Dialogue With Nigeria By AKIN OSUNTOKUN
DIALOGUE WITH NIGERIA BY AKIN OSUNTOKUN
First the good news, there is an often ignored critical dimension to debates on the political history of Nigeria and on which Nigeria can justifiably take pride. The default preference of (International) Western scholarship is the evasion of any evidence that runs counter to their narrative of the unrelieved incapacity of Africa in general and Nigeria in particular for exemplary political leadership.(The last on which local and foreign scholars now swear is ‘Nigeria and Prebendal politics by Richard Joseph)
Before I go to my inference, I will ask the question of how any honest observer of Nigerian politics will characterise the decade running from the 1950s to the early in terms of political leadership in Nigeria? . When I asked this question of the one and only Premier of the Northern region, Sir Ahmadu Bello from AI, this was the response I got:
“The creation of the civil service during the period of Ahmadu Bello is one of his major achievements. He regarded the Northern civil service as a meritocracy, which should be above petty political quarrels, and certainly above corruption. The civil service had a rigorous code of ethics, and came to serve as a counterbalance to both politicians and traditional leaders. The trans-ethnic nature of the civil service provided the backbone for Northern Regionalism and for northern development efforts, which were based on the principle of equal distribution of opportunities”
