The City and Hegemonic Politics: The Press and the Struggle for Lagos in Colonial Nigeria

Abstract

Hegemony and counter-hegemonic politics are inherent in most human groupings, particularly where such politics is geared towards the appropriation of space. Although Gramsci, perhaps the most cited writer on the subject of hegemony, tend to conflate domination and hegemony, neo-Gramscian writers have attempted to separate the two, drawing out the elements which have compelled researchers to investigate further the dynamics of hegemony in different contexts. Taking the useful analytical framework of hegemony which involves "creation and institutionalization of a pattern of group activity in a state with a concomitant espousal of an idealized framework that strives to present itself as ‘common sense’ ", the paper attempts to explain how elite and counter-elite dichotomy in a social formation are enacted in the struggle for power. Contentious micro-politics in Lagos, the capital city in colonial Nigeria, with the attendant pull and push of elite bargaining for power and prominence is examined in this paper, particularly as the dual claim to consent and dissent was reflected in the nationalist newspaper press of the era.

The press in Nigeria, which predates colonial state and society, is profoundly implicated in the sustenance, mobilization or/and demobilization of hegemony. Lagos was the centre of this push towards hegemonic and counter-hegemonic politics. Lagos is located in the Yoruba (Western) part of colonial Nigeria while its politics was dominated by the Yoruba and Creoles until the arrival of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, West African Pilot subsequently became symbols and means of challenging Yoruba hegemony in Lagos (and, concurrently, national) politics by his Igbo (Eastern) ‘tribesmen’. The Daily Service, controlled by Yoruba elements, was to counter this challenge by the Igbo politicians and elite. At stake was the status of Lagos, the economic, cultural and political nerve-centre of Nigeria, which had been made a part of the Western Region, thereby consolidating Yoruba control over the affair of the increasingly multi-ethnic metropolitan Lagos. The struggle by the principally the Igbo elite to sever Lagos, as federal capital, from the control of the Western Regional Government and the resolve of the Yoruba elite against this, as reflected on the pages of two rival newspapers, the West Africa Pilot and Daily Service, are used in this paper to explicate a theoretical position that argues for the centrality of discursive, non-material and non-forcible construction of consent, dissent and consensus as crucial ways of understanding hegemony in a contentious context. This case, fed by past animosities, prejudices and myths, is particularly interesting because the schemas which are idealized into a dominant symbolic framework in this struggle have significant implications not only for group ethnic identity, but also for macro (federal) politics in the struggle for Nigeria’s independence.

…To study affiliation is to study and to recreate the bonds between texts and the world…To recreate the affiliative network is therefore to make visible, to give materiality back to, the strands holding the text to society, author, and culture…

The status of Lagos and the implications of this status for national politics in Nigeria has always been a contentious issue. Therefore, the city, as the capital of colonial - and later post-colonial Nigeria - was imbricated in the struggle for hegemony and domination, which was folded into the struggle against colonial rule, the struggle for independence and later the struggle for national cohesion. The choice of Lagos itself as colonial capital was a function of myriad of factors, as much political, economic and social, as it was fortuitous. However, barely five years after the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates, with Lagos becoming the capital city, interested elements in the new colony of Nigeria began a move to push Lagos away from its "central status" and replace it with another capital, perhaps fitting for the political goals of such elements.

The "anti-Lagos" elements presented what they considered important points against the retention of Lagos as capital city - or "Administrative Headquarters" as it was then known – and the removal of the capital to "an uninhabited spot in Kaduna, 570 miles away from Lagos", somewhere behind Lokoja, which perhaps happens to be Abuja, the present Federal Capital Territory. According to The Lagos Weekly Record newspaper of February 14, 1920, the "anti-Lagos" elements had described Lagos as "the nerve-centre of political agitation and the grave of official reputations". The paper described as "unauthorized and fallacious", the claim in some quarters that the then Governor-General of Colonial Nigeria had ordered that " the Headquarters of the Governor-General and the central seat of Government would be the high plateau immediately behind Lokoja known as Mount Patte, situated in the very centre of the Protectorate, commanding the Niger and the Benue, within easy (reach) of Baro the starting-point of the central railway, and linked up with the western railway by a branch line to Osogbo" (emphasis added).

Consequent upon the agitation and rumours of the impending shift in the capital, the Governor-General, Sir Hugh Clifford, toured the Southern and Northern Provinces, and addressed the Nigerian Council on the matter on Monday December 29, 1919. Clifford declared to the Council:

After giving this question the most careful consideration, I have arrived at the conclusion that, at any rate, for a great many years to come, the only possible place at which the principal seat of Government can be located is Lagos. I have said that Nigeria is today standing on the threshold of great commercial expansion and development; and experience gained in other new and undeveloped countries in the Tropics shows that during the initial stages, so much depends upon the inspiration and initiative of Government and upon its close cooperation with those sections of the public which are actively engaged in the promotion of trade and of business enterprises, that is essential that the administrative Headquarters should itself be the great radiating centre of energy, innovation and progress(emphasis added).

