Nigeria became recognized as a Republic on the 1st of October, 1963, but this did not mark the beginning of Nigeria’s political journey as a Republican state. The first republic in Nigeria started on the 1st of October, 1960 upon the attainment of independence and ended on the 15th of January, 1966 during the first military coup d’état . During independence, Nigeria had all the features of a democratic state and was seen by other African countries as a hope for democracy. Nigeria had a federal constitution that ensured adequate autonomy to three (later four) regions which were: Northern region, Eastern region and Western region; the country adopted and operated a parliamentary democracy that emphasized majority rule; the constitution included an elaborate bill of rights; and, unlike other African states that adopted one-party systems immediately after independence, Nigeria had a functional, albeit regionally based, multiparty system. However, the democratic qualities that Nigeria possessed at that time didn’t guarantee the survival of the republic because of certain structural weaknesses and political crises. People ask questions like: what are the factors that led to the collapse of the first republic in Nigeria? Why did Nigeria’s first republic fail? What led to the fall of Nigeria’s first republic? Etc. In this article, answers to these questions will be provided. Table of Contents  1. Structural Weaknesses that led to the collapse of the first republic in Nigeria 1. 1. Ethnically based Federal Regions, with uneven size and power 2. 2. Ethno-Regional Political Parties 1. The three dominant parties 3. 3. The political alignment which formed after the 1959 election 4. 4. The fear of ethnic domination 2. Now to the five crises which gradually eroded the foundations of Nigeria’s First Republic, leading to its fall/collapse. 1. 1. The disintegration of the AG, 1962-63 2. 2. Census Crisis, 1962-64 3. 3. The General Strike, June 1-13, 1964 4. 4. The General Election, December 1964 5. 5. The Western Regional Election, October 1965 1. References: Structural Weaknesses that led to the collapse of the first republic in Nigeria 1. Ethnically based Federal Regions, with uneven size and power The first structural weakness which set the First Republic in Nigeria for political crisis was its ethnically- based federal regions and the asymmetry in size and power between them. Upon independence, Nigeria was composed of three federating regions: Northern, Eastern and Western regions. (Later in 1963 a new region, the Mid-West, was carved out of the West following a crisis in that region). Each of the regions was dominated by one of the country’s three largest ethnic groups: Hausa-Fulani in the North, Yoruba in the West and Igbo in the East. This arrangement presided over by the dominant ethnic groups placed minorities at a considerable disadvantage in the competition for jobs and resources at the regional level. It also allowed the elites of the three largest ethnic groups to monopolize access to federal patronage, which they leveraged for political support. These three regions were largely autonomous from the federal and were constitutionally powerful as well, a historian of Nigeria’s political parties during this period puts it: In their respective regions, the leaders of these dominant nationality groups controlled the means of access to wealth and power… They tended to equate their private interests with the objective interests of their nationality groups; conversely, they exploited the sentiments of their groups to promote their private interests. Of the three regions, the North was much larger demographically and geographically (See Fig. 1 & Chart 1). Consequently, it was allocated more than half the seats in the federal parliament (See Chart 2). This meant that a party could potentially govern the country by winning votes from the North alone. This had the double effect of reinforcing the regional outlook of the Hausa-Fulani elites and heightening the fear of northern hegemony amongst Yoruba and Igbo elites.

The country’s federal regions broadly coincided with – and reinforced – the nation’s ethnic cleavages, the exclusion of minorities from each region’s political and economic structures, and the structural tensions which resulted from the Northern region being large enough to dominate its two southern counterparts in parliament, set the scene for the political conflicts which consumed the First Republic.

2. Ethno-Regional Political Parties The second structural weakness which afflicted the First Republic was the emotive association between political party and ethno- regional identity. This meant politics largely “revolved around ethnic-based regional…parties”. Reflecting the tripodal ethnic balance, three parties bestrode the political scene like titans and thus shaped the destiny of the First Republic: Northern People’s Congress (NPC), the Action Group (AG), and the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC). All three parties originally emerged out of ethno-cultural associations: NPC from Jam’iyar Mutanen Arewa (Association of Peoples of the North) AG from Egbe omo Oduduwa (Society for the Descendants of Oduduwa. In Yoruba folklore Oduduwa is described as the ancestral progenitor of the Yoruba people) NCNC from the Igbo State Union As a result, these three parties and their leaders reflected, shaped, and intensified the nation’s ethno- regional cleavages. The three dominant parties The Northern People’s Congress (NPC) was a “Hausa-Fulani dominated party” which held sway in the North. Of the three parties, it was the most entrenched in its regional identity. Nothing illustrates this more than its name, and the fact that in the 1959 eve of independence general election it did not field a single candidate in the other regions. The NPC’s foundational aim was to protect the conservative social hierarchy of the North from the “winds of radical change sweeping up from the south”. The party chairman, who was also the Regional Premier (Premiers were the political leaders of the Regions, analogous to Governors today), was Ahmadu Bello, a titled prince from the region’s aristocracy.

