As #Nigeria celebrates 60th Independence Day October 1, for benefit of those who missed last sessions, from today I'll series-tweet #NaijaPoliticalHistory from 1945 that led to independence and created ethnic politics. Based on my research; main focus on Zik, Awo & Bello. (1)
In the beginning was nationalism.
Political associations advocating nationalist ideals, such as Herbert Macaulay's Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), were active from as early as the 1920s.
But the Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM), established in 1936, was the first...
organization to successfully recruit nationalist and politically-conscious elements from various parts of Nigeria.
NYM wanted "the development of a united nation out of the conglomerate of peoples who inhabit Nigeria" by establishing "a sense of common nationalism among
the differing elements in the country."
Obafemi Awolowo was one of the first members of the movement while Nnamdi Azikiwe joined in 1937.
Zik helped broaden NYM’s appeal by popularizing it amongst Igbos via his quite popular nationalist newspaper, the West African Pilot.
However, while many historical accounts emphasize the "national" outlook of NYM, it was in reality a predominantly Southern Nigerian organization whose nationalist message never made much impact in the Northern region of Nigeria.
A number of reasons have been offered for this.
The reasons range from low education levels in the North to the hostility of the North's powerful emirs as well as British colonial authorities to NYM.
NYM's inability to gain traction in the North was an early sign of the obstacles to forging a successful pan-Nigerian message.
Nevertheless, the NYM movement offered promising beginnings for a potentially pan-Nigerian nationalist political organization, especially as the start of World War 2 provided a huge boost to pro-independence agitations in Nigeria. How so?
Pre-WWII, regular Nigerians were largely isolated from the outside world. Only a tiny elite student group had experienced life in Europe or America.
Regular Nigerians, whose only contact with white people was with British officials, considered all white people powerful beings.
This changed during the war as Nigerian soldiers recruited into Allied Forces came into contact with regular European soldiers who were farmers, tradesmen or even servants back in their countries. In short, "ordinary" human beings like them not possessing much power or influence.
Nigerians at home also observed white soldiers passing through their country on the way to war fronts, with none of the special privileges the colonial officials they saw everyday had. Sometimes looking scared and lost.
These experiences helped demystify white people as self-sufficient and all-powerful, rendering to regular Nigerians more believable the nationalists’ claims that independence could be won from the British.
Nothing weakens power like its demystification.
But while Nigerian Youth Movement energetically agitated for increased rights for Nigerians, personal rivalries intensified within the organization.
These personal rivalries and jealousies led to factionalism within the movement.
The most historically consequential of these rivalries was between Zik and Ernest Ikoli, a top NYM figure who in 1938 founded Daily Service, a nationalist newspaper that became direct competition for Zik’s West African Pilot, a development Zik is said to have strongly resented.
The Nigerian reading public was very small at the time as most people couldn't read. So competition was fierce to get their business. Economic interests started working to the detriment of political goals.
The in-fighting eventually led to Zik’s departure from NYM in 1941.
In what was a sign of things to come, the NYM rift descended into accusations of ethnic chauvinism.
These were levelled by Zik against his rivals and vice versa.
Igbo NYM members stood solidly behind Azikiwe and when he left the nationalist movement, they left with him.
Thus, despite efforts by Awo and others to keep NYM alive and ethnically broad-based, after Zik's departure in 1941, it essentially became a Yoruba-dominated movement that fizzled out slowly but surely.
The NYM saga left a lasting impression on Yorubas in the movement, including Awo who later said the loyalty Igbo NYM members had shown Zik in his rivalry with Ikoli (who was from a minority ethnic group) arose not from ideological, but from ethnic allegiance.
Embittered by the NYM experience, Awo would later use it to justify his view that Nigeria should not be structured under a unitary constitution, but under a federalist system.
He argued this was necessary to avoid Nigeria being "dominated" by one ethnic group (read: Igbos).
By 1944, Zik had co-founded a new political party called the National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) which aimed to achieve independence.
Following WWII, events occured that would reshape Nigeria’s socio-political landscape, establish the constitutional framework under which political leaders would operate for the next years and set Nigeria firmly on the road to regionalism and solidification of ethnic identities.
The roots of these events were economic, not political.
In the post-war era, the British faced an upsurge in organized resistance from Nigerian workers unhappy with the sharp rise in living costs the wartime economy had brought.
This eventually led to the most successful labour action ever in Nigeria till date, a 37-day general strike in 1945 by 17 labour unions demanding wage increases to offset cost of living increases.
The strike effectively shut down the economy and entire colonial administration.
It was called-off only after the government agreed to address workers’ demands.
The event shook the British authorities, while propelling to national-hero status Zik, whose newspapers and nationalist political party, NCNC, had very actively supported the strike.
One can easily imagine the psychological boost this successful action provided not only the striking unionists, but all the Nigerians agitating for a greater say in their country's affairs. Nigerians had self-organized, stared down their British overlords and emerged triumphant.
Faced with this increasingly coordinated nationalist movement and fearing a rise in Soviet-inspired communist ideology within the unions, the British decided on a far-reaching program of economic, social and constitutional development.
To be continued tomorrow. Happy Sunday🙂.
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