Clifford’s reasons for remaining in Lagos transcended commercial reasons – even though, as he acknowledged, these are supposed to lead to the radiation of "energy, innovation and progress". Curiously, for a foreign imposition at its infancy that the colonial government was, Clifford was also concerned about the government moving too far away from the articulation of dissent. The Governor-General argued that the functions of the colonial government would suffer in its execution if it moved away from critical appraisal that was evident in Lagos:

This is a function which (we) can hardly hope to fulfil unless the principal operations of the Government are carried on in the midst of the most active life and thought of the country, whence it is able to maintain the closest touch with every section of the community, and where its activities are exposed to the closest scrutiny and criticism. Such things, I contend, are aids to good government with which no administration can safely afford to dispense (italics added).

Clifford did not stop there, he argued further against the agitation to take the capital to what would appear to be the present day Abuja or even Kaduna, affirming that such a move has been "definitely abandoned" and hoping that it would not be revived for many decades:

(I)f the seat of Government be situated in some position of comparable isolation, it must inevitably tend to become increasingly bureaucratic, and automatically deprive itself of the assistance in the framing of its measures which articulate public opinion of those whose affairs are its charge can alone efficiently supply… (italics added)

Contrary to Clifford’s hope, the matter again came up in the 1940s and 1950s Nigeria as the nationalist struggle increased in tempo, and as the dynamics of the concomitant political calculations for the appropriation of space and power in the lead up to independence, took a new life. But first, the debate began in terms of the rightful and also constitutional ‘ownership’ of the space, and consequently deteriorated into the propriety or otherwise of moving the capital to another part of the country.

This paper analyses the structure, nature and dynamics of this struggle for hegemony over a city that was seen by some of the ‘gladiators’ as the social and political – if not also, economic – equivalent of the rest, if not the whole, of Nigeria. As one of the leading nationalists of that era, H.O. Davies, captured this sentiment, the city contained "the genius of the country" (Awolowo, 1960: 154). Obafemi Awolowo, who was also one of the leading activists of that era, but resident in Ibadan, accused the nationalists in Lagos of seeing the city as "the alpha and omega of political sagacity and wisdom", while believing that "only those who lived within its confines should essay to lead the country" (Ibid).

The foregoing description of the centrality and assumed primacy of Lagos explains why it was important in the hegemonic and counter-hegemonic politics of the period, particularly in the context of how this politics was geared toward the appropriation of space - within that particular socio-political formation – as explicated in the newspaper press of the period. Two rival newspapers – West African Pilot and Daily Service - are used in this paper, as they represent rival claims to ‘ownership’ and ‘primacy’ in spatial politics, to explicate a theoretical position that captures these struggles within the framework of the creation and institutionalisation of a "pattern of group activity" in which idealized forms that cohere with the interests of the group are leveraged into ‘commonsensical’ ideas in the pursuit of group’s political, economic and social interests.

The paper proceeds by providing a theoretical background and a brief historical background, which are then followed by the analysis of the push for hegemony in the press. The paper concludes by noting that as "experts in legitimation", the politicians and the newspapers representing their interests attempted, in the case studied, to either render existing power structures acceptable or on the contrary, to subvert and change such power structures in the city to suit their interests.

(A)ffiliation releases a text from its isolation and imposes upon the scholar or critic the presentational problem of historically recreating or reconstructing the possibilities from which the text arose.

- Edward Said, "The World, the Text, and the Critic"

Antonio Gramsci’s political theory is centrally a discourse of the genesis and formation of the historical subject. His view of ‘political agents’ who ‘posit themselves in and through historical action’ led him to reject ‘mechanistic and deterministic’ interpretations of Marxism (Fontana, 1993: 1). His concept of ‘hegemony’, which is the organising focus of Gramscian thought on politics and ideology (Gramsci, 1978), is best understood as ‘the organisation of consent – the process through which subordinated forms of consciousness are constructed without recourse to violence or coercion’ (Barrett, 1991: 54). This concept has proved very useful in understanding and explicating the organisation and mobilisation of interests in society.

However, there is an interesting debate that is yet unsettled in the literature as to whether Gramsci uses hegemony strictly as the non-coercive (ideological) aspect of the structure of consent or whether he uses it to understand the meshing of coercive and non-coercive aspects (Ibid: 54-55). Gramsci is believed to be responsible for this uncertainty given his tendency to conflate domination and hegemony and shift conceptual grounds in his writings (Agbaje 1992: 11). Yet, Agbaje (op. cit: 10-11) argues that even while composed of the two dimensions, the forcible, less subtle dimension of hegemony belongs more to the drive towards dominance and domination, while hegemony, ‘at its most pristine’, implies ‘the construction of consensus, consent, and dissent through subtle, indirect and non-forcible means’.

Nonetheless, it must be conceded that Gramsci gives more weight to the non-forcible aspect of hegemony as ‘intellectual and moral leadership (direzione) whose principal constituting elements are consent and persuasion’ (Fontana, op. cit: 140). Gramsci advances that given the fact that reality is perceived and knowledge acquired through cultural and ideological "prisms" and "filters", which give form and meaning in society, hegemony implies the creation of particular structure of knowledge and particular system of values by the leadership. The group that is able to form and transform its own knowledge and values into generally applicable conceptions of the world (Ibid), that is able to create an order in which its own way of life and thought is dominant and diffused throughout society (Laitin, 1986: 105), is the one that exercises leadership (Ibid).

