For a century before
the advent of British administration in Nigeria. the Fulani provided the ruling
class of most Northern Nigeria. The notable exception is the Bornu Emirate to
the northeast which is inhabited by the Kanuri. What we now know as the
provinces of Sokoto, Gwandu. Katsina. Kano. Zaria. Bauchi. Adamawa. Plateau and
Niger fell under varying degrees to the influence of the Fulani aristocracy.
Northern Nigeria was by no means a void nor was it without history. We do not
propose to delve into ancient history. This is hardly a useful exercise here.
Suffice it to say that British expansion met established Hausa states at
varying levels of development and prosperity. There were in all at this stage
14 Hausa states which comprised. Daura, Kano, Zaria, Gobir, Katsina, Rono and
Biram (the Hausa Bakwai or legitimate 7 states); Zamfara. Kebbi, Nupe, Gwari,
Gauri, lIorin (Yoruba) and Kwararafa (the banza Bakwai or upstart seven which
developed to the south and west of the original group). Each state had its own
traditions and legends of origin and at varying degrees had embraced or come
under the influence of Islam. It has been said that it would be strictly
incorrect :0 refer to these Hausa
states as if they belonged to the same ethnic group. They were people who spoke
the Hausa language and adopted the Hausa mode of dress and life generally.
When the 19th
Century opened, the Fulani appeared to be the predominant race in the Sudan.
Fulani is the Hausa name for the people who call themselves Fulbe. They
themselves made a distinction between the Cattle Fulani and the Town
Fulani; the latter included the aristocratic families such as the Torobe.
The origin of these people is less than clear. What is more certain, however,
is that by the 16th century, there was a steady movement of those Fulani
people from the region now known as Senegal towards the East through Messina
and the Hausa states toward Chad and Adamawa and beyond.
From the rank of the
Fulani the great religious leaders of the 18th and 19th centuries
came in the Sudan to launch a series of religious movements which, as often
happened in Islam, passed into political wars. We are here concerned with the
religious movement that affected Northern Nigeria.
Usman Dan Fodio who was
subsequently known as Shehu or Sheikh was born a Fulani in the Hausa state of
Gobir about 1750. He was brought up with his brother Abdullahi as a strict
Muslim and after studying for some years in Agades he felt the call to dedicate
his life to teaching the faith. On his return from Agades, Dan Fodio acted as
tutor to the Sarkin Gobir's two sons in Alkaluwa. One of these was Yunfa who
was later to succeed to the throne. In the interval before his accession Dan
Fodio felt obliged to withdraw from Alkaluwa giving as his reason the reversion
to pagan practices by the court and the hostility shown toward the Muslim
faith. When Yunfa finally became King, he sought out his old tutor and
encouraged him to resume his itinerant preaching. Dan Fodio soon fell out with
the new king and in 1804 was driven to flight. A party rallied to him, defeated
the king, and proclaimed Dan Fodio, (now their leader) Sarkin Musulmi,
Commander of the Faithful, a title which is still held by his successor, the
Sultan of Sokoto. A general movement broke out all over the area which later
became Northern Nigeria.
The line of cleavage
did not run clear between the Fulanis and the Hausas but the Fulani who
provided the energy and ambition to the apparent religious cause. Everywhere followers
of the Shehu, appointed or self-appointed, received flags from his hands. They
called upon the faithful to drive out the old Hausa or as they were called the
Habe dynasties and then set themselves up in turn as rulers subject to Sokoto
which had become the seat of the Fulani authority in 1810. Not only was this
change accomplished in the old Hausa kingdoms but in the impetus of the
movement, Fulani leaders pushed the boundaries of Islam south, incorporating in
varying degrees many pagan tribes.
As indicated earlier,
the movement for religious revival degenerated into a political war of
conquest. Consequently, the son of the Shehu. Bello, who succeeded him became
more interested in the military and political results of the religious revival than
in spreading the faith.