Having won the largest number of seats in the 1959 elections, the party gained the privilege of forming Nigeria’s first post- independence government. However, as it fell just short of winning the majority needed to govern alone (i.e. 157 seats), it had to form a coalition with one of the two main southern parties. Illustrative of the constitutional power of the Regions, Ahmadu Bello, who should have been Prime Minister, being NPC’s party leader, instead chose to remain as Regional Premier, instead preferring to send his deputy, Tafawa Balewa, to Lagos to lead the federal government. This would be analogous to a politician today passing up the opportunity to become President, choosing instead to remain a state Governor. The National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) was the southern party which entered into a coalition with the NPC as a junior partner in government. It was a decision for which it was richly rewarded. “Party stalwarts got plum ministerial and ambassadorial posts”. The Presidency (then a largely ceremonial role) for example, which went to Nnamdi Azikiwe, one of the party’s founders, and the Finance ministry went to Festus Okotie-Eboh, the party’s national treasurer.

The NCNC, as its name indicates, originally hoped to project a nationalist, pan-Nigerian image, but the ethnic regionalism which the country’s federal structure encouraged gradually shrivelled the party’s political horizons and it increasingly became the “voice of Igbo nationalism”. Like the NPC, the party’s chairman, Michael Okpara, chose to remain as Regional Premier after the 1959 election rather than take up a seat in the federal cabinet. But unlike the NPC, the NCNC campaigned in the other two regions during the election; it won seats in the West and – in alliance with the Aminu Kano-led Northern Elements Progressive Union – won seats in the North as well. The Action Group (AG) is the last party which completes our tripartite list. The AG, like its southern counterpart, the NCNC, initially aspired to be more than a regional party. It’s advertised political ideology was “democratic socialism” which it hoped would gain it cross-regional support. However, trapped by the nature of the political terrain, party elites soon concluded that “the only certain avenue to power was a regional political party”. Consequently, the AG similarly shrank into its ethnic enclave and never managed to shake off its image as a platform “to safeguard Yoruba interests”.

