BRITISH CONSPIRACY...PART ONE.

        ... by Shola Adebowale   

Preamble; -‘Personally, now and for some time I feel so ashamed to have killed people to sustain the unity of Nigeria. I feel so sad to have shed blood for the unity of Nigeria...While some of us were dying in the battle field for the restoration of Nigeria as one country, some people have their eagle eyes on one particular subject ‘oil’, the live wire of the economy, the new fulcrum or pendulum of power. While we fought for one country, some people have been reaping where they did not sow .They have been reaping from bogus population figures fashioned to suit their selfish purposes’. The Black scorpion - “However, Richard Nixon got a very different sense of the situation when he met Rogers and officials of the African Bureau. Following their briefing, he telephoned his National Security adviser and said: “They’re going to let them starve, aren’t they, Henry.”The US President, on the starvation going on during the blockade of Biafra.  -‘The children of Nigeria are suffering unbelievably. I have seen nothing like it since Belsen. Death and pain stalk beside them. Out of every two born one must die... often suffering the greatest agony as they go.”’ Dr. Robert Collis  -‘Since 1914 the British government has been trying to make Nigeria into one country, but the Nigerian people themselves are historically different in their backgrounds, in their religious beliefs and customs, and do not show themselves any signs of willingness to unite. . . Nigerian unity is only a British invention.’ Abubaker Tafawa Balewa, 1948  -‘Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no “Nigerians” in the same sense as there are “English”. The word “Nigerian” is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not.’ Obafemi Awolowo  -"…there was a threat that the Igbos wanted to take revenge. Now sitting down and looking at it, quite honestly in retrospect, I think we used that so as to gain support, to get people committed so that you didn't get caught. It was preemptive."IBB on the of killing of Igbos throughout all nooks and crannies of the Northern Region  -“Let us go and crush them. We will pillage their property, rape their womenfolk, kill off their menfolk and leave them uselessly weeping. We will complete the pogrom of 1966".The theme song of Radio Kaduna,1967 -‘The very circumstances of Nigeria only permit an idiot to be detribalized’. Ojukwu “How the British Undermined Democracy in Africa”:  An Exclusive Account of Nigeria’s First Elections.                                                                                     The account of Harold Smith, a Former British Colonial Officer, New African: May 2005 When you hear British government officials thunder about election malpractices these days, you think butter will not melt in their mouths. But in 1956 and 1959, the British deliberately influenced Nigeria’s independence elections so that the Northerners would dominate the country following independence. And for 45 years (since 1960),one of the British colonial officials involved in the affair has been trying in vain to blow the whistle, but the UK media which likes to think of itself as being free and fair will not touch the story even with a barge pole apparently on national interest grounds.  This story will shock most people, especially Nigeria’s multitude of ethnic groups who are still discussing the mechanism of living together as onenation at the national conference convened in Abuja by President (Olusegun Obasanjo’s government three months ago. New African can now reveal that but for the British dirty work, the Northern domination of Nigeria which has caused so much angst in the country and which led both tothe coup of January 1966 and the subsequent “civil war”1967-1970) that killed two million people would not have arisen and, therefore, the current national conference in Abuja would nothave been necessary. To fully understand this shocking story, we need to go back in time to 1956. The sun is about to set on the mighty British Empire over which the sun was said to never set. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s landmark “winds of change” speech delivered in South Africa is having an effect. After much agonizing, the British are retreating from West Africa almost in a panic. As Harold Smith, the star of this story puts it: “The withdrawal took place in haste, because world opinion was beginning to demand that the colonial powers spend money on their African possessions. If this suggests that Britain enhanced its colonies, itsimply isnot true, If this had been the ease, then Britain would have left behind many more factories, plantations, roads, ports and means of communication in Africa than she did... In 1947, Sir Hugh Foot found that there was not a single university in Nigeria or technical school, and in the North not one secondary school.” But there is no turning back. Britain has to grant independence to its African colonies. But in Nigeria, the same Britain, led by the same Harold Macmillan, will not leave until itmakes sure that in Harold Smith’s words, “its stooges in the North” will dominate the country after independence. It does not matter whether the Northerners are up to the task or not. As it happened, they were not! And Nigeria has suffered for ituntil this day. Perhaps the Africans were expecting too much from Britain. As Harold Smith says: “When did Britain itself become a democracy, and has ityet achieved that state? With universal male suffrage in 1884 or when all women got the vote in 1928? Britain’s democratic traditions are of more recent origin than most are