Nigeria’s persistent dysfunction as a federal formation reflects unresolved tensions in the founding visions of its original statesmen. A reckoning is long overdue.
By Chudi Okoye
“Out of many, one,” poets and prominent politicians previously proclaimed, echoing the idealism of ancient philosophers. This is rendered in classical Latin as E pluribus unum.
For long, I too believed in this creed, and did often plead its case – until Nigeria challenged that belief.
Now, my head decidedly out of the clouds, I propose an alternative formulation: “Due to many, worn,” or, as I had it translated into Latin, Ob plurimos, attrita.
I hesitated slightly as inspiration came and I coined that phrase. I hesitated because the phrase subverts the claim of cohesive nationhood encapsulated in the slogan “One Nigeria” – a claim rooted in centuries of Western idealism. The slogan emerged in the wake of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-70), raised as a rallying cry for national unity. Since then, it has persisted in the Nigerian political lexicon as an aspirational statement of national unity and identity.
I am not sure if this was a conscious adaptation, but the slogan “One Nigeria” echoes the official motto of the United States, E pluribus unum (“Out of many, one”). The phrase, inscribed on America’s Great Seal and engraved on various coins, goes all the way back to the country’s founding. It was proposed in 1776 by Pierre Eugene du Simitiere, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and adopted in 1782.
But the phrase has a far deeper historical provenance. It reaches back to the renowned Roman poet, Virgil, who lived in the 1st century BC and wrote the epic poem, Aeneid. In another poem often attributed to him, Moretum – a rustic recipe for making cheese-and-herb paste from different ingredients – Virgil writes: “by degrees they one by one do lose/Their proper powers, and out of many comes/A single color…” A curious culinary metaphor for unity out of diversity.
A little earlier than Virgil, Julius Caesar’s contemporary, the philosopher and statesman Cicero, used a similar phrase in his De Officiis, a treatise on moral duty completed in 44 BC, conceptualizing the family as “unus fiat ex pluribus” (which translates to “one made out of many”). Indeed, the phrase flows even further back, all the way to the 6th century Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, who taught that despite the apparent diversity and change in the universe, there is a profound underlying unity – a principle he expressed as “the one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one.” Heraclitus captured in nascent philosophical terms the paradoxical interplay between multiplicity and oneness that would echo down through the ages. It even resonates in the African philosophy of Ubuntu.
With this historical lineage, stretching back 2,500 years, you can understand why I trembled as my own subversive thought yielded a negation of that classical idealism. But the phrase, “due to many, worn,” came to me in stages. A few years ago, in a flight of amateur poetry-making, I’d written a satirical verse that I gave the title “Worn Nigeria,” a rhyming disputation of the claim of “One Nigeria” which includes my re-write of the erstwhile Nigerian national anthem, Arise O Compatriots. I will return to that poem later as I unpack my proposition, “Due to many, worn.”
First, let me turn to what triggered this reflection: the latest resurgence of the perennial dispute over the legacies of Nigeria’s foremost statesmen, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo. The dispute, yet again, was about their differing conceptions of Nigerian nationhood, manifested in their politics and rhetoric in the lead-up to and immediately after independence.
Founding Fractures
The latest flare-up in this perennial debate followed the viral recycling – as if newly discovered – of a 2017 Vanguard interview with the late Dr. Paul Unongo, an academic, Middle Belt stalwart, and Second Republic cabinet minister who admired Zik. The piece, headlined “Nigeria’s problems started with Awo’s introduction of tribal politics – Unongo,” was eagerly re-circulated by protagonists who likely stumbled on it recently. It reignited the long-simmering controversy over the 1951 Western Region election, in which Awolowo’s Action Group (AG) outmaneuvered Azikiwe’s National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) to form the government. Awo has long faced accusations of playing the tribal card to secure that outcome.
If accurately reported, the interview shows Unongo, a Zik loyalist, landing heavy blows on Awo for that political sleight. He adopted a Shakespearean irony, praising Awo as Zik’s “younger brother” with a “correct diagnosis” of Nigeria’s dilemma, and defending him from the “tribalist” label – only to imply the very same charge. In his words:
“Awolowo felt, as the strongman of the Yoruba, [that] Azikiwe should not have won the election in his place, and he could not countenance an Igbo man coming to be the premier… of a predominantly Yoruba place. Night came, and when day broke, Zik discovered his majority had collapsed. The Yoruba abandoned him and went to a strange person they did not know ideologically, that is Awolowo, on the basis of tribe.”
