Thread by @RemiAdekoya1

Greetings all! It's Day 4 of our #NigerianPoliticalHistory sessions based on my recent thesis research.

Today, we'll be discussing some of the major events leading to Nigeria's first-ever democratic general election in 1951 and how ethnicity came into play during this period.

Yesterday, we discussed some of the Igbo-Yoruba elite-driven tensions of 1948. It is important to mention here that while the East-West/Igbo-Yoruba rivalry could be described as a clash of equals, the North-South cleavage was a different scenario altogether.

The Northern Region constituted three-quarters of Nigeria’s total area size, making it larger than the Eastern and Western Regions’ combined.

Furthermore, while the 1952-53 census had the Eastern and Western Regions with similar population sizes (7.2 million and 6.4 million respectively), the North was home to 16.8 million, or 55.4%, of Nigeria’s population.

The tri-regional relationship was thus an asymmetrical one in terms of population size and area mass. The South was better educated and more developed, but the North was far larger and had many more people.

The North’s numerical superiority became particularly significant as future political arrangements would lead to political power at the centre (in the federal House of Representatives) becoming, in a practical sense, increasingly dependent on regional population numbers.

This to the contestation and politicization of census results and a sharpening of ‘us’ vs ‘them’ ethnic and/or regional divides. Meanwhile, Governor Macpherson wanting to avoid his predecessor’s mistake of not consulting new constitutional proposals with Nigerian opinion leaders.

So from 1948 through 1949, conferences on proposed constitutional reform were organized at village, provincial and regional levels culminating in a 1950 General Conference in Ibadan where representatives from all sections of Nigeria gathered to reconcile regional recommendations.

Importantly, a majority of the delegates voted to retain the three existing regions (West, East and North) as distinct political units, entrenching the tri-regional structuring of Nigeria. By 1950 the outline of the new constitution scheduled for introduction in 1951 was clear.

The new constitution would not only preserve the 3 regions and their separate assemblies, but significantly increase their powers, upping the political stakes. The Macpherson Constitution was historic in providing the first general election in Nigerian history, scheduled for 1951

Anti-Azikiwe Yoruba elites now faced the very realistic scenario of Zik leading his NCNC party to capture not just his home Eastern Region assembly but also the Western Region assembly that would both be invested with tangible powers.

At that time Awolowo called several secret meetings of several of his Yoruba supporters and some individuals from non-Yoruba groups in the Western Region. In March 1951, the Action Group (AG), a new political party led by Awolowo, was officially established.

Action Group's original core support came from some of the old Yoruba families, Yoruba professionals, middle-class Yoruba traders, Yoruba intellectuals opposed to Azikiwe, chiefs who were patrons of the Egbe Omo Odùduwà and some leaders of minority groups in Western Nigeria.

Action Group had a clear and regionally-restricted objective: the capture of power in the Western Region under the electoral system of the new constitution. Accordingly, a main theme in the group’s electoral campaign was opposition to Azikiwe and the threat of Igbo domination.

Meanwhile, Azikiwe's NCNC also employed ethnicity as an argument while trying to win support from non-Yoruba groups in the Western Region by portraying AG as having an agenda for Yoruba domination in the Western Region.

In the years 1948-51, ethnic and regional nationalism thus gained political legitimacy, becoming the most effective means for ambitious political leaders to achieve power.

The 1951 Macpherson Constitution contained some federalist features but was essentially a unitary solution. It posited regional Houses of Assembly would each elect a number of members to a central House of Representatives and nominate (for the first time) Nigerian ministers to

a central Council of Ministers presided over by the British Governor-General. On the one hand, the new constitution provided broad scope for regional legislative initiative, investing regional assemblies with real powers unlike the advisory role they were relegated to previously.

On the other, it granted unlimited legislative authority to the central legislature and stipulated regional laws could not be enacted without the approval of the central Council of Ministers. Like its predecessor, the Macpherson Constitution was attacked from various angles by

Southern politicians. Azikiwe’s NCNC criticized its regionalism, arguing that since ministers would be nominated by regional Houses of Assembly, rather than the central legislature, ‘regional bias will be the guiding principle since acceptability to the region determines the

selection of any particular Central Minister’. Meanwhile, Awolowo, who favoured a strongly-federalist solution, described the new constitution as a ‘wretched compromise between federalism and Unitarianism’.

Southern leaders were also very displeased the North was allocated 50% of the seats in the federal House of Representatives (after threatening secession otherwise) on grounds their region contained over half of Nigeria’s population.

Southern politicians feared this veto power could hand Northern political elites’ perpetual control of the centre but accepted the arrangement to avoid the North blocking constitutional advances for Nigeria as a whole.

British officials, seeking to keep Nigeria together, believed providing the North safeguards it felt it needed to avoid Southern domination was necessary. Also, the North, in no hurry for independence, provided a welcome counter-weight to growing Southern agitation on the issue.

In his report to London, Governor Macpherson thus described the outcome of the constitutional negotiations as ‘extremely satisfactory’. We see here the crucial role regional population figures played in shaping Nigeria’s political centre at the time and why they became

such a hotly-contested political issue with some Southern voices accusing British authorities of colluding with the North to artificially boost its population figures, so the region could be used to checkmate the more independent-minded South.

As Falola and Heaton observed, the 1951 election campaign ‘galvanized regional and ethnic identifications as cultural associations organized as proper political parties to campaign for control of the various regional assemblies.’

In the East, there was the Ibo State Union with Azikiwe doubling as its president and NCNC head. In the West, the Egbe Omo Odùduwà Awolowo had co-founded provided the foundational basis for AG while the Northern People’s Congress had gone from a cultural organization to a party.

During the campaign, Azikiwe’s West African Pilot portrayed Awolowo’s AG as a party of ‘tribal regionalism’ and ethnic chauvinism in contrast to NCNC, which was the only ‘truly nationalist’ party fighting for a ‘unified’ Nigeria.'