aware, When the British removed themselves from Nigeria in 1960 (though in truth they did not really surrender all power to the African people), there was not even universal suffrage as only a minority of the country’s women - those in the South - were entitled to vote.” Nigeria’s independence elections were held in two stages, the first on a regional level in 1956. And the second on a federal level in 1959. The British did the counting in both instances and, according to their pre-set plan, massaged the figures and the electoral process leading to them so that the politicians in the West, led by Chief Anthony Enahoro and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who more than likely would have won the elections, were declared losers. At the time, Nigeria’s three regions - North (dominated by the Hausa and Fulani), West (Yoruba) and East (Ibo) - had a measure of independence and were in effect federal states. The 1956 election was, thus, the final regional election before independence. So much was at stake that the major political parties mounted massive campaigns. Enter Harold Smith. Then only 29, he was a mere labour officer based in Lagos. In the absence of his boss, he had been chosen by the labour commissioner to “keep an eye on things”. In his autobiography written in 1987 (but which is yet to be published in hard copy in Britain because of the “dynamite” it contains), Smith reveals: “At this juncture, the order arrived which was to change my life, It had come through the chain of command, apparently from the governor-general himself. It was addressed to me personally... The order directed me to arrange for all Nigerian staff of the [Labour] Department and all departmental vehicles to proceed to the minister of labour’s constituency for the duration of the election campaign to work under the minister’s orders and to get his Ibo friends elected. This was a covert operation and a cover story was needed. I was to devise a survey of migrant labour covering the minister’s constituency  “My reply was brief, ‘No,’ I wrote on the minute sheet, ‘This would be a criminal act,’... The British government was taking credit for its liberal policies in moving towards independence and the honest and fair handover of power to the new democratically elected leaders of Nigeria. Yet here was chicanery and cynical interference in the electoral process beyond belief.” Smith continues: “The British loved the North and had arranged for 50% of the votes to be controlled by the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC), which was largely a creation of the British and hardly a normal political party in the accepted sense, It was funded by the British controlled Native Authorities and was quite simply a tool of the British administration.  “Because of this, independence was to some extent a sham because the results were a foregone conclusion, The North and the British would continue to rule. However, it was still possible that the two advanced and educated Southern parties would unite against the North, so it was necessary to keep them apart. Divide and rule, the old British device for creating conflict, was employed in its most brazen and cynical form to keep the Ibos and Yorubas from working together in Nigeria.” According to Smith, it was British policy to encourage tribal rule in the East and West by discouraging the creation of new states which would have broken up the two power groups. “Of particular importance,” he told New African on 13 April 2005, “was the need for the NPC in the North to go unchallenged. And it was made quite dear to the leaders in the South that the British would not tolerate more than token electioneering against the NPC in the North… “What was quite obvious from the orders coming out of Government House in 1956 was that Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe [leader of the largely Ibo NCNC party in the East] was working with the British and the NPC in the North against the Action Group in the West [that was why Smith was ordered to go and help the NCNC via the Ibo minister’s constituency in the East].  “In many respects,” Smith says, “it was difficult to detect in the North where the British administration ended and Northern rule began. Thus, through a cynical display of horse dealing, the 1959 Federal election became a mockery, because the outcome - Northern domination of Nigeria after independence - was assured before a single vote was cast. “The Northerners never really wanted the British to leave. They feared the Southerners more than the British. The British and the Northern elite worked so closely together that differences of policy could hardly exist. The British claimed that the Northerners demanded - and must have - 50%of all the seats in a Federal legislature. Was it really the Emirs who thought this up or did the British put them up to it? The British agreed anyway... Whoever controlled the NPC controlled the North and the whole of Nigeria. As the British and the Emirs were inseparable, elections were a mere formality. “This is the story of evil committed by ‘kind, nice, decent British politicians, they sought to keep Britain from bankruptcy and found a solution in the mineral-rich Empire on the point of independence. It was necessary to bend the rules and sadly, in due course the rules were totally forgotten. Those who got in the way were innocent but had to be dealt with quite harshly.” The principal people, “who got in the way” happened to be the opposition members of the Action Group in the West. A solution was found, they were sent off to jail on trumped up treason charges. Chief Enahoro (who is still alive) got 15 years in jail, and Chief Awolowo 10 years. The seeds of destruction of Nigeria’s democracy had been sown, and the dark clouds of conflict and war were swirling on the horizon.  