Pretty damning, isn’t it? Yet, is it historical?
When this controversy resurfaced, I pushed back in private circles, arguing that while Awo’s action may have grated as realpolitik, it was not unusual in parliamentary system (which Nigeria operated), and is not inexcusable, given the historical context. Let’s consider the situation.
The first step in deconstructing the Zik-as-victim narrative is to clarify the facts of the 1951 Western Region election. At the close of the polls, Awo’s AG had secured 38 of the 80 Regional Assembly seats, while Zik’s NCNC held 24 (some unofficial sources claim 25). The AG fell short of a majority, but several independent and fringe-party candidates had also won seats, some notionally aligned with the NCNC. In theory, this gave the NCNC a better shot at forming a government, if it could rally sympathetic Yoruba independents. This was where coalition gamesmanship kicked in, with both sides striving to secure a working majority. Awo acted swiftly, winning over 15 of the fringe candidates, while only three stayed with the NCNC. This gave the AG an effective majority of 53 seats and enabled it to form the government in January 1952.
Though often portrayed as a subversion of Zik’s mandate, Awo’s maneuver was legal and politically astute. It was a textbook instance of coalition-building in a parliamentary system, not a constitutional aberration (it still occurs under the current presidential system via party switching). Nevertheless, the episode lives in infamy for die-hard Zik supporters – reframed more through ethnic grievance than political realism.
Even so, the episode cannot be divorced from its historical context. By 1951, Nigeria was still a fragile colonial creation. The Northern and Southern protectorates had been created in 1900, with their peoples previously in distinct worlds, and only unified in 1914. Expecting a Yoruba political class to accept an Igbo leader in their region – even a pan-Nigerian figure like Zik – was arguably an idealistic leap. Nationalism was embryonic, and regionalism was rising in anticipation of British withdrawal. Against this backdrop, Awo’s action can be seen as a region asserting itself – not just against colonialism, but against perceived internal domination. What may offend modern sensibilities was then an act of political self-preservation, however regrettable it might now seem.
There is certainly room to critique Awo’s disposition toward the Igbos, especially during and after the Civil War; and I’ve written about this elsewhere. But to judge his 1951 political maneuver through the lens of idealized nationalism is to retroject modern expectations onto a society still in ethnic flux, shaped by Britain’s divide-and-rule colonial policy. The Macpherson Constitution, under which the election was held, had already conceded the primacy of regional identity by devolving power to the three regions. Nationalism, at that point, was aspirational; regionalism was the operative logic. Within that context, Awo’s move can be seen not so much as sabotage as a strategic assertion of political space – like the Monroe Doctrine. It mirrored the emerging impulse toward indigenous self-determination, driven as much by internal anxieties as by the looming exit of colonial power. Even today, no Nigerian state will easily accept a governor seen as a non-indigene, despite constitutional disproof of such bias. It may rankle modern sensibilities that Awo and the West resorted to elemental tactics to gain political advantage. But, seen as resistance against potential dual subjugation – colonial rule and internal domination – it is, given the zeitgeist, understandable.
One vs. Worn Nigeria
Beyond the tactical maneuvers of 1951 lies a deeper philosophical question: what Nigeria is, or ought to be. For Zik and Awo, this question evoked different answers, rooted in radically divergent notions of nationhood: one imaginated, the other anchored in hard ethnic calculus.
Zik, it seems to me, well understood Nigeria as a colonial patchwork. But he also saw an opportunity to create a cohesive country, much like Bismarck’s 19th-century unification of Germany; a springboard, even, to potentiate a future African superstate. It was a large and lavish dream, steeped in the Enlightenment ideals of unity and human progress. Despite his soaring vision, Zik was not – be it said – immune to the gravitational pull of ethnic logic. At critical moments, his nationalist ethos seemed to be arrested by regionalist pressures, and at such times the idealist in him gave way to the ethnic tactician – demonstrating the fragility of pan-Nigerianism when faced with the brute force of sectional interest. We cannot forget the much-recycled speech Zik gave to the Igbo Union in 1949, adverting to an irreducible objective of Igbo self-determination. Yet such deviations never dimmed his integrative zeal.
