I was shopping, as it were, for a political party that would terminate what my generation began and thought that the Labour Party (LP) would be the answer and solution until, it became very clear to me, that you who won an election as Governor of Edo State but was denied by the Electoral Commission [for which you are now in court] is therefore in a better position to continue where my generation stopped. I pray you succeed in court, to redeem the image of the Law profession which you and I belong. To show that I should be taken seriously, I have decided to join the PDP to demonstrate that my actions should speak louder than my words.

I had contacted Chief Tom Ikimi to arrange a meeting with the Executive members of Edo State Branch of the PDP, which I hope will enable me to formally join the Party as a ranking member with the portfolio of Legal Adviser and/or ideological leader (pro bono). shown below. This is because, in my view, Nigeria has no political parties but an oligarchy; as will be shown below. 

Chief Tom Ikimi and I, share a few things in common, we are both golfers and were also invited by Gen Sani Abacha to join his government. While Chief Ikimi accepted, I declined, but we both served our country well. Having recently reached out to some leaders of political parties, including the Labour Party, I have come to the conclusion that our country requires young, knowledgeable and independent minded, Nigerians honed through training in ideology and our political past to dare to reshape the now and future of our country. For me, most of the young men and women in politics today are those, I will like to call “operatives”, likely recruited by oligarchs to promote the Nigerian concept of “oligarchy” initiated by the Armed Forces of Nigeria. They are in essence, a small group of persons having control over the affairs of Nigeria with three major tribes and 385 other minority tribes. Two major religions with many others under the direction of a few with ultimate objective as a country subject to the “North”, I have been accused of being anti-North but on the contrary I am a true Nigerian. At the age of four, I was taken to Jos by my mother and her husband Mr. Jasper Okposima, a miner who exposed me to “Western civilization” at Clerk’s Quarters, Church and Palmer Streets then in Jos in 1941 – 1953 where I learnt Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba in that order plus English, Edo and Urhobo which made me a Nigerian in the truth and in fact.

I am convinced that a new PDP with taproots in Edo State should emerge as a challenge to the British well-conducted youth of the North and his two ladies of means (wives) of the East and Western Nigeria [Nd’igbo and the Yoruba], who have held sway since 1914 amalgamation. A tripod of which two rule at any point in time with a dominant husband – the North Looking at the way things have played out over the years, one is convinced more than ever before that to make a meaningful intervention and strengthen the polity, Nigeria should do so through strong and vibrant political parties not ethnic or religious associations. I consider the PDP as a better alternative to bring about this desired change. However, the PDP needs to be retooled by exposing its leadership and followership to a sequence of robust political ideas and its organizational skills must be national and not ethnic or religious basis.

Nigeria in the Image of Sudan 

Nigeria today, is on the brink of the precipice and experts have reasons to believe that she may go the way of Sudan. And all, I repeat, all Nigerians will be losers, all, the 389 ethnic nationalities including the big three - the Nd’igbo, Yoruba and the British created tribe of “Hausa/Fulani” or Fulani/Hausa including all structures, visible and invisible, which took years to build, manufacture and create, will be destroyed. In this document, I have listed ideas earlier sold to Labour Party because of my friendship with Ojukwu even though I was not a member of APGA when Peter Obi was the Governor of Anambra State which LP ignored, believing that we love our country Nigeria and will not allow her to go the way of Sudan. Sudan had an imperial institution - Sudan Political Service (SPS) “the SPS was instituted in 1901, and a regular system of recruiting young university graduates was in place by 1905. These recruits unusually were chosen on the basis, not of examinations but of a series of interviews. It was the duty of the Sudanese government agent in London to sift through hundreds of application forms and letters of recommendation, and then invite a short list of candidates to the selection board in London.” --- Public schoolboys were strongly favored, as were athletes, and it was this particular feature which gave rise to the saying that the Sudan was a country of ‘Blacks ruled by Blues’. ‘Blacks’ referred to the original Arabic name for Sudan, al bilad as-sudan, the Land of the Blacks, while ‘Blues’ referred to the distinction of getting a Blue representing either Oxford or Cambridge in a match against the other universities. Athleticism was greatly valued because of the supposedly sapping nature of the climate. The Sudan, in the words of one later governor general, was not a land for ‘weaklings to master’. The Sudan Political Service was regarded as the elite of the African Service, and enjoyed a prestige comparable with the Indian Civil Service. It conferred even greater distinction, because it was known that getting in was not simply a matter of passing examinations, as was the case for nearly every other branch of the civil service. Service in Sudan was very much about character and not merely brains; Sudan was where the ‘best of the imperial breed’ could exercise an unlimited sway over natives.” [Ghosts of Empire: Britain’s Legacies in the Modern World, Kwasi Kwarteng, pg. 237] Thus the Sudan had the best of British tradition and intention, and provided the image upon which a Muslim North was created. 

It is very clear that the experiment of the British in Sudan encouraged Lord Lugard to recommend amalgamation to the British government aided by the Secretary of State, Lord Harcourt, for the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria on January 1914. Until Independence in 1960, colonial officers in Northern Nigeria were mainly ex-service men from Sudan while the expatriates in the South were civilians who did not attend SPC. AHM Kirk-Greene wrote “one is reminded of the quip about the mutual hostility and regional loyalty of the Administrative staff of the Northern and Southern Provinces of Nigeria up to 1939: if all Nigerians had withdrawn from the country, there would have been a civil war between the two groups of Europeans. The seed of antagonism and division of Europeans of North and Southern Protectorates was planted in us by the British. The North for protection had to promote an ideology - Fulani/Hausa or Hausa/Fulani as the new Nigerian tribe. The amalgamation was thus influenced more from Sudan than London to enable the coast protect the interior. In addition to human nuisance, which helped to promote the conquest mentality which today is responsible for Nigeria’s inability to move from a country to a Nation.

Kirk-Greene wrote “Lugard cited Lord Scarborough, Chairman of the Royal Niger Company, as having declared that the coast ought to pay for the development of the interior, and any other way would be a ‘suicidal policy’. Till date, the coast has religiously developed the interior and thus has made the North arrogant because it sees itself as successor to the colonial British insisting that Western civilization was inferior to Arab civilization.