Central to this is the concept of elaboration – which ‘aspires to the condition of hegemony’ with intellectuals playing the pivotal role. Gramsci describes this role as that of "experts in legitimation" (Said, 1983: 170,172). Gramsci uses the concept of elaboration in two ‘seemingly contradictory but actually complementary’ senses. In one sense, elaboration connotes the refinement, working out (e-laborare) of a prior or more powerful idea, the perpetuation of a worldview (Ibid: 170). On the other hand, it also means something that Edward Said (Ibid) describes as more qualitatively positive. This is the position that culture or thought or art is a "highly complex and quasi-autonomous extension of political reality" and, taken against the backdrop of the primal importance that Gramsci gives to intellectuals, elaboration has the "density, complexity and historical-semantic value that is so strong as to make politics possible" (Ibid: 170-171).

Elaboration therefore is the ‘central cultural activity’, which, even if passed off as mere intellectual propaganda for the protection and furtherance of the interests of the ruling class, constitutes the material making a society a society (Ibid: 171). It is ‘ a going enterprise’, the ‘ensemble of patterns making it feasible for society to maintain itself’ (Ibid).

Although not connected directly in the literature - particular in relating knowledge (text) to power - elaboration is linked to affiliation in the construction of hegemony. I intend here to formulate this linkage by drawing from Said’s work, The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983). The material that is furnished by elaboration, as core of social web, which keeps society going, I want to argue, is tied to social forms by affiliation, which creates and recreates the bonds between texts and the structures of power (Cf. Said, Ibid: 175). In creating an affiliative network, the strands holding text to society and power is given materiality and made visible. For Gramsci, the media – which I prefer to call here, text – is part of the important ‘material structure’ for the elaboration and spreading of hegemonic ideology (Mouffe, 1981: 217). Affiliation also releases a text from isolation, as mere text, imposing a ‘presentational problem of historically recreating or reconstructing the possibilities from which the text arose’ (Ibid). As Said argues, it is at this juncture that we find a place for,

… intentional analysis and for the effort to place text in

homological, dialogical, or antithetical relationships with other texts, classes, and institutions (Ibid).

Intellectuals exercises hegemony over a particular location, not only because they create a particular way of life and particular conception of the world, but also because they are able to translate the interests and values of a specific social formation into general and ‘common’ values and interests. One way in which this can be done is through the text – which propagates this way of life and conception of the world. Here, hegemony, which resides in civil society, is translated into a bulwark in support of political society (Laitin, op. cit: 105). Hegemony is here conceived as involving the "creation and institutionalization of a pattern of group activity in a state with a concomitant espousal of an idealized framework that strives to present itself as ‘common sense’ " (Haynes 1995). It is a ‘vehicle’ with which,

…the dominant social groups establish a system of "permanent consent" that legitimates a prevailing social order by encompassing a complex network of mutually reinforcing and interwoven ideas affirmed and articulated by intellectuals (Fontana, op. cit: 141).

The intellectuals, in the context of the empirical situation here, are the activists and partisans – what David Laitin (op. cit: 100) calls ‘political entrepreneurs - who were using the newspapers to legitimate or de-legitimate the prevailing social order in colonial Lagos. The conflict that is inherent in the logic of hegemony – which produces counter-hegemony – is captured well by Laitin who argues that a successful hegemony does not necessarily yield "order", but it "yields a set of conflicts that automatically and commonsensically stands at the top of the political agenda" (Laitin, op. cit: 107). I proceed to examine here, an empirical situation, which proves the fore going argument.

(The city) is a poetics linked to origins, size, and geography, defined by its parts rather than by a fraction of it … For the citiness of a city lies in the absorption of its many parts into a common whirlpool. Its core experience intimates a civis: a place of civilization where people who may not have the same occupation, or accept the same ancestors, and people who may not bow to the same deity, can live within a common frame of politics, thus entrenching the possibility of shared decision-making as a permanent way of life. The city is, in this sense, an ever-ready challenge because it is continually suggesting the necessity to find a common morality that can hold people together.

- Odia Ofeimun, ‘Imagination and the City’

Perhaps the modern history of Lagos - which is also called Eko – began in 1851 when the British forced the King of Lagos, Kosoko, from the throne on the grounds of his slave-raiding activities. He was replaced his more pliant uncle, Akitoye. As Michael Crowder (1962: 120) argues, the installation of king who was not only sympathetic to British interests but also depended on the British for survival, in place of a hostile one, was "a classic example of nineteenth century colonial expansion". Britain on July 30, 1961 annexed the ‘internally stable’ Lagos because of her need for a stable base from which it could regulate trade with the interior (Ibid: 133). With the ‘cession’ of Lagos to the British by the King, Dosumu, who succeeded Akitoye, and the subsequent annexation, a new era began "in the history of British relations with that part of the coast, an era which inaugurated the new territory of Nigeria" (Ibid: 136).

With the annexation of Lagos came debilitating conditions in the Yoruba hinterland as the Ijaye war flared up again. Eventually, the troubles in the interior boiled down to competition between the Egba and Ibadan to have/control access to Lagos. So, while Lagos enjoyed relative peace and centrality in trade, the parts of the interior were either engaged in war or bitter rivalry.

