Ojukwu on "Our Role In The Development Of Nigeria"

Christian education and Western training stimulated and enriched our native resourcefulness, industry, and dynamism and so contributed in no small measure to the leading role we played in the development of Nigeria during the half century before 1966. In all spheres of life in the former Federation of Nigeria--economic, social, cultural, political, and constitutional--we were in the forefront of the struggle for unity and equality, justice and progress. Economically, down to the late 1950s, our territory was relegated to the backwaters as a destitute area. national institutions, projects, and utilities were deliberately sited outside our territory.

Nevertheless, we invested confidently in the development of whole of Nigeria. We unhesitatingly built houses, hotels, shops, market stalls, etc,. in various parts of the country, sometimes on the strength of mere certificates of occupancy which could be, and indeed often were, revoked at will in Northern Nigeria. We provided intermediate and high-level manpower for the development of Nigeria, only to be later frustrated and expelled from positions we had earned on merit.

After the fashion of the Christian missionaries, we built schools and colleges and supplied teachers and lecturers for general education throughout the country. In the same manner, we established hospitals and nursing homes and provided doctors and nurses for healing and tending the sick. We strove in every way to identify ourselves with the peoples of the areas in which we settled. We spoke their language; we intermarried with them; and Northern Nigerians even declared that, because we wore their dresses, they had conquered us culturally. Yet, in spite of all this, in Northern Nigeria we were physically and socially segregated from the indigenous people. In contrast, the people of Western Nigeria who shared the same education and cultural experience, took pride in being “traditionally reluctant” to settle in and contribute to the development of places outside their region...”

In the field of political and constitutional development, while we advocated a strong united Nigeria and had for our watchword one country, one constitution, one destiny, Northern Nigerians consistently and openly maintained that the Amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria in 1914 was “a mistake.” Not surprisingly, in January 1950, at the General Conference Summoned at Ibadan to discuss proposals for the review of the Nigerian Constitution, the Northern Nigerian delegates announced that “unless the Northern Central Legislature it would ask for separation from the rest of Nigeria on the arrangements existing before 1914.” In other words, Northern Nigeria would secede. Eventually, to avoid breaking up the country, we conceded this demand.

At the Ibadan conference of 1950, also, Northern Nigerians insisted that “only Northern Nigerian male adults of twenty five years or more, resident in the region for three years, should be qualified for election to the Northern House of Assembly.” In reply, our delegates were obliged to enter a minority report in which they raised an issue of fundamental principle. They asserted:

“It is our view invidious that any Nigerian could under a Nigerian Constitution be deprived of the right of election to the House of Assembly in any region in which he for reason of the accident of birth or ancestry.”

Three years later, in May 1953, during one of the recurrent constitutional crises of those years, Northern Nigeria again agitated for secession. They published an eight point proposal for the establishment of a “Central Agency” to maintain what was in effect a Common Services Organization. To secure the implementation of this proposal by force, Northern Nigerian leaders organized and carried out violent demonstrations, during which they slaughtered and wounded hundreds of our people then resident in Kano, Northern Nigeria, acts of genocide which they had perpetrated at Jos in Northern Nigeria earlier in 1945. In the end, we had to abandon the idea of a strong and united country which we had been advocating and, with difficulty, persuaded Northern Nigeria to accept a stronger federal system of government than that which was envisaged by them.

The following year, as a result of its failure to absorb Lagos, Western Nigeria also threatened to secede and was only prevented from proceeding to make good the threat by a stern and timely warning from the British Secretary of State for the colonies, Mr. Oliver Lyttleton (afterward Lord Chandos).

Address Delivered at the OAU Special Session, Addis Ababa, August 05, 1968