By Ben Simon
December 16, 2013 1:14 AM
Lagos (AFP) - January 1,
2014 marks the centenary of the amalgamation of southern and northern
Nigeria but the anniversary looks set to be muted, amid lingering
questions about whether the union can hold.
In
the run-up to the landmark, opinion is split between those who think
amalgamation has been a boon and others who consider it the first step
in the creation of a still-failing state.
Writer
Adewale Maja-Pearce described Africa's most populous nation as one
"imposed by the colonialists who dreamt up the fiction which has now
become the nightmare we are all struggling to escape".
The most
pressing question now is whether to continue trying to "make it work",
the International New York Times columnist told AFP.Nigeria's first step towards independence in 1960 was taken on New Year's Day 1914 at a ceremony outside a courthouse in the southern city of Lagos.
The British rulers hoped that trade would be boosted by uniting the economically faltering north with the more prosperous south.
But
the primarily commercial move, as with others in Britain's then-global
empire, also fused an array of people divided by custom, language and,
perhaps most importantly, faith.
By the start of the 19th century,
northern Nigeria, where the Fulani-Hausa ethnic group was dominant, had
become a caliphate, controlled by a structured network of Islamic
theocrats. 
The south meanwhile consisted of scores of ethnic groups and a loosely-structured maze of leaders and tribal chiefs.
That
made it a far tougher territory for the British to manage, said Ed
Keazor, a historian consulting the Nigerian government on the centennial
celebrations.
For Frederick
Lugard, Britain's high commissioner of northern Nigeria and later the
first governor-general of the amalgamated colony, the north "worked
better", added Keazor.
Lugard "was an autocrat", Keazor said. "The emirs' (Muslim rulers) style suited his own style."
But lacking cash crops, the north by 1912 needed subsidies from London to meet its administrative costs. Lugard hoped his amalgamation project would raise profits by streamlining the management of the colonies with him at the top.
With war in Europe brewing, London decided to give the idea a try.
"Today, Nigeria enters on a
new stage of progress," Lugard said outside the Lagos supreme court
building on the first day of 1914, according to a text provided by
Keazor.
"We all join in earnest hope that the era now inaugurated
will prove, not only a departure in material prosperity, but also...
increase the individual happiness" of the Nigerian people, he declared.Amalgamation proved an early success for Britain, according to several accounts.
The
north's economy improved, backed by a surge in cotton production and
better access to the ports lining Nigeria's southern coast.
After
the end of World War Two in 1945, Nigeria was split into three
geopolitical zones: the mostly Hausa north, the Yoruba-dominated west
and the east, where Igbos were the majority. The two southern regions had by then become majority Christian.
But in the late colonial period, "political combat most often boiled down to a three-way struggle", the International Crisis Group said.
On the eve of independence,
perhaps aware that its amalgamated colony had become a powder keg, "the
British agonised over whether the country should be split in two parts
-- a Christian south and Muslim north", wrote David Cook, a specialist
in radical Islam at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
That did not happen but the new nation did fracture within its first decade.
The
1967-1970 Biafra civil war began after the Igbo-led region, alleging
their tribesmen were being massacred in the north, tried to secede.
In
the three decades after the war, Nigeria was mostly led by military
dictators from the north in an era that saw the country's huge oil
resources squandered through corruption.
Elsewhere,
sectarian violence in the "Middle Belt" dividing north and south has
killed 10,000 people since 1992, Human Rights Watch reported this month.
More than four thousand people have died since 2009 in an insurgency waged by radical Islamist group Boko Haram.
The Islamist violence has not spread below the Middle Belt but has inflamed anti-northern sentiment in the south.
"It is only oil that has kept us together," said Maja-Pearce.
Petro-dollars
have been used to smooth out political rivalries, pacify rebels and
generally "patch up" conflicts which could have threatened Nigeria's
unity, he added.
The People's
Democratic Party, which has led the country since 1999, has an
unwritten rule to rotate its leaders between southern Christians and
northern Muslims, aiming to ease regional tensions.
For
Professor Dapo Thomas of Lagos State University, politicians who still
fixate on and exploit regional rivalries "are the ones who made a mess
of amalgamation".
"I believe the amalgamation was the best thing to have happened to Nigeria," he told AFP.
Already
home to the continent's biggest population, with an estimated 170
million, Nigeria may soon boast Africa's largest economy.
Thomas attributed that -- and the country's growing political and cultural clout -- to amalgamation.
"All we need is the spirit of accommodation... and a leader who will explore the positives in our diversity," he added.
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