Against this background, Lagos became the hub of economic and social activities, with the attendant political significance of such emerging centre of modernity. The dynamics and intensity of the politics of Lagos was so strong as to even trap the nationalist fervour that was been generated by Herbert Macaulay over the 1923 elections in which the ‘natives’ were allowed to elect four people into the legislative assembly – three representing Lagos and one representing Calabar. It was not until the 1930s that a new generation of Nigerians looking beyond the "narrow political horizons of the capital" hijacked the control of the nationalist movement from the generation of the Macaulays (Ibid: 217).

The political history of Lagos in the period between 1923-1938 revolved around the quinquennial elections for the Legislative Council and the triennial election for the Lagos Town Council – the latter which had the elective principle partially extended to it in 1920 – and the long-running issue of the status and headship of the House of Docemo, the ruling house in Lagos (Coleman, 1986: 197). Macaulay threw himself at all of these, using his newspaper, Lagos Daily News, market women, the House of Docemo and its supporters, and ‘his unique ability to fire the imagination of the semiliterate and illiterate masses of Lagos’ to advantage (Ibid: 197).

The competition for the elective posts in Lagos increased political awakening in the city, with the number of newspapers (five) surpassing the number of parties (two) that emerged with the awakening (Ibid: 198). However, the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) led by Macaulay emerged as the most powerful party, returning candidates to the Legislative Council in 1923, 1928, and 1933. Even though it claimed to be "national", the NNDP was a Lagos affair, notwithstanding the fact that it took a ‘national’ stand on crucial issues, reminding Lagosians of their linkage with a larger territory called Nigeria (Ibid: 199).

Until the1930s, most educated Nigerians who invariably led the nationalist movement and controlled the press were from Yoruba or Creole families who had been in long contact with Europeans (Crowder, op. cit: 217). This "closed aristocracy" of the Yoruba and the Yorubalised Creoles was only intellectually challenged, in a serious and sustained manner, from this time on - the 1930s (Ibid). With this challenge came concrete development in nationalist organization.

The Ibo – as they were then called – constituted the largest ethnic category that challenged this "closed aristocracy". But this challenge was only possible when it was organised around the towering image and figure of Nnamdi Azikiwe, who then had just returned with a string of degrees from America. By the early 1950s, the Ibo had constituted 44.6 percent of the population of Lagos.

From 1934-1949, Azikiwe, popularly called Zik, was "the most important and celebrated nationalist leader" on the West Coast of Africa, if not in all tropical Africa (Coleman, op. cit: 220). He initiated a new era in journalism upon his return from America, first in Ghana and later in Nigeria. With bold, daring and sometimes shocking directness of his editorials and news, Azikiwe’s West African Pilot displaced other newspapers, emerging as a commercial success (Ibid: 222-223). As the author of one of the most cited works on Nigerian history, James Coleman stated, Azikiwe’s,

Combative and provocative journalism was the principal source of his fame and power, and the most crucial single precipitant of the Nigerian awakening…. Although Azikiwe’s power and influence resulted partly from his fresh and militant approach (to the issue of freedom and independence), they also reflected the fact that he was the first non-Yoruba Nigerian (apart from Ernest Ikoli, an Ijaw) to emerge into prominence (Ibid: 223-224).

Before the emergence and ascendancy of Azikiwe in Nigerian journalism and politics – which were meshed in those days (Adebanwi, 2002a) - the Ibo had been on the periphery of politics, lacking a symbol and a spokesman, even while exhibiting an unprecedented passion to catch up with their main southern rival, the Yoruba, particularly in the area of education and modernity (Coleman, op. cit: 224).

With the pressure exerted in the main by Azikiwe through his papers, the issue of Lagos became very salient. After the activist Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM), which was an off-shoot of the Lagos Youth Movement, was more or less dissolved due to internal wrangling over the choice of the Movement for the Legislative Council – in which Azikiwe and Samuel Akinsanya were pitched against Ernest Ikoli and Obafemi Awolowo with the attendant press war between the Zik-owned West African Pilot and NYM-owned Daily Service – the emergent parties, the National Council for Nigeria and Cameroons, NCNC (later National Council for Nigerian Citizens) and the Action Group engaged in a battle over the status of Lagos.

Azikiwe had earlier protested the domination of Lagos politics by the Yoruba who were also discriminating against non-Yorubas particularly in the area of housing (Coleman, op. cit: 340); but his presidency of the Ibo State Union did not help matters. He had said while addressing his Ibo constituents that, "It would appear that the God of Africa had created the Igbo nation to lead the children of Africa from the bondage of ages…" (Crowder, op. cit: 228).

