BAD
GUYS (And GOOD GUYS): Right and Wrong in Good Books
The Administration of Nigeria 1900 to 1960: I F
Nicolson
Catch
22 (and a Bit) - Smith's Word of Honour
Colonial
Cadet in Nigeria: John Smith
Crime
and Punishment: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Nigeria
by Walter Schwarz, and Nigeria: Background to Nationalism by James S. Coleman
The Nigerian Federal Election of 1959: K W J Post
- The Last Great Act of Treason?
! Poor Bloody Africa: The
British Destruction of African Democracy:
Transition
in Africa: Sir James Robertson
NB Items starting
with ! are recent additions or updates.
The Administration of
The Governor General of
The best book on Lugard and his lady friends is
by I F Nicolson, 'The Administration of Nigeria 1900 to 1960.' It is sad that
Nicolson did not write a second volume taking the story on from 1960. Anyway,
Nicolson knew that we had rigged the Independence Elections, for we discussed
this in his office in
We had decided to give power to Balewa, a
Northerner, because he was quite a benevolent person who could be easily guided
by our people. He was not really a politician and was quite gentle and honest
for a political stooge. Idealistic young Sandhurst-trained officers shot Balewa
in 1966. A pro-British officer, General Ironsi then took over, but he seemed to
be under the influence of a friend of mine, Nwokedi - an Easterner. There was a
counter coup and Ironsi was killed.
When the Governor General ordered me to get
involved in the first stage at State (or Regional) level of the Independence
Elections in 1956, I refused. I was to assist the Minister of Labour Okotie
Eboh, a notoriously crooked politician and friend of Robertson. Okotie Eboh was
my Minister. He too was shot, to everyone's delight, with Balewa the Prime
Minister.
The British had planned for the Western power
base of Awolowo, a nationalistic leader, to be destabilised. For all I know,
the Southerners had won the Independence Elections, but no way were they to be
allowed to run
Nwokedi, who was my senior colleague, was one of
our golden boys and a friend of mine. He was an ally of Dr Azikiwe, who became
Governor General at
Although our stooges got shot, the British were
resourceful and for another thirty years have played an active role in deciding
who would rule as military dictator. Our sponsored dictatorships have been
relatively benevolent. Nigerians have never known democracy so do not miss it
too much. Western style democracy does not appeal to them, as they dislike the
very idea of joining an opposition. As the Government controls the spoils, many
Nigerians leave the losing Party and join the winning Party to get some loot.
I told everyone that what we were doing in the
late fifties was wrong and would lead to disaster, but I was told by the
Governor General to shut up or be killed. I fled
2 June 1997
'Catch
22' and a Bit: Smith's Word of Honour
My career and health were destroyed during
Government service in
They want my scout's honour, cross my heart -
which, as a boy - I solemnly believed was the highest form of oath, especially
if one added '...hope to die' as a postscript. They deny rigging
They must have my word of honour never to reveal
what they say they never did, i.e. rig
"But you did," I insist. "You
sacked me because I wouldn't take part at a very high level..."
"Well, of course, we did. We know that. The
point is that nobody else knows!"
"I know..."
"But you won't know when you have become
one of us. Just keep your mouth shut."
"After I have given my word?"
"Exactly. Give your word. Forget all about
it. Keep your mouth shut, or else..."
"Or else?"
"You will regret it. An officer in the
Colonial Service is exactly the same as an officer in the Army who disobeys
orders on active service. You know the penalty...!
"I declined your offer to become a Colonel
in the Army."
"You are impertinent, and you know far too
much. You can never be allowed to return to the
It got much worse.
Mr Major's Government recently denied that they
had me poisoned in
I asked how they knew. They replied that the
Director of Porton Down had told them so. (A few weeks later he was reprimanded
by the House of Commons for lying to them on another issue.) I told the
Ministry of Defence that I would have been very surprised if the Director of
Porton Down had said anything else. It was noteworthy, I added, that at the
time Porton Down had a branch in Nigeria where they were testing poison gas and
other means of keeping the Queen's peace.
