“It is odd that Britain, which backed Nigeria for two and a half years in a war of attrition against Biafra, should fall out with its friends over a man in a crate”
Since the Spectator stood alone among 10 British journals in taking the side of Biafra during the civil war in the Sixties, we have the right to laugh and say 'I told you so' at the latest antics of the Nigerian government: its attempt to kidnap a former senior minister, Mr Umuru Dikko, and return him to Lagos as air freight. The new Nigerian military government of General Muhammadu Buhari claims that before the coup in December last year, Mr Dikko, as Transport Minister, had stashed away millions or billions of pounds in bribes and had forced up the cost of rice to hungry Nigerians; but it would not be wise to repeat such slander. It is my view that Mr Dikko is and has always been a selfless Nigerian patriot, scrupulous in respect for the democratic process, sober and chaste in his personal life, accustomed to give most of his meagre salary to the poor, and that if he is now living comfortably in a Bayswater house, this may be attributable to a well placed accumulator bet at Kano race course.
The Dikko affair will of course be explained on the left by neo-colonialism, and on the right by the special cupidity and incompetence of the black man; but it is worth giving serious study to the phenomenon of a place like Nigeria. The best book I have read on this, The African Predicament, by Stanislav Andreski, was published as long ago as 1968, when it was thought outrageous. For although a sociologist, Mr Andreski was born a Pole, and does not subscribe to the Marxist and liberal sentimentality about Africa or anywhere else. He had spent many years in Nigeria, and it was of that country he seemed to be writing most in his chapter: `Kleptocracy or Corruption as a System of Government'. He tried to avoid the word `corruption' because it implied a fall from a previously attained higher standard; also because it implied an outside moral condemnation, not always shared by Africans.
Professor Andreski understood that few Nigerians felt 'any moral bonds beyond the confines of the clan and the tribe'. Many of those in the cities did not feel those bonds. Those with loyalty to the larger nations or 'ethnicity', such as Hausas, Yorubas or Ibos, could not extend that loyalty to 'Nigeria' which was an area drawn on the map and named by a lady journalist on the Times. Professor Andreski observed that the former Eastern Region, then fighting for its existence as Biafra, had 'a larger and much better educated population than most African states, and by all standards of professed political ethics eminently qualifies for sovereignty.' He was writing early on in a war that was to last two and a half years before Biafra fell to the Lagos government's troops backed by Britain and Russia.
Professor Andreski distinguished between venality on behalf of kinsmen and that on behalf of the individual or his immediate family. The consequences for the public were much the same. Even during the early Sixties, jobs and contracts were almost always awarded according to graft or nepotism. The headmaster of a state school would exact additional fees and expenses for food and board. In state hospitals, doctors would look at only those patients who paid them extra. 'Those in charge of the dispensary stole the medicaments and then sold them either to the patients on the premises or to the traders. The doctors did the same, taking the medicaments for use in their private consulting rooms. Patients unable to pay got injections of coloured water.' (Any British reader who feels complacent about this should study the recent trial of two London doctors convicted and sent to prison for selling blood contributed free. One of them also earned £250,000 a year from a side practice doing abortions. Perhaps 'free' health services always end that way.)
The British had trained an admirable body of civil servants, judges and military men, but when independence arrived, as Andreski remarked, these men 'were surrounded by half-baked newcomers, and became subordinated to the politicians who had reached the top by demagoguery and huckstering, and who had nothing to lose but everything to gain.'
The first military coup in Nigeria took place in 1966. Until then, says Andreski, `Nigeria was providing the most perfect example of kleptocracy.' He did not expect that this military government would remove venality but that it would 'add force as the second prop of the regime which will no longer remain a pure kleptocracy'. Since then Nigeria has endured alternate regimes of the kleptocrats and the generals, though many of the latter have themselves proved venal. Nigeria has not yet undergone a third kind of regime now seen in West Africa, that of the NCOs or junior officers, who are wont to kill off both generals and kleptocrats in the name of revenge or Marxist slogans.
The Dikko Affair will no doubt be written off by the 'Coasters', the old white hands, as another case of WAWA, 'West Africa Wins Again'. Few will stop to consider why it is that the English-speaking states of West Africa, which were once models of good government, have sunk into kleptocracy and military rule, while most of the French-speaking countries, although neglected as colonies, are fairly stable and prosperous. Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone and the Gambia point a wretched contrast with the Cameroons, Togo, the Ivory Coast and Senegal. Some of the French territories failed. All the British territories failed.
Britain's mistake was to assume (or merely pretend?) that countries with no sense of nationhood, no tradition of government and only a small, trained ruling class, were actually able to run their own destinies. The British may have been motivated by a sincere belief that all peoples, without regard to their past or culture, are equally fit for self-government. This belief, though erroneous, may have been truly held by the left-liberal 'friends of Africa'. As for the British politicians, the Foreign Office and big business, I think that their motives were different. They wanted to be shot of responsibility for these troublesome and ungrateful African peoples, even if it meant their falling into poverty, despotism and civil war. They also wanted to maintain Britain's 'vital interests', like petrol and soap flakes, by giving support to whatever regime held power. Hence Britain's disgraceful war against Biafra.
It is odd that Britain, which backed Nigeria for two and a half years in a war of attrition against Biafra, should fall out with its friends over a man in a crate.
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