The record of Fulani
success had some important exceptions. The ancient Kanuri kingdom of Bornu with
its capital near Lake Chad and itself Moslem. threw back the Fulani invaders.
The holy man of Bomu. EI-Kanemi, taunted Shehu Usman Dan Fodio with having
turned a war of religion into one of conquest and with attacking his
co-religionists. EI-Kanemi frankly admitted that some of his chiefs had
relapsed into heathenism, that the Alkalis or Moslem judges sometimes
took bribes and that women went unveiled; but he argued that this was not
sufficient excuse for war. This opposition from Bornu, as we shall see when we
come to consider the pattern and the spread of the atrocities in the 1966
pogrom, seems to rear its head once again in 1966. Bello in his defence of his
father's action justified it mainly on the ground of proselytism. Said he:
And the second reason
for our jihad was that they were heathens, the people of Hausa. A further
reason for the war was that we sought to aid truth against falsehood and to
strengthen Islam. For to make war on the heathen from the beginning, if one has
the power is declared a duty. So also is it a
duty to make war on those heathen who have converted to Islam and later have
reverted to heathenism, if one has the power. In truth we stated at the
beginning of this book that the Hausa chiefs, their people and their mallams
were evildoers.
At the beginning of the
present century, the British administration emerged in Northern Nigeria. They
based their title on conquest. Sir Fredrick Lugard, the first British Governor
of Northern Nigeria asserted in one of his early reports as follows: -
"The Fulani hold their suzerainty by right of conquest. I can myself see
no injustice in the transfer of the suzerainty thus acquired to the British by
the same right of conquest."
The Fulani caste seemed
to have accepted their masters without much resistance. The explanation of this,
it is said, was due in part to the insecurity of the Fulani position in
relation to their subjects who had shown little loyalty to the Fulani during
the period of their confrontation with the British.
The British, by force
of arms, broke the Fulani ascendancy in the North, but by a twist of irony,
restored that supremacy under the system of indirect rule. Once the suzerainty of the British was accepted
by the Fulani, the British were content to allow and even to support and
consolidate the authority of the Fulani Emirs in their various Emirates. The Fulani
Emir was left as the head of the native administration, the head of the native
judiciary, the religious head, and practically the head of everything in his
emirate. Offices in the native administration, in the native administration
police, in the native judiciary, were filled by appointees of the emirs. These
appointees were invariably the relations of the Emir or his courtiers. Moslem
religion permeated every aspect of life in the Emirates. The society became a
'closed shop'. Strangers especially non-Moslems, had no place in the society.
It is generally accepted that in 1966 there were over 2 million
Easterners in Northern Nigeria. Their presence in the North was all connected
with the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria in 1914 by the British.
Unfortunately, although they were there in such large numbers and for so long
and filled a very important position in the economic and political development
of Northern Nigeria, they were never fully integrated into the mainstream of
life in society. They became what sociologists call a privileged pariah class -
'privileged' because participating in and benefiting from the modernising
sectors of the economy to which the Northern moslems had been induced to turn
their back. Their standard of living was higher
than the normal run of life of most Northerners. They were ‘pariah’ because
they were kept outside the rank system of society. Because of the attitude of
the Northern Moslems to modern education, the administrators of the day were
compelled to employ these Easterners though they disliked having them. It cut
across the policy of the day of separating the North from the South. 'Divide
and rule’ is a cliché which has grown odious by being frequently used for all
situations whether appropriate or not: but it really enshrined an important gem
of British colonial policy. The North and South were amalgamated in 1914
ostensibly under one government yet the 'writ' of the Legislative Council in
Lagos did not run into Northern Nigeria. The British colonial administrator
reserved the right to legislate alone for the North until the Richard's Constitution
of 1946. Easterners and in fact other non-Northerners were restricted in most
of the towns to strangers’ quarters called Saban
Gari. In these circumstances the Easterners and Northerners grew up
as separate communities. Dissimilarities were accentuated and old prejudices
hardened. Since 1950 attempts, especially by Southerners, were made to bridge
the gap but such attempts were regarded by the Northern aristocracy as an
imposition from the South and were smashed.