Why Sudan?

Let me draw your attention to the statement made by our President, Bola Tinubu after INEC declared Senator Monday Okpebholo elected when we all knew that you won the September 2024 election in Edo State. The President was quoted as saying that as he promised, he had delivered Edo State, and has gone further to deliver Ondo State. The question to be asked now is: how did he deliver these two States? It was not that the people of Edo State voted massively for his Party the APC, where INEC provided figures not related to the election. As the saying goes, “go to court” and as you and I know, rather most educated Nigerians know that the court would rubber-stamp INEC’s result. The danger here as it happened in Sudan was that a coup was staged against its President in 2010 which broke the country into two separate entities. In 2011, the Southern Sudan voted for independence to have a Christian leadership while the Animist South against rule by the Arab Muslim North modern Sudan – [North and South] having been threatened of conflict and instability with two length North-South Civil War. Sudan became independent in 1956; 1955 - 1972 was the first Sudanese Civil War between North and South over demand for more regions by Southern Sudan Region. Some 500,000 people were estimated to have been killed. The 1972 peace agreement failed to diffuse the tension, and in 1969 Colonel Nimeiri staged a coup wherein Parliament and political parties where abolished. In 1977, Limited Political Pluralism was introduced, Sharia Islamic Law was introduced in 1983- complete from 1985 - 2005 to 2023.

It is my hope and prayer that President Tinubu understands the meaning of Muslim/Muslim ticket and would not be carried away by people like Senator Ali Ndume to shout Democracy, yet in action he implements a Muslim/Muslim agenda.

My Involvement with Ethnic and Religious Associations

I now believe that my appreciation of amalgamation of 1914 must have shielded me from accepting appointments into government at various levels all these years.

• Rejected nomination to serve as State Commissioner Edo/Delta under General  Agbazika Innih’s government - 1975/76
• Declined the offer of an invitation to the Court of Appeal under Justice Akanbi as President of the Court - 1986
• Declined the offer to serve as Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice in General Sani Abacha’s government – see my CV
• Participated in the Constitution Drafting Committee under Buba Ardo CJ, Borno State or N.E. and the Constituent Assembly 1986 – 89
• And Okurounmu Committee of the National Conference 2013.

Although I rejected all government appointments between 1979 to date, I am proud to be a member of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Benin Branch which six of us were the founding members in 1971. In 1973, then a junior, I was at the Annual Conference held in Kano elected as the National Treasurer, later Secretary, Finance Committee at Sixth Commonwealth Law Conference – 1980; member of the General Council of the Bar 1978 – 1984; Visiting Lecturer for Courses in Civil Procedure at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies – 1985; member of the Council of Legal Education 1979 – 1985; member, Disciplinary Committee, of the General Council of the Bar, 1990 to 1995 and member, Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee 1991 - 1993 (the committee that confers the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria on Lawyers). Of relevance also is my involvement in the Catholic Social Movement (CSM); Christian Social Movement of Nigeria (CSMN); Ethnic Nationalities Movement (ENM); and National Christian Elders Forum (NCEF). The CSMN is a registered trustee harboring all the five blocs of Christians. To this day, CSMN is a think-tank for Christians in Nigeria, the basis upon which this paper is featured and hopes to establish the fact that one North in one Nigeria is a misnomer, is responsible for Nigeria’s inability to transform Nigeria from a country to a Nation. It will be shown in this publication that our colonial masters, who were mainly soldiers, were in substance opposed to Democracy and left a system of “Democracy” that is mere lip service. Unfortunately all that our political leaders that led the country to Independence in 1960 can be summed up as the Black man’s ambition to take over governance from the white, unfortunately our black leaders were unable to appreciate that the white man as humans and racist that preferred the minority Negroid to majority black Negros in Nigeria.

South Paying for the North

While on his way home in May 1905, Lord Lugard drafted a top secret dispatch to the Secretary of States titled ‘Amalgamation of Nigeria’, and it embodies, inter alia, the unique Lugard scheme for continuous administration. But our interest here must be confined to the idea of amalgamation, and as this is Lugard’s first official representation (he was not a member of the Royal Niger Committee of 1898). It is worth piecing together his views on the future of an all-embracing Nigerian administration which can be found here and there in his lengthy memorandum focused on the future government of the North. He raised, for instance, the issue of a common revenue to be ‘spent in the interest of Nigeria as a single and indivisible entity’. This, in Lugard’s view, could only be affected by ‘complete amalgamation under a single Administrator’, a goal which he declared to have been ‘continuously and strenuously’ urged by all the High Commissioners and Governors from 1900 onwards in the belief that the longer such unification was deferred the wider would become the divergence between the policies and practices of each Administration. In support of the respectable ancestry of such an amalgamation, Lugard cited Lord Scarborough, Chairman of the Royal Niger Company, as having declared that the coast ought to pay for the development of the interior, and any other would be a ‘suicidal policy’. Lugard’s premise was typically forthright: ‘The country is essentially one’-a far cry from the divisive feelings often voiced in 1966 and 1967, indicative of grave doubts whether any fundamental basis for unity existed at all. Till date the coast has continued to pay to develop the interior while the interior shows no gratitude or genuine affiliation with the coast.

