Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - CONFESSION OF AN OCTOGENARIAN BRITON ON THE NIGERIA PROJECT

An aside:

"Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." (Jesus talking, Matthew 10:16, King James Version)   and this "wise as serpents" cuts both ways.

Harold Smith (R.I.P.) made that big buzz when he was featured in New African more than a decade ago –part of the "how the Oyibo favoured the North" mythology.  Similar story about Sierra Leone – the Creoles of those colonial days may have been properly regarded as "half-Englishmen "or "Black Englishmen" when it came to realpolitik as Professor Ochonu points out, to what advantage? Middle men?  Check out page 5 of Graham Greene's "The Heart of the Matter " which seems to capture the matrix of the colonial mentality (Sierra Leone

"…I hate the bloody niggers. Mustn't call them that you know"

"My boy seems all right"

"A man's boy's always all right. He's a real nigger – but these, look at 'em, look at that one with a boa feather down there. They aren't even real niggers. Just West Indians and they rule the coast. Clerks in the stores, city council, magistrates, lawyers - my God. It's all right up in the protectorate. I haven't anything to say against a real nigger. God made our colours. But these – my God! The government's afraid of them. The Police are afraid of them. Look down there" Harris said, "look at Scobie"…

"He loves 'em so much" Harris said, "he sleeps with 'em"

To those of us  who did not formally study history beyond secondary school and make no pretention to being historians, Leo Spitzer 's The Creoles of Sierra Leone: Responses to Colonialism and Akintola Wyse's  H. C. Bankole-Bright and Politics in Colonial Sierra Leone, 1919–1958 have been sufficient to unearth a similar kind of palaver with British colonialism  - the old Creole peoples grievance up to this day, which I hope to be taking up with my honoured  guest,  Professor Bernard Porter this coming Wednesday :  the procedure whereby Freetown and the Western Area which was the colony was eventually amalgamated with the Protectorate( the hinterland of the country) and of course the disappearance of Creole political power  - the Creoles, vastly outnumbered, lost  in the ocean  of "one man, one vote" whereby the Creoles lost political power forever  (some of the stiff-upper lip Anglo-Sierra Leoneans still lament  their lost aristocracy, pedigree  (not degrees) and privilege and  are  feeling sincere  even today  when  they say that "the country has gone to the dogs" (smile)

I could tell you some of the unwritten history since where we lived was once a hotbed of intrigue ( circa 1958-Independence in 1961) I eavesdropped and served some of the Creole Elders at their  hush hush meeting – they took the British crown right up to the Privy Council  to retain their colony status --- it's a behind the scenes story  and I am privileged to know some of it because my Yoruba grandmother's sister Gertrude was or rather is the mother of Cyril Rogers-Wright, my (Uncle Cyril) one of the Creole agitators and headed by Mr. Buck/ Buckle  & co of  "The Settlers' Descendants Union"

 There are still people griping that "The injustices done to the Krios in Sierra Leone by the British have to be addressed. " (Tom Jones)

I suppose that they will be griping for another 400 years.

Na wah o!

Cornelius

We Sweden

 

On Sunday, 3 January 2016 19:13:06 UTC+1, MEOc...@gmail.com wrote:

Corrected version:

Precisely! In fact I am always correcting my Southern Nigerian brethren's

misperception that the British-Northern Nigerian love affair was indeed a

love affair instead of a manifestation of British real politik, which is

what it was. The British did not care about any African groups as much as

they cared about preserving their influence and ability to control from

afar. Any group or individuals deemed amenable to this objective became

their favorite. It was thus a strategic British courtship, not a preference

for Muslims or Hausa or an inmate hatred for "educated" Africans as is

widely believed in Southern Nigeria.

In some other African British colonies like the Gold Coast and Tanganyika,

where the dominant nationalist personality was so popular that the British

could not discredit or marginalized them, and where the British didn't have

the regional/ethnic/religious tendencies they could play off against one

another, they worked to moderate the radicalism of people like Nkrumah and

Nyerere and to negotiate an independence deal they thought they could live

with.

And yes, perhaps more Northern Nigerian aristocrats were disciplined by the

British than Southern Nigerian ones. It was all about protecting and

advancing British interests, and the professed affection for northern

politico-religious traditions was a mere justification, although the justification was

very elaborate.