Zik’s main rival, Obafemi Awolowo, in his autobiography, concedes that, "the Ibo had never had a share in newspaper publicity before the advent of the (Zik’s) Pilot", but argues that "no Yoruba man of the class of Ibos publicised in the Pilot ever had a share of publicity in any paper either" (emphasis added, Awolowo, 1960:139). Even though it is difficult to determine what Awolowo meant by "the class of Ibos", he also concedes that "the Ibos needed all the boosting they could get", ostensibly through Zik’s medium. But even here, Awolowo queries the actual practice of this "ethnic boosting" (Coleman, op. cit: 342-343). This bears long quotation:

But, Dr. Azikiwe went about it in a manner which disgusted those of us who were used to describing citizens of Nigeria as Nigerians or Africans, and regarding their achievement as reflecting on Nigeria, indeed Africa, as a whole… But as against these, the achievement of Yorubas and in particular, the academic laurels of their scholars received, if at all, inconspicuous notice in the Pilot. When an Ibo did or was about to do something praiseworthy, he was invariably given a two-column headline and report in the Pilot, and was always described by his ethnic origin in the headlines. But when the Ph.D. degree of London University, indeed of any university for that matter, was conferred on the first Nigerian ever, the historic news was given a small single-space in the Pilot, and the headline read: ‘Nigerian Economist Passes Ph.D. in London’. The scholar concerned was Dr. Fadipe, a Yoruba… Apart from failing to give publicity to the achievements of the Yoruba, and holding their public men to obloquy, the Pilot always made sure that all their misdoings received the publicity (Awolowo, Ibid: 140-141).

Awolowo fails to note that giving the prior advantage enjoyed by the Yoruba in the press, the Pilot’s attitude to ‘Yoruba achievement’ may only balance out long years of publicity enjoyed by the Yoruba. Even while this will not excuse this attitude as detailed by Awolowo, it can partly explain the urge for the Ibo in this era to "equal" or "balance out" the Yoruba who had had a head start. This was eventually achieved, as the Yoruba later started complaining of ‘Ibo domination’ in metropolitan – and even national – politics.

With the creation – and subsequent activities - of Egbe Omo Oduduwa, a Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, the Yoruba-Ibo tension rose in Lagos as the creation of the Egbe heightened ‘tribal’ antagonism between the Yoruba and the Ibo (Sklar, 1963: 68-70). Prior to the creation of the Egbe, the immediate past years had witnessed the establishment of Ibo’s ideological leadership of the pan-Nigeria movement, which also ran alongside the pursuit of Ibo ‘cultural supremacy’ organised around the Ibo State Union (Ibid). The Egbe seemed to have unveiled this dualistic hegemony (Ibid) – which the West African Pilot was to deride as "Ibo domination stunt". By 1948, Oluwole Alakija, a leading member of the Egbe, made a statement, which was not untypical of the rivalry and passion against Azikiwe – and by extension, the Ibo:

We were bunched together by the British who named us Nigeria. We never knew the Ibos, but since we came to know them, we have tried to be friendly and neighbourly. Then came the Arch Devil to sow the seeds of distrust and hatred… We have tolerated enough from a class of Ibos and addle-brained Yorubas who have mortgaged their thinking caps to Azikiwe and his hirelings (quoted in Coleman, op. cit: 346).

The Ibos responded in kind to this intemperate statement leading to a press war which preceded a near descent into physical violence between the two groups as gladiators descended on the local markets to purchase machetes (Ibid). A mass meeting of Ibos in Lagos resolved that any further personal attacks on Azikiwe would be seen as attacks on the "Ibo nation", because "if a hen were killed, the chickens would be exposed to danger" (Ibid). In the context of all these, the Pilot affirmed that:

Henceforth, the cry must be one of battle against the Egbe Omo Oduduwa, its leaders at home and abroad, up hill and down dale in the streets of Nigeria and in the residences of its advocates… It is the enemy of Nigeria; it must be crushed to the earth… There is no going back, until the Fascist Organization of Sir Adeyemo (leader of the Egbe) has been dismembered (quoted in Ibid: 346).

It was against this backdrop that the struggle for Lagos was enacted. The NCNC – and mainly Ibo - led by Azikiwe argued for the administrative separation of Lagos, as federal capital, from the rest of the West, while the Action Group – mainly Yoruba - led by Obafemi Awolowo, rooted for the retention/merger of Lagos with the Yoruba West. While the West African Pilot represented the position of the former, the Daily Service represented the position of the latter in a passionate tussle for hegemony in the increasingly multi-cultural city.

In the push and pull towards hegemony and counter-hegemony by the rival ethnic/political groups over the status and ‘ownership’ of Lagos, the newspapers representing the opposing camps gave vent to the ideas, ideals, interests and values of the groups. The Yoruba elite in the AG and Igbo elite in the NCNC saw themselves as ‘determinate hegemonic force’ (Fontana, op. cit: 32), which can transform the position, power and privilege of their groups. The consequence of such consciousness, Fontana (Ibid) advances, "is the transformation of a subordinate, particularistic mass of disaggregated individuals into a leading and hegemonic subject whose thought and values have become the prevailing conception of the world".

In the 1940s and early 1950s Nigeria, the North was largely indifferent to the status of Lagos. Therefore, it was a straight fight between the East (NCNC) and the West (AG).

The reforms in the Lagos Town Council (LTC) removed the independent status of Lagos - which was then largely controlled by the NCNC which had produced as Ibo mayor for the city – and merged it with the Western Region. The Pilot argues in this context that changes in the status of Lagos must be conceived along with the essence of the city:

If Lagos is still assumed to be the capital of Nigeria, surely in all its phases, institutions must exist to act as unifying media so that the centric force created will be Nigerian, neither entirely Yoruba, nor Ibo, nor Hausa. It is in this light that the proposed LTC reforms must again be examined.