The emergence of political parties in Nigeria did not improve matters in the North
either. As far as the North was concerned it did not succeed in breaking down
the old barriers. The dominant political party in the North (the Northern
People's Congress) started off as a party of native administration
functionaries and appointees of the Emirs and never really went beyond that. It
is our view that the foundation of Nigeria contained the seeds of her own destruction.
Planning and Organisation of the
Pogrom
Before the Army
takeover of January, 1966 the position of Easterners and Northerners was
insecure. As far back as 1953 the Eastern community in Kano, capital of Kano
Emirate and a famous trade centre, was subjected to ruthless attack by the
Northerners. This incident was later to be known as the Kano riots of 1953. It
was so violent and bloody that the then British administration set up an
official inquiry. The principal organiser of this attack was Mallam Inua
Wada, then Secretary of the Kano branch of the Northern People's
Congress and later the Federal Minister of Works in the Federal Government of
the late Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. The ostensible reason for this planned
attack on an unsuspecting Eastern community was that it was a retaliation for
the booing and jeering experienced by the Northern members of Parliament at the
hands of Lagos crowds in Lagos.
Lagos, be it noted, was
and still is the capital of Nigeria whose population has always been mainly
Yorubas. The official report disclosed that it was not the proposed visit to
Kano of an Easterner that sparked off the trouble but that of a Western
(Yoruba) politician, Chief S.L. Akintola a member of the
Action Group party. The Action Group was then a bitter opponent of the N.P.C.
the dominant party in Northern Nigeria. According to the report, Mallam Inua Wada
convened a meeting of the Native Authority sectional heads at the Works Depot
in Kano and treated them to a most provocative speech. He said, inter alia:
“Having abused us in the South these very Southerners have decided
to come over to the North to abuse us, but we are determined to retaliate
treatment given us in the South. We have therefore organised about 1000 men
ready in the city to meet force with force.
We are determined to show Akintola
and his Group what we can do in our
land when they come.... The Northern Peoples Congress has declared a strike in all Native Administration offices for
Saturday, 16 May 1953.... We shall post sufficient number of men at the
entrance of every office and business place.... We are prepared to face
anything that comes out of this business.”
On Saturday 11th
May 1953, these organised crowds swooped down in bloody massacre on innocent
citizens in spite of the fact that the visit of Chief Akintola's team had been
previously banned. Chief Akintola did not turn up in Kano. The irony in the
whole incident was that the Northern rioters switched the attack from
Westerners (Yorubas) whom they scarcely touched to Easterners whom they
butchered with a "universally unexpected degree of violence."
In its conclusions the
Commission of Inquiry condemned the riots in these terms: "No amount of
provocation, short term or long term, can in any sense justify their behaviour.”
And it warned that the "Seeds of the trouble which broke out in Kano on
May 16 (1953) have their counterparts still in the ground. It could happen
again and only a realization and acceptance of the underlying causes can
remove the danger of reccurance."
We take note of the
fact that in the Kano riots much use was made of Native Administration agencies
both in the planning and execution of the riots. When one recalls the important
position which the Native Administration occupies in the scheme of government
in Northern Nigeria under the system of indirect rule and even after
independence, the extreme danger inherent in the deployment of governmental
agencies for riotous attacks on innocent citizens becomes disturbingly
apparent. Yet this practice reached its peak in the pogrom of 1966.
The evidence disclosed
that although there was no incident of violence comparable with the 1953 Kano
riots that took place until 1966, yet the position of the Easterners was
gravely threatened in other directions. This was especially so in economic
fields, as it was a known fact that Easterners had huge investments in the
North. The dispossession of the Easterners’ market stalls and other sources of
livelihood were not an isolated act of a spiteful few but an expression of a
deliberate Government policy. But what was the reasons this hostilities to
Easterners and especially to the Igbos?