Curiously, the Government had also built a vast,
very expensive mental hospital in the bush nearby. What it did was a mystery as
it was kept fully staffed but empty. It must have been like the hospital in the
film 'Coma', with its warehouse of spare bits of corpses. When the
distinguished American author, John Gunther, heard about it (probably from the
CIA), he went along and asked why such an expensive facility was kept empty at
such cost when the need for hospital care in
A Rear Admiral recently wrote to me to say that
I now had his permission to publish my remarkable story. He added, somewhat
unnecessarily, that this did not mean that I would be published. The Government
wanted it known that they were no longer banning publication. Even the Cabinet
Secretary was anxious to tell me that I was no longer banned by the Major
Government. Nothing changed of course. Except that I was sounded out about
accepting a pension, on the usual terms of course. The interview with an MP
only took place on condition that I agreed that we could not discuss why the
interview was taking place. In other words, officially, I suppose it never
happened. Certainly nothing came of it. Presumably because I refused to give my
word never to reveal something quite dreadful, which officially never happened.
Over to you, Mr Blair!
12 May 1997
John Smith of
John Smith's 'Colonial
Cadet in
The book is also invaluable
for demonstrating how indirect rule worked. What was initiated as an
inexpensive way of running an occupied country with a handful of administrators
necessarily entailed a very close relationship between the people at all levels
and the British. The record was a proud one. If there was modest development,
there was also the minimum of interference with the native culture. Remarkably
too, for this was imperialism triumphant, there was also deep affection and
even love. Nevertheless, every effort, including blatant criminality, was made
by the British to ensure that in the independence elections, the pro-British
Northerners won. The British were the servants of the Emirs and the Native
Administrations and the political party - the NPC - formed with the help and
encouragement of the British to contest elections, ran the Northern Regional
Government and, in due course, the Federal Government.
In John Smith's account,
the opposition party NEPU is viewed as an intrusive/disruptive element. The
British certainly often appeared to turn a blind eye to the harassment NEPU
suffered at the hands of the Native Administrations and the Emirs. John Smith
is so innocent of the undemocratic stance that he portrays while protecting his
charges, and this was not untypical, that one can almost feel this total
identification with the interests of the Emirs. In rigging elections in the North
(and Northern officials, while admitting the fact, will be hurt that what they
did should be seen, not as duty arising from necessity, but as election
rigging) the British did nothing unusual. It was merely an extension of the
extremely varied, normal routine, which primarily was to act in the Emirs'
interest.
Indirect rule was not
simply a system where the British used the rule of the Emirs, that is to say,
where the Emirs were the agents of the British. In many ways, as Smith
demonstrates, it was the other way around - the British were the agents of the
Emirs. When Northern officials are charged with fiddling the elections, they
openly admit it but express astonishment. Why the fuss? That was their job.
They organised the election arrangements superbly, despite tremendous problems,
and went on without hesitation to ensure total victory for their bosses, as a
natural continuation of the same process. What seems criminality on a grand
scale to the impartial observer was to the British simply a matter of getting
on with the job.
Faced with a Southern
official, who levels charges of gross corruption, the Northern official is
bemused, amused and then a bit put out. "Come on, old chap," they
say, "That's putting it a bit strong. It was our job to look after our people.
Outsiders and trouble makers had to be checked." The point that I am
making is that the British stood for order and stability and keeping everything
quiet and peaceful. Quite how British officials became so indoctrinated with
this ethos of the status quo is a mystery to me. Perhaps it was acquired at
John Smith alone can be
safely excluded from anything improper. His integrity and intelligence are
exceptional and remarkable. There were other Northern officials of the same
high calibre who served 'their people' (and by that, without sarcasm, I mean
the Northern peoples) with tremendous love and devotion far beyond the call of
duty. I may seem confused and ambivalent in both indicating criminality and yet
admiring Northern officials. I understand this, and that same paradox is an
essential part of the record of British rule in
To progressives, ignorant
of what the British did in
17 June 1992
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (Prestupleniye i
nakazaniye) Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866)
A horrible crime has been committed, but the
core of Dostoevsky's novel is Raskolnikov's attempt to find a moral
justification for his crime. He was, he claimed, going to use the money for
which he committed murder, to become a benefactor of mankind.
The Governor General of
"Because it was necessary," he replied
calmly. "Look, Smith," he added, losing his composure momentarily.
"You don't know all the facts..." Nevertheless, when he later adopted
a more threatening posture, he went on to say that I already knew far too much!
