The inability of Awolowo to realise his goal of becoming the prime minister became the tinderbox that sparked the conflagration that would consume the nation, plunge the young nation into turmoil and ultimately end the first republic.
The I950s in Nigeria were a period of hope, prospect, glory and nationalistic fervour. The nation was teeming with sharp and brilliant minds who could not wait to bring their grand idea, lofty goals and monumental visions to fruition in a new independent Nigeria. We have Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the Western region, Sir Ahmadu Bello in the Northern Region and Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe in the Eastern Region. There are other dynamic, selfless and brilliant minds like Tafawa Balewa who would later become Nigeria’s first prime minister in post-colonial Nigeria. The feisty, young, eloquent Anthony Enahoro, K.O. Mbadiwe, Aja Nwachukwu, Jaja Wachuckwu, and Raymond Njoku.
These hopes, aspirations and ambitions were later carried over into the new sovereign nation after Nigeria gained independence from the British on October 1st 1960. Nigeria may have gained independence but the heterogeneous makeup of the nation’s population and the decision to ignore incidents of persecution and violence against some ethnic groups left many with a sense of foreboding and trepidation. The issue of unfair treatment and persecution of certain ethnic nationalities, especially minority groups, was not addressed. The fissure in the Federation was not addressed. The fault lines were exacerbated by the actions of the three major ethnic groups. The British lopsided division of the federating units and regions meant the Northern region was better positioned to have a majority in the federal parliament and form a government to lead the nation.
Before independence in 1960, Nigeria conducted a national election in 1959 to pick new leaders who would oversee the affairs of the new nation. The election saw the Northern People Congress (NPC) win 148 seats in the house of representatives, the NCNC (major party in the East) had 89 seats while the AG (dominant in the West) garnered 75 seats. This effectively meant the Northern Peoples Congress had a majority in the house. In his bid to become the nation’s first prime minister if his party won the election in 1959, Awolowo had left his position as the premier of the Western Region in 1959 to contest federal elections to the House of Representatives. Chief S.L. Akintola then became premier. The Action Group, however, lost the federal election, and Awolowo became opposition leader while remaining as party chairman with Akintola as his deputy. This would later sparked personality clash between the two leaders.
The Awolowo and Akintola power struggle and personality clash
The inability of Awolowo to realise his goal of becoming the prime minister became the tinderbox that sparked the conflagration that would consume the nation, plunge the young nation into turmoil and ultimately end the first republic.
No sooner had Awolowo lost out in his prime ministership bid than cracks began to show in the wall of the Action Group, his party.
Awolowo, the party leader and the opposition leader in the Federal House of Representatives and Akintola who was the deputy leader and the
The Premier of the Western Region became embroiled in a battle of supremacy and control as their disagreement over how the party and region should be led morphed into bitter animosity and all-out political war.
Awolowo unequivocally rejected Akintola’s suggestion of the formation of a national government with the NPC, accusing him of planning to oust and replace him as the leader of the party. Awolowo also asked Akintola to always consult him before taking any major decision affecting the people of the Region, a demand Akintola flat out rejected. Awolowo also accused Akintola of making a secret deal with Tafawa Balewa so that Akintola would support Balewa to become the president when Nigeria became a
republic.
Matters came to a head and the crisis reached a boiling point in 1962 when Akintola and Ayo Rosiji, who was then the General Secretary, walked out of the party’s 1962 convention in Jos after they realised that they, alongside their supporters, would be suspended.
The party became deeply fractured and fractionalised by crisis into two groups, Awolowo and his loyalists on one side and Akintola and his supporters on the other side. Subsequently, Akintola was later removed as the Premier by the Governor of the Western Region, Sir Adesoji Adeyemi, after the Western Region Assembly passed a vote of no confidence in him, leading to the outbreak of violence on the floor of the house. But his removal was nullified by the Supreme Court, even though he lost his appeal at the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, domiciled in the United Kingdom, and was Nigeria’s highest final and highest tribunal before the creation of the Supreme Court. After he was reinstated as the premier of the Western region in 1963 and returned to power, he formed a new party known as the United Progressive Party (UPP).
Following the breakdown of law and order, the federal government declared a state of emergency in the Region in 1962, appointed Moses Majekodunmi as the region’s administrator and also removed Sir Adesoji Adeyemi as the governor of the region. Sam Ikoku was appointed as the new secretary of the Action Group to replace Ayo Rosiji while Alhaji D.S. Adegbenro succeeded Akintola as the premier of the Western region.
Region. Chief Obafemi Awolowo and some of his close associates, like Lateef Jakande and Anthony Enahoro, were later charged with treason and sentenced to five years in prison.
In July 1964, another five-yearly election was due, with the Northern seats more than those of the three southern regions combined; the southern-based parties realised they had to make some political inroads in North and win some seats there if they were ever going to have a chance of securing a majority in the federal parliament and forming a government.
The 1964 federal election
The political parties then merged to form mega alliances. The NCNC, the AG faction loyal to Awolowo and the Northern Progressive Front (NPF) made up of the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) and the United Middle
Belt Congress (UMBC) merged to form the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA) under the leadership of Dr Michael Okpara, the Premier of the Eastern region, on June 3, 1964. On August 20, 1964, the NPC, NNDP, the Mid-Western Democratic Front (MDF), the Niger Delta Congress (NDC) and the dynamic party formed the Nigerian National Alliance (NNA) under the leadership of the premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmed Bello.
