utm_source=&utm_medium=twitter

Hmm good insight. Learned lessons and what to do later. Thanks Poster for your time.

Hmmmmm.

@OP
U never tell why Nig will break now