The rise of regional forces has Nigeria thinking the unthinkable. Chris McGreal reports from Lagos
The end of military rule nine months ago has unleashed a store of bitter resentments in Nigeria that have fuelled ethnic massacres, the rise of militant regional organisations and a rush to introduce sharia law in the Islamic north over the virulent protests of Christians.
It has all raised a question no one has dared contemplate seriously since the bloody civil war over Biafra 30 years ago: is it time to dissolve Nigeria?
The recent troubles come on top of long- standing grievances and divisions. The east, which tasted separation briefly as Biafra during the war, provides the country’s massive oil revenues but has little to show beyond devastating pollution. The south-west – home to 20- million Yorubas and the commercial hub, Lagos – claims to have been robbed of political influence by decades of northern- dominated military rule. The northern Hausa-Fulani protest that southerners own the economy.
Years of military rule and plunder have taken their toll on Nigeria’s standing in the world. But at home a grand conspiracy by their compatriots is what Nigerians complain of most.
At the heart of the south-west’s burgeoning ethnic nationalism is the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), a Yoruba separatist movement founded six years ago to oppose military rule. It is blamed for much of the killings of hundreds of Hausas and eastern Igbos in and around Lagos in recent months, provoking retaliatory massacres of Yorubas in other parts of Nigeria.
The OPC is scorned by many businesspeople and mainstream politicians. But the organisation’s popularity has surged among the mass of poor in Lagos keen to find someone to blame for their plight. One of its leaders, Gani Adams, is a folk hero after eluding capture even though the police put a price on his head for leading ethnic killings.
The OPC has some prominent supporters. Its treasurer is Beko Ransome-Kuti, a former political prisoner of the military whose late brother, Fela Kuti, was Nigeria’s most famous and politicised singer.
“This concept called Nigeria is of very doubtful viability,” said Ransome-Kuti.
“There is just nothing you can call one Nigeria and the earlier we appreciate that the better or we’ll end up in dire straits … Everything revolves around the ethnic factor. The north wants to control everything. The OPC is here to make sure that the south-west, or the Yorubas, are emancipated from northern oppression.”
Regional rivalry is partly driven by differences over how Nigeria is governed. The north, with few resources, backs big government and shared national wealth, particularly the oil revenues. It relies on the civil service to provide jobs and views the fashion for privatisation as a threat to its hegemony over vast state enterprises.
The south-west is scornful of the pervasive federal administration, blaming it for corruption, inefficiency and the collapse of much of Nigeria’s infrastructure.
Ransome-Kuti says the OPC favours a return to the handful of largely self- governing regions that existed when the army first seized power in 1966. If it cannot win agreement on devolution, he says the organisation will declare independence.
But if the south-west were to win even a measure of autonomy it would help galvanise the demand for self-government among the splintered ethnic movements in the oil-rich Niger Delta. That is one of the north’s great fears because oil underpins the economy.
The OPC’s rise has provoked the creation of a rival organisation, the Arewa People’s Congress, to “safeguard northern interests”. Its chair, Sagir Mohammed, accuses the OPC of “unleashing terror”. When the police offered a 100 000 naira (about R60 000) reward for Adams’s capture, the APC doubled it.
“Our motto is to preserve the territorial indivisibility of the country,” said Mohammed. “No matter how peaceful you may want to be, you may find you have been pushed to the limit and you are forced to respond with violence. The OPC’s long-term objective is the balkanisation of the country. This is a threat to our nascent democracy.”
Southern suspicions have been fuelled by the spread of sharia law. Although Islamic courts have existed for years in the Muslim north, they have heard civil cases only. Now one state, Zamfara, has made sharia the principal criminal code and used it to close bars, segregate schools and transport, and enforce a dress code. Five other states with significant Christian minorities are moving in a similar direction.
Underpinning the rise in Yoruba nationalism is disappointment with President Olusegun Obasanjo’s democratic government, which took office last May, and fears of a return to military rule.
Obasanjo, whose status as a Yoruba and a former military ruler puts him in both camps and neither, has been attacked by all sides. The north complains his government has too many Yorubas; the south-west protests that he constantly bows to northern pressure on issues such as sharia.
Obasanjo has skilfully neutralised the army for now. But the OPC says that if the government fails to deliver, the military will be back.
“I know some of their fears,” said the president. “I tell them that you don’t solve that problem by severing ties. You solve that by strengthening the institutions that prevent a repeat of the past.
“I will admit that people have reason to be suspicious. The ethnic differences are there. Religious differences are there. But there are more important things to worry about, like injustice and poverty.”