Smith and the governor-general The governor-general of Nigeria at the time was Sir James Robertson. He had told Harold Smith in the face in 1960 that the independence elections had been rigged “because it was necessary”. He then threatened Smith if he did not shut his “bloody” mouth. Sir James had met Prime Minister Macmillan when he was on his way to South Africa to make the “winds of change” speech. London had already agreed that “because of Britain’s self-interest”, Nigeria, one of the richest and most populous colonies in the British Empire, should be left in the safehands of “friends of Britain” after independence. As such, the North had to win the independence elections by any means necessary. For Sir James and Macmillan’s government, everything went swimmingly in the 1956 and 1959elections, except that there was oneodd Englishman in the Colonial Service in Lagos, the labour officer Harold Smith who would not do their bidding and keep quiet about it. Smith, a dashing young man with a bright future, had joined the Colonial Service in 1955 after obtaining a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Oxford the previous year. He had met at Oxford the young lady who would become his wile and co-sufferer, Carol. Born in Manchester in 1927, and at only 29 years of age with movie star good looks, his career was going well. He had brilliant reports. His name was soon known in the distant parts of Nigeria as “Smith the Lawmaker” because he had drafted two of Nigeria’s laws - the Factories Act which was hailed at the time as the “finest piece of legislation to be placed on Nigeria’s statute book”, and the National Provident Fund Act. His seniors trusted him, they knew he always delivered on time; In short, he was a good man in the service of the Queen. But by 1956, he had become a thorn in the flesh of the British government because, as he puts it, “I chose to believe in democracy and to consider it dishonourable and despicable to tamper with it”.  In fact, he was not alone; there were two other British officials in Lagos who, like Smith, had initially protested against the rigging of the 1956 elections.  The two, however, later crumbled under pressure from Sir James and Whitehall. But Smith stood his ground. As he told New African in his home, in the tiny village of Widbrook, near Bradford-on-Avon, England (see interview on p14), “it was decided that I was the ringleader and should be punished. For 12 years, I suffered the devastating effects of poison which destroyed my gut and simulated the disease, Tropical Sprue, [a disease common in Asia but rarely found in Africa.]  My chance survival was remarkable and only after many years of medical research did I feel confident enough to re-commence my whistle-blowing. By this time, the British had created a wasteland in Nigeria.” He continued; “Many people and institutions, including the oil companies and Tory and Labour politicians were all involved in interfering with the 1956 elections, when I, with my two colleagues, were ordered by Sir James to take a major role in the clandestine arrangement. It was evident on the ground that planning had been in hand for some time. “And so, our stooges who did not want the British to leave had power thrust upon them. Nobody believed that the mass of people who followed their nationalist leaders in the South could possibly vote for the Northerners, In fact few people voted for the Northerners, hut who cared when the British were counting the votes! “To leave friends in charge of Nigeria in our absence was surely prudent. The loss of one or two lives is all we can comprehend. An expedient Whitehall decision is calm and deliberate and the risks, fever considered, must be small and, of course, anonymous,” It is clear at the time that Smith could not adequately fathom the enormity of the power he was fighting against when he confronted the governor-general. Their meeting was quite dramatic. “Sir James confessed to me,” he told New African, “that he had rigged the elections to let me know how much trouble I was in. ‘Why’. I pleaded. ‘Because it was necessary’, he replied.” “Ah, necessity and Machiavelli, and oil,” Smith writes in his 1987 book. “Without oil, without the profits from oil, neither the UK nor Western Europe can survive. Of course, that was before we discovered oil in the North Sea.” When Sir James called Smith to his grand office facing the Marina in Lagos, Smith says the governor-general told him; “You know why you are here, Smith. And I want you to know that all your worst fears and suspicions are absolutely correct. All the accusations you have made are correct, I am telling you this because I want you to know how much trouble you are in.” Smith the Lawmaker was now in real trouble, “It is a cliché to say that my heart sank, but I use it deliberately because it was somewhere in my groin, he tells in his 1987 book. “I had wanted to he proved wrong, but I was being told from the highest possible source that my conclusions were correct. Britain had calmly, coldly and with deliberation set out to tamper with democracy in Nigeria. “While I was absorbing this incredible disclosure, it became clear that in Sir James’ opinion, I was willfully disobeying orders on active service. I would now do exactly as I was told, and I had no choice... “I listened to Sir James’ terms, and when he had finished, I said nothing. I looked at the portly figure of the most senior, the most powerful representative of the Queen in