Chapter Three The Trouble with Nigeria Nigeria has long been seen as a project that has failed or is failing. However, scholars disagree about the nature of the problem, whether the problem can be fixed or is worth fixing, and the potential consequences of fixing or not fixing the problem. One approach that has been consistently suggested to both understand and fix the problem is to convene a Sovereign National Conference (SNG) of all ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. The criteria for including a group in this dialogue is the group’s maintenance of pre-colonial boundaries wherein every ethnic grouping was a nation state. The use of this criteria is understandable considering that not much has changed from the precolonial era despite the many boundary delimitation projects, the haphazard creation of 36 states, a Federal Capital Territory, and 774 Local Government Councils from three regions in 1960. The pre-colonial ethnic configuration continues to form the bases of national identity with people identifying as Hausa-Fulani, Igbo, Yoruba, or Ijaw before they identify as Nigerians. Pro-democracy groups and activists during the long period of military rule from 1983 to 1999 first canvassed the need for a national dialogue, which continues to resonate with segments of the Nigerian population at home and in the diaspora. Many of these groups and the individuals who led them faced intimidation and harassment from military dictators who wanted to extend their rule indefinitely. Many other groups have since joined the clamor for SNG. The desires of the pro- dialogue groups were fulfilled on 1 October 2013, when President Goodluck Jonathan announced that in “response to the yearnings of our people,”1 his administration would conduct a “national conversation”2 to solve some of the country’s more pressing problems. According to him, the conversation could not be convened at a more auspicious time since on 1 January 2014, “Nigeria will be 100 years old as a country following the amalgamation of the protectorates of Southern and Northern Nigeria in 1914.”3 The president proposed the national conversation to “in this last year of the first century of our union,”4 address “our future as a nation and a people.”5 A nation and people that he believes “are divided in many ways – ethnically, religiously, politically, and materially.”6 These divisions “stoke tension and bring about friction … [and] it makes perfect sense for the interested parties to come together to discuss.”7 In preparation for the national conversation, the president appointed an Advisory Committee “to establish the modalities”8 for the national conference and to “design a framework and come up with recommendations as to the form, structure and mechanism of the process.”9 The president appointed Femi Okunroumu, octogenarian, ethnic Yoruba, former senator, and avowed Awoist,10 as the chairperson of the committee. On October 7, 2013, the president inaugurated the 13-member Advisory Committee on National Dialogue with a commission to “facilitate a most acceptable process”11 for holding the national dialogue. The Committee, which began sitting almost immediately – including a controversial sitting in Benin City that made headline news more for the spat between Governor Adams Oshiomole, a critic of the conference, and Colonel (Rtd) Tony Nyiam, a member of the Committee – submitted its 4,000 page report to President Jonathan on 18 December 2013.12 13 The National Conference (NC) has since held and its report submitted to former President Jonathan, who sat on it, refusing even to present it to the National Assembly that was dominated by his party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). That report is still gathering frost in the cooler despite the hundreds of millions of Naira spent to organize it. President Jonathan’s decision to convoke the national dialogue is not without precedent. Past governments convoked various forms of national and constitutional conferences with mixed results.14 15 While some of the conferences yielded new constitutions or amendments to existing constitutions, the results of other conferences were either completely discarded or were selectively applied in ways that, overall, made very little impact on the national problematic. President Jonathan’s decision, however, is noteworthy in many respects. Firstly, it was the first time, especially in an election cycle, that a Nigerian government will publicly acknowledge fundamental problems with the structural foundations of the nation and the need for comprehensive dialogue to fix it. Past presidents denied that Nigeria had deep structural challenges, preferring to blame people, especially political opponents, for the country’s woes. Secondly, the conference was convened at a time of great political ferment and perturbation due to the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency and preparations for the 2015 presidential election. Considering that elections are typically fractious in Nigeria and the 2015 presidential elections had shaped up to be even more so with deep divisions – religious, ethnic, economic, cultural, political, etc. – converging on a national scale, the convoking of the national dialogue created fear and panic about the possible breakup of Nigeria. Thirdly, the idea of charting a “future” for Nigeria nearly 100 years after its founding and amid criticism that Nigeria is not a nation but “a mere geographical expression,”16 an “evil entity,”17 and an “artificial creation,”18 made this new effort both promising and fraught with danger. For instance, while the government believed that the conference would help resolve longstanding contradictions that continue to fuel suspicions and tensions, opponents of the conference feared its potential to expose deep frailties, including the national bifurcation between north and south that may conspire to transform such national dialogue into open confrontation with the potential to create instability. In a potentially fractious election cycle, this may create numerous second and third order problems, including the possibility that some members of the elite that are steeped in ethnic and regional politics may exploit the process to push for secession. Despite these or because of these, there was much skepticism about the national dialogue even among those that clamorously advocated for it in the past.19 Many former advocates, especially those in opposition political parties or movements, questioned President Jonathan’s motivation for convoking the dialogue at the time. More specifically, they questioned the source of the president’s optimism that the dialogue could solve the nation’s many problems considering his staunch opposition to the conference in the past. Thus, without saying so, the president’s opponents saw the move as mere political grandstanding to buy political goodwill from segments of the population, particularly the southwest, that had visceral opposition to the president’s second term push. Indeed, ethno-national groups like the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) and a section of Afenifere bought the president’s idea and saw in it the opportunity to articulate the Yoruba position and conditions for continued partnership in the Nigerian federation. However, any credit that the president might have earned for convoking the dialogue, which cost tax payers about 7 billion Naira, was vitiated by the president’s decision to withhold the conference results from congress or to implement it; instead, using the report as a campaign tool to win votes. In campaign stumps for 2015 re-election in Lagos, President Jonathan promised to implement the report only if he was given a second presidential term. He lost the election by about 3 million votes, ending the People’s Democratic Party’s 16-years political dominance. The fact that he lost the election with no chance that the incoming administration that boycotted the dialogue, means that the exercise was a huge drain on the country’s lean resources and symbolic of the president’s inability to prioritize governance objectives, needs, and activities. It is because of this inability to prioritize that the president was criticized throughout his rule as “clueless” and “ideologically empty.” Whatever the case, the desire for a national conversation, whether sovereign or not, is borne out of frustration over the growing divisions, which are producing not just suspicions but also armed violence. The central argument of this chapter is that the roots of the insurgencies in Nigeria are traceable to Nigeria’s foundation, specifically the British colonial statecraft that merged ethnic nationalities without creating the type of behavioral assertions needed to form nationhood.20 This colonial legacy continues to blight opportunities for nationhood, buttressing Margery Perham’s observation that “the day when Nigeria becomes a true federation, still more a nation, is still far away.”21 Over the years, the divisions have deepened with unhealthy competition among Nigeria’s ethnic, regional, religious, and political groups. These problems form the bedrock of issues discussed at the national dialogue and are at the heart of This Troubled Land. A Brief History of Nigeria In the beginning, there was no Nigeria. There were: Kingdoms like Oyo, Lagos, Calabar, Brass, Itsekiri, Benin, Tiv, Borno, Sokoto Caliphate (with loose control over Kano, Ilorin and Zaria etc.), Bonny, Opobo etc. Prior to the British conquest of the different nations making up the present day Nigeria, these nations were independent nation states and communities independent of