LAGOS: January 1, 2014 marks the centenary of the amalgamation of southern and northern Nigeria but the anniversary looks set to be muted, amid lingering questions about whether the union can hold.

In the run-up to the landmark, opinion is split between those who think amalgamation has been a boon and others who consider it the first step in the creation of a still-failing state.

Writer Adewale Maja-Pearce described Africa’s most populous nation as one “imposed by the colonialists who dreamt up the fiction which has now become the nightmare we are all struggling to escape”.

The most pressing question now is whether to continue trying to “make it work”, said Maja-Pearce.

Nigeria’s first step towards independence in 1960 was taken on New Year’s Day 1914 at a ceremony outside a courthouse in the southern city of Lagos.

The British rulers hoped that trade would be boosted by uniting the economically faltering north with the more prosperous south.

But the primarily commercial move, as with others in Britain’s then-global empire, also fused an array of people divided by custom, language and, perhaps most importantly, faith.

By the start of the 19th century, northern Nigeria, where the Fulani-Hausa ethnic group was dominant, had become a caliphate, controlled by a structured network of Islamic theocrats.

The south meanwhile consisted of scores of ethnic groups and a loosely-structured maze of leaders and tribal chiefs.

That made it a far tougher territory for the British to manage, said Ed Keazor, a historian consulting the Nigerian government on the centennial celebrations.

For Frederick Lugard, Britain’s high commissioner of northern Nigeria and later the first governor-general of the amalgamated colony, the north “worked better”, added Keazor.

Lugard “was an autocrat”, Keazor said. “The emirs’ style suited his own.” But lacking cash crops, the north by 1912 needed subsidies from London to meet its administrative costs.

Lugard hoped his amalgamation project would raise profits by streamlining the management of the colonies with him at the top.

With war in Europe brewing, London decided to give the idea a try.

“Today, Nigeria enters on a new stage of progress,” Lugard said outside the Lagos supreme court building on the first day of 1914, according to a text provided by Keazor.

“We all join in earnest hope that the era now inaugurated will prove, not only a departure in material prosperity, but also increase the individual happiness” of the Nigerian people, he declared.

Amalgamation proved an early success for Britain, according to several accounts.

The north’s economy improved, backed by a surge in cotton production and better access to the ports lining Nigeria’s southern coast.

For Prof Dapo Thomas of Lagos State University, politicians who still fixate on and exploit regional rivalries “are the ones who made a mess of amalgamation”.

“I believe the amalgamation was the best thing to have happened to Nigeria,” he said.— AFP