Zik’s pan-Nigerian vision had strong appeal for the younger intellectuals of the day. But his peers, the other regional leaders, were less enthused. They had different conceptions of Nigeria, and even suspected that Zik’s nationalism masked an Igbo agenda. Awo, for one – ever pragmatic and steeped in federalist logic – saw Nigeria as a composite of distinct nationalities. Once, employing Metternich’s famous description of pre-unification Italy, Awo said Nigeria was a “mere geographical expression.” He feared that premature unity could lead to a form of ethnic subjugation, but also believed Nigeria might better actualize its potential if governed through regional autonomy.
The Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, shared Awo’s instinct. His dialectical exchange with Zik, often cited though the context is unclear, has entered the canon of Nigerian political thought. To Zik’s idealistic plea, “Let us forget our differences,” Bello reportedly replied, “No, let us understand our differences. I am a Muslim and a Northerner; you are a Christian and an Easterner.” Though likely paraphrased, the quote captures a core philosophical divide: Zik’s pan-Nigerian vision versus Bello’s insistence on acknowledging Nigeria’s deep-rooted regional and religious differences. His skepticism of forced unity manifested elsewhere. During the heated March 1953 House of Representatives debate over Chief Anthony Enahoro’s motion for early self-government, the Sardauna declared, “The mistake of 1914 has come to light, and I should like to go no further. I should like the North to be able to stand alone.” For Bello, amalgamation was not a gift to embrace but an error to carefully manage. He feared Southern domination amid a lack of preparedness in the North, and thus wanted to delay independence. But more than that, his pragmatic regionalism, similar to Awo’s federalism, stood in stark opposition to Zik’s idealism.
These contending concepts – Zik’s pan-Nigerian idealism, Awo’s pragmatic federalism, and Bello’s cautious regionalism – reveal the unresolved strains that continue to shape Nigeria’s nationhood. Earlier, I mentioned Virgil’s Aeneid, the tale of Aeneas fleeing Troy to found a new country that became Rome. If I were to write a Nigerian counterpart, I might call it Anaemia, a tale of chronic national weakness. Zik would be Aeneas, bent on forging unity from colonial ruin; Awo, the cautious Ulysses, resisted centralist snares; Bello, our Anchises in a turban, never boarded the ship. But there are no gods here, just Lugard with his divide and rule. Hence, the persistent disunity. The military tried to overcome this with their post-war “One Nigeria” mantra. This resurrected Zik’s integrative rhetoric, but it reflected their central command ethos rather than any democratic consensus. The result has been an uneasy cohabitation under a coercive state, which persists even under civilian rule.
The bitterest irony is that Zik’s vision of national integration ultimately marginalized both himself and his Igbo ethnic group: Zik lost two presidential elections in the Second Republic, and the Igbos remain politically marginalized. Instead, it is the regions once wary of unification – the Sardauna’s Hausa-Fulani North and Awo’s Yoruba South West – that have dominated the very centripetal architecture that Zik zealfully pursued. Successive heads of state from those regions have brazenly used federal power to local advantage – as we’ve seen most starkly with Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu. Be careful what you wish for!
My poem “Worn Nigeria,” and my formulation “Due to many, worn,” depict the notion of “One Nigeria” as a mirage, arguing instead that the Nigerian republic is fraying at the seams for this very reason of forced centralism.
This is not merely a Nigerian dilemma. Even the United States, supposedly the global exemplar of E pluribus unum, is now, under President Donald Trump, retreating from that grand ideal – its racial, regional, and religious fault lines re-emerging.
And yet, the solution lies not in breakup but in what we might call “nested autonomy,” a model that devolves greater powers to the federating entities, themselves re-aggregated into larger and more viable political units. We already have this in the six geopolitical zones. They need only be constitutionally recognized and administratively empowered. This requires a new mental model, a shift from the “unity in diversity” formula, with its centre-dominant architecture, to “diversity in unity”: a framework that acknowledges foundational differences and unleashes the sub-national entities, while maintaining an ecumenical civic identity.
It is the surest way to redeem the dream of “One Nigeria” from the unraveling tragedy of “Worn Nigeria.”