The paper makes the case that it is in the ‘common’ interest of all Nigerians to make Lagos free of any regional control. At the start of this debate, Pilot comes across as if it were a dispassionate observer of the trend, speaking to the seemingly ‘transcendental’ significance of a ‘multi-cultural’ city for all – "we":

If we succeed in making Lagos Nigeria’s capital, where all tribes of the nation can live without feeling themselves ostracised, where the government system of the city will not be biased in nature but based on progressive formula, if we can indeed make Lagos a sort of London, or New York, where all citizens from all parts can commingle and inhabit without animosity, then surely we would have succeeded in cementing the Nigerian ideal…(Emphasis added)

What Pilot calls "nature" could be seen as the claim of the Yoruba to ‘natural ownership’ of Lagos; which explains why the paper then makes a case for the determination of the status of Lagos based on "progressive formula". Such a formula – ‘for the sake of unity’- the paper argues further, will "determine for centuries to come the graph line of peace among the people of Nigeria". The paper therefore urges Nigerians to,

make this Atlantic City a truly worthy capital of Nigeria. One that will serve as a unifying force to make three warring Nigerias impossible. And the NCNC is dedicated to this magnificent obsession. (Emphasis added)

The theme of "unity" is one that resonates in any hegemonic process as the hegemonic group attempts to unify all, or at least, the majority around an organising idea, which, at base, only serves the interest of the group. Lagos, for Pilot, is no longer just another town, but a centre of unity, a "cosmopolitan city inhabited by a more politically advanced people drawn from all sections of a federated Nigeria". The decision by the colonial government to incorporate Lagos into the Western Region, which will then rule the city indirectly, is consequently condemned by the paper as gratifying the "personal ambition of certain disgruntled and interested individuals", through the introduction of "a decadent and contemptible indirect rule system (which) will retard the progress of this metropolis".

Pilot challenges Lagosians to oppose the move which actualisation will mean that Lagos ‘has lost its status’:

Shall Lagos citizens allow this retrogressive Action Group policy to jeopardise their communal interest on account of party politics? Lagos has lost its homogeneous character and should any attempt be made to revive that lost heritage, then the Central Government will be admitting our plea that Lagos is no longer the capital of a federated Nigeria. (Emphasis added)

The case of Lagos is very contentious in this battle for hegemony for a number of reasons, both economic and political. The West needed Lagos to add to her size, population and influence, as well as for economic reasons, as Awolowo, often repeatedly stated (Adebanwi, 2002b: 258). Again, the AG did not have political control of the Lagos Town Council (LTC), but would control the council indirectly if the city were merged with the Western Region. For the NCNC, Lagos was one its major areas of support and it did not desire to lose it to the AG. Related to this is the rising population of the Ibo in Lagos; the NCNC obviously preferred not to place them under (rival) Yoruba control. This is apart from the economic benefits that would accrue to the West only if the city was placed under the Western Regional Government.

A Pilot popular columnist and member of the NCNC, Mbonu Ojike, in his "Weekend Catechism", argues that the "history" of federal capital all over the world supports the position of his party. He cited Canada, where Ottawa is independent of provincial control; Australia, where Camberra is independent of the control of any state; and US, where Washington D.C. enjoys ‘political freedom’ from the 50 states, to emphasise that the Action Group’s terms were unacceptable:

And what is worse is that Nigerians are expected to sign away to Action Group ambition the city of Lagos which for three quarters of a century or more was developed with Eastern, Western and Northern funds…

When the Macpherson Constitution eventually merged Lagos with the Western Region, Pilot states that colonial Nigeria no longer had a capital:

The Macpherson Constitution has given us a country without a capital. Lagos though theoretically recognized as the capital of Nigeria, really belongs to the West and henceforth she will be subject to legislations from the Western House of Assembly. What impudence. What a degradation of status! (Emphasis added)

The paper pursues that the Macpherson constitution, by making the position of Lagos "anomalous", unsheathes one of its "greatest weaknesses":

The dual position of Lagos, described by the NCNC as anomalous, unsheathes one of the greatest weaknesses of the Macpherson Constitution. It is a weakness, which, perhaps, the unity if the country hinges. Theoretically, the municipality is ward and responsibility of the Western Region, but in practice the Central Government’s estimates make several provisions for special expenditure for Lagos. This is because of the dual position of Lagos. Sooner or later matters are bound to come to a head in the first real test of the Macpherson Constitution over this matter of where Lagos stands.

This remained one of the important reason why the paper fought the Macpherson Constitution – described as a "perfect monster" – until it was abandoned.

The fears of the NCNC elements were to begin to come to light shortly after the merger. The Western Regional Government set up the Storey Commission of Inquiry to look into the affairs of the LTC, which was controlled by the NCNC. The Commission’s report was to form the basis of the dissolution of the LTC. The Daily Service was as ecstatic about this dissolution as it was full of condemnation for the dissolved NCNC-controlled LTC:

The dissolution of the Lagos Town Council, following the findings of the Storey Commission, is just, timely and expedient. The NCNC rascals who dominated the council since 1950 had proved themselves to be wholly incompetent, irresponsible, corrupt, shameless and utterly devoid of all sense of decency and of proportion… They had (…) exposed Lagos to ridicule not only of the rest of Nigeria but of the whole civilised world. Lagos Town Council under the NCNC had long become a bedlam and a disgrace to the good name of Lagos. (Emphasis added)

Service then congratulates the regional government, "especially the Minister of Local Government (Hon. Obafemi Awolowo) … for taking action so promptly" on the findings of the commission. For Pilot the situation foretells "the encircling gloom of a not distant future ahead of Lagos" unless "all true patriots lead the isle of Nigeria’s destiny out of Pharaoh’s land (emphasis added)". The paper presents the position of the NCNC as that of "true patriots" who were concerned with the "collective destiny" of a Nigeria ostensibly trapped in the ‘land of Pharaoh’ (Western Region).

