How Nigeria walked into a disastrous independence and why Azikiwe never became prime minister

This week, our history series focuses on two years before Nigerian independence, when its post-British political fate was decided. Throughout 1958, Obafemi Awolowo ramped up his calls for Nigeria to be divided into more than three regions before independence. He stated colonialism meant the Yorubas, Igbos, Hausa-Fulanis and others had been “lumped together by our British overlords without the knowledge or consent of the people concerned, and with little or no regard to their cultural, linguistic and ethnological differences.”

Awo stated “there is more in common between a Greek villager and a British villager than there is between a Sokoto villager and an Ijaw villager.” While the Greeks and Brits shared a culture “derived more or less from the same source – Christianity – when you consider the relationship between the Sokoto man and the Ijaw man, where is the connection? There is none at all, either in language or in culture. They do not even derive their culture from the same source,” he argued.

Interestingly, though bitter political rivals, Ahmadu Bello shared Awo’s view on northern and southern Nigerians being fundamentally different. “They (southerners) get their civilisation from over the sea; we get ours from over the desert,” Bello told Manchester Guardian in 1956. He saw southerners as western-oriented while the north looked to the Islamic world for inspiration.

However, because Bello viewed the north as being in a dominant political position by the late 1950s, he was not overly worried about what would happen to his region in an independent Nigeria. In March 1958, he was confident enough to declare before the northern House of Chiefs that the aim of his “Northernisation” policy was to have “northerners gain control of everything in the country.” Nnamdi Azikiwe, meanwhile, argued that cultural differences between Nigerians were not an obstacle to nation-building.

Zik and Bello are famously said to have had a meeting at which Zik said to Bello, “Let us forget our differences” to which Bello responded, “No, let us understand our differences. I am a Muslim and a northerner. You are a Christian and an easterner.” This exchange encapsulates the vast difference in approach to Nigeria’s ethno-cultural diversity between Bello (and Awo) on the one hand, and Zik on the other. Awo and Bello were both clearly more realistic about what Nigeria was while Zik appeared to overestimate the ability of rhetoric to constitute reality.

 

It is worth mentioning that despite his strong opposition to Bello and northern elites, Awo approached not just NCNC for a coalition, but NPC as well. However, northern elites were so bitterly opposed to Awo, largely because of his consistent campaign to break up the north, that they ruled this out and chose NCNC instead

 

Nevertheless, having lost his battle for a reconfiguration of Nigeria before independence, Awo, like Bello and Zik, turned his focus to the all-important general election of 1959, which would determine who controlled Nigeria’s political centre after Britain left. Electioneering kicked off in earnest with Awo and other Action Group (AG) leaders crisscrossing Nigeria in helicopters, campaigning hard in the seat-rich north and in the east, where they hoped to make enough in-roads with regional minorities to be able win a majority at the centre.

AG’s 1959 campaign was described in foreign press as “the most expensive and most professional” political campaign ever conducted in Africa at the time. Yet, ultimately, all that expensive campaigning had little effect as election results revealed voting along largely ethnic lines. Zik’s National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) party won all 50 seats in the Igbo constituencies of the east. Bello’s NPC dominated the north, capturing virtually all the available seats in upper-north constituencies populated mostly by Hausa-Fulanis. Awo’s AG won 32 of 47 available seats in the Yoruba sector of the west. Additionally, AG won 14 of 23 available seats in eastern minority areas, and, in alliance with the United Middle Belt Congress, 25 seats in the lower north. Similarly, NCNC won 14 of 15 seats in non-Yoruba western Nigeria. Factor in independents plus small parties and all told, Bello’s NPC commanded 142 of the 312 seats in Nigeria’s federal House of Representatives, NCNC 89 seats and AG 73 seats.

This parliamentary arithmetic meant any two of the major parties could form a majority coalition. Awo sent emissaries to NCNC offering a coalition agreement in which Zik, as leader of the bigger party in parliament, would become Nigeria’s first independent prime minister while Awo would be finance minister. However, just after the results were announced, but before any coalition deal had been reached, British Governor-General James Robertson appointed Tafawa Balewa prime minister on grounds he represented the largest party in the House of Representatives and could form a coalition.

Balewa specifically requested this favour from Robertson to strengthen his hand in coalition negotiations. Balewa told Robertson he was sure Festus Okotie-Eboh, an NCNC man who opposed an NCNC-AG coalition since that meant Awo as finance minister, a job he wanted for himself, would break away from NCNC with other party members and join an NPC coalition even if Zik opposed it.

NCNC, a coalition of numerous unions and movements, was never as disciplined a party as Awo’s AG or Bello’s NPC. Moreover, the days when Zik’s authority in the party went unquestioned were long gone by 1959. In the immediate years preceding independence, while Zik remained an important symbolic figurehead for NCNC, he was never fully in control of the party. Outside, he tried to create the impression he was, but insiders knew he wasn’t. To further complicate matters, most Yoruba members of NCNC said they would never accept a coalition in which Awo would play a prominent role. They threatened to dump NCNC if Zik tried to push through AG as coalition partner.

Add to this the fact many NCNC members recalled bitterly their years of rivalry with AG in the south, didn’t trust AG politicians and feared the potential threat of northerners not accepting an all-south government, perhaps even seceding, and we see how an NCNC-AG coalition that would have made Zik Nigeria’s PM became a non-starter.

Publicly, Zik preferred not to admit he would have been unable to force through an NCNC-AG coalition even if he had wanted as that would have revealed him not being in control of the party he led. So, he emphasised the threat of northern secession instead. In the end thus, NCNC joined NPC as a junior coalition partner with Zik receiving the ceremonial post of governor-general which offered no real power.

Sure enough, the corrupt Festus Okotie-Eboh, popularly referred to as “Mr 10%” for his wheeling-dealing, got his coveted job of finance minister in the NPC-NCNC government.

It is worth mentioning that despite his strong opposition to Bello and northern elites, Awo approached not just NCNC for a coalition, but NPC as well. However, northern elites were so bitterly opposed to Awo, largely because of his consistent campaign to break up the north, that they ruled this out and chose NCNC instead. And this was how Nigeria’s first independent government came into being, an arrangement that would bring disastrous consequences still being felt in the country’s politics today. Next series, we shall discuss the early 1960s and how the events of those years led to a civil war in Nigeria, which at independence was a state without a nation. Till then, take care folks!