Kirk-Greene wrote “by the middle of 1914 the situation came very near to boiling over when the Times of Nigeria accusation bluntly alleged in its leader titled: ‘The Hidden Meaning’ that unification was synonymous with a sell-out of the South. ‘The amalgamation of 1914’, it asserted, ‘is, broadly speaking, the conquest and subjugation of Southern Nigeria by Northern Land. Northern Nigeria system, Northern Nigerian laws, Northern Nigerian land laws, Northern Nigerian administration, must be made to supersede every system in Southern Nigeria’. One further weapon was placed in the press’s hands when a copy of a confidential dispatch to the Colonial Office on educational policy sent by Lugard on his way home in S.S. Mendi, was leaked to the Nigerian Chronicle. They printed it in full under the contentious title of ‘The Proposed Installation of Mental Slavery’ and, linking it with the remarks the Governor had made when opening the exhibition of school work in Lagos, made it the cause of a severe attack on him for his alleged plan to curb the educational genius of the South.” [Lugard and the Amalgamation of Nigeria: A Documentary Record on the Amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigerian and Administration, 1912-1919, pg. 24]

A former Lagos civil servant, Ian Nicolson, who has called amalgamation ‘a very saddening experience…. After studying the work of his [Lugard’s] forerunners who administered Southern Nigeria’. In harsh words, he castigates Lugard’s administrative plans as ‘trampling on all the carefully nursed seedlings of civilized government, law and legislature, and substituting authoritarian administrocracy in which the whole emphasis was away from the coast, away from the law and education in its widest sense’, and concludes that Lugard’s amalgamation place Nigeria in a state of arrested development, with its institutions of government left on the whole ‘dormant and static’ for the next thirty years. These contrasting views on the wisdom of the very concept of amalgamating the two Nigerias have been widely revived in 1966-1967. [pg. 26]

When therefore the Sardauna of Sokoto said after the motion by Chief Anthony Enahoro in 1953 calling for Independence in 1956 talked of the mistake of 1914 as an aberration, suggesting that the North was extending favour to the South, when the opposite was the case. The North was able to balance its deficit account with the British treasury, provided a gateway to the sea as well as joint railway. It is time for the South to say loud and clear, it was and still the South that had and has continue to extend favours to the North. Therefore 1914 was a blessing not a mistake for the North. In any case, the North as a colony had no say in the matter. As stated above, there was the plan to curb the “educational genius of the South”. With the benefit of hindsight, for some explained reasons not only education in the South was tampered with, but other infrastructures like railway was halted, e.g. Lagos monorail was halted and a perpetual “wall” was constructed to restrict the development of seaports which the South had monopoly of. It is time that the South begin to speak out, in fact, blow its trumpets because if the South does not do so, it cannot expect the North to do so for it. There is need, in the above circumstance, for policies of minerals, oil and gas to be reviewed.

Minerals

Lugard in his Amalgamation Report at paragraph 92 wrote “I thoroughly subscribe to the view that all mineral syndicates should produce proof that their capital and control are predominantly British. Since minerals in Nigeria are the property of the Government this presents no great difficulty. --- The revised Mineral Ordinance and Regulations of 1916 appear to have given properties, and worked well. --- The imposition of a normal surface rent (1d. to 3d. an acre) became a necessity when the Ordinance was made applicable to the Southern Provinces, where the system of land tenure differs widely from the North.” [pg. 109] From the above, it is very clear that minerals in the hands of the Federal Government are a continuation of colonialism. Should this be stopped? Not yet in any case, 13% derivation is not the solution to the problem. 

North Conquest of the South

It is a statement of fact today, 2024, that the “North” overthrew the Constitution shared the country’s commonwealth and introduced the “conquest mentality” rule. It is safe to conclude that since African States were granted independence beginning with Sudan in 1956, then Ghana in 1957 and Nigeria in 1960, most young Africans in uniform who were so anxious to “inherit” their “fathers’ wealth” – resulted to staging coups that has now been repeated in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger only to promote oligarchy. The whole concept affected State creation in Nigeria except perhaps for the 12 States structure created by General Gowon in 1967, the icing on the cake was the military Constitution of 1999 that entrenched the principle that indigenes own the top-soil but the Federal Government own the sub-soil, the way all minerals in British commonwealth were owned by the British crown. In effect, minerals including oil and gas are owned and controlled by the new colonial masters. The “North” became the sole beneficiary of minerals including oil and gas.

Devolving from the above, it is very clear that Nigeria is the creation of soldiers, first the British soldiers then Nigerian soldiers. The contest between Northern and Eastern soldiers had the same objectives and one wonders whether Nigeria could have been different if Biafra had won, especially for minority ethnic groups.

Political Party

A political party is one of the several types of organizations which under various political systems seek to control the personnel and policy of government. Political parties as defined here as an instrument of Democratic regime in which the chief governmental officials are chosen by election. A clique of military officers that gain control of government and by its command of the Armed Forces of a country is hardly a political party, although it may masquerade as one. A landed aristocracy or traditional ruler that exerts a continuing stress on affairs of the state under an absolute or non-absolute monarchy may play an important role in the governance of the realm but does not constitute a political party. Under dictatorship or oligarchy where one party system has been established to bolster the power of the dictator are not political parties. It is the freedom to form organizations that strive for power by electoral methods that are political parties. So when a “president” is proclaimed by the courts even though there were other candidates in the elections that scored more votes, does not constitute Democracy and the group or platform under which the candidate was supposed to have won the election cannot be construed properly as a political party. In the case of Nigeria of 2024, Nigeria cannot correctly be said to have political parties otherwise all the parties including the All Progressive Congress (APC) would have protested the manner in which the result of the Edo State gubernatorial election of 2024 was conducted without recourse to court of law or tribunal because faulty election or rigged election goes to the core of the existence of political parties in a democratic country. In 1966, there was in Nigeria a military coup, which, very clearly had a tribal influence. The Head of State and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces proscribed without justification, 81 political parties and 26 ethnic and tribal unions. With justification, one can say that till date, political parties and tribal unions remain banned under Decree 33 of 1966, and when Yakubu Gowon took over as Head of State and did not lift the ban. It is my submission that Religious and Tribal unions/associations are no substitute for political parties anywhere in the world and Western countries have shown that Liberal Democracy is still the best form of government invented by humans. Anything different is a poor caricature of Democracy. When Babangida created his new breed politicians, I must confess that I made an input in the exercise in 19---, he did so to ensure that the military continue with a few selected Nigerians to rule. It is my submission that since 1966 when Aguiyi-Ironsi banned political parties, Nigeria has had masquerades of political parties. The real parties were those mentioned, participated in the Constitutional Conferences that compelled the British to grant Independence to Nigeria. The National one was the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), the Regional parties were the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) for the North with only one member from the West - Chief Ukueku. However the NPC had some NCNC members working for them at the National level, the Action Group made incursion in the East and North while Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) in the North some connection with the NCNC and these were the parties that negotiated Independence for Nigeria. 