The Pilot asks, in the absence of the will for a reversal of the status of Lagos, for a new capital to be created:

We are no alarmists, neither do we intend to precipitate an unholy rivalry for supremacy among the three states that now constitute Nigeria. The only solution lies in the creation of a new capital unfettered by regional legislations. Meanwhile Nigeria remains without a capital.(Emphasis added)

This was strictly in line with the paper’s earlier warning, in which it declared that the "irrevocable" position of the NCNC:

The NCNC (…) irrevocably maintains that if Lagos is to remain the capital of Nigeria, it must also be placed on a status exactly similar to what obtains in many capitals all over the world; so that any mischievous attempt to merge Lagos with the West must be vehemently opposed as that would automatically strip Lagos of the glory and privilege it had hitherto enjoyed as capital of Nigeria. (Emphasis added)

This "glory and privilege" which Lagos had - metaphors for the political, economic and even social significance of the city - appeared to be the main reason while both sides wanted to keep Lagos within their sphere of influence. The Pilot describes as "shameless gospellers" those canvassing "Lagos for Yorubas", including the Service, while Service describes those engaging in the "stupid talk" of de-linking Lagos from the West as "ne’er-do-wells".

When the Secretary of States for the Colonies in the immediate past Labour Government expressed surprise that the matter of Lagos merger was alive when he met the representatives of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa, Service avers that the paper would have been surprised too but for the fact that it knows "who has been holding the question in the air" – ostensibly, Azikiwe, through the Pilot. Expletives are then poured on the "who":

And it is he who has been encouraging the ne’er-do-wells to irritate the responsible section of the Nigerian community with stupid talks about Lagos… (T)he ignorant and irresponsible advocates of "separate-Lagos" should have been silenced long before now… (Emphasis added)

In what would appear a pointer to how the capital could be moved out of Lagos to elsewhere – as it eventually happened when the capital was moved to Abuja, a move which, incidentally, the Yoruba West opposed – the Service states:

The people of the Western Region are not compelling the whole country to make Lagos their capital. But, at least, it is the duty of the Governor to make it clear that the only alternative to the present situation of Lagos is for the people of Nigeria to buy a piece of land and establish on it a federal capital independent of the three regions (Emphasis added).

The two papers entered a period of "détente" when the two parties began working together on the subject of the date of independence. They then turned on the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) – which became "the imperialist stooge" (Adebanwi, 2002b: 262). Both the NCNC and the AG were committed to 1956 as the year of independence for Nigeria while the leaders of the NPC entered a caveat, described as "as soon as possible". The Pilot captures this "détente" thus:

What matters now is self-government first and above every other consideration. The present united front formed by militant nationalists should therefore be maintained at all costs. It is not only the responsibility of the two leaders (Zik and Awo), but that of all their followers and admirers (emphasis added).

This "united front" however could not be sustained beyond mid-1953 when the party leaders met in London for constitutional talks with the British Government. When the issue of Lagos came up at the conference, Awolowo and his AG colleagues staged a walk out. Against this backdrop, Service argues:

What should be the position of Lagos in a federal Nigeria? … The people of Nigeria have a right to say that their capital (not necessarily Lagos) should be independent. But neither the NCNC nor the NPC has any right to say that the town of Lagos should be truncated from the region to which it naturally belongs. All they can do is to demand that the capital of Nigeria be removed from Lagos to say, Kaduna or Port-Harcourt, which was bought with the money of Nigeria and which, in fact, should not belong to any one Region (emphasis added).

The Service then presents the reasons why the West would not agree to the severance of Lagos from it:

To submit to the severance of Lagos from the West would amount to economic and fiscal suicide on the part of the people and Government of the Western Region. … The population and revenue (will be) cut down by 270,000 people and millions of pounds.

Service states that the decision of the Colonial Secretary in London, Mr. Lyttleton, to "dismember" the Western Region for the sake of the "future of Nigeria" was not only unfair but also indefensible (Adebanwi, 2002b, op. cit: 265). The paper adds that:

Lagos, an indisputable Yoruba City owned by the West, is to remain a lone star… And in arriving at his decision, Mr. Lyttleton disregards all historical facts and constitutional precedent (emphasis added).

But Pilot contests this. What is "indisputable" for the paper is the "joint-ownership" of the city:

There is hardly any Nigerian who does not regard Lagos with special sentimental feelings. To the Binis, it is part of their ancient empire; to the Northerner, it is not only a capital developed with the revenue from their tin, groundnuts and cotton but the life-blood of their economic existence with particular reference to their export and import trade. Similarly, Easterners feel that Lagos has been developed not only from their revenue but through their blood, sweat and tears as well; while a section of Westerners feel that they have an exclusive attachment to the city because of historical and geographical connections. The truth, in short, is that Lagos is very dear to all section of the country (emphasis added).