The political situation in
Those who do not believe that the British
Government is capable of such infamy may be tempted to vent their anger on the
messenger. The truth is that I opposed this criminality from the start, and
paid a high price for being loyal to our democracy and traditions and the rule
of law. I have researched deeply into the question of the motives for this
treason for thirty years, and if the reasons or excuses which I produce do not
seem adequate, I must stress that I would concur in that judgement. These are
the reasons or excuses I have discovered, and unless Lord Grey, for example,
who is still alive (1992) is prepared to enlighten us further, we may never -
as the criminals may have destroyed the records - get a better explanation.
Raskolnikov's motives are one by one proved to
be false, as perhaps Robertson's too will be one day. It is evident that there
was deep mistrust of Dr Azikiwe, the nationalist leader, by the British., In
1943 the British Colonial Secretary described Zik as 'the biggest danger of the
lot.' Over the years Dr Zik had made some bloodcurdling speeches which had
thoroughly alarmed the British. In 1947, for example, he labelled imperialists
and their accomplices as international criminals like the Nazis, and promised
retribution when
It is highly probable that the British were
going to favour their allies in the North anyway, and looked around for
evidence of extremist threats to justify what they were already planning to do.
It might be said of Dr Zik's extremist and sometimes inflammatory speeches that
he had the role of a dedicated nationalist to maintain. It was important to
appear to be a valiant fighter against the imperialist yoke. Personally, I
always regarded Zik's hyperbole as a joke. He was an armchair rebel and had not
the slightest intention of going to jail or sacrificing his very comfortable
life style for the cause.
The British might argue that what they were
doing was in
When the criminality has the approval of a
British Prime Minister like Macmillan or Eden, not even a police inspector like
Porfiri Petrovich, an astute psychologist, will be smart enough to bring the
criminals to book. The question of punishment, therefore, only arises when it
is decided how to punish those who tried to expose the criminality. The
criminals were awarded high honours for their treason, which resulted in the deaths
of two million people.
Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov suffered a crisis of
conscience because he murdered two women. How conscience-stricken should one
feel for two million?
In truth, the more one kills the less one feels.
Constant repetition obliterates the moral sense, perhaps. And the architects of
Bomber Harris planned mass killing of German
civilians without the slightest concern for his victims, because he had killed
individual Kurds, and twos and threes and small family groups while strafing
rebellious tribesmen from the air in
Dostoevsky's debate as to whether or not the end
justifies the means is now something of a cliché, but it is as vitally
important as ever. Necessity makes us bend the rules, ignore the law, flout
convention and decency. The necessity is to ensure that things come out right.
The desire is to take the chance out of political events. It may not work,
millions may die cruelly, but at least we tried. When the perpetrators of crime
are those charged with preventing it, the title of our novel should truly be
'Crime without Punishment', or 'Punishment of the innocent is no crime and this
is your very own criminal Government telling you so.'
20 July 1992
Schwarz is a typical writer on
I wish the many journalists who wrote about
Well, at least Schwarz had read Coleman whose
work is excellent. I met many young Americans in
So Schwarz gets his stuff from Coleman who got
it from Tokumboh and Bola Onitiri who followed the Yoruba tradition of telling
the white man what he wanted to hear. This is a universal custom in the
downtrodden (a misnomer, really, speaking of the Yoruba. They are rich,
conservative, proud, even arrogant and patronising) when replying to questions
from the powerful. The British police do not have to beat people up to get
confessions. Most of the British lower classes know what is expected of them
and readily comply. (Care on the part of the police is necessary because the
confessions often go way over the top and have to be edited down rather than
exaggerated, and cut and edited to dovetail in with the rest of the 'evidence'.
Was it ever thus?)
The story in Schwarz is the official story. It
sounds truthful and realistic and authentic. The central truth nevertheless is
a lie. It is understandable that this should happen because the British took
very great care to cover up their criminality. The British are not stupid. They
know the penalty for being found out. They had, moreover, a lot of experience
in the business.
Why did I not seek out the reporters? I did. I
told everyone I could, and this got back to the Governor General, who was very
angry. The actual incident involved my being overheard over dinner at the Lagos
Resthouse restaurant talking to an official of the American Consulate and one
of my young American friends. The latter was one or more of the following. He
was a post-graduate student, a writer, a historian, a do-gooder, someone
vaguely attached to the US Consulate or a CIA man. There were quite a few young
Americans around like this. Coleman and Bretton were not untypical.
