BRITISH CONSPIRACY...PART TWO.

  Shola Adebowale 

The British media In I 987, after 27 years of trying in vain to get the British media interested in his story (even The Guardian, considered to be the most liberal and progressive of all British newspapers, would not publish it),Smith wrote his autobiography based mainly on his Nigerian experience. To this day, this book has not been published in hardcopy by any British publisher because of its contents. After unsuccessfully contacting many publishers, he finally set up his own website (www.libertas.demon.co.uk) and published the whole book on the site for free. Smith and his supportive wife, Carol, showed New African piles of letters going back 45 years that they had exchanged with British editors, politicians prime ministers and other officials  all in an attempt to get their story into the public domain. Except for one or two small provincial newspapers, none of the British mainstream media (both press and electronic) has shown any interest. (Go to ‘Nigeria: A Lesson to African Journalists.’) For The Guardian alone, between 1989 and 2003, and 2003, Smith and Carol a former headmistress and later inspector of schools) wrote 19 letters to the then eeditor, I Peter Preston, urging him to publish their story. They got no reply. They similarly wrote 24 letters between 1995 and 2005 to the current editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger and got no reply From 1988 and 1994, correspondence developed between the Smiths and The Guardian’s former chief columnist and chairman of the Scott Family Trust thatpublishes the paper, the late Hugo Young. Smith and Carol also wrote three times between 19933 and 1994 to The Guardian’s deputy editor, Jonathan Fenby, and got no reply. They took the fight to other journalists and writers involved with The Guardianand the BBC, and though some did reply, they would not publish the story. Desperate to get the story out, Smith wrote to the “Letters Column” of The Independent in London, and though his letter was published the paper would not follow up and do a bigger piece. The Smiths have since tried all the other British mainstream media from the BBC to The Times, The Observer and all – and none will publish how Britain tampered with Nigeria’s independence elections and stitched the country up. Nigeria: Election Rigging and Dirty Tricks The case of Harold Smith was looked at briefly in Lobster 25 (not my doing) and not, I might add, in a very satisfactory manner and against the wishes of Harold Smith, who is in ill-health. Unfortunately, Robin Ramsay failed to print out the IBM discs which contain Harold’s writings and relied instead on a number of newspaper cuttings. I have, therefore, edited down some of Harold’s writings and parts of his unpublished memoir Sons of Oxford. (Now on the web as; “A Squalid End to Empire”).  An introduction and certain explanatory notes have been made by me. Harold Smith is a member of that select band of patriotic British citizens who, having blown the whistle on wrong-doing and corruption, have found to their dismay that their adherence to duty brought not a slap on the back but a slap in the face.  Smith discovered a plot to rig the elections in colonial Nigeria but no one in authority wanted to hear the truth. Instead, when not met with indifference by politicians and the press, he was initially subjected to persecution, threats of blackmail, and later had his telephone tapped and his home searched. Harold Smith believes that he may even have been poisoned. Stephen Dorril HaroldSmith’s allegations of vote rigging in Nigeria in the late-fifties are not just an historical curiosity. Following the suspension of Nigeria’s presidential elections in June 1993, which plunged the country into political turmoil, they have a particular resonance. The case to stop the polls after allegations of vote-rigging was brought by a shadowy group of wealthy businessmen and former politicians who wanted the military to continue to rule the country.  The prime motive was to stop a president being elected, for the first time, from the Southern region of the country. Senior Army officers of the sixth military regime to rule Nigeria since Independence in 1960, were concerned that Moshood Abiola would expose the true extent of corruption in the country, as well as pursuing allegations of assassinations of journalists and opponents of the military regime. The corruption, principally from the illegal sale of oil, has turned a once prosperous country into an area of unmitigated economic disaster. Nigeria is now the seventeenth poorest nation in the world.  