By EMMANUEL YAWE –
As Nigerian university students in the 70s we were deeply immersed in the struggles for the liberation of Africa from colonialism. True, “the wind of change” as predicted by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to the Parliament of South Africa on 3 February 1960 in Cape Town had come to pass.
Between January and December 1960 alone, 17 sub-Saharan African countries managed to attain their independence from European colonial powers. The phenomenal year became known as The Year of Africa. In analyzing these developments, we found the easy way out by classifying some countries as “progressive/radicals” and others as “conservative/retrogressive”. Those countries that had waged ferocious anti-colonial wars before independence was granted were hailed as progressive and radical while those who negotiated independence at conference tables were contemptuously dubbed retrogressive conservatives.
Some countries like Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa were still holding down African counties as colonies, so we looked up to a final showdown in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe and finally South Africa the bastion of racism. It was the final showdown in which we hoped the progressives would win over the conservatives. Some of us who had never fought in a war let alone fire a dane gun started imagining our serves playing some heroic role in the impending inevitable war against racism and colonialism.
Sadly, our dear country Nigeria did not qualify to be a progressive country going by our classification. Even Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe our foremost nationalist and first President at independence confessed that we got it on a platter of gold. When at the height of agitations for independence after the world-war 11 some young enthusiastic multi-ethnic Nigerian nationalists on February 16 1946 tried to radicalize the Nigerian struggle for independence, they got the shock of their lives. Among its founding members were Kolawole Balogun who became the first President, M.C.K. Ajuluchukwu who became the first Secretary General, Abiodun Aloba, Nduka Eze, G. Onyeagbula, M. Aina, G. Ebo, J. Inoma and S. Aderibigbe to mention but a few. These youths were unsure about the pace and commitment of the elders to immediate self-government. They thus formed the Zikist movement with a radical agenda for decolonization of Nigeria.
Amazingly, it was the man who inspired them to nationalist agitations, the one whose name they had chosen as a further symbol of militancy, Azikiwe, from where they derived the name Zikist movement and the man they sought to defend against all negative attacks from the British colonial masters and their agents that that first denounced them. Writing in one of his newspaper columns in the West African Pilot, it was Zik who described the Zikist in his typical flowery language as “fissiparous lieutenants and cantankerous followers”. This was followed up with a presidential address at the Annual Convention of the NCNC in Lagos on April 4, 1949, where Zik, condemned them in very trenchant terms. The British government quite aware that the young men were on their own without the support of Zik had already subjected five of them to arrest and trial which came to an end on February 2, 1949. The men who were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment were Enahoro, Agwuna, Abdallah, Oged Macaulay and Smart Ebbi. Finally, on April 12, 1950, the Zikist Movement was banned. That was the end to radical anti-colonial agitation in Nigeria.
By the 70s Nigeria had gone through some bumpy early post-independence years as a democratic country, then the military struck plunging the country into military dictatorship, and a civil war that followed which took its toll on lives and property of Nigerians. In the 70s, we were a young and angry generation still furious at the conservatives who said they fighting for our freedom but compromised and took an independence that had no meaning to us. Over ten years of independence had not taken us to the land of milk and honey that had been promised us before 1960.
On the other hand, we looked back with admiration to the old school violent and radical anti-colonial revolutionaries. The Mau-Mau who waged an audacious war against the British in Kenya, and the National Liberation Front (Front de Liberation Nationale, FLN, in French) who similarly led a brutal and bloody war known as the Algerian War or Algerian war of independence.The war took place mainly on the territory of Algeria, with repercussions in metropolitan France because as it raged, the French public slowly turned against it and many of France’s key allies, including the United States, switched from supporting France to abstaining in the UN debate on Algeria. After major demonstrations in Algiers and several other cities in favor of independence (1960) and a United Nations resolution recognizing the right to independence, Charles de Gaulle, the first President of the Fifth Republic, decided to open a series of negotiations with the FLN. A referendum took place on 8 April 1962 and the French electorate approved the Évian Accords. The final result was 91% in favor of the ratification of this agreement and on 1 July, the Accords were subject to a second referendum in Algeria, where 99.72% voted for independence and just 0.28% against.
Upon independence in 1962, 900,000 European-Algerians fled to France within a few months in fear of the FLN’s revenge. The French government was unprepared to receive such a vast number of refugees, which caused turmoil in France. The majority of Algerian Muslims who had worked for the French were disarmed and left behind, as the agreement between French and Algerian authorities declared that no actions could be taken against them. However, they were regarded as traitors and many were murdered by the FLN or by lynch mobs, often after being abducted and tortured. The tables had been turned and that made us happy. About 90,000 managed to flee to France some with help from their French officers acting against orders, and today they and their descendants form a significant part of the Algerian- French population.
Bouteflika personal history reads like Algeria’s country history. He joined the liberation struggle early irn life and fought for the freedom of his people before he turned twenty years of age. All through the years of independence from 1962 he was always in power. He started as a Minister of Youth and Sports.
Next year, Algeria will mark sixty years of independence, a third of which came under Bouteflika’s leadership. During his rule, Algeria might have used its vast oil and gas wealth to diversify its economy, establishing a foundation for years of prosperity to come. Bouteflika himself might have stepped down from office in 2014 after his third term, securing his legacy as a peacemaker and passing the torch to future generations.
Instead, driven by a combination of personal ambition, he stayed put, coming to embody for many Algerians the regime’s worst qualities: greed for power, corruption, and disdain for the population.
Bouteflika bequeathed Algeria the same rigid, unbending political system he inherited: the same economic system so dangerously dependent on hydrocarbon exports, and reinforced corrupt patronage networks linking the two. After two decades largely lost, Algeria remains firmly saddled with a regime unable to adapt to—much less anticipate—new threats and challenges.
In the days after Bouteflika’s death, Abdelaziz Rahabi, a former minister in the 1990s eulogized him as “one of the forefathers of the political system, marked by authoritarianism, corruption, and systemic resistance to all forms of change and modernity.” Therein lies the contradiction of Bouteflika and his mission in Africa where so much hope was placed and misplaced.