The administration was not making life easy for
me. I now see why they kept me on the move, or on the hop, around various
offices in
Did Tokumboh and Onitiri know that the
independence elections were rigged? Of course. What Coleman would have done if
they had told him the truth, or if I had spoken to him (and it is possible that
I did) I do not know. Look at the curious case of Ken Post, who wrote the
authoritative study of the elections and gave the British a glowing
testimonial, not just a clean bill of health. Ken knew much more than he 'let
on'. But having done his duty, he was suitably rewarded by appointment to
Coleman did not know? Did he not speak to his
own Consular people? Did he not speak to the State Department? Did he not speak
to the CIA? Did he not speak to Nigerian journalists? Did he not speak to any
honest British officials? It seems not.
Sources are like a stream. Maybe it does not
matter whether you drink from the stream or not. Michael Crowder was a
wonderful friend to have, and I cherished and was for ever proud that I had
known him. He liked me too. Yet Michael gave me his word that he would blow the
whistle on British treachery one day, but he never did. Histories go on being
written, the stream of life flows on, and the old lies are still there in the
bed of the stream.
23 March 1992
'The Nigerian
Federal Election of 1959' by K W J Post. The Last
Great Act of Treason?
'The last great act of the British Raj.' So
wrote Ken Post, a young British academic-to-be (if his researches were
acceptable) of
The bulk of Nigeria's territory lay in the
Northern Region and the British backed up the Northerners' demand for 50% of
the Federal parliamentary seats by stating in the 1950's that the North did
indeed have over 50% of Nigeria's population. At that time I was in charge of
statistics in the Department of Labour's Headquarters in
I have written to many of the academics
involved, including Ken Post, about
A totally inexperienced young graduate student,
Ken Post, is selected to make a one-man study of one of the most complex and
important general elections to be held in
Yet Mr Post produced a detailed, fact-filled,
fat volume which appears quite intimidating, and reached very clear and
decisive conclusions. British public relations had transformed a poor, squalid,
backward colony into a beacon of democracy, a model democracy, the twelfth
largest democracy in the world. And yet in six years the window dressing had
slipped to reveal near total anarchy, the destruction of the parliamentary
opposition, trumped-up treason trials, a totally corrupt political elite, a
military coup, the assassination of three Prime Ministers, a bloody pogrom, one
of the bloodiest civil wars in world history and the total destruction of that
democracy, hailed by Mr Post and given his imprimatur of being fair, decent and
honest.
One in five Africans is a Nigerian. The most
important black
Of course, Mr Post knew that this was a British
election. British officials were in control of the electoral machinery. It
would indeed have been very surprising if Mr Post had returned to his
supervisors, his professors at
Presumably they knew that
Mr Post had an impossible task. I do not
question his integrity. In fact, he compiled a comprehensive, detailed,
exhausting and voluminous work. If I question its accuracy, value or integrity,
it is because it is almost totally dependent on tainted and very suspect
British official sources which I had conclusive evidence were corrupt. When I
was invited to a meeting with HE the Governor General, Sir James Robertson, to
discuss all this at Government House in 1960, his personal assistant, the
beautifully mannered and charming John Bongard told me not to mention unsavoury
matters.
"You mean the election rigging?" I
asked.
"No. He wants to talk about the election
rigging, but don't mention buggering black boys," said Bongard.
When I asked the Governor General why he had
rigged the Independence Elections, he replied quietly, "Because it was
necessary."
Livy said, 'Treachery, though covered up, always
comes out in the end.' 'Deeply concealed acts of treachery,' said
Carefully read, Mr Post occasionally indicates
reservations to his general thesis, but he carefully skirts the rocks that
would sink his vessel. Quite simply, the fact that the British-controlled NPC
exercised totalitarian power over two-thirds of Nigerian territory made the
election results a nonsense. There had been a secret agreement inflicted on the
Southern leaders, binding them not to campaign in the North. What sort of
election was this where the pro-British party, which was hardly recognisable as
a normal political party, was guaranteed success?