Sent from my iPad

On Jan 3, 2016, at 11:28 AM, Emmanuel Udogu <udo...@appstate.edu> wrote:

                                     My thought on this issue

As noted already, this script or anecdote is not new. Many of us have
expressed our concerns on this matter in our writings and at different
forums and conferences. In fact, I shall allude to this question at a
conference to be held in Budapest, Hungary this spring.

Recently, I expressed my view on this issue thus: "Our leaders who
were carefully schooled and socialized in the governance template of
the colonial overseers found it—and still find it—difficult to peel
off the authoritarian character imbibed during colonial rule. Put
bluntly, the hegemonic powers governed autocratically but "imposed" a
liberal democratic genre on Africa; it was an impossible mission, many
argued, for Africa's new leaders who mimicked their colonial
administrative ancestors with panache to change."

The question, however, is: How do scholars—particularly
Africanists—deconstruct this political attitude (of rigging
elections—a subject in our forthcoming volume—for example)?
Fortunately, some of us on this forum and elsewhere have been
producing modalities for doing so in our works. But, we have a long
way to go partially because some of our current leaders remain
inflexible to change. Accordingly, we should roll up our sleeves and
go to work for substantial improvement in order to make our future
generations proud of us!

Ike Udogu


On 1/3/16, Moses Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Malami,

Precisely! In fact I am always correcting my Southern Nigerian brethren's

misperception that the British-Northern Nigerian love affair was indeed a

love affair instead of a manifestation of British real politik, which is

what it was. The British did not care about any African groups as much as

they cared about preserving their influence and ability to control from

afar. Any group or individuals deemed amenable to this objective became

their favorite. It was thus a strategic British courtship, not a preference

for Muslims or Hausa or an inmate hatred for "educated" Africans as is

widely believed in Southern Nigeria.

In some other African British colonies like the Gold Coast and Tanganyika,

where the dominant nationalist personality was so popular that the British

could not discredit or marginalized them, and where the British didn't have

the regional/ethnic/religious tendencies they could play off against one

another, they worked to moderate the radicalism of People like Nkrumah and

Nyerere and to negotiate an independence deal they thought they could live

with.

And yes, perhaps more Northern Nigerian aristocrats were disciplined by the

British than Southern Nigerian ones. It was all about protecting and

advancing British interests, and the professed affection for northern

politico-religious traditions were mere justifications, although they were

very elaborate.

Sent from my iPad

On Jan 3, 2016, at 9:13 AM, 'Malami Buba' via USA Africa Dialogue Series

<usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

The statement that "it was well established and well documented that the

British not only favored the North but worked to empower the conservative

politicians of the NPC to take over at independence", is in line with

basic British 'fudge' instinct: If they must succumb, then the weakest

link is strongly preferred.  But do not be fooled by this love affair; the

same fate visited any Northern aristocrat who tried to rock the boat

during this decolonisation period. In other words, it was very much a

British script on offer.

Malami

Prof Malami Buba

Department of English Language & Linguistics,

Sokoto State University, Sokoto

PMB 2134, Birnin Kebbi Road, Sokoto

NIGERIA

On 3 Jan 2016, at 15:33, Moses Ochonu wrote:

It is not a scam. It has been circulating for almost a decade. It is a

largely true account, a product of neocolonial guilt and soul searching

by a colonial actor. The British did not hide their desire to see

northerners take over the leadership of post-independence Nigeria and

worked towards it. Historians who have read colonial correspondence,

diaries of colonial officials, and the many published and unpublished

memoirs of former colonial officials will testify to this bias. It is

thus not only plausible that they manipulated the census to give an

electoral advantage to to the North, what Smith is saying is entirely

consistent with the cardinal objective of British decolonization in

Nigeria: to install a conservative postcolonial government they could

trust not to move away from the commonwealth and towards a socialist or

pan-African agenda of total decolonization. As a result, they loved and

cultivated ties with the aristocrats/politicians of the Northern

People's Congress (NPC), a conservative political party of Northern

aristocrats and their supporters.