Evidence showed that
the late Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sarduana of Sokoto built up, trained and maintained
a para-military organisation known as the ‘Sarduana Brigade’ as his private
army. This group turned out to be an instrument used for eliminating Easterners
from the North. Apart
from the Census trouble, the 1964 general election saw the members of Sarduana
Brigade going round telling people that there would be trouble in the whole
country if the NPC should lose the election. Many NEPU men and women were
killed because they were in alliance with the NCNC. Hundreds of them were
imprisoned in the North. What saved the situation and a mass killing of Igbos
in 1964 was the boycott of the 1964 election by the U.P.G.A. In fact during one
of the meetings of the U.P.GA for North campaign, Dr. Okpara was called upon informing
him that the elections should be boycotted or postponed because of the threat
given to the Easterners by the Sarduana Brigade and some Northern
parliamentarians at that time. Of course between 1962 and 1964 whenever there
was any local election or regional election, people were chased up and down
especially people who were living in Sabon Gari. They had some trouble with the
Igbos because of the alliance with the N.E.P.U"
Before
the Army takeover of January 1966, there were many events that unfolded in
other parts of the country especially in Western Nigeria. As people watch
events as they unfold, it was clear to every Dick and Harry that the Federation
was papably sick. The Western Nigeria elections of October 1965 brought the
Federation to the brink of disintegration.
The 1965 Western
elections were openly rigged. The blatant electoral irregularities plunged the
Region into serious violence as the citizens were driven to take the
law into their own hands.
Chaos reigned supreme. Even the Chairman of the
Electoral Commission of Western Nigeria after listing the shortcomings of the
election publicly confessed his doubt about "the future of free and fair
elections in the whole-of Nigeria." Writing in the same vein a
correspondent of the African World, a London monthly commented in
the issue of March 1966: "The ruling
party in the Western Region, by alliance with its opposite number in the North
has practically ended all hopes of effecting constitutional changes in the
country by democratic means."
The word
"pogrom" has been used in this write-up to describe what took place
in Nigeria in 1966 because it is the most appropriate term to use. In that
sense it means a violent riot aimed at massacre or persecution of an ethnic or
religious group. It should be noted that the anti-Igbo of 1966 as a series of
massacres were directed at Igbo and other southern Nigerian residents
throughout Nigeria before and after the overthrow (and assassination) of the
Aguiyi-Ironsi junta by Murtala Mohammed.
What were the forces
responsible for this great tragedy? Evidence disclosed that it was not a case
of popular rebellion by an oppressed people or a case of protest getting out of
hand or of a spontaneous outburst of communal strife sparked off by some sudden
provocation which resulted in the loss of lives, destruction and looting of
property in one or two towns. Rather, it was a planned exercise which involved
various "interests" and personalities. The pogrom was planned on a
wide scale.
The British
Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
The January Army
takeover was hailed throughout the whole Federation. The disturbances in the
Western Region and in the Tiv areas of the North which marked the last days of first Republic came to an immediate
halt. There was a marked sense of relief throughout the whole country. The mood
of the country was amply portrayed by the national press. The Daily Times accused the
politicians for the way things had gone wrong with the country and
"praised the New Regime for a manner in which it had effected the
changeover without causing much public panic". The West African Pilot said that January 16 would
"go down in history as a great day for Nigeria because it was the day
Nigeria took a new lease of life". The Nigerian Morning Post (the official organ of the
Federal Government) after accusing the politicians in Nigeria of thinking they
had a divine right to lord it over the ordinary people declared "we, of
this newspaper join millions of fellow countrymen in welcoming the dawn of this
era in the history of our country." The New Nigerian of the North observed that
"regionalism and tribalism have been the major factors that have
precipitated the present crisis. If we have learnt that much, then some good
may come out of what has happened".
The
only discordant note was struck by the B.B.C.
in London. Within 48 hours of the Army takeover the B.B.C. correspondent
dubbed the whole episode as an Igbo coup. The B.B.C. was to stick
to this note to the end.