'And so in 1960
If Nigerians after 1960 (although British
officials were still in place over large areas) rigged elections shamelessly, they
had learned from experts. Let us consider how the British ran an election in
Prime Minister Balewa's constituency in 1964. In the general election that year
an 'affidavit described how three abortive attempts had been made to nominate a
candidate in the Prime Minister Balewa's constituency. At the first attempt,
the nominators were arrested; the second time they were carried away by thugs;
on the third occasion they were kidnapped and held until the lists closed.' In
sixty one constituencies in the North, NPC candidates were returned unopposed.
It seems the nominations of the opposition candidates somehow were overlooked.
(Martin Meredith. 'The First Dance of Freedom.' Abacus. 1985. P. 179). As the
British were still running the administration in
Post's Eurocentrism and Britishness is evident
throughout his study. "
If the relative honesty of British and African
peoples is to be put in the scales in a Nigerian context, is the integrity of
the people who conquered by force of arms outside the rule of law to be valued
higher than the innocent victims of this conquest? If Mr Post's innocence leads
him to believe that the British were impartial in a contest between the
pro-British North and the nationalist South, his study is undermined. The
British handed power to the North at
The 1959 elections were orderly, efficient and
largely peaceful on polling day. The British arrangements went smoothly. It is
these attributes that Mr Post confuses with fairness and honesty. In truth he
was watching the Africans exclusively. His verdict exonerates those he
observed. This was one of the greatest confidence tricks perpetrated by a
colonial power in
As Post reminds us, the registration and poll
were voluntary. Allegations that the British in the major part of the country,
the North, which covered at least two thirds of Nigerian territory, marshalled
every adult male who could walk through the registration and polling booths,
apparently escaped Post's attention. He expresses no surprise that the
politically inexperienced and apathetic peasants in remote rural areas with few
if any attributes of civilisation - tarred roads, clean water, schools or
medical provision - produced a percentage poll of 89.2. Knowing British
chicanery, Mr Post was right not to be surprised. From reports I received from
contacts throughout the country, I was not surprised either. The lower figures
of 74% in the East and 71% in the West are acceptable as a reflection of the
higher literacy and political awareness in the coastal regions and were
certainly due to truly voluntary registration and voting. The Southern figures
were comparable (if somewhat lower) with voting figures in British general
elections, as Post notes. In the North, incredibly, albeit with British
assistance, the percentage poll was 10.5% higher than in the British General
Election of the same year! Even Mr Post acknowledges that the British in the
North lent a hand to get Northerners to register. Yet he draws back from the
realisation that the British would complete the job and marshal largely
illiterate peasants through the same booth to vote for their pro-British
masters. Why bother to tackle the enormous job of registration if the voters
were not going to turn up to vote? And as Post records on page 205, it appeared
that almost the entire eligible male population was registered in a majority of
Northern constituencies, 'voluntarily'. Presumably if the British had 'helped',
registration would have been 200%.
To recap: In addition to the illegal
gerrymandering, that I witnessed, by my British colleagues which would have, if
known, rendered the election results null and void, the British had given the
pro-British North 50% of the seats. They had forced the Southern nationalists
to keep out of the North. 'Voluntary registration' had achieved near total
figures in the North and voting percentages were also incredibly high. In these
British-arranged circumstances a Northern (and British) win was an absolute
certainty. Any informed person betting on a Southern win against these odds
would have been declared insane. And did those who registered know what they
were doing so voluntarily? Post adds a footnote to page 205 to suggest whether
they were really aware of what was happening was an entirely different matter.
A knowing Post gives us here a cynical smile. Post does not really believe they
registered of their own volition. If they had, we would have to assume that
they knew what they were doing. Post thinks that preposterous, as it probably
would appear to most people. And here Post gets himself into a logical bind. He
cannot bring himself to admit the truth. Yes, they did not need to know what
they were doing, because they were not registering of their own volition. Mr
Post, by his own admission in that footnote, gives the game away. Just another
British fix.
