The Hausas too were great traders. In fact, they had been trading with the Arabs and other people like the Yorubas (buying kolanuts and stuffs from them) before the arrival of the whites. In fact, many Hausas became Muslims due to the Trans Saharan Trade.
The video failed to mention the Hausa achievements and prominent people among them like Aliko Dangote, who is now the richest black man in the world. His grandfather Alhassan Dantata, was a great merchant who invented the groundnut pyramids. The British were his great partners in business. It is not only Dangote, that is a billionaire in the North today, there are people like Abdussamad Rabiu and the rest. Their wealth was through food, airline, sugar business etc.
When the British arrived in what is today called Nigeria, they found the Hausas difficult to conquer because they have more established system than those in the South. It took at least 50 years after the South was defeated before the North fell under their control and they couldn’t mind to change many things that they saw in the North as they did in the South. The Northerners were literate in Arabic ( If the Chinese don’t speak English, it won’t be fair to call them illiterate). The North has produced people like Alkishwani, a Mathematician in the 18th century
https://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/special/muhammad_ibn_muhammad.html They had taxation system and all that. This can explain part of the reasons why the British treated them differently than the Southerners because they gave more to the South in terms of religion and culture. To appreciate this, you should watch the video on the Durbar that was organized for the Queen Elizabeth in 1956 in the North to see how North displayed the beautiful stuffs that they had. https://youtu.be/s1vdW0V0BRI
The Northern Nigeria ‘privilege position’ as it was mentioned in the video, was not artificially given to them by the British, they were more independent to the British civilization because they already had their own and the fact that they are the most populous region (majority carry the vote), make it easier to see why they produced the first Prime Minister, it was not because the British manipulated things for them.
The video portrayed Northerners to be kind of jealous of Igbos success and that led to the anti Igbo sentiment in the North which may be somehow linked to the Civil War. I was surprised that the narrator decided to single out the Northerners with lack of open mindedness ignoring the fact that all the leaders of the three major tribes were on the record saying things that were very divisive. Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe said ” it is better for us and many admirers abroad that we should disintegrate in peace not in pieces”.
Imagine a founding father saying we should disintegrate. But the narrator only called out Sardauna in the video. I may not denied that there is anti Igbo sentiment, but there is also anti northern sentiment in the heart of the Southerners right from the beginning of the nation. One of the earliest Northern Nigerian politicians, Abubakar Imam lamented in his memoir that the Igbos were using the West African Pilot, a newspaper to promote those sentiments and narrated stories on how he himself was treated not fairly by Dr Nnamdi Azikwe while they were on a trip to England. Even today, some Igbos like using the word Aboki for a Northerner. I was harassed by an Igbo last year in Time Square for doing nothing other than being a Northerner. I am not saying that’s how all Igbos are, I have wonderful Igbo friends. In fact, it is the same anti Hausa sentiment that led some Igbo officers to assassinate Hausa and Yoruba leaders in the 1966 coup while sparing their own.
The video wants us to see the Coup plotters of 1966 with all their wrongful act of killing both innocent men and women as being revolutionaries or putting the end to the wrong that was going on at that time. Their actions should in no way be glorified even if they had a good intention, which I believe they didn’t. The narrator downplayed how destructive their action was and how terrible it has changed the Nigerian history. Their decision to kill top Hausa and Yoruba leaders and sparing their kinsmen is what led to the suffering of their fellow Igbos at the hands of Northerners as a retaliation for assassination of their leaders, and the counter coup that was launched the same year and eventually the Biafra War. One can say that there may not have been a Biafra war had it been those Igbo soldiers didn’t committed the ‘Carnage before the dawn’.
To make it clear I strongly condemned the persecution of innocent Igbos living in the North because of retaliation. I am also not happy mentioning here that the January 1966 coup which was conducted by more than 26 military officers in which more than 20 were Igbos that killed 22 people in which only one person was an Igbo is due to ethnic sentiment. The casualties may have been 100% non igbo, if not Arthur Unegbe an Igbo was killed either because he refused to yield the armory to the coup plotters or because he was seen as threat because he may have raise an alarm because of his relationship with the top Northern officer that was a target. The idea that the coup plotters not being sentimental and that the sparing of their kinsmen and killing others is coincidental, is not true for the following reasons: One of the plotters claimed was to stop corruption.
In Tafawa Balewa’s cabinet, one of the persons that can be easily associated with corruption in an event that had gotten the attention of the nation at that time was an Igbo. Kinsley Mbadiwe built an expensive palace a year before the coup and when he was asked where he got the money to build it, he claimed that he got it ” from sources known and unknown”. Imagine a person that wasn’t able to depend his corrupt action in public was spared by his kinsmen who launched a coup to fight corruption, but they killed others in the cabinet that were not from the same tribes with them. This defies common sense! Also, both the coup plotters and the coup beneficiary were from the same tribe. At the federal level the Prime minister a Northerner was killed and the President, an Igbo was spared. They said it was because he wasn’t in the country.
A coincident? Ok, let’s look at the regional level. There were three regions: North, West and East, Northern premier Sardauna was killed, Western premier Akintola a Yoruba was killed, but the third premier, an Igbo, Micheal Opara was spared by his kinsmen. What? They still claiming coincidence. Ok, let’s look at the military. The top Northern military officer, Brigadier Maimalari was killed, the top Yoruba officer, Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun was killed, but the highest ranking Igbo officer was spared. Coincidence too? Ok! As, I have mentioned 95% of those killed by the coup plotters were non Igbos, but 90% of the coup plotters were Igbos. You want more? I have more. Zanna Bukar Dipcharima was the deputy Prime Minister, a Northerner would have taken over, but an Igbo, Iguiyi Ironsi took that away from him and the Igbo plotters let their kinsmen to go ahead with being the new leader. The narrator and others want us to see all those more than 7 events as coincidence. The Northern officers may not have retaliate in the counter coup had it been aftermath, the Igbos elders apologize for the what few of the tribesmen did to the founding fathers of the country from other regions.
Also, the coup beneficiary, the head of States, Iguiyi Ironsi should have executed the plotters or did something significant to honor the death of the assassinated to placate the grieving North, but instead he decided to centralized the power with the aim of making Nigeria a Unitary State. The North felt that was adding insult to injury. It felt like you guys killed our leaders and now you taking any remaining power that we have? They decided to take a revenge by eliminating him and brutally killing other innocent Igbos, which I condemned.
Eventually this led to the Civil War. What I want to call our attention also is that it wasn’t only the Igbos that were massacred during the civil war, they also massacred minorities in the Middle belt and the Biafra. To know more about that read the book ” The forgotten victims : ethnic minorities in the Nigerian-Biafra war, 1967-1970 ” by Arua Oko Omaka. No one is perfect!
I know things that the Hausas are doing that are not good, but no need to mention them here because the aim of my comment is to fill in the missing gap that the narrator in the documentary left out. I love Igbos, I love Yorubas and I love Hausas and other tribes. Every tribe have their own good and bad and same goes to every individual in every tribe. I may do a video that would appreciate the diversity in the three major tribes.
references
https://swordpress.com.ng/2021/02/06/war-bloodiest-wars-in-human-history-flashback-nigerian-civil-war-war-com-ng/