A POLITICAL ECONOMY EXPLANATION OF THE NIGERIAN CIVIL WAR

A POLITICAL ECONOMY EXPLANATION OF THE NIGERIAN CIVIL WAR

Abstract:

The problem of seeing the post – independence crises that resulted in the Nigeria Civil War in geo-ethnic or geo-strategic terms have pervaded most if not all, Nigerian analysts of the crises which led to the shooting war of 1967 to 1970. This exercise in obscurantism and agnosticism has dominated most of the studies of the Nigerian Civil War. As a result of this reductionism we have decided to reinterpret most of the liberal / bourgeois literatures on the Nigerian Civil War whose emphasis has been on primordial explanatory variables as the primary explanatory variables of the Nigerian Civil War. We have found out in this research dissertation that the primordial explanatory variables are secondary variables or ideological cover for the sectional chauvinists and veritable tools in the hands of imperialism to continue the plunder of Nigerian human and material resources. Thus those who continue to hold on to these tools of analysis are consciously and unconsciously aiding the dynamics of imperialists and the interest of their local collaborators – the comprador bourgeoisie. We have found out in this research work that this mutual interdependence between the imperialist bourgeoisie and the Nigerian comprador bourgeoisie in the dehumanising exploitation of the working people and the surplus transfer regimes has been the fundamental basis of the Nigerian immediate post independence crises that gave birth to the Nigerian Civil War. As such, the Civil War cannot be explained away in other terms outside the economy, its class character and class relations. In this respect, therefore, ethnic or primordial explanations of the Nigerian crises of the First Republic and indeed the Nigerian Civil War are nothing but a cover for class formation. It was equally the nature and structure of the Nigerian economy and its lack of industrial base that have had the paralytic effects on the post independence political crises that led to the demise of the First Republic, the coup and counter coup that heralded the Civil War and the shooting war itself. The economic demands of the Korean War boom of 1953/54 in international commodity market and the collapse of world commodity prices resulted in the collapse of the bases of the regional enclave economies hence their deadly, intra-bourgeois struggles for federal power by the regionalised comprador bourgeoisie of the First Republic. At this point in time, as the regional economies were collapsing, that of the centre was appreciating as a result of crude oil discoveries. The do or die struggles between the regionalised dominant classes in the First Republic, therefore, finds meaning in the post Korean War economic misfortunes that befell the unproductive comprador bourgeoise and the landed aristocracy. The decomposition of Nigeria politics in the First Republic, the remaking of the political map and post independence coalition and indeed the First Republic crises, and the coup and counter coup and the Civil War were products of the economic crisis of the international post Korean War burst of regional primary commodity products from 1955/56 through to the First Republic and its final demise. The alignment and realignment of forces forced on the agenda the rapid sliding of the precipice into the Civil War on July 6, 1967 when the shooting war began. However, the rebel invasion of Mid-West and its threat on Lagos and Western States on August 9, 1967 led to a major realignment of forces during the Civil War. It forced the fence sitting Mid-Western and Western states to the side of the Northern dominant landed aristocracy/comprador bourgeoisie against the Eastern comprador bourgeoisie and it also led to the transformation of the war from a Northern versus Eastern comprador bourgeoisie at war to a truly Nigerian Civil War. It equally changed the tempo and strategy of the war from a “Police Action” to a Total War. The economic interests in the Civil War made the struggle for the oil producing areas assumed a high degree of intensity. This interest of Euro-American imperialism is based on crude oil the king – pin of modern industries. However, for Nigeria and indeed victorious war coalition it became the entrenchment of the comprador political economy. Thus we lost the Civil War in its development dynamics as all war improvisations were not harnessed for national development. Indeed the resolution of the national question. in terms of nation building was not achieved, The Nigerian Civil War whether won by either sides to the war cannot be said to be a progressive war.

A POLITICAL ECONOMY EXPLANATION OF THE NIGERIAN CIVIL WAR