New Breed Politicians

The new breed political parties including PDP were set up by the military President Ibrahim Babangida was caricature parties, parastatals in the name of political parties which explains why it is not far-fetched that Nigeria may go the way of Sudan. These political parties did not and cannot perform the function of political parties, they are idle most of the year and only become relevant during election waiting for instructions as to which party they should support. They behave and act as operatives of the Secret Services – “Operatives”. Another faulty institution is the Electoral Commission which instead of promoting competitions amongst the parties, decided which political party and/or individual should be declared winner as dictated by the oligarchs of the day usually military men in khaki and agbada or their nominees.

Losing Faith in Democracy

In an article titled Why Africans are losing Faith in Democracy on The Economist of October 7, 2023, which reads in part: “One reason coups have grown more common is that many Africans have lost faith in democracy. Afrobarometer, a pollster, found that the share who prefer democracy to any other form of government has fallen from 75% in 2012 to 66%. In South Africa, which has one of the world’s most liberal constitutions, 72% say that if a non-elected leader could cut crime and boost housing and jobs, they would be willing to forgo elections. Incumbent regimes, most of which claim to be democratic, have brought neither prosperity nor security. More people are dying in small conflicts than at any point since at least 1989. The reason for this is that of the three arms of government, the Legislature and Head of the State, President, etc are free for all. Political parties with the major functions are non-existent in fact. PDP with the right direction will soon catch up the ANC of South Africa founded in 1912. I must emphasize that Africa the Dark Continent, Africa has done very well since the 1950s and the 60s when African countries were granted independence. Africa for thousands of years had jakpa to civilization and have suffered rule by African Traditional Rulers, slave raiders, slavery, colonialism before Independence. African need to graduate to full Democracy and that is what the PDP Edo State must set out to do notwithstanding the fact that the Presidential Election of 2023 and Edo State Election of 2024, were not how to protect Democracy. 

Nigeria would have been a different place, had Babangida allowed Nigerians to establish political parties rather than imposing parastatals which he called “New Breed politicians”, who knows, we may have had an Igbo man as elected Governor of Sokoto. After all, under NCNC we had Alhaji Altine as Mayor of Enugu, Ekuyasi, an Ibo representing Edo of Benin City. Premier Ahmadu Bello would not have regarded Enahoro’s motion for Independence as a mistake which encourage NPC to promote riot in Kano ostensibly against the Yoruba only for it to be turned against Ibo because a dead Nd’igbo means death to a kafir. The same would not have been said when Yoruba who had many Muslims killed; Sir Ahmadu Bello himself lamented the Kano riot against Nd’igbo in 1959 was not intended for the Nd’igbo but Action Group. 

Sudan of Today

Sudan today is a ghost country with the herdsmen (Janjaweed) actually the tools of conquest that were and are carefully co-ordinated, controlled organized and funded by the Sudanese military. The military and the herdsmen after joining hands to overthrow Al-Bashir are now at each other’s throats. Genocide returned to Darfur October 2023 when survivors tell of mass slaughter, murdered babies and killings spree. After surviving weeks of gunfire and rockets directed at the Masilit a black African ethnic group the Masilit fled to Chad. Fighters wearing the uniform of Rapid Support Force (RSF) dragged men to the side and shot them. Sudan today is very much like a country under a violent tsunami that has reduced it into rubbles and would cost much to rebuild if ever this is contemplated. Khartoum the “Paris” of Africa at one time have been reduced to a dump site and it is my prayer that Nigeria does not come to the level of present Sudan that has lost everything.

The Nigerian

Factor At this juncture, permit me to tell the story of a lady who was born in London to Nigerian parents but relocated to Nigeria to begin her education. She found Nigeria her home country too harsh for her disposition and returned to her place of birth unlike my daughter Ifueko, though born in Lagos, is not a Lagosian by Nigerian law. She returned to her country of birth, As Bishop Kukah wrote “at that event, at only 30 years old, she had spoken about her journey into politics barely 15 years after returning to the UK at the age of 16. She spoke of her experience with white British teachers who had discouraged her from contemplating going to Oxford because she would be boxing well above her weight. She said that when she informed a white female member of the Labour Party of her plans to join the Conservative Party, the lady had considered it a sign of ingratitude and a lack of appreciation of what the Labour Party had done for people of her kind. In the end, she said, she had joined the Conservative Party because, its ideology aligned with her personal beliefs. Seven years later, Kemi Badenoch now sits at the highest pedestal of a Party she joined barely ten years ago. This is a feat that is moment defining and will remain a major marker in the future of British politics.” I don’t know how you joined the PDP. All I know is that I assisted Professor Omo Omoruyi to fine-tune the two new breed political parties the National Republican Convention (NRC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), and later the Alliance for Democracy (AD) of which I was elected Legal Adviser. I concur with former President Shehu Shagari that Nigeria has had two political parties - the military and the civilians. The military whether in uniform or agbada has tried to emasculate the civilians by the establishment of a one-party State in Nigeria. Fortunately, Democracy is fighting back and the military is now compelled to return to the barracks even though their experiment on Democracy is still affecting the politics of Nigeria. Nigeria needs a political party that will mobilize public opinion to appreciate the dangers of going the Sudan way especially when Nigeria was “created” in the mould of Sudan.

This solution is to remind all Nigerians of the past in the hope that it will influence the present and the future and that no better example can be found than the Sudan. One has 12 witnessed and participated in elections since 1954, and can confirm that the only free, fair and credible election was that of June 12, 1993, when Chief MKO Abiola was elected but the “North” did not approve of handing over power to a Southerner at the time.