The 1964 election was marred by widespread irregularities and manipulations further worsening the crisis in the Western Region. The outcome of the election and the crisis that it engendered were not unconnected to the lack of adequate preparation on the part of the federal electoral commission due to the short time between the dissolution of the parliament and the conduct of the election. In the first week of December 1964, Prime Minister Balewa had implored President Azikiwe to dissolve parliament towards an election that would be held on 30 December. This made it impossible for the Electoral Commission to prepare a real genuine and practical voters’ list.
At the close of nominations, 66 candidates for NNA and 15 for UPGA were declared unopposed. The UPGA leaders raised an alarm over irregularities in the results and sent a petition to the president, threatening a boycott if the irregularities were not addressed. President Azikiwe asked the prime minister to shift the elections to a later date but the prime minister declined his request causing the UPGA to leaders to direct their members to boycott the elections. When the election started on December 30th 1964 as scheduled the UPGA boycotted it. While voting did not take place in the eastern region, election took place in the northern and western regions, in some parts of the mid-western region and only in one ward in Lagos. When the votes were counted, the NNA won a comfortable margin of seats and Balewa was reluctantly asked to form a government by President Azikiwe in order to douse the tension and bring peace to the country.
Western region election of 1965
After the federal election of 1964, the country was already teetering on the verge of full-blown anarchy. The country was anything but peaceful and stable. The atmosphere was charged. The socio-political situation was volatile. Even before the first ballot was cast, it was obvious the outcome of the election would be, as the federal government backed Akintola, who was ready to do any win the election. were hospitaliseded with trepidatwere ion and gland oom. It may be that Chief Samuel Akintola’s governing Nigerian National Democratic party (NNDP) would have won a Western provincial election even if it were devoid of rigging and manipulations. Also, the opposition United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA) deluded itself into partsking it had what it took to defeat the NNDP in a reasonably free election. The truth will never be known into because the election was not free, fair and credible. Many of the troubling elements, malevolent actions and undemocratic antics of the Balewa led NNA during the 1964 federal election were also deployed to brutal effect by the NNDP.
Electioneering had hardly begun when Akintola’s regional government proscribe all public protest demonstrations. Then UPGA leaders lamented that their candidates were barred from contesting in the some areas—an allegation that seemed substantiated in part when the NNDP, to the chagrin of the public, announced at the close of filing that its nominees were unopposed for sixteen of the 94 Assembly UPGA candidate against Akintola inexplicably withdrew a week before election day, leaving the regional Premier without a challenger. Before the November election, violence was already rife and chaos was widespread According to New York Times, four persons were killed, 25 hospitalized, more than 300 arrested, police seizure of 8,500 illegally held ballots.
Akintola, backed by the northern dominated NNA, eventually won the election amid strong and irrefutable charge of widespread irregularities and fraud. Hardly had Akintola’s NNDP won the regional election when protest broke out in many part of the region. The widespread public demonstrations against the new regional government soon snowballed violence, chaos and break down of law and order. Supporters of politicians on both side went after their opponents. An estimated 2,000 people died in violence that erupted in the Western Region. In the face of the growing unrest and upheaval, the troubled Balewa was asked to declare state of emergency in the restive region but he rejected the idea even though he had done the same thing during AG crisis four years earlier. He instead directed the regional government to use the instrument and full force of the State to deal with the situation as it deemed fit. By this time, Azikiwe and the prime minister relationship had broken down and they hardly see eye to eye. By April, rumours of coup and military takeover to restore peace and order.
The military takeover
At the height of Western region crisis, Balewa, in January 1966, hosted the emergency Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference to discuss the crisis in Cyprus in Lagos. The Prime Minister of Great Britain, Harold Wilson who was also at the conference, had sounded out Balewa on the possibility of a Military Coup in Nigeria in January 1966 and had offered him political asylum in one of the British frigate on the Atlantic and subsequently a voyage to Great Britain by sea, he rejected the offer and remained unfazed throughout the conference.
The military finally did strike in a coup in January 1966. Balewa, Akintola and Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Premier of the Northern Region were killed during the coup. The coup effectively ended Nigeria’s first republic and set off a chain of events that truncated the nation’s political and socio-economic progress. The January coup was followed by successive coups. The fallout of the first coup was one of the remote causes of the civil. Aggrieved by what they felt was a disproportionate killing of northern politicians by what would later be termed by many as an Igbo coup, northern soldiers who dominated the military at the time carried out a retaliatory coup in July of 1966, targeting Igbo soldiers. Aguiyi Ironsi, the military head of state that took over in 1966 after the January coup, was killed. Adekunle Fajuyi, the Military governor of the Western region, was also killed. Hundreds of serving Igbo military officers were brutally murdered. The ugly and seditious anti-Igbo rhetoric and sentiment stoked by top northern politicians and soldiers became widespread leading to attack and killing of Igbos living in the north.
The widespread persecution and violent attack against Nigerians of Igbo extraction in many part of the country to prompted many of them to return to the East where the felf they would be safe. The assumption of power by General Yakubu Gowon in what many considered blatant power grab and disregard for hierarchy and seniority in military further widened the fissure in the already deeply polarised military and worsened the rift and animosity between top military officers, especially the military governor of the Eastern Region, colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu. The tension continued and all attempt to save the nation from an all out war, including a last minute reconciliation and accord in Aburi, Ghana, failed. All hell broke lose in 1967 when Ojukwu declared secession of the Eastern region from Nigeria leading the Nigerian civil war.
The crisis of the Western region changed Nigeria forever in many ways. It weaved military ideology and doctrine into our socio-economic and political fabric and eventually plunged Nigeria into a 30-month fratricidal war. Nigeria regional system federating unit and the parliamentary system bequeathed to us by the British was replaced with creation of more state and a more expensive presidential system of government.