In 1946, a new constitution was announced. It was called the Richards Constitution, after Arthur Richards, the British Governor who designed it. It was supposed to be a step toward self-government. It created a Central Legislative Council with representatives from all regions. It allowed more Nigerians to participate in their own governance. It was, the British said, a new deal for Nigeria.

The Nigerians who were consulted about this new deal could be counted on one hand. The Central Legislative Council included twenty-eight officials and eighteen unofficial members — of whom only four were elected. The rest were appointed. The power remained with the Governor. The new deal was the old deal with more Nigerian faces in the room.

But it was something. It created regional assemblies in the North, West, and East. It expanded the franchise — not to everyone, but to more people than before. It was the first constitution that acknowledged, however grudgingly, that Nigerians might eventually govern themselves.

The response was immediate and angry. The National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons — NCNC, led by Nnamdi Azikiwe — organized protests across the country. The Nigerian Youth Movement condemned the constitution as autocratic. The question was not whether the constitution was better than what came before. The question was who got to decide what came next. And the answer was still: the British.

In 1948, John Macpherson arrived as the new Governor. He was sent to fix what Richards had broken. He convened a series of conferences — in Ibadan, in Kano, in Enugu — to consult with Nigerians about the next constitution. This was the Macpherson Constitution of 1951, and it was different. It created a House of Representatives with a majority of elected members. It expanded the regional assemblies. It was, for the first time, a constitution that Nigerians had been consulted about before it was imposed.

But imposed it was. The consultations happened after the British had already decided what the constitution would look like. The conferences were advisory. The final document was still written in London. And the structure it created — regional governments with the North larger than the other two regions combined — laid the groundwork for the ethnic politics that would eventually tear the country apart.

In 1954, another constitution. The Lyttelton Constitution, named for the Secretary of State for the Colonies. This one established a federal system — the regions became more powerful, the center became weaker. The logic was sound: a country as diverse as Nigeria needed a structure that allowed different regions to develop at different paces, to preserve their cultures, to feel secure that they would not be dominated by any other group.

The logic was also fatal. The federal system created regional political parties that served regional interests. The Northern People's Congress dominated the North. The Action Group dominated the West. The NCNC dominated the East. The center could not hold because there was no center — only three regions pulling in different directions.

From 1957 to 1960, there were conferences in London. Nigerians sat in rooms with British officials and negotiated the terms of their own independence. The deals were made: the North would have representation proportional to its population. The South would have regional autonomy. The federal government would handle defense and foreign affairs. Everything else would belong to the regions.

Independence came on October 1, 1960. The constitution that was inaugurated that day represented what Nigerians could agree on — or more precisely, what Nigerian leaders could agree on, in rooms in London, while the British watched and approved.

What happened to those agreements? The First Republic collapsed in 1966. The military took over. The federal system was dismantled. The regions were broken into twelve states, then nineteen, then thirty-six. The power that had been distributed to the regions was concentrated in the center. The constitution of 1960 became a memory, then a fantasy, then a what-if that historians debate.

The lost accord is this: the promise of 1946, 1951, 1954, 1960 — the promise that Nigerians would gradually take control of their own governance, that the British would hand over power responsibly, that the structure created would be capable of holding a diverse nation together. That promise was broken. Not all at once, but gradually, through the accumulation of distrust, the escalation of regional rivalry, the coups and counter-coups, the Civil War that made it clear that the federal system had failed.

The rooms where these constitutions were written — the Richards room, the Macpherson conference halls, the Lyttelton offices, the London negotiation tables — they all had one thing in common. Nigerians were present, but they were not in charge. The British decided when to grant consultation, when to grant representation, when to grant independence. The pace was set in London. The structure was approved in London. The final word was always British.

Even the independence constitution — the one that seemed like Nigerian self-determination — was possible only because the British allowed it. And when it failed, there was no backup plan, no Nigerian tradition of constitutional amendment, no civic culture of negotiation and compromise. There was only the military, waiting to step in, and the ethnic politicians, ready to turn every disagreement into an existential threat.

The Richards room was a colonial room. The Macpherson rooms were colonial rooms with Nigerian guests. The Lyttelton constitution was a colonial document with Nigerian fingerprints. And the independence constitution — the one that was supposed to be truly Nigerian — lasted six years before it was replaced by military decree.

The question these lost accords raise is whether Nigeria ever had a chance to build a constitutional culture. A culture where the rules are negotiated, where power is shared, where compromise is possible, where the system can adapt without collapse. The British never intended to create such a culture. They intended to create a structure that would maintain order until they left. And the Nigerians who inherited that structure discovered that it could not hold the weight of their own ambitions, their own fears, their own divisions.

So the accords were lost. The Richards promise. The Macpherson consultation. The Lyttelton federalism. The independence agreement. All lost, one by one, until the only accord left was the gun. The military accord. The accord of force. The accord that needs no constitution because it needs only obedience.

We are still living in the aftermath of those lost rooms. Still trying to build a constitutional culture where none was allowed to grow. Still trying to negotiate what the British imposed and the military destroyed. Still looking for the accord that was promised and never delivered — the accord of Nigerians with each other, freely chosen, freely maintained, freely changed when it no longer serves.

That accord is still waiting to be made.