The British (and the Americans) detested the NCNC and the AG, the two

main southern political parties, whose leaders, Azikiwe and Awo, were

considered too radical and too anti-colonial for the kind of

postcolonial government the British were trying to install upon their

"departure." To be sure, the British had always had a soft spot for the

conservative and gradualist disposition of the northern emirates and

disdain for the Western educated intelligentsia of the South. This

attitude started from the very beginning of unified colonial Nigeria in

1914, even before. If you read Philip Zachernuck's book you will see

this tension between the Southern intelligentsia and colonial

authorities. Matters came to a head during the amalgamation proposals,

when the Southern Western educated elites vehemently attacked the

proposals, perhaps Nigeria's first coordinated anticolonial campaign. By

the way, I have published on some of these themes, especially the

British fondness for the dominant political tendency in the North,

especially the Muslim emirates.

Finally, there is nothing unusual about the content of this "confession."

Electoral manipulation by colonial authorities were routine colonial

business. In fact the French were more brazen in this pursuit. A Columbia

University graduate student is writing her entire dissertation on the

topic of electoral manipulation and election rigging in colonial French

West Africa. She gave a brilliantly revealing presentation at a

conference at attended in Columbia last year. The popular, three-part

al-jazeera documentary "The French-African Connection" lay bare such

manipulations in several colonies--Cameroon, Gabon, etc, with testimonies

and interview footage of former colonial officials and intelligence

operatives who participated in or coordinated the rigging confessing to

their deeds.

A small personal anecdote: at another conference last year, I made a

prefatory remark during my presentation, saying basically that there was

a certain affinity between the aristocrats of the North and British

colonial officialdom, and that the British seemed to be drawn to the

Northern aristocrats' political disposition and their religio-political

tradition. Professor Murray Last, author of the most authoritative book

on the Sokoto Caliphate, who was at the same conference, promptly

interjected to say that there was no need for me to be tentative, since

it was well established and well documented that the British not only

favored the North but worked to empower the conservative politicians of

the NPC to take over at independence.

Sent from my iPad

On Jan 2, 2016, at 10:30 PM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu> wrote:

hi ademola

in my opinion it reads like a scam.

ken

On 1/2/16 8:09 PM, Ademola Dasylva wrote:

‎I saw this piece on WhatsApp and USAAFRICADIALOGUE, and felt it is

worth drawing attention to; that is, provided the claimed source is

genuine. One cannot be too sure nowadays:

BRITON CONFESSES TO FRAUDULENT CENSUS IN NIGERIA

The man Harold Smith is not new in Nigerian history. He is one of the

architects of colonial foundation that midwife Nigerian independence in

1960. His response was "I am in my 80s now; I have agreed but in the

past' they' did not want me to say anything, but now I don't want to go

to my grave without telling the truth about the atrocities perpetrated

in Africa by the colonialists. Brothers and sisters; on Ben TV last

Thursday, Harold Smith was on a program to reveal what went behind the

scene before the independence. The Oxford University graduate had this

to say about his role in Nigeria pre and after independence era.

'Our agenda was to completely exploit Africa . Nigeria was my duty

post. When we assessed Nigeria, this was what we found in the southern

region; strength, intelligence, determination to succeed, well

established history, complex but focused life style, great hope and

aspirations… the East is good in business and technology, the west is

good in administration and commerce, law and medicine, but it was a

pity we planned our agenda to give power "at all cost" to the

northerner. They seemed to be submissive and silly of a kind. Our

mission was accomplished by destroying the opposition at all fronts.

The west led in the fight for the independence, and was punished for

asking for freedom. They will not rule Nigeria !

Harold Smith confessed that the Census results were announced before

they were counted. Despite seeing vast land with no human but cattle in

the north, we still gave the north 55 million instead of 32 Million.

This was to be used to maintain their majority votes and future power

bid. He stated that the West without Lagos was the most populous in

Nigeria at that time but we ignored that. The north was seriously

encouraged to go into the military. According to him, they believe that

the south may attend western education, but future leaders will always

come from military background. Their traditional rulers were to be made

influential and super human. The northerners were given accelerated

promotions both in the military and civil service to justify their

superiority over the south. Everything was to work against the south.

We truncated their good plan for their future. "I was very sorry for

the A.G; it was a great party too much for African standard. We planned

to destroy Awolowo and Azikiwe well, the west and the east and sowed a

seed of discord among them". We tricked Azikiwe into accepting to be

president having known that Balewa will be the main man with power.

Awolowo has to go to jail to cripple his genius plans for a greater

Nigeria . However, Harold Smith justified the British agenda of

...

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