The military’s call for fresh elections in August 1993 was a sign that the powerful Northern elite in the country will not relinquish power to the Yoruba-dominated South-west. Chief Ojukwu, who led Biafra’s Igbo people away from the rest of Nigeria in May 1967, warned that the issue is power and that prominent Western Nigerians were  talking about secession leading to the break-up of the country. Harold Smith would argue that many of these present day problems can be traced back to the events and decisions made in the mid to late fifties to which he was witness. After the Second World War, Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa and the most important colony that Britain possessed, was caught up, according to Martin Meredith (his book The First Dance of Freedom: Black Africa in the Post-War Era, Hamish Hamilton, 1984, provides the basis of the introduction), in a web of regional and tribal rivalry. There was a wave of disaffection over low wages, rising prices, while unemployment, inflated by returning ex-servicemen, swept the towns, resulting in a general strike in 1945. The educated elite were also resentful over discrimination and about proposals for constitutional advancement which the British authorities put forward without consultation. In 1944, the versatile nationalist leader, Nnamdi Azikiwe, described by the authorities as the ‘biggest danger of the lot’ to colonial rule, formed the first modern political organisation, the National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons, with the object of seeking self government.Initially, the  NCNC achieved some success by championing the rights of workers and attracting the youthful support but within a few years the Nigerian nationalists had fallen into disarray and rival factions.   Nigeria’s great size added to the problems of the nationalists. In the North, powerful Muslim emirs still ruled in accordance with Islamic law.  In these feudal societies few traces of modern life had been allowed to intrude. The British went some way to supporting this way of life, treating the North as a distinct and separate entity preserving many of its traditional ways. In all, the North comprised two-thirds of Nigeria’s territory and contained more than half of its population, many of whom looked disdainfully upon the Southern peoples.  The South was divided into two regions each with their own dominant tribal group. In the West, the Yoruba had absorbed many western ideas and skills, while the poorer Igbo in the East had migrated to the other regions. There they found jobs in the administrative classes which caused some tension and created a degree of hostility among the Northerners.  Nigerian politicians were well aware of these divisions. Northern leader Abubaker Tafawa Balewa said in 1948: ‘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.’  The Yoruba leader, Obafemi Awolowo, who dominated Western region politics, wrote: ‘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.’  Finding a constitutional arrangement which would satisfy so many diverse interests was bound to prove difficult, In 1948, the British announced that a new constitution would be forthcoming in full consultation with the Nigerians. This inevitably led to a power struggle between the rival groups which sharpened all past animosities.  Each region had its own ruling political party: Azikiwe’s NCNC controlled the East; Awolowo’s Action Party led the West and the Northern People’s Congress led by the Sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello, dominated the North. The 1951 constitution, which gave considerable powers to the regions but kept a strong central legislature lasted  only a few years. In 1953, when Southerners pressed the federal assembly for a resolution demanding self-government by 1956, Northern members held back fearing that the North would be swamped by the better educated and more sophisticated Southerners. In the crisis that followed, the British authorities realised the need for a different constitution.  The 1954 arrangement gave the three regions much greater power. Each had its own assembly and the East and the West were able to move separately to self-government, while the North was given more time to prepare. The bitter contest that divided them proved to be, however, an ill-omen for the future.  Harold Smith was born in Manchester in 1927, one of seven children. He left school at fourteen to become an engineering apprentice and through hard work at evening classes won a WEA scholarship to Oxford University. He graduated from Magdalen College with an Honours Degree in Politics and Economics, and a Diploma in Public Administration. A Labour Party activist, he became a civil servant in the Colonial Service in 1955 working in the Nigerian Ministry of Labour’s Lagos headquarters. he left the service in 1960, after a mysterious wasting disease failed to respond to treatment. In 1972, doctors diagnosed his illness as tropical sprue which only responded to treatment slowly. He subsequently undertook unpaid work for unmarried pregnant teenagers and acting as secretary for the Coeliac Action Group. His wife, Caroline, a teacher and later ILEA Schools Inspector, supported the family through thirty difficult years. In 1955 Harold Smith was interviewed for a civil service post in Nigeria by Mr Barltrop, the Labour Advisor to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, who advised him that he would have heavy responsibilities thrust upon him in Nigeria. Labour Officers were ‘very thin on the ground.’ Barltrop’s Deputy, Edgar Parry, a former trade union official who had served in West Africa filled him, in on the real picture in Lagos. ‘The Labour Department in Nigeria is a shambles. Peter Cook, the Deputy Commissioner, who’s been passed over yet again, really runs everything and he’s a total disaster, a homo, a pervert. His speech is almost impossible to decipher and his handwriting is totally illegible. He does have some skills in settling strikes, perhaps because the workers will sign anything to get away from him. Now he will hate your guts and as soon as you arrive he’ll try to post you up shit creek.’ Parry, however, had anticipated that move and, by what means is not known, ensured that it would be impossible for Cook to move Harold out of Lagos. Parry continued, ‘Into this Augean stable goes bright, ambitious George Foggon, the new Commissioner, the new broom. He’s come from the Control Commission in Berlin but really he’s just a jumped-up labour exchange clerk. He knows bugger all about industrial relations so we’re sending him a researcher from the TUC whom Cook will tie up in knots. You see, George’s problem is that he can give orders but nobody will take any notice because Cook is really in charge.’ Having painted a black picture of his new bosses, Parry said that he wanted Harold to ‘keep me informed on what George is up to’. He was also to draft a new Factories Act for Nigeria. Once out in Lagos, Harold found that Cook did indeed control the Labour Department’s administration, including promotions, postings, sackings and bicycle allowances. He made the African employees’ lives a misery whenever he chose. In the early fifties, colonial administrations had been forced with some reluctance to set up Labour Departments under pressure from progressive Colonial Secretaries in London. Peter Cook’s policy of doing nothing would have found favour with Governor Generals in the past. ‘Notwithstanding the Administration’s long-standing distaste for progressive measures, the blimps did find that the Labour Department had its uses’, Harold recalled. ‘Most important was the Intelligence aspect. Intelligence is the life blood of any colonial regime. Trouble must be nipped in the bud and trouble makers controlled. The apparatus of conciliation and even the encouragement of trade unions made sure that most kinds of dissent or rebellion were channelled into the offices of the Labour Department whence they were immediately notified to the Administration’s Special Branch officers. The Commissioner of Labour in each colony sat on the main Intelligence Committee with representatives of the Police, Military and Administration. The industrial relations section of the Labour Department in Lagos maintained daily contact with Special Branch headquarters. In the cold war atmosphere of the 1950’s which the British had spread throughout their African possessions, the bogey of international communism was suspected of lurking behind every clerk or railway worker who sought to live on more than two or three shillings (ten or fifteen pence) per day.’ Despite Cook’s apparent inactivity and failure to clear the mountain of paperwork, ‘he did keep a close eye on industrial disputes and could act decisively to damp them down when he chose’. Harold was not finding it a happy experience working in the Labour Department. ‘I felt sick with the whole situation. What had I let myself in for? It was not that Peter Cook was a homosexual. That need not have been anyone’s concern, but his own and his friends. I was going to be responsible for the running of the juvenile bureau and the proper and fair handing out of jobs and Peter Cook would be - and I was to find he was indeed - seducing and raping the boys in my charge. Edgar Parry, in London, knew this. Foggon, the Commissioner, knew this. Apparently everybody in Lagos knew. How could it be allowed?’ Cook, known as ‘Satan’ to Africans or the ‘Big White Queen’ to his chums, controlled recruitment to the Civil Service and any ambitious young African who wanted to get ahead had to meet Cook’s requirements. One of Satan’s neighbour’s children wandered into a party given by Cook for his friends in the administration. ‘She observed what was described as the black and white necklace dance. A circle was formed of naked white men and black boys. Each participant, while dancing in a circle, penetrated the black boy in front, and so on... The child ran screaming to tell her parents.’ Harold Smith did manage to draft a new Factories Act which was presented to Foggon, who was stunned that anyone had managed to achieve such a feat. The Act immediately went on to the Nigerian Statute Book and was passed without amendment, being generally regarded as the best presented bill to go to the Attorney General’s chambers. ‘It was met with tremendous approval from all sides.’ Harold had also become concerned about the general level of corruption. He was always being offered bribes and favours, which he turned down, and when a new Labour Officer, Victor Beck, a former TUC researcher, joined the staff, Harold hoped to enlist him in the battle to clean up the Labour Department. Gradually, Harold began to hear of corruption within the Department and the way Cook used such information to blackmail other officials or to keep them in their place. Cook had even reclassified some files which Harold had and placed them in his personal files. Cook was, himself, taking bribes from the Spanish authorities. Some twenty thousand Nigerian workers were on Fernando Poo and their conditions were often appalling, despite the presence of a British Vice- Consul. ‘Little or nothing was done to check the most awful atrocities. There were reports on the files of workers being tied to trees and beaten to death.’ Cook, who ensured that this information was suppressed, observed to Smith: ‘They deserve all they get.’ When Harold saw Cook ‘he went on to talk about Fernando Poo and the Spanish who gave Sir John Macpherson (who, following retirement, became Permanent Secretary in the Colonial Office) an incredibly valuable string of diamonds and a necklace for his wife.’ The necklace, however, was not handed over to the government. Cook recalled that ‘Once she saw that necklace that was it. She’d probably never had better than Woolworth’s till she saw that diamond necklace! I know Sir John kept the diamonds and he knows that I know. You see they can’t touch me. I know too much.’ As Harold Smith became more involved in the work of the Department and became responsible for more areas of work, friction increased with Cook. His boss used to taunt him that all the work he was doing to revise and update labour codes would come to nothing. It was not only the British officials on whom Cook had something. Festus Samuel Okotie Eboh became the Minister of Labour and later Minister of Finance and was to play a crucial role in the later very tragic history of Nigeria. The British Authorities played a decisive part in the selection of politicians for ministerial posts. ‘The essence of colonial rule is that politics is banned for the people of the country while the colonial regime engages in full time politics. The notion that colonial administration functions without politics would be laughable to those administrators or political officers engaged in the trade. The politics of the colonial regime are employed in the selection, destruction and manipulation of the leaders of the native people.  Although the idea of indirect rule has become closely identified with Nigeria, it is not a new idea as every conquering power exercises its authority using existing power structures in the community. To this end in Nigeria a highly efficient intelligence service operated both through the administration which routinely completed intelligence reports and through the army, police and Special Branch.  The Labour Department also played a key role. The major aim of all this is to encourage friends of the colonial regime, people who are “sound”, that is prepared to betray their own people’s interests for personal advancement, and to put down irresponsible elements, that is to say nationalist politicians who act in their people’s interests and cannot be bribed.’ ‘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. Balewa, the leader from the north, was of course the exception, as was Awolowo. Balewa was so pro-British that he hardly needed manipulating. He was sound because he took advice from his band of British advisors. Awolowo in the West was not sound because he was extremely intelligent, wrote first class books and taunted the British for their stupidity. At the same time he betrayed a love of democracy and touching faith in British fair play that was to lead to his downfall. And yet his integrity, which led to his being jailed in 1962, also saved his life when the first coup took place in 1966. The mercurial leader of the East, Dr Azikiwe (Zik), was an enigma. A charismatic and the first Nigerian nationalist leader of note. He was seen as an egotistical, temperamental and flawed character by his political enemies, but revered by his Igbo followers. Zik was not feared by the British. His often unpredictable behaviour in the 1950’s may have been more in response to pressure from without than his own faults of temperament. If a nationalist politician had skeletons in his personal or political cupboard the British knew about them. At the same time the preponderance of Igbo members of the lower and middle ranks of the civil service meant that, apart from the highest levels, an Igbo politician who did not know most Government secrets simply was not listening.’ The interlocking blackmail that PeterCook exemplified in the civil service was paralleled in thecontrol of politicians by the colonial regime. One of Harold’s expatriate neighbours was a Post Office engineer who specialised in tapping Nigerian politicians’ telephone lines. Surveillance of politicians by other Nigerians employed in Special Branch was also routine, as was interception of the mail to prevent subversive literature coming into Nigeria, much of which was burned in the stove at the Post Office. ‘Ronald Wraith, in a fascinating study of corruption in Nigeria, fails to mention the involvement of the British at all. (Although he does demonstrate that corruption was rife in Britain up to the middle of the nineteenth century.) It does seem a little unfair. After all, although corruption undoubtedly got worse after the British left, it was clearly much in evidence while the British were in charge. The British not only tolerated and indulged corruption. They actively took part at the highest possible levels and instigated it and encouraged it in Nigerian politicians, the better to control or blackmail them. The most corrupt act of all is colonialism itself.’ ‘By 1955 the problem was how to hand thecountry back to the Nigerians. A coalition of politicians from the major tribes in each Region filled the ministerial posts. At this juncture there was no Prime Minister and the Governor General presided. Large ministerial palaces were provided for each Minister and Mercedes Benz limousines became normal transport for top politicians. Standards of luxury were dictated by the British colonial regime far in excess of the living standards of most British politicians, let alone Nigerian ones, most of whom had risen from the most humble backgrounds.’ ‘The rumours which circulated about Festus Samuel Okotie Eboh were well founded as those in contact with him knew. The Nigerian public wanted to know why he was allowed to get away with it. Why had the Governor General chosen such corrupt politicians? Why did the civil servants not refuse to co-operate with corrupt Ministers? It was evident that the colonial regime still had overall power and was fully informed as to what was going on. It was clearly official policy to let the Ministers be corrupt. In the Department of Labour George Foggon saw it as his job to carry out the Minister’s orders, whatever his personal qualms.’ ‘Not only did the Ministers betray ignorance of the proper role of Ministers in a parliamentary democracy, but the top civil servants seemed to be ignorant too. In the Ministry (formerly Department) of Labour Okotie Eboh acted as if he could do what he liked unless he was stopped. Given top civil servants who lacked training in constitutional and parliamentary practice and substituted a simplistic notion that they merely had to carry out a Minister’s orders and the scene was set for corruption and larceny on a grand scale. Although I was supposed to be in charge of trade testing matters, it was kept from me that Okotie Eboh had sold the trade testing headquarters in Lagos to a large trading company [United Africa Company]. This was not the whole story. The deal was arranged by the Commissioner of Labour. The trade testing headquarters were on a prime site opposite the main Lagos railway station. Having pocketed the proceeds the Minister then had built a makeshift edifice as a replacement in the bush outside Lagos. It was evident that Government House was fully informed as to what was going on. However, Okotie Eboh was one of the politicians most favoured by the British.’ ‘Okotie Eboh was a fat, jovial character of much the same build and disposition as the seventeen stone Governor General, Sir James Robertson. The Minister had until recently been Sam Edah, but had changed his name to that of a family who were powerful in his constituency. Those who disliked the Minister referred to him as “Festering Sam.’ Presumably the Governor General had political reasons for not throwing the rule book at Okotie Eboh. When the Governor General wanted to get rid of Adelabu, an extraordinary politician who, had he lived, might have been Nigeria’s most dynamic leader, he promptly sacked him, presumably because he was seen as dangerous by the British. A rival to Dr Azikiwe, he not only frightened the Igbo leader but frightened the British more. Okotie Eboh was into interlocking blackmail too.  The trade testers were corrupt and were hardly in a position to protest when their office was sold over their heads. George Foggon’s justification for putting through the deal was that he was obeying orders, although he knew he was doing wrong. But the Minister knew George tolerated the corrupt trade testers. George was on thin ice too. Peter Cook could not protest even if he had wanted to. The Minister knew the Department and the follies and weaknesses of its officials intimately. If its top officials could get up to tricks, so could he. In London, Okotie Eboh was granted VIP status and entertained by the Foreign Office hospitality section, which laid on a constant supply of prostitutes. His trips abroad, ostensibly to attract capital investment for Nigeria, became a notorious round of Foreign Office hospitality and prostitutes.”