(AFP) – January 1, 2014 marks the centenary of the amalgamation of\u00a0southern and northern Nigeria but the anniversary looks set to be muted,\u00a0amid lingering questions about whether the union can hold.<\/p>\n
In the run-up to the landmark, opinion is split between those who think\u00a0amalgamation has been a boon and others who consider it the first step in\u00a0the creation of a still-failing state.<\/p>\n
Writer Adewale Maja-Pearce described Africa’s most populous nation as one\u00a0“imposed by the colonialists who dreamt up the fiction which has now\u00a0become the nightmare we are all struggling to escape”.<\/p>\n
The most pressing question now is whether to continue trying to “make it\u00a0work”, the International New York Times columnist told AFP.<\/p>\n
Nigeria’s first step towards independence in 1960 was taken on New Year’s\u00a0Day 1914 at a ceremony outside a courthouse in the southern city of Lagos.<\/p>\n
The British rulers hoped that trade would be boosted by uniting theeconomically faltering north with the more prosperous south.<\/p>\n
But the primarily commercial move, as with others in Britain’s then-global\u00a0empire, also fused an array of people divided by custom, language and,\u00a0perhaps most importantly, faith.<\/p>\n
By the start of the 19th century, northern Nigeria, where the Fulani-Hausa\u00a0ethnic group was dominant, had become a caliphate, controlled by a\u00a0structured network of Islamic theocrats.<\/p>\n
The south meanwhile consisted of scores of ethnic groups and a\u00a0loosely-structured maze of leaders and tribal chiefs.<\/p>\n
That made it a far tougher territory for the British to manage, said Ed\u00a0Keazor, a historian consulting the Nigerian government on the centennial\u00a0celebrations.<\/p>\n
For Frederick Lugard, Britain’s high commissioner of northern Nigeria and\u00a0later the first governor-general of the amalgamated colony, the north\u00a0“worked better”, added Keazor.<\/p>\n
Lugard “was an autocrat”, Keazor said. “The emirs’ (Muslim rulers) style\u00a0suited his own style.”\u00a0But lacking cash crops, the north by 1912 needed subsidies from London to\u00a0meet its administrative costs.<\/p>\n
Lugard hoped his amalgamation project would raise profits by streamlining\u00a0the management of the colonies with him at the top.<\/p>\n
With war in Europe brewing, London decided to give the idea a try.<\/p>\n
“Today, Nigeria enters on a new stage of progress,” Lugard said outside\u00a0the Lagos supreme court building on the first day of 1914, according to a\u00a0text provided by Keazor.<\/p>\n
“We all join in earnest hope that the era now inaugurated will prove, not\u00a0only a departure in material prosperity, but also… increase the\u00a0individual happiness” of the Nigerian people, he declared.<\/p>\n
Amalgamation proved an early success for Britain, according to several\u00a0accounts.<\/p>\n
The north’s economy improved, backed by a surge in cotton production and\u00a0better access to the ports lining Nigeria’s southern coast.<\/p>\n
After the end of World War Two in 1945, Nigeria was split into three\u00a0geopolitical zones: the mostly\u00a0Hausa north, the Yoruba-dominated west and the east, where Igbos were the\u00a0majority.<\/p>\n
The two southern regions had by then become majority Christian.<\/p>\n
But in the late colonial period, “political combat most often boiled down\u00a0to a three-way struggle”, the International Crisis Group said.<\/p>\n
On the eve of independence, perhaps aware that its amalgamated colony had\u00a0become a powder keg, “the British agonised over whether the country shouldbe split in two parts — a Christian south and Muslim north”, wrote David
\nCook, a specialist in radical Islam at Rice University in Houston, Texas.<\/p>\n
That did not happen but the new nation did fracture within its first decade.<\/p>\n
The 1967-1970 Biafra civil war began after the Igbo-led region, allegingtheir tribesmen were being massacred in the north, tried to secede.<\/p>\n
In the three decades after the war, Nigeria was mostly led by military\u00a0dictators from the north in an era that saw the country’s huge oil
\nresources squandered through corruption.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, sectarian violence in the “Middle Belt” dividing north and\u00a0south has killed 10,000 people since 1992, Human Rights Watch reported\u00a0this month.<\/p>\n
More than four thousand people have died since 2009 in an insurgency waged\u00a0by radical Islamist group Boko Haram.<\/p>\n
The Islamist violence has not spread below the Middle Belt but hasinflamed anti-northern sentiment in the south.<\/p>\n
“It is only oil that has kept us together,” said Maja-Pearce.<\/p>\n
Petro-dollars have been used to smooth out political rivalries, pacify\u00a0rebels and generally “patch up” conflicts which could have threatened \u00a0Nigeria’s unity, he added.<\/p>\n
The People’s Democratic Party, which has led the country since 1999, has\u00a0an unwritten rule to rotate its leaders between southern Christians and\u00a0northern Muslims, aiming to ease regional tensions.<\/p>\n
For Professor Dapo Thomas of Lagos State University, politicians who still\u00a0fixate on and exploit regional rivalries “are the ones who made a mess of\u00a0amalgamation”.<\/p>\n
“I believe the amalgamation was the best thing to have happened to\u00a0Nigeria,” he told AFP.<\/p>\n
Already home to the continent’s biggest population, with an estimated 170\u00a0million, Nigeria may soon boast Africa’s largest economy.<\/p>\n
Thomas attributed that — and the country’s growing political and cultural\u00a0clout — to amalgamation.<\/p>\n
“All we need is the spirit of accommodation… and a leader who will\u00a0explore the positives in our diversity,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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