A Letter from Nigeria
Jervis, Steven A.
The end of civilian rule in Nigeria, a country regarded as a happy exception to the trend toward one-party dictatorships in newly-independent countries, has far-reaching political...
...Inefficient local councils were replaced by administrators...
...General Ironsi has shown no dictatorial ambitions, but may be tempted to harshness as his task grows rougher...
...Its fifty million people are not only subject to the strains of "rapid development...
...Nigeria seemed adrift, under reactionary influence from the North and affording small opportunity for the growing class of able young civil servants and university graduates...
...It has provided a government which appears to recognize the urgency of the country's problems, and that is something new for Nigeria...
...The next day it seemed that the revolution had failed: only Kaduna remained in rebel hands and the military commander, General Ironsi, had declared his loyalty to the federal government...
...By April the flush of triumph had begun to wear off and distaste for the old regime gave way to question ing of the new: Why were so few politicians being put on trial...
...Prospects for democracy seem better than in years...
...The Yorubas control the constitutional review panel...
...General Ironsi will be hard pressed to hold things together, especially if he continues to be beset with economic difficulties...
...UPGA called a last-minute boycott which had little effect outside the East and Mid-West, but did pro voke a full-scale crisis at the begin ning of last year...
...What was the military doing in fancy new barracks...
...But with many of its leaders dead and its power openly challenged at last, there was little government left and no popular support for it to fall back on...
...The style of the military regime has been calm and businesslike, self-effacing, smart but not flamboyant...
...Corruption was widespread, debilitating—and accepted...
...As polling day approached, it be came clear that UPGA would fail...
...Newspapers and plays were banned for political reasons, and it became a crime to listen to opposition radio broadcasts...
...the "dash"—the payoff—was ubiquitous, from ten shillings for traffic police to fifty pounds for regional scholarship boards, to heaven knows how much for the men who dispensed government building contracts...
...And why was food getting so awfully expensive...
...This must be contrasted with years of public slackness, inefficiency and cynicism...
...Seem better...
...The least "tribal" institution in the country, it includes a surprising number of young, idealistic and well-educated men, many of whom joined in hopes of something like January 15...
...Politicians built their palaces and piloted their limousines with fanfare...
...The vaunted multi-party system masked corrosive disunity, not creative opposition...
...The end of civilian rule in Nigeria, a country regarded as a happy exception to the trend toward one-party dictatorships in newly-independent countries, has far-reaching political implications...
...Nevertheless the army remains a source of hope...
...There are few troops to be seen...
...Yet Nigeria feels not at all like a police state...
...A chain of political crises divided the young nation and nearly broke it up altogether...
...That night there were broadcasts from the Northern capital, Kaduna, full of revolutionary fervor, announcing and demanding loyalty to a new government which would end tribalism and corruption...
...Tremendous repugnance is felt for the politicians of the past, even the North, where the death of Ahmadu Bello has so far been received with notable calm...
...Though all political groups, including the NNDP, rushed in with professions of delight over the change in government, party activities have been banned...
...The Western elections, the most blatantly rigged of all, produced an implausibly overwhelming NNDP triumph...
...Already the whispering and insinuations: "The Igbos are taking over the universities...
...The election was crucial for national politics: a defeat for the NNDP, which was thought to have little popular support, would put the three southern regions under UPGA control...
...The military has its own right-wing forces, unhappy that so much conservative power has been smashed, and left-wing ones, who wonder why the fiery Major Nzegwu was clapped in jail...
...Similar feelings, with familiar political overtones, pervade the army itself, and this is where the most serious trouble may come...
...But no heavenly intervention was required...
...Violence immediately swept through the region, seemingly initiated by furious UPGA supporters, but increasingly aggravated by political thugs in general who, no longer on party payrolls, were improvising new ways of obtaining revenue...
...The "coup," as the tangled events of mid-January are known here, was a reaction not merely against the NNA rule, but against the whole rotting edifice of the First Republic...