Another astonishing fact was that the Northern
Emir-controlled Government party, the NPC, did not even need to fight its
opponents in the West and East. They could sit back and let the Southerners
fight each other. The NPC contested only one seat in the West and none at all
in the East. The NPC was indeed an unusual political party. The truth is that
it was not a proper political party at all, but a regime devised to perpetuate
the wishes of the British, both before and after the
In 1956 the present writer was ordered by the
Governor General to take all Department of Labour staff and vehicles to
campaign in Warri for the chief stooge of the British in the South, Festus
(Festering) Samuel Okotie Eboh, the most corrupt and probably therefore the
politician most favoured by the British in the South. I refused to take part in
this criminality as already stated. Now in stage two of the
Okotie Eboh was the most important politician
for the British. This is why such extraordinary measures had to be taken to
make sure he won. I knew this in 1956, which is why the Governor General warned
me that I knew far too much. If I revealed what I knew, he said that means
would be found to silence me. The British could always deliver election results
to please their friends, even when one British official broke ranks. There was
one exception and it illustrates how grotesque Post's conclusions were about
the
On 7 November, shortly before the general
election, a plebiscite was held in the
However, the British do not give up so easily.
In the 1959 vote there had been 70,401 against 42,979 to postpone a decision to
join
Post makes no reference to the celebrated
presence of the CIA and its role in the
Francis Nwokedi, whom the British had chosen to
have the key post in
As I have remarked, the Governor General said
that I knew far too much, and he would know. I have indicated how I knew so
much. It should be remembered that I was part of the British establishment. The
Labour Department expatriate staff made no claim to be very cerebral. (The
African staff were, however, quite brilliant). I made friends in other
departments including one that will not surprise the astute reader of what has
gone before. One informant was in charge of counter-intelligence. Another
tapped all leading politicians' 'phones. As the Governor General rightly said,
"I knew too much." This rigged election put into office a gang of crooks
who for six years ransacked this great giant, this great empire of a nation, a
commonwealth in itself. 'Nigerians' are so diverse, so exuberant, and so full
of excitement and laughter... When the military rose against these crooks, a
civil war started and one thousand days later up to two million young Nigerians
were dead. This was treason to our democracy.
I have written this election study as a duty, a
debt, that I owe to a dear friend now dead. Philip Williams, the biographer of
Hugh Gaitskell, pioneered the study of elections at
"How do you do it, Phil!" I once
exclaimed.
"I'll tell you a secret, Harold," Phil
said very seriously. "You get the results, you get all the information you
can, you take a dozen pencils and note pads and you knock yourself out for
weeks analysing it all!"
In 1957 I told Phil how we had rigged the
elections in the first stage Regional (State) level of the independence
elections. I had resigned from the Colonial Service and taken a job as
Personnel Officer at the Esso Fawley Refinery. We started a second baby; we had
a house, a car, a dog and a cat as well as a well-paid job. However, I knew too
much, and the British Government took my job, my car, my home, my dog and cat
(I still grieve for them) and forced me to return to
In 1960 I fled from
Ken Post worked incredibly hard to produce this
book on
Another American Professor Schwarz also believed
Mr Post may have been too sanguine in his conclusion about the fairness of the
elections. Certainly one of
The Russians were always damned because in their
kind of elections the Government or official candidates always won with thumping
majorities. In some of the roughest and undeveloped terrain in Africa,
Professor Post records registration and voting figures which can only be
compared with the
As Sir Alan Burns proudly pointed out, '...no
attempt was made to force upon
The election studies in
It was really the British colonial officials in
the North who were determined that it was their Southern counterparts - the
mission boy nigger lovers - who would be powerless. Did Dr Azikiwe and Awolowo
really believe that the British were going to hand over the richest black
colony in
The only people who would be in a position to
question Ken Post's endorsement of the
The name of the game in handing over
I do not say that all the events in
The Coker Commission helped to prove that even
if one doubted the charge of treason, Awo had undoubtedly diverted millions of
public funds into his party machine. However, this had been known to British
intelligence for years. Had they nipped this in the bud, they could not have
used it to jail Awo at their convenience. I know this to be true because the
Senior Resident in the West, a fellow Magdalensis named Smith, told me he had
all this stuff in his safe in 1960, and it had been there for some time. Post
was told all this too, as can be seen from his book. Polling day was on 12
October 1959. Post dates his Preface 31 August 1961. The following year the
Coker Commission was set up to - surprise, surprise! - discover what had been
known all the time and help put Awo out of politics. One major threat to
British control of
Awo may have thought that diverting funds to
further the pursuit of freedom from the colonial yoke was morally justified.
