With the 1959 elections ending with no clear winner, an alliance had to be formed to determine who would rule. It was no brainer that AG and NCNC should form a coalition. Awolowo had already humbled himself to be a Deputy Prime Minister or Finance Minister in Zik’s government. Zik invited AG’s team to Asaba, West’s door to the East, to have coalition talks. The talks were a clever ruse to keep AG’s hopes high so that AG would be kept distracted from going upwards to the North for talks. Then the AG read in the news that Zik and Michael Okpara had gone up North and clinched the deal with the Sardauna on forming the government. Tafawa Balewa would be the Prime Minister for the new nation and Zik, the President. Even Nkrumah was shocked. He asked Zik why having spent so much energy fighting for colonial emancipation and then settling for a toothless bulldog role when Nigeria needed him the most? But it was a trap. As he said in his autobiography, My Life, the first time Sardauna came to Lagos to participate in national politics was in 1947. Then, with over £13,500 raised from all over Nigeria – a doctor’s annual salary, then was a little over £200 – Zik had led other six prominent NCNC delegates to London to protest the “obnoxious laws” of Governor Arthur Richards. The trip ended in failure with backbiting, abuses and accusation of theft. Zik’s opponents at the NYM, accused him of squandering the money and trust of Nigerians. Zik replied insinuating that the Yoruba on the team, that is: Mrs. Fumilayo Ransome-Kuti, Prince Adeleke Adedoyin, Dr. A. B. Olorunnimbe, were the problem. There erupted a heated and prolonged press war between Zik’s Political Reminiscence in his West African Pilot and H.O. Davies’ Political Panorama in Daily Service. This led to Lagos Igbos rushing to buy machetes en masse thinking a tribal war was imminent. The Governor and his General Secretary, Hugh Foot, quickly called Zik and H.O. Davies to order at the Government House. In the middle of all this was the time Sardauna came to Lagos for the first time. As he wrote in his autobiography, he went away with the resolve that “the North must take politics seriously”. And later when the Daily Service published the speech of Zik about Igbos been destined by God to conquer and rule over others, Sardauna’s resolve went deeper. He had been reading Zik and the Igbos through that lens ever since. His way of neutralising Zik when the opportunity came in 1959 was to offer him a powerless post, which surprisingly Zik and Okpara dutifully accepted in place of being Nigeria’s first Prime Minister. It was this historic mistake that Nzeogwu, Ifeajuna and other coup plotters tried to undo in 1966. -Damola Awoyokun. Reading from the above, one would see that the Ibo had been planning since 1947 to take over Lagos in Yorubaland. They bought machetes en mass to fight the Yoruba in 1947 in their own homeland after Zik was accused of corruption. Today, some gullible Yoruba Youths see Ibo as an ally. Ibo have armed themselves in Lagos and would rather see Yorubaland come to ruin. The experience Sardauna witnessed in Lagos of Ibo arming themselves to fight the Yoruba in Yorubaland ensured the Gambari never gave the Ibo any chance to control their homeland and the only reason why Gambari massacred the Ibo in their million in 1966. Ibo are the number one enemy of the Yoruba in Nigeria.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 11:00:09 +0000