I had noted elsewhere that "this narrative is very interesting in the way it negotiates the interests of Pilot on the Lagos issue" (Adebanwi, 2002b: 266). While the Pilot’s Binis could claim Lagos as "part of their ancient empire" and therefore a "lost possession" - the North, whose inadequate resources necessitated amalgamation with the South, for the paper, suddenly had enough resources part of which was used in developing Lagos. The Pilot’s East was bound to Lagos with "blood, tears and toil", while only "a section" of the West feel "exclusive attachment"- not ownership - to the city (Ibid).

The Service, affronted by this, disclaims the connections of the other parts of Nigeria:

The development of Lagos dates as far as the days before the amalgamation of 1924 and even from that date the contribution of which the North and East have made (…) is infinitesimal".

A front-page story in the Service even uses what Azikiwe wrote in the Pilot on May 14, 1940 to back the claim of the Yoruba to Lagos. The Service claims that Zik had written that:

When we speak of the Oba of Lagos, we refer to the paramount Native Ruler of Lagos Township, although Lagos is peopled mainly by the Yoruba-speaking peoples and Lagos is part of Yoruba land. And since Yoruba is part of the Western Region, Lagos should remain in Yoruba land which is part of the West.

Pilot praises the decision of Her Majesty’s Government which it believes tallies with the "wishes of the majority" that "Lagos should serve as the central bound of unity". The paper avers that the city has, by its severance from the Western Region, been elevated to "an exalted position". This "majority wish", for the Service, is "against reason and justice" and a reflection of the "pet(ty) jealousy and covetousness of certain malcontents". Pursues the Service:

It is not difficult for any fair-minded person to see how the present position of Lagos is inimical to the future of Nigeria … (and) a harmonious future… For (Lyttleton) to disregard these facts is dangerous not only to the future but also to the very existence of Nigeria…The choice is between Lagos and Nigeria (emphasis added).

Service declares that rather than lose Lagos to the status of federal capital, the West was prepared to contribute to building an "independent federal capital", so that while Lagos remained the commercial centre, the political capital could move elsewhere to allow the West claim ownership over Lagos:

Bu to compel the West to surrender Lagos as a federal capital is to sow the seed of permanent disunity and bitterness between the West and the other regions … If the other Regions are not prepared to allow their federal capital to remain in the Western Region, they can remove the capital to any other place… (emphasis added)

But for Pilot Lagos must remain the political, as well as the, commercial capital of colonial Nigeria and future independent Nigeria:

The political capital of any country should also be its commercial capital as well as the principal mirror of its cultural and social progress.

By this time it was obvious that the alliance constructed over the date of independence between NCNC-Pilot and AG-Service had broken down. While Service deplores the "underhand tricks" and "stab in the back" by the ally of AG in the London talks, which proves that the "NCNC is not being true to the spirit in which the (alliance) was born"; Pilot claims that the AG is "unfortunately back to the tribal shrine from which it emerged (with) the ugly old days of hate, rancour and disunity"

The newspapers in their support for hegemonic and counter-hegemony groups not only tried, as explicated here, to create a way of life and a conception of the world, but they also attempted to translate the interests and values of the groups they represent into the ‘common’ values and interests of the wider society (Fontana, op. cit: 140-141).

As "experts in legitimation", they attempted to render existing power structures - where such structures favoured the group they represent - acceptable; and where they are otherwise, unacceptable. They attempted to universalize the values of the social group which they represent.

In the case examined here, given the centrality, the political, economic, social and symbolic value of the city at stake, the press became a practical means of securing power and hegemony in the city. The case shows the centrality of discursive, non-material and non-forcible construction of consent, dissent and consensus as crucial ways of understanding hegemony in a contentious context.

Adebanwi, Adewale N., "The Nation As Grand Narrative: The Nigerian Press and the Politics of Meaning", Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria, August, 2002b.

Adebanwi, Wale, "The Nigerian Press and the National Question", in Abubakar Momoh and Said Adejumobi (eds.) The National Question in Nigeria: Comparative Perspectives, Hampshire, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2002a.

Agbaje, Adigun, The Nigerian Press, Hegemony, and the Social Construction of Legitimacy, 1960-1983, Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992.

Awolowo, Obafemi, Awo: The Autobiography of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960.

Barrett, Michele, The Politics of Truth: From Marx to Foucault, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991.

Coleman, James S., Nigeria: Background to Nationalism, Benin City: Broburg and Wistrom, 1958.

Crowder, Michael, The Story of Nigeria, London: Faber and Faber, 1962.

Fontana, Benedetto, Hegemony and Power: On the Relation Between Gramsci and Machiavelli, Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

Gibbons, Michael T. (ed.), Interpreting Politics, New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987.

Laitin, David D., Hegemony and Culture: Politics of Religious Change Among the Yoruba, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Mouffe, Chantal, "Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci", in Tony Bennett, et al (eds.) Culture, Ideology and Social Process: A Reader, London: The Open University Press, 1981.

Said, Edward, The World, the Text and the Critic, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983.

Sklar, Richard L., Nigerian Political Parties: Power in An Emergent African Nation, New York: NOK Publishers International, 1963.

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