Like the NCNC in 1959, it also campaigned outside its region and won seats through alliances with ethnic minority parties: United Middle-Belt Congress (UMBC) in the North and Dynamic party in the East. Having won the smallest share of seats among the three major parties, and having similarly performed the poorest in its region (it only won 53% of the seats in the Western Region. NPC won 77% of Northern seats and NCNC won 79% of Eastern seats), the AG thus went into opposition upon independence. Awolowo, the party chairman, became the official leader of the opposition in the federal parliament. He was the only party chairman who “opted to go to the [federal] centre” and leave his deputy, Ladoke Akintola, to become Regional Premier. This decision, however, was to cost Awolowo as it left him “particularly vulnerable” to a leadership challenge from his deputy. The decision of both southern parties to step out of their ethnic enclaves to field candidates across the federation in 1959 reflected their aspirations that the nation would be an open constituency for all parties to compete in. It was however also a reflection of political reality. Because of the sharp disparity in parliamentary seat allocation, “only the NPC could dominate the federation from its regional base alone”. An advantage neither of the other two parties enjoyed. Consequently, even as the nature of the First Republic’s political culture strongly anchored the AG and the NCNC to their ethnic base, the asymmetry of parliamentary power in the republic necessarily forced them to reach out to minorities beyond their regions. 3. The political alignment which formed after the 1959 election It can be argued that the political constellation which emerged after the 1959 election was the most potent of the young republic’s structural weaknesses. It had huge impacts on the stability of the soon to be an independent nation. The North-South governing coalition between the NPC and the NCNC, variously described as “unnatural”, a coalition of “strange bedfellows”, only accentuated the republic’s structural imbalances. On immediate observations, it was certainly a partnership of unequal – with the NPC being by far the more powerful of the two governing parties. This meant the NCNC was always acutely sensitive to the tenuousness of its share of power. Further aggravating the latent tension between the governing duo was the fact that politicians from either party viewed members from the other side with suspicion, condescension, and even hostility. This was a microcosm of the North-South cleavage within wider the Nigerian society just after independence whereby Yorubas and Igbos “sincerely saw the North as feudal and backward, a brake upon nationalist progress”, and the Hausa-Fulanis “sincerely perceived the prospect of Southern domination as a threat to [their] … cultural values”. The deep cultural gulf between the two parties, therefore, led to a governing coalition that was wracked by “tension and mistrust”, such that when multiple crises came the governing alliance repeatedly broke down under the strains. Thus, another facet of the structural tension caused by the post-1959 political alignment is the misfortune which befell the AG in opposition. Defeat in the election left the AG “stranded in opposition…without a firm base of power resources”; by extension, it also meant that Yoruba elites lost their bargaining power over the distribution of federal patronage to their region. To illustrate this point: Apparently, part of the “bargain” which the NCNC secured upon joining government was “enhanced entry and promotion for Easterners in the public service and [the] armed forces”. ‘Relegation’ to the status of opposition and loss of access to patronage would eventually split the AG into two camps. The disintegration of the AG into factions was the first crisis which shook the republic early in its life – accentuating all its structural tensions, as we will see in the second section. 4. The fear of ethnic domination The last and deepest of the structural weaknesses was the fear of ethnic domination which pervaded the politics of the First Republic. The Yorubas and Igbos in the two southern regions feared that the Hausa-Fulanis would use the North’s demographic preponderance to perpetuate northern hegemony and monopolise federal resources for their region; Hausa-Fulanis, in turn, feared that in an open contest, the Yorubas and Igbos, being the more educated, would dominate the political and economic structures of the federation. Similarly, within the south, the powerful undercurrent of tribalism placed the Yoruba and Igbo elites at loggerheads. And within the three regions, minority ethnic groups lived under the suffocating embrace of the three dominant groups. Thus, upon independence in 1960, Nigeria had a tense, fractured and conflictual socio-political landscape which resembled what Crawford Young has characterized as a “three-player ethnic game”. This ethnically charged political competition hindered national unity and progress. Now to the five crises which gradually eroded the foundations of Nigeria’s First Republic, leading to its fall/collapse. 1. The disintegration of the AG, 1962-63 The collapse of the AG’s political power between 1962 and 1963 produced far-reaching effects. The crisis that engulfed the party stemmed from its “staggering defeat” in 1959. It had been ‘relegated’ to the opposition. The NCNC had made impressive inroads into its regional heartland, securing for itself 21 seats in the AG’s political turf by exploiting minority discontent within the Western Region[41]. Most damagingly for Awolowo’s leadership of the party, leading Yoruba personalities interpreted the AG’s opposition role as a defeat for the entire ethnic group. Under the crushing weight of disappointment, it didn’t take long for the party to fracture. Throughout 1960 and 1961, a simmering tension developed between Awolowo and his deputy, Akintola, who was also the Premier of the Western Region.

The first source of tension was over the ideological orientation of the party. Defeat in the election had led Awolowo to conclude that the AG could revive its fortunes and broaden its support base by sharpening its socialist rhetoric, radicalising its message and stepping up attacks on social inequalities. Awolowo reasoned that such an ideologically radical posture would enable the party to break out of its regional box and draw cross-ethnic support from workers and the underprivileged across the country. This placed him at odds with Akintola and many of the party elites who were regionalist in outlook and status- quo oriented. It also placed him at odds with the “Yoruba businessmen and merchants at the party’s financial core” who worried that Awolowo wanted to take the AG down the route to communism. Disputes over party strategy further placed Awolowo and Akintola at loggerheads. Awolowo and his faction argued that only a twin strategy of confronting the NPC in parliament, and of luring the NCNC into a “progressive coalition”, could act as a brake on Northern power and therefore secure for Yoruba elites a place at the federal table. Akintola and his faction, on the other hand, countered that moderation toward the NPC – being the dominant party in government – was the best strategy for Yorubas to gain access to the “privileges and benefits in the federation”. Aggravating the emerging party split was the clash over regional and party control between Awolowo who kept a firm hand in the Western Region to keep his deputy from “wrestling control of the party”, and Akintola who wished to strike out on his own and emerge from under the shadow of his party boss. Akintola was said to have bitterly complained about Awolowo’s “insatiable desire to run the government of which I am head from outside”. In February 1962, the festering tension finally erupted at the party congress as Awolowo moved to reassert his dominance in the AG. He orchestrated a series of motions which led to “critical changes” in the running of the party. For example, the party constitution was amended to weaken the Regional Premier’s (Akintola) role, and strengthen the party President’s (Awolowo) role in the “Federal Executive Committee” (FEC) – the party’s key decision-making body. In addition, Awolowo’s allies “scored a clean sweep of the elections for major party offices”. As Akintola licked his wounds, having emerged from the party congress with his pride and power dented, Awolowo moved in for the kill. The opportunity seemed ripe to remove his weakened rival from office. In May, just three months after the party congress, he incited the party into deposing Akintola as Premier and party deputy. Unsurprisingly Akintola refused to go down quietly. He challenged the constitutionality of his removal in court, “vowing a fight to the finish”. By now the disintegrating AG and the deepening split in Yoruba elite cohesion was clearly becoming a “threat to peace and order in the West”. Violent riots erupted throughout the region as the power struggle between the two men and their factions spilt out into the streets. The NPC and NCNC watched the deepening fragmentation of their Western rival with cautious optimism. They believed that the intra-party conflict would open up the West, allowing them to extend their influence into the region. Ahmadu Bello, the NPC party chairman and Premier of the North went as far as issuing a public statement of support for the embattled Akintola. The struggle between the two factions reached its climax on the 25th of May when the Awolowo faction attempted to vote in a new Regional Premier, Alhaji Adegbenro, in the regional parliament. The parliamentary procedure descended into physical violence. Calculating that in any vote they would lose as they were in the minority, parliamentarians from the Akintola faction, supported by NCNC members of the Western regional assembly, resorted to violent disruption to block Adegbenro from being sworn in. John Mackintosh, a British political scientist, then lecturing at the University of Ibadan, described the scene in parliament: The House of Assembly met at 9 a.m. and after prayers, as Chief Odebiyi rose to move the first motion, Mr E. O. Oke, a supporter of Chief Akintola, jumped on the table shouting ‘There is fire on the mountain’. He proceeded to fling chairs about the chamber. Mr E. Ebubedike, also a supporter of Chief Akintola, seized the mace, attempted to club the speaker with it but missed and broke the mace on the table. The supporters of Alhaji Adegbenro sat quiet as they had been instructed to do, with the exception of one member who was hit with a chair and retaliated. Mr Akinyemi (NCNC) and Messrs Adigun and Adeniya (pro-Akintola) continued to throw chairs, the opposition joined in and there was such disorder that the Nigerian police released tear gas and cleared the House. The Prime Minister, Sir Tafawa Balewa, gave an even more graphic account of events: The whole House was shattered, every bit of furniture there was broken … some persons were stabbed As the AG reeled from this assault, the two governing parties stepped- up the offensive by instituting a commission of inquiry in June – “the Coker Commission” – to investigate allegations of misuse of public funds in the Western Region. The Commission found Awolowo guilty of embezzling millions in cash and over-draft from government companies and parastatals, and of “trying to build a financial empire through abuse of his official position”. Such was the drain on regional funds by Awolowo and AG party stalwarts that by 1962 the Western Region Marketing Board – the wealthiest of the three regional marketing boards – “had to borrow to perform its own routine operations”.
While there was “little surprise or shock among AG supporters” at the extent of the fraud uncovered, and while few doubted Awolowo’s pivotal role in the scandal, many however felt that the findings of the Commission were selective and driven by a political agenda. For a start, its complete exoneration of Akintola from any of the financial misdemeanours struck many as absurd as he was the party deputy and Regional Premier while the region’s funds were being siphoned off to fund party activities. Also, most observers felt that had a similar investigation been done over the finances in the other two regions, the same level of abuse of public funds would have been uncovered. With Coker Commission’s revelations inflicting damaging blows on Awolowo and the AG’s prestige, the Emergency Administrator’s restrictions on AG members were gradually relaxed for Akintola’s supporters and that for Awolowo’s tightened[65]. This allowed Akintola to regroup his supporters; setting the stage for his eventual return as Premier. Under the unrelenting pressure, many Awolowo supporters defected to Akintola’s side in a bid to save their political careers. As indications multiplied that Akintola, backed by federal might, would be reinstalled as Regional Premier without a re-election after the Emergency period expired, some Awolowo supporters began secretly plotting the government’s overthrow. The plot, however, was uncovered by a police informant. In September 1962, the Prime Minister “revealed to a stunned nation” the uncovered plot. In November, Awolowo and the decimated leadership of the AG, now languishing in prison, were charged with “treasonable felony” and “conspiracy to stage a coup d’état”. In December, the NPC- NCNC federal government announced that it would no longer recognise the party as the official opposition.
1963 brought no respite for the rapidly collapsing AG. On the 1st of January, to the surprise of few, Akintola was re-installed as Regional Premier without an election. An election would have revived the flagging fortunes of the AG as Alhaji Adgbenro, the party candidate, would almost certainly have won. Akintola’s return was only made possible by his alliance with one of the governing duo – the NCNC. In return, Akintola rewarded his Eastern ally with a “generous share of power in the West”, resulting in the NCNC scooping up numerous regional ministerial portfolios. More seriously for the Yorubas, particularly in view of the ethno- regional balance-of-power, Akintola was forced, as part of the bargain, to accept the partition of the West. This would eventually lead to the creation in August of a new region – the Mid-West – for the minorities in the West. All the regions had their minority troubles. In the East, for example, the Ibibios, Efiks and Ijaws, to name but a few, all harboured separatist sentiments against their domineering Igbo overlords. And in the North “escalating political repression” twice plunged the region’s Tiv areas into open rebellion, in 1960 and 1964. After the partition, and with its destruction nearing completion, two events finally finished off the AG as a credible force on the national scene. The formal publication of the Coker Commission report in January 1963 gave the NPC-NCNC-led federal government and the Akintola-led Western Regional government the legal cover they needed to confiscate the assets of the AG, and break up its “commercial and financial” networks – steps which did “real damage” to the party. And on September 11, Awolowo and his co-conspirators were finally found guilty of the treasonable felony charge and sentenced to 10 years in prison. This effectively wiped out the top echelons of the AG. The eminent Stanford political scientist, Larry Diamond, in his Class, Ethnicity and Democracy in Nigeria, described the collapse of the AG thus: The breadth and magnitude of the defeat inflicted upon Chief Awolowo and his AG supporters by the NPC and the NCNC was simply staggering. Not only did the Awolowo Action Group lose the power struggle in the West, it was also… destroyed…as an effective opposition force The collapse of the AG immediately led to realignments in the political constellation. With his regional rival in jail and his grip over the West consolidated, Akintola shook off his alliance with the NCNC, dismissed their members from the regional cabinet, formed a new party – the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) – and realigned it with the NPC. This was arguably where he had always wanted to be, as close as possible to federal power. He probably calculated that under the nourishing embrace of the dominant party in government, he could rebuild the shattered position of the West and restore the Yorubas to parity in the ethno- regional balance. More fundamentally, the collapse of one pole (the AG) transformed the contest from a tripolar struggle to a bipolar one. With the disappearance of the AG as a national political force, the two governing parties now faced each other in direct and increasingly acrimonious confrontations. Like the breaking of the ground after an earthquake, deep fissures opened between the NPC and the NCNC. As the dust settled from the crisis, it became manifestly clear that the NPC had reaped the biggest windfall. With a dependent ally in Akintola’s NNDP now in control of the Western Region, the southern dream of an east-west ‘progressive alliance’ against Northern hegemony was shattered. And with 16 independent parliamentarians having earlier in 1961 joined the NPC, their party now had a slim working majority in parliament. These developments meant the NCNC effectively lost its leverage over the federal government, and therefore its “extractive capacity” – denting its power and confidence. The Northern Region now stood poised to bring Nigeria under its sole captaincy. John Stuart Mill, in his 1861 Considerations on Representative Government, set out several conditions for a stable federation, one of which was that “there should not be anyone State [or Region] so much more powerful than the rest as to be capable of vying in strength with many of them combined. If there be such a one … it will insist on being master of the joint deliberations”. Eastern Regional Premier, Michael Okpara, belatedly recognizing that the emerging political balance would be unfavourable to the East, tried to “drawback” from the “total extinction” of the AG. Maitama Sule, then an NPC Federal Minister, however, observing the changes taking place, remarked with breath-taking confidence: “In a very short time, the NPC will rule the whole of Nigeria”. It was against this background that the First Republic’s next crisis played out.

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Keentola,

Can you share with me, link to the comprehensive post?

The National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) was the southern party which entered into a coalition with the NPC as a junior partner in government. It was a decision for which it was richly rewarded.

This means Azikwe of igbo South East became a slave /junior to Ahmadu Bello of North....


The decision was richly rewarded..

Meaning azikwe was compensated with sumtin.. Yes, a figure head n ceremonial powerless president....

Please kindly note that b4 NPc merged with NC NC, the first met with Awolowo AG and offered Awolowo a figurehead powerless president but the great sir Awo rejected such position.


Even the great Awo was offered that seat but he rejected.. Awo rejectee was what Azikwe saw heaven.. Till today, Igbos are still slaving for their awusa master... See pic below


Twale Great Awo......