The British were not the sort of colonial street fighters who let moral
considerations deter them from going for the jugular. Awo went to jail, not
because he was charged with being a criminal - that was irrelevant - but
because he trusted the British to be moral. After all, they could have made
provision for political party financing from public funds. They could also have
acted quickly to stop the offence. Of course, that would have seemed
hypocritical when the British were financing the NPC - the party which drew on
the major geographical area and major part of
Mr Post's study is replete with voting and
registration figures, all of which have passed through British hands. As such
they are tainted, very suspect and quite unacceptable. Sir James Robertson in
1960 not only accepted that the elections were rigged, he was anxious to
convince me that they were, in order to underline the trouble I was in. He
emphasised that the orders had come from him and that hundreds of senior
officers had been involved in this covert operation. He stressed that I was the
only one to object.
I already knew that the 1956 State (first stage)
Elections had been hopelessly compromised. This was how my troubles had started
when Sir James sent me personal orders to take all Labour Headquarters staff
and vehicles to assist the NCNC campaign against the Action Group. This was the
Minister of Labour's constituency although he himself was not standing. The
order came through Francis Nwokedi who was, like Okotie Eboh, a close friend of
Dr Zik. I was friendly with Nwokedi, who was to head the Foreign Service after
Independence; serve with Ironsi in the Congo; be Ironsi's close colleague after
the military coup; be responsible for the Nwokedi report which proposed
scrapping the Federation and precipitated the Northern pogrom; and finally
became a Biafran leader, gun runner and hawk.
Also in 1956 the Governor General ordered my
boss Charles Bunker to pressurise British and other firms to provide large sums
of money, cars and petrol to Okotie Eboh who was the National Treasurer of the
NCNC. It was this vast financial power which made it possible for Okotie Eboh
to become the major force in the NCNC, drive Dr Zik into a back seat and seal
an alliance, as the British demanded, with the NPC.
With all this evidence and much more, the
elections were clearly a total fraud and the British role had been entirely
criminal. It is for this reason that there is really no point in examining Mr
Post's numbers as if they were factual. This criminality also reinforced
commonly expressed doubts about the integrity of the Northern census returns,
which had been designed to back up a demand that the North be given 50% of the
parliamentary seats.
If all British chicanery were planned to give
I do not know the true Northern census figures.
Neither do I know the true election returns for the 1956 and 1959 elections. I
do know that these elections were totally rigged and that the British, not the
Nigerians, engaged in wholly reprehensible, criminal behaviour. If the Nigerian
politicians did engage in corrupt electoral practices post 1960, they had been
taught by their masters in 1956 and 1959.
There was nothing personal in the vindictiveness
shown to Awo and Zik by the British. The nationalist leaders were not rotters;
they were intellectuals who were rather unsociable and aloof, and did not suck
up to the British, unlike the Northern creeps. Awolowo and Enahoro were men of
considerable intellect and principle, but they would tangle with the British.
Not too long after they were condemned as treasonable, criminal and evil, they
were reinstated and back in harness at a Federal level with the full backing of
the British and their Northern dupes, for it was Zik's turn to be worked over
and taught a lesson. In fact, the wily Zik, when he saw defeat looming in the
civil war, ratted on his party and his people and was allowed to join the
winning side. Of course, it is wrong to talk of anyone winning in a barbaric
war, which cost the lives of a generation of young people. Neither the
Nigerians nor the Biafrans won this bloody contest. Surely there were only
losers? Not quite. It is true that the Nigerian people lost, but it was the
British who won for their allies in the North ruled as always and even survived
when split up into many states, because none of these states crossed the
frontier between North and South. The integrity of the North survived even the
fragmentation intended by the creation of many new States.
The game plan was to keep
I should very much like to have Professor Post's
answers to the following questions: -
- Does
he stand by his assessment of the election?
- What
were his qualifications to make the study?
- Who
suggested he make it? (He clearly obtained co-operation from the colonial
regime). Did this affect his conclusions?
- Where
did he spend polling day?
- Did
he feel competent to make this colossal study without any assistance?
- Did
he obtain a higher degree for this study? Is the book identical with his
thesis? Can I obtain a copy of his thesis?
- Did
the academics, whom he acknowledges, suggest changes in his book?