I was also one of the lead counsels for Chief Olu Falae at the Presidential Election against Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999. After the election, Chief Obasanjo boasted that he won 60% of the total votes. I had to correct the misconception at the lecture I gave at the Holy Cross Cathedral, Mission Road, Benin City that the election was won by Chief Olu Falae and evidence of this fact were the Forms EC 8A which were handed to me by the Electoral Commission. When later I saw the then Chairman of the Electoral Commission, late Hon Justice Ephraim Akpata JSC (rtd), he threatened to sue me. Fortunately, he did not before passing on. That also explains my rejection of a brief by now Senator Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole who wanted me to represent him at the Electoral Tribunal in 2008. I declined and told him that he does not need a good lawyer and that all he needed was to conform to the concept of the “North”. He listened to my advice and won. I have refused election related cases up till last year (2023) when I indicated my desire to join the Labour Party as an ideologue, but did not hear from the leadership. I appeared for a client who was a member of the Labour Party and the Party itself at the Election Tribunal and at the Court of Appeal.  

National Conference 2014

I was a member of the Okurounmu’s Committee (2013) for the Constitutional Conference of 2014. Fortunately or unfortunately, I was the only member of the Committee who was denied membership at the main Conference headed by Chief Justice Idris Kutigi. In his memoirs titled The Dream: Pursuing The Black Renaissance Through The Murky Waters of Nigerian Politics, Senator Femi Okurounmu wrote: “I sought a private audience with Anyim and persuaded him to replace Nyiam with Chief Solomon Asemota. He wanted an assurance that Asemota would accept the appointment and I promised to contact Chief Ayo Adebanjo to prevail on him to do so. Chief Adebanjo did contact Chief Asemota and obtained an assurance from him that he would accept the job. Thereupon, he contacted me and I passed the assurance to Anyim, leading to the formal announcement of Chief Solomon Asemota as a member of the Committee to replace Col. Tony Nyiam. I was sure of Asemota’s commitment to the national conference because we had agitated together for it for many years and on many fora, first on the Ethnic Nationalities Forum, and also on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy (AD). His inflexibility, however, later proved nearly disastrous for me. [pg. 484]”  

Permit me to state that I was one of the members of the Patriots led by Prof. Ben Nwabueze that visited Dr. Goodluck Jonathan in 2013 calling for a National Conference. A Committee was thereafter set up with Prof. Nwabueze as a member but he could not be part and asked me to represent him because he was hospitalized in the UK. The main reason for Nwabueze’s objection was professional. As the doyen of the legal profession at the time and Chairman of The Patriots, I could not say no, (in any case, Nwabueze taught me Constitutional Law at the University of Lagos in 1964). At the conclusion of the Okurounmu Committee’s assignment, I submitted a Minority Report, which the Chairman, Sen. Femi Okurounmu and others in the Committee refused to include in the Main Report on the flimsy argument that the Committee was one and could only submit one Report. I decided to send my Minority Report to the Presidency which Pius Anyim Pius said he could not infuse because it is a “one-Commission Report”. I still maintain that issues concerning Constitutional Law and Justice should be left to lawyers to guide others; to have made Okurounmu chairman with Nwabueze as a member and later on myself, was wrong and should not be repeated. Out of deference to Professor Ben Nwabueze I agreed to serve and even my effort was not appreciated because the Committee was programmed to take one direction while I took the opposite. This is the fate that befell the legal profession in Nigeria, where juniors and lawyers are place above their seniors, Magistrates trying Chief Justice, all to rubbish the traditions of the legal profession diluted with Sharia is proof of conquest mentality of the North.

Okurounmu wrote in his book that: “beginning from December 2003, the Nd’igbo, led by Dim Emeka Ojukwu and the Afenifere had initiated a conjoined consultative meeting for the discussion of Nigeria’s manifold problems. The first meeting was held on 2 December, 2003, in the Law office of Chief Solomon Asemota who was the convener. The meeting observed ‘that all Nigerian Ethnic Nationalities except the Hausa/Fulani agreed that a National Conference is necessary to draw a New Constitution, because the 1999 Constitution provides the basis for injustice now being perpetuated against the Nigerian people. The said constitution is biased in favor of some ethnic nationalities. A National Conference from which a New Ideological Group will emerge in addition to a New Constitution that will provide for welding the 389 ethnic nationalities into a nation was considered the best, feasible and non-violent option which should be pursued immediately…’ It was further agreed that ‘the South-West and the South-East leaders and the convener should immediately go into further discussions and plan to invite other nationalities into the fold’. Those who attended the meeting were Sir Olaniwun Ajayi, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Sen. Femi Okurounmu, Prince Jide Akinbiyi, for Afenifere; and Dim Emeka Ojukwu, Chief Chekwas Okorie, Chief Kalu Idika Kalu, and Engr. Odi Nwosu for Nd’igbo. That meeting eventually evolved into the Ethnic Nationalities Forum which gave birth to the Ethnic Nationalities Movement. Afenifere was a very strong pillar of the Ethnic Nationalities Forum whose co-leaders were Pa Reuben Fasoranti, Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu and Barr Solomon Asemota, with Hon. Mike Orobator as Secretary. The Forum, on the 27th of May 2004 held a Press Conference captioned “The Social-Political Issues that Threaten Sustainable Peace and the Very Survival of Nigeria”. [pg. 420] [Emphasis supplied] By appointing Sen. Okurounmu as Chairman of the Committee, the “North” took the wind out of the Patriot’s sail as he was never a member of the Patriots founded by Chief Rotimi Williams and Professor Ben Nwabueze. No wonder the Constitutional Conference failed and, today we are back to square one - slavery mentality. 