...After one nerve wracking week, punctuated by seces sionist noises in the East, an agree ment was reached between President Azikiwe and Prime Minister Balewa...
...The Azikiwe-Balewa agreement was no solution for the country's political ills...
...But there are many sources of uneasiness, starting with the very existence of the concentrated power that military government inevitably entails...
...Nigeria's First Republic, with all its misplaced claims to stability and democratic procedures, had come to an end...
...By the beginning of January order had collapsed: cars, markets, houses—and people— were burned and destroyed, while the federal government, committed to the NNDP, did nothing but invite the Commonwealth to Lagos to talk about Rhodesia...
...Almost the first act of the new government was the restoration of the banned newspapers, some of which have printed restrained but firm criticisms of federal appointments...
...This would revive the possi bility of a united South making in roads into the North and dominating the country—a situation'which, accord ing to the powerful Northern leader, Sir Ahmadu Bello, God would "pro vide a way" to upset...
...Because the Northern Region, which had controlled national politics for years, was larger than the three others combined, UPGA could not win the elec tion without breaking NNA hegem ony in the North...
...Land grants were revoked and lavish ministerial property recovered and sold...
...As the NNA moved to consolidate its power, it seemed there would soon be little left of Nigerian democracy...
...they are also racked by hundreds of tribal divisions...
...The Northerners are foxy and inscrutable...
...In response to the general disorder, a small group of young army officers, led by Major Chukwuma Nzegwu, moved against the government...
...The cry of the new government is Unity, but "One Nigeria" is a long way off...
...They swiftly killed Ahmadu Bello and the NNDP leader, Chief Akintola, abducted Prime Minister Balewa (later found dead) and assumed control at a number of points...
...Nigeria is an exceptionally difficult country to govern...
...Shortly before midnight on January 16, the cabinet "handed over" to General Ironsi, to whom Major Nzegwu quickly surrendered...
...Thus the precarious coalition of North and East which had governed Nigeria since 1960 had yielded to an arrangement which, with dangerous logic, reflected the deepest of the country's many divisions: the conservative, Islamic, agrarian North versus the progressive, substantially Christian, rapidly-industrializing South...
...It is not just a matter of North versus South: there is hardly a town or county without its ethnic complexities...
...There were no holidays proclaimed after the coup, no organized jubilation (compare Ghana): the country was told to prepare for hard work...
...The popular Western version of Nigeria—a showplace of democracy in black Africa—was a thinly-disguised fraud...
...Following the suspension of the old federal and regional governments, civil servants were given the powers once held by corrupt ministers...
...In a widely publicized gesture the Governor of the Mid-West locked out a crowd of civil servants who arrived late for work, kept them standing in the sun several hours before castigating them and warning that "next time it would be more than just standing here...
...Then came January 15...
...Panels were established to study economic development and constitutional changes, with emphasis on achieving the national unity so lacking under the old regime...
...There is no tradition of armed aristocrats here, no legion of brutal professionals...
...The NNA had come out ahead in the pre-electoral ritual of fakery and had managed to have a fantastic 67 of its candidates declared "elected unop posed...
...Under the leadership of General Ironsi and the four young colonels he appointed to govern the regions, the military moved quickly toward reorganization and reform...
...A series of maneuvers had placed the region in the hands of a Northern ally, the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), so that Northern power extended into the South...
...By the time of the first post-independence general elections, December 1964, there had been an important realignment of political forces—the conflict now lay between two major groupings, the Nigerian National Alliance (NNA) which dominated the North, and the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA) with its strength in the three southern regions—West, Mid-West and East...
...Racked by corruption and violence, the country had been unable to hold an honest election since its independence was proclaimed in 1960...
...Everyone knew what was happening, but few spoke out...
...it crumbled in its first trial, the re gional elections in the West (October 1965...
Vol. 13 • July 1966 • No. 4