Nigeria, and very calmly pronounced two words; ‘No. Sir’,” And Smith’s fate was sealed. A man of firm convictions, Smith may have perhaps allowed himself here to be carried away by youthful exuberance, because most people would have taken Sir James’ word that there was a choice - keep your mouth shut and continue to be a golden boy, a high flier, an outstanding officer with appropriate remuneration and rewards, or, as Sir James starkly put it; “You will never be employed again by anybody.” Smith says; “I chose the latter course. I had no choice really. Cheating a fledgling nation out of its birthright was evidently routine practice for some. I could not see myself getting involved in this kind of intrigue. And of course, I thought I would somehow survive. In fact, I did survive, even though I found myself permanently retired at 33with no salary or pension. I had only graduated at Oxford six years earlier.” He continues; “The governor-general simply could not understand why I should make such a fuss about which set of Africans the British chose to leave in charge in Lagos. If I would not play the game, I would have to take the consequences. I suppose this was the way Africans were treated, and it was decided I might profit from the same medicine. “Sir James had said forcefully; ‘You may be under a misapprehension, Smith. I want you to know that I personally gave the orders regarding the elections to which you objected. They were necessary.’ ” “But illegal. Sir,” I riposted. “Sir James then tried a different tack; ‘Look here. Smith, he pleaded. ‘Be reasonable. ‘Your work has been brilliant and outstanding. If you will keep your mouth shut. I can promise rapid promotion and a most distinguished career elsewhere in government Service Overseas, but you will not be allowed to work in the UK. You must understand that you know too much for your own good. If you don’t give me your word, meanswill be found to shut you up. No one will believe your story and the press will not be allowed to print it.’ “Sir James continued: ‘You will never work ina responsible position in the UK again. Be sensible and think of your own interest. ‘You have had a taste of what lies in store for you. I was not personally responsible for what those Whitehall wallahs did to you back in the UK [when they forced the American oil company Esso to terminate Smith’s appointment as personnel manager after his first tour of duty in Nigeria had ended].  Those Whitehall Johnnies are responsible for all this. Now be reasonable and we will forget the whole thing. Just give me your word and think of the brilliant career which lies ahead.” Smith told New African that at that moment, he almost agreed with Sir James. But then, the governor general shot himself in the foot by pressing too much and rounding furiously on Smith with threats: ‘You will never work in the UK again! You will be absolutely finished!  Smith said he replied: “It was very kind of you to see me, Sir. My position is unchanged. I cannot carry out unlawful orders, as I said ‘goodbye sir’, he turned away. He was very angry. Oddly enough, I felt sorry for him.” But true to Sir James’ words, Smith has never again worked in the UK. He was only 33 at the time of the confrontation in 1960. And permanently retired!  On his return to the UK, he tried two temporary jobs as a postman and labour clerk, and, as Sir James had predicted, the Whitehall Johnnies hounded him out. Imagine an Oxford graduate working as a postman but they wouldn’t even allow him that. Later, Whitehall realised that stick alone would not keep Smith quiet, so they tried carrots. First, they gave him a secret trial in London, using the same top lawyers that Britain had used at the Nuremberg trials against the Nazis, and found him not guilty of treason. Smith, out of work for solong and poor as a church mouse, was given no defence lawyer. He defended himself. Then, they offered him a “pot of money”. He turned it down. They next tried a top job in the Fat East plus permanent exile from England. He turned itdown too. Finally, they offered him a knighthood. He refused that as well. Perhaps poison would make him change his mind. In fact, he nearly died. Tropical Sprue (the strange disease Smith caught in Nigeria) attacks the gut and punches holes in it. For over 12 years, Smith battled with the disease, losing weight all the time, and becoming listless and helpless, until medical research came across an antidote in the late 1980’s - don’t eat flour or anything powdery that will sink through the holes in the gut punched by the Sprue and into the bloodstream. Havingdone two tours inNigeria (between 1955 and 1960), Smith still loves the country and talks about itas an authority. He feels exceedingly distressed that his beloved Britain “encouraged” Nigerian politicians in the pre-independence era to become corrupt. He writes in his 1987 book: “A major proportion of the politicians who made Nigeria notorious for corruption after independence were selected by the British before independence. The politicians and leaders and men of eminence not chosen were often honest, trustworthy and responsible people. Why were these people not brought in by the British? The answer is that the British needed people they could control. They sometimes selected crooks whom they knew they could control after independence.” He insists that Nigerian institutions: “Did not become corrupt after independence, they were crooked before the British handed over power to a small and elite group of African leaders and civil servants who were for the most part. Britishers with black faces and they continued to rule as the British had ruled.”