The “North” Does Not Believe in Democracy

One cannot help but agree with Kwasi Kwarteng when he wrote “Independence finally came on 1 October 1960. The new federal Prime Minister, responsible for the central government, was another Northerner called Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, but everyone believed him to be a creation of the Sardauna, who had earlier told an American journalist that he would leave the job of being Nigeria’s prime minister to ‘one of my lieutenants’. There had been elections in 1959 in which none of the three tribally based parties had secured an overall majority, but in which each had won handsome majorities in its home region. The Northern Region was the most populous of the three regions, with about 50 per cent of the country’s population, so it was not surprising when the Northern Peoples’ Congress (NPC) captured 134 out of 312 seats in the 1959 pre independence parliament, all of which were in the North. In the East, the Igbos had won eighty-nine seats, while the Yoruba Action Group in the West won seventy-three. The next five years were ‘characterized by political crises’ as each of the three main parties fought for ‘supremacy over the federal government’. That there were three regions, each with its own ethnically based party, was wildly destabilizing and the perfect recipe for ‘ethnic combat’. --- All parties were ‘locked in a ferocious competition for a larger share from the national treasury’: ‘Tribalism became the ideology of politics.’ As population would influence the allocation of seats, censuses became keenly contested, --- In 1952, before the final constitution had been settled on, people had been under-counted in the census taken that year, because it was believed that the census was an instrument by which the colonial government would collect more taxes. In 1962, after independence, the census was now believed to affect political representation and so figures increased dramatically in many regions. The 1962 census was said to have cost £1.5 million, but the figures were never published. The Sardauna of Sokoto was reportedly upset by the findings when he saw that the unofficial figures showed that, while the North’s population had gone up 30 percent from 16.8 million in 1952 to 22.5 million, some of the Eastern areas claimed increases of 200 per cent. The Western returns also gave an increase of 70 per cent. The implications of all this were clear: it was rumored that the North no longer contained half the population and so could easily be dominated by a combination of the other two regions. When shown the results of the 1962 census, the Sardauna was said to have ‘torn up the figures in disgust’ and to have ordered Tafawa Balewa, the federal Prime Minister, ‘to try again’. Balewa did try again. Another census was conducted in November 1963, in which the Northern Region managed to ‘find’ another 7 million people more than the previous year and now, with a population of 29.8 million, there was no question of the north not having more than half of Nigeria’s population of 55 million. Dr. Michael Okpara, Premier Minister of the Eastern Region, the Igbo-dominated area, rejected the census on the grounds that the ‘Northern figures were fraudulent’. Satisfied with the new figures, the Sardauna allowed the federal Prime Minister to publish them, which he did without consulting the other regional premiers. Elections took place at the end of 1964 in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and disillusionment. It was clear that the only issue at stake was whether the north would dominate Nigeria, or whether the two regions in the south could muster enough seats to counterbalance the Northern bloc.” 

The Northern elites clearly resented these newcomers and managed to keep the immigrants in so-called strangers’ communities, where, because of the difference of religion, schooling was segregated and two different societies existed side by side. --- ‘Southern Nigerian system is turning out every year hundreds of Europeanized Africans’,--- Fifty years of colonial rule had failed to bridge this gap. --- It was not possible to become a Northerner by simply settling in the North, since an individual had to be born into a Northern tribe to be considered a true Northerner. --- After the elections at the end of 1964, the Easterners openly threatened secession and there was anarchy in the Western Region, while in the North the Sardauna was still trying to keep out Southern influences in order to consolidate his power. It was obvious that by 1964 that the Federation of Nigeria was falling apart. [Ghosts of Empire – Britain’s Legacies in the Modern World, pgs. 303 – 305] 0 I agree with his views concerning census that should be included in PDP’s manifesto. Professor Omo Omoruyi also supported the view when he wrote that the North does not believe in democracy “Alhaji Saleh told me in his own words, the definition of democracy: “professor, my vote is not the same weight as the vote of the Emir of Bauchi and the Emir of Bauchi is not the same weight as the vote of the Sultan of Sokoto” he then said “that is why we are not going to accept the mandate which Chief Abiola is claiming”. He added that if I was able to develop a new political education programme to reflect this new and curious philosophy of democracy. I would get money and much more from the head of state for the center and for myself. It was obvious that he was thinking of buying me just as many people I had always respected gave up their honour and collected money from the regime’s handlers during this period.” [Tales of June 12 – The Betrayal of the Democratic Rights of Nigerians (1993), pg. 34] It is safe to suggest that till date the “North” does not accept Democracy.

Willink’s Commission

In 1958 the Willink’s Commission set up to identify the fear of minorities, identified the British creation of Fulani/Hausa or Hausa/Fulani as “a system of rule and of society where the important ingredient is the Muslim law.” In other words, the North accepts only those who are not born in the North but accept Muslim rule as Northerners. Till date the amorphous ideology North is still being practiced by some Northerners.

The Willink’s Commission and the ideology of Fulani/Hausa as a tribe created by the British and some Muslim scholars, who insist that the “North” which is another name for Hausa/Fulani or Fulani/Hausa and the religion of Islam and Islamic way of life, must be accepted by anyone who wants to be regarded as a Northerner. Today, have Tinubu as a Muslim and President. The PDP had Atiku Abubakar and Wike who professed to be PDP but at the same time APC. This ideological thought that the Hausa/Fulani will be leaders of APC and PDP encouraged the Nd’igbo, I suspect to promote Ohaneze Nd’igbo with the Ijaws working very hard to be recognized as the fourth tribe. When Nigeria’s wealth is shared among the big three and an aspiring fourth member, nothing will be left for the other 385 tribes.

In 1937, Southern Nigeria was broken into East and West which began the identity politics in Nigeria. Later, twelve States by General Gowon cannot be regarded as an identity politics, but one of survival as it weakened Biafra. However my friend and mentor Prof. Ben Nwabueze a very enlightened Nd’igbo promoted its vision of identity politics, with the establishment of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, which affected me as a Catholic.

Present Day Traditional Institutions in Nigeria

Before I conclude, I want to restate that the future of Nigeria and Africa are in your hands. As colonial subjects, Nigeria was classified as Negros and Negriods; the blacks and not so black.  

Recently, traditional rulers are often mentioned in relation to the type of government, for us, Nigeria outside Democracy, this is dangerous. We must not be misled by military apologists who after staging coups and benefited more from its spoils now want a new dynasty in which military men will hold sway. After the overthrow of General Yakubu Gowon in 1975, his subordinates concentrated on how best to spend the wealth of the Nation population and land mass that were assets in themselves became principles for sharing the Nation’s wealth. Minority tribes in which the wealth of the Nation – (oil and gas) became colonized people.

It is now time that we re-examined our past to avoid its mistakes, and Sudan became an example by choice. To avoid mistakes of Sudan, one cannot but agree with Kwasi Kwarteng when he wrote: “Lugard was a great theorist of imperialism and his greatest legacy in the British Empire and to Nigeria was the doctrine of indirect rule. In many ways, Goldie had anticipated this, in his eagerness, as early as the 1880s, to keep the chiefs and local rulers happy. As Long as trade was unimpeded, he was content for local rulers to enjoy their traditional powers. Lugard translated this into a deliberate doctrine, even though once again it was the actual circumstance, the prevailing shortage of money with which to govern Nigeria, that drove the policy in the first instance. Indirect rule was a function of necessity more than it was an attempt to allow people to govern themselves. It was a practical, not a theoretical, commitment to self-determination or to any other grandiose idea. Lugard himself saw indirect rule as a better policy than a ‘regime laid down by regulations from Whitehall’. The old individualistic spirit, the spirit of 'anarchic individualism’, is always present in his life and work. The ‘all-pervading love of freedom’ which Lugard believed was the 'most notable characteristic’ of British colonial policy was derived from the 'individual instincts of each Englishman from the highest to the most junior’. This spirit of individualism meant that each of the fifty dependencies of the Crown, which Lugard distinguished from the ‘self-governing Dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa', had 'its own policy adapted to the character and traditions of its people. Indirect rule worked because it meant that the 'fifty or a hundred different Native administrations’ in Nigeria were free to develop in their own way, ‘subject only to a general scheme of policy’. As far as Lugard was concerned, democracy had taken several centuries to develop in Britain itself, and was not even an 'unqualified success in Europe' in the 1920s; Mussolini's Italy had 'discarded' it. Democracy simply was not ‘adapted to the mentality or traditions of Eastern or of African races’.” [Ghosts of Empire, pgs. 290 - 291] I submit that Democracy is the answer and political parties rather than ethnic and religion that held sway before Democracy was invented.  

Conclusion

Having contested Edo State gubernatorial election under the PDP platform and won but declared the loser by the Electoral Commission. You are now before the Electoral Tribunal, hoping that it will reverse the decision of the Electoral Commission. I have in this paper, traced the history of Democracy and elections in Nigeria that suggest that now that we are not as rich as in the past, there is need for younger professionals to come together to prevent our country from going the way of Sudan, that forsake democracy for extreme Islamism. It is my hope that this paper will stimulate you and others to promote talk talk than war war or jihad. At my old age, I am prepared to join the “jaw jaw”, so as to have a superior argument. Meanwhile, we expect the courts to live up to expectation.

God bless Nigeria Dated in Benin City, this 1st day of January 2025

Coming just after a visit to General Ibrahim Babangida, Mr Peter Obi at an early morning press conference on Thursday latched onto President Bola Tinubu in a way he has refrained from since  the last presidential election campaign.

It was easy to speculate that the 2023 Labour Party presidential candidate may have been emboldened by words of courage he picked up during his visit to Babangida.

However, President Tinubu is one who is not deterred by challengers as he is wont to do what pleases him irrespective of whose ox is gored.

Even more, is it any surprise that the Tinubu government is the first since the advent of the Fourth Republic not to have a retired or serving military officer in any serious position?

So, for Peter Obi aiming to draw courage or inspiration from Babangida in the coming 2027 war may be far-fetched if that is part of strategy to grab power and run away with it in 2027.

Famed as among the ‘owners’ of Nigeria, General Babangida alongside some three other Generals, namely Olusegun Obasanjo, Theophilus Danjuma, General Aliyu Gusau and lately Abdulsalami Abubakar were believed ‘ have foisted Atiku Abubakar on the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP ticket in 2019. Then, they were said to have positioned the former Customs man as their choice to push Muhammadu Buhari. The myth around them was solidified when to the shock of many, their emissary who arrived just before the PDP convention kicked off in Port-Harcourt successfully pulled the strings to humiliate Nyesom Wike in his backyard at Port-Harcourt where the convention took place.

Wike had pulled out all the stops to push his former friend, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal for the PDP ticket. But he was shocked on the convention night when Atiku to the shock of many emerged. However, the myth around the owners of Nigeria melted in the General Election when Buhari easily won for himself the presidential election.

So, Peter Obi consulting or receiving inspiration from Babangida may matter little to Tinubu.

But that does not remove from the substance of some issues Obi raised at the press conference.

Fundamental to those issues was his claim that the president is too far removed from the pains of the ordinary Nigerian.

Obi who won popularity among his supporters during the last campaign for his ability to use figures in pushing his claim and with it notoriety from his critics for supposedly churning fake figures was on point as concerning the ratio of Tinubu’s presence in Nigeria and abroad.

According to Peter Obi, President Tinubu has spent 180 of his 580 days in office abroad. That approximates to 31% of his time in office. In practical terms, it means that the president is spending one day out of every three days out of the country.

This is especially worrisome and is not a matter for politicising. The trips abroad are often couched as necessary to woo private investments into the country.

This narration betrays the fact that investments are not necessarily won by the personal visits of the president or his delegation but by the investment climate in the country.

Trade offices and diplomats from foreign countries in Nigeria are always available to tell their citizens and potential investors the truth about the prospects of committing investments into Nigeria.

It is best for President Tinubu to commit more of his days to Nigeria and with it the chances of working out the solutions to the multifarious issues bedevilIng the country.

The example of the late president of Tanzania, John Magufuli who only travelled once out of his country while he was president between 2015 and 2021 is exemplary. In the period GDP growth rate with the exception of one year hovered around 5%. It is telling that he stayed back and addressed the issues in his country that made room for foreign and local capital to be harnessed.

Obi may have spoken truth to power even if it is at the cost of more isolation from political actors who he claimed are afraid of relate with him because they fear losing out from the patronages of the APC government.

Obi was not specific in his charges especially as he alleged persecution from the agents of state. These are weighty allegations that some like us may see as political sophistry but if he is sure, he should boldly come out with the evidence. In that way, the democracy he is helping to build will be helped in addressing the malignancy that comes from one man rule.  

Fifty-seven years ago almost to the month, celebrated Kenya political scientist, Ali Mazrui, observed that “for some reason, a disproportionate number of the historic acts of violence in Africa since independence have tended to happen in the months of January and February”. He had good reason for this. 

In January 1961, the Belgians and the Americans arranged to hand over to Moise Tshombe in Katanga, Patrice Lumumba, the inconvenient post-colonial prime minister of the country now known as the Democratic of the Congo. The following month, the world learnt of the brutal fate that befell Lumumba. The Congo and indeed Africa have both paid a heavy price for those events. 

Togo’s first president, Sylvanus Olympio, was killed in January 1963. Two years later, in January 1965, Pierre Ngendandumwe, Burundi’s prime minister, was assassinated. 

In the year before the assassination of Ngendandumwe, meanwhile, Ugandan, John Okello, led the overthrow of Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah in the very bloody Zanzibar Revolution. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) would later record with clinical economy that the effect of the revolution was that “the Arab regime of Zanzibar vanished in a single day as its leaders fled, died or were interned”.

The year after the assassination in Burundi, it was the turn of Nigeria’s prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, together with the regional premiers in the northern and western regions. The following month, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown while on his way to see Mao Tse Tung in Beijing, China. 

Professor Mazrui never did manage a dispositive answer to his question as to whether there is “any special reason why the opening months of January and February from year to year should have had such a disproportionate share of Africa’s great acts of turbulence?” Instead, he offered a telling insight, arguing that these events were the fallouts of the search for two forms of legitimacy essential to the trajectory of Africa after the colonial experience. One was the legitimacy of the state and the other was the legitimacy of regimes or of rulers.

Nearly six decades later, these twin problems of state and regime legitimacy continue to afflict African countries but the ways in which different countries now respond to them have arguably made our collective African Januaries a little more interesting.

In many countries, elections – rather than assassinations – have become the chosen path. In 2024, the people defenestrated ruling parties in Botswana, Ghana, Senegal, and even South Africa. Namibia’s ruling party edged a contest that produced the country’s first female president in an act of political survival for the ruling SWAPO that may just have postponed its day of electoral reckoning. 

Some of the elections during the year, of course, re-enacted familiar scenes from a discredited part in Africa’s history. Tunisia’s election in October 2024 arranged to re-select law professor and incumbent president, Kais Saied, with 90.7% of the votes cast. It was like a scene from the period before the Arab Spring. 

Since the turn of the millennium, however, many of Africa’s elections have been increasingly decided by judges, not voters. In the latest example, in Mozambique, the ruling FRELIMO party procured a judicial validation of an election widely seen as heavily rigged in its favour. A country already ravaged by a murderous insurgency in its northern region of Cabo Delgado and a destructive cyclone must now live with self-inflicted ungovernability. The Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), in power since independence in 1966, made a different choice when the people rejected it.

Judicial involvement in elections is not without high risk to the judges involved or to political stability. To deliver their judgment nullifying the rigged presidential election in 2020, the Malawi Defence Forces arranged to clothe all five judges of the Constitutional Court of Malawi who sat on the case with bullet-proof vests. 

In the same year, by contrast, the ruling party in Mali chose to steal through the courts 31 seats won by the opposition in parliament. The result was an uprising that led first to the dissolution of the Constitutional Court, and later the overthrow of the government in a military coup.

Ghana’s 2024 election was the first in nearly one and a half decades not to end up in the courts. The candidate of the ruling party and incumbent Vice-President, Mahamudu Bawumia, conceded the race long before a far-from-credible electoral commission had got around to announcing any results.  Ahead of the election, the opposition had made it clear that they would not contemplate going to court if they were denied victory. In his concession, Bawumia saved the country from what would have been an assured date with instability.

Judges do not always wait until after the ballot to weigh in with their own votes. In Burundi in 2015, President Pierre Nkurunziza was determined to run for a third term even though it seemed clear that he was constitutionally barred from doing so. The case ended up before the Constitutional Court where the judges initially decided to uphold term limits barring the president from running for a third term. Under pressure from a barrage of very personalised presidential threats, the vice-president of the Constitutional Court, Sylvere Nimpagaritse, fled into exile and “the remaining judges then changed their decision in Nkurunziza’s favour”.

The model of judicial overthrow of the popular will and its replacement with judges as the only eligible voters is, of course, an exclusively Nigerian invention. The politicians who control Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) are quick to intone “go to court” at the end of every rigged election, secure in the knowledge that they have also rigged the courts and have many of the judges safely locked away inside their bedrooms. 

In the 2023 election cycle, over 81 percent of the seats contested ended up being decided by the judges. This business model of managing elections is bad both for democracy and for the independence of the judiciary. 

First, it denies citizens the right to decide who governs them or on what platform. 

Second, the way in which judges achieve this result is not much different from the toppling of elective government by soldiers with guns. The only difference when the judges do it is that they deploy the artifice of law when in fact what they seek to do is to replace legality with corrupt whim. 

Third, the depth of judicial involvement in elections in Nigeria makes the judiciary a plaything of the politicians who have every incentive to capture and corrupt it. 

Fourth, this creates an internal market in judicial business that casualizes all but political cases where the judges involved increase their chances of trading in judicial power and legitimacy for cash or powerful networks at the hands of politically exposed litigants. 

In 2025, Nigeria will enter the foothills of another major election cycle. With all the political parties all but defanged, the main theatre of activity will be the judiciary. In Imo State, for instance, where the National Judicial Council (NJC) has removed the Chief Judge for falsifying her age, the State Governor has chosen not to designate any replacement because, ostensibly, he does not find the options available politically palatable.  

In the elections in Tanzania this year and in Uganda at the end of the year, judges will be very active in persecuting regime opponents. In Nigeria, that is already routine even before the electoral gong tolls. The upshot is almost assuredly to guarantee uncertainty instead of ending it. 

When he wrote in 1968, Ali Mazrui thought that the opening months of the year seemed to guarantee turbulence in Africa. Today, that tendency occurs all year round. Far from becoming less turbulent, Africa’s January may have infected the remaining months of the year with a turbulent contagion.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.