8 June, 2026.
The question haunts every conversation about this country. At dinner tables in Lagos, in campus dormitories in Zaria, in taxi parks in Enugu, and under the harsh sun of Maiduguri, the same words are repeated: how did we get here? It is the cry of a people watching their nation struggle to breathe. To answer honestly is to travel backwards through a century of decisions made by colonial officials and Nigerian leaders alike.
The story begins on 1 January 1914, when Sir Frederick Lugard amalgamated the Northern and Southern Nigeria Protectorates into a single administrative unit. For the British, this was a matter of convenience and cost-cutting. The Northern protectorate was landlocked and running deficits. The Southern protectorate generated customs revenue from its busy ports. By merging them, Lugard could use Southern revenues to subsidize the North. What became the Nigerian state was an accounting decision dressed in colonial regalia. As Sir Hugh Clifford, Governor of Nigeria, openly admitted, the colony did not constitute a single nation. The British built a state but refused to nurture a nation.
At independence in 1960, Nigeria was handed to its new leaders as a collection of regions held together by little more than a colonial-era constitution. The First Republic lasted barely six years. The Northern Peoples Congress led by Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, dominated the North. The National Council of Nigerian Citizens led by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe controlled the East. The Action Group led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo governed the West. Corruption became the system. Michael Crowther, a historian of this period, observed that most leaders became inebriated and abused office flagrantly for personal and selfish gains.
The Coker Commission of 1962 exposed the rot. Justice G.B.A. Coker investigated the Western Region and indicted Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Chief S.L. Akintola, Chief Ayo Rosiji, Chief Bode Thomas, and several senior civil servants for diverting public funds to finance the Action Group. None were prosecuted. The rule of law was present in the constitution but absent in practice.
The First Republic collapsed in January 1966. In the early hours of 15 January, a group of young military officers led by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, and Captain Christian Anuforo launched a coup. In Kaduna, they killed Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Premier of the Northern Region, along with his wife and aides. They also killed Alhaji Ahmed Ben Musa, Chairman of the Northern Nigeria Marketing Board. In Lagos, they killed Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the Prime Minister, and Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, the Minister of Finance. In Ibadan, they killed Chief S.L. Akintola. Eleven political and military figures died, all but one from the North and West. No major figure from the East was killed.
General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo officer, assumed power. On 24 May 1966, he issued Decree No. 34, the Unification Decree, abolishing Nigeria's federal structure. In the North, this was interpreted as an Igbo attempt to dismantle the region's autonomy. On 29 July 1966, Northern officers mutinied. They killed General Aguiyi-Ironsi and Colonel Fajuyi, the Military Governor of the Western Region. Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon became Head of State. In the weeks that followed, massacres of Igbo civilians in the North killed between thirty thousand and fifty thousand people. Survivors fled eastward. The Eastern Region, led by Lieutenant Colonel Emeka Ojukwu, declared independence as the Republic of Biafra on 30 May 1967. The civil war that followed killed approximately three million people, most from starvation.
The 1970s brought oil wealth and the resource curse. The cement armada of the Gowon years saw hundreds of ships carrying cement anchored off Lagos for months, incurring massive demurrage fees. Money that could have built schools and hospitals was burned on idle ships.
The Maitatsine uprisings of the 1980s foreshadowed Boko Haram. Muhammadu Marwa led revolts in Kano, Maiduguri, Kaduna, Yola, and Gombe between 1980 and 1985. Over eight thousand people died. Elizabeth Isichei understood these as revolts of the disinherited, driven by marginalization and poverty, not theology. The state responded with violence but never addressed the root causes.
The 1990s brought the tyrannies of General Ibrahim Babangida and General Sani Abacha. Babangida annulled the 12 June 1993 election won by Chief Moshood Abiola. Abacha, who seized power in November 1993, was the most brutal and corrupt. He imprisoned and killed Abiola. He executed Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists in 1995. According to testimony from Chief Bola Ige, Abacha stole or diverted an estimated 2.3 billion dollars from the treasury, one billion dollars in contracts, and one billion dollars in bribes. Some estimates suggest he appropriated thirty-five percent of Nigeria's GDP. Abacha died in June 1998. General Abdulsalami Abubakar arranged a transition to civilian rule.
Since 1999, democracy has brought stable transfers of power but not stable improvement. The security vote system drains resources. Approximately 670 million US dollars is paid out annually in security votes that recipients are not required to account for. Soldiers serve under conditions of late salaries and inadequate equipment. The enlistment of political loyalists into the military has compromised professionalism.
Boko Haram emerged from the specific grievances of Northern Nigeria. Mohammed Yusuf, its founder, was arrested and executed without trial in July 2009. His killing gave the group its defining moment of martyrdom. Abubakar Shekau, his deputy, led the survivors underground and emerged with a far more lethal strategy. The insurgency has killed over three hundred fifty thousand people and displaced millions.
Today, according to the World Bank, approximately sixty-three percent of Nigerians, roughly 140 million people, live below the poverty line. The population has grown from 37.3 million in 1950 to 237.5 million in 2025. This growth has outpaced the economy. Individual Nigerians are poorer today than a decade ago.
Three futures are possible. The first is managed decline, the most likely. The second is fragmentation, with separatist movements like the Indigenous People of Biafra led by Nnamdi Kanu and the Yoruba Nation movement led by Professor Banji Akintoye gaining ground. The third is the long reset, a generational project of rebuilding from the bottom up through education, devolution, and accountability.
How did we get here? Through a century of decisions made by people who placed themselves above the nation they were meant to serve. What now? That depends on whether a new generation can summon the will to build something better. The evidence is not encouraging. But the hope insists.
The unabridged version of this article, containing full historical detail, all citations, and comprehensive analysis, will be available on www.abujanetworknews.com.ng
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
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