- Was
he under any pressure to give the election a clean bill of health?
- What
constraints were there on his freedom to report truthfully?
- I myself
spent polling day in charge of a polling station in
- Did
he employ any interpreters or conduct any interviews during the campaign?
- Apart
from election returns, which came from colonial government, what were his
sources?
- The
North, it was claimed, covered the major part of
- Where
did he go during his study? What was his mileage? Did he travel only by
car?
- Would
his study not have had more claim to impartiality, if made by a non
British academic?
- When
he made this study, how old was he? How had he voted, if ever, in British
elections? What were his political party affiliations?
- Did
he make any further election studies?
- What
are his views on the election now?
9 February 1992
! ('The Guardsmen: Harold Macmillan, Three
Friends
And the World They Made' by Simon Ball)
Poor Bloody
Destruction of African Democracy
Macmillan's Machiavellian Machinations
'It
is out of season to question at this time of day, the original policy of
conferring on every colony of the
Three British colonial officers protested at the
British rigging of
The remarkable way in which I was treated -
vilification; vindication; commendation; threats; vindication; hostility; offer
of a knighthood (with permanent exile); vindication; denigration - puzzled me
until I read every book on Macmillan, his diaries, biographies, etc. Only then
did I realise I had been treated in accord with Macmillan's personal
philosophy. However, as Macmillan had by this time killed three million
innocent Africans with Labour's help, I could hardly feel badly done to. I was
very lucky to be alive. Had I come near success as a whistle-blower, I would
have been killed. This was no problem for MI5/6 who have many killers to hand. Actually
I was a failed whistle-blower because poisoned by Porton Down, which was the
view of a Minister of Defence who had reason to know!
For twelve years I suffered the devastating
effects of a poison, which destroyed my gut and simulated tropical sprue, which
is rarely found in
Macmillan evolved his
'The
purely Balkan politics we have here are more to my liking,' he wrote. 'If you
don't like a chap,
you don't deprive
him of the whip or turn him out of the party. You just say he is a monarchist
or
has plotted to
kill Murphy' - Macmillan's American counterpart - 'and you shoot him off to
prison
or a Saharan
concentration camp. Then a week or two later, you let him out and make him
Minister
for something or
other. It's really very exhilarating.'
In 1960 Macmillan rigged
My own treatment as a whistle-blower was not
much better. His son-in-law, Julian Amery, through the Governor General, Sir
James Robertson, threatened my life should I succeed in alerting the British
public. At the very least, they promised, if I did not accept permanent exile to
the
Mac, SuperMac, devious? Devious is not the word.
Insane is a better one. Drunk with power? Hitler was insane? Mussolini was
insane?
A
Dagger in His Heart
“Without
oil, and without the profits from oil, neither the
Harold Macmillan, 4 October 1956. The Macmillan Diaries.
At the time Macmillan recorded this view, he was
heavily engaged with
'Many people' doubtless included the oil
companies, and Tory and Labour politicians. In fact, the first stage of the
Independence Elections was rigged in 1956, when I, with my colleague Charles Bunker,
was ordered by the Governor General to take a major role in the clandestine
arrangement. It was evident on the ground that planning had been in hand for
some time.
Although of great international importance, not
one civil servant blew the whistle on the awful lies told by Government
Ministers during the
It is clearly better to conduct dirty work
abroad in secret. Macmillan kept a close eye on the independence arrangements
for
It seems that it was British parliamentary
democracy that was being set aside by Harold Macmillan. Our stooges, who did
not want the British to leave - the most backward and feudal we could find -
had power thrust upon them. Nobody believed the mass of the people who followed
their nationalist leaders could possibly have voted for those awful creatures
and, in fact, very few did, but who cared when the British were counting the
votes! Amazingly at the victory celebrations on Independence Day, not a single
nationalist leader was on the platform when the Union flag was lowered.
Had Macmillan feared the
Clearly, the opposition had to be smashed, and
in no time the leaders of the Action Group were framed on trumped-up treason
charges. Would not this increase the risk of a coup? Our stooges were gunned
down in 1966, and the Ibo were for a moment victorious. A British counter-coup
restored our boys in power and sadly involved a pogrom. The Ibo declared for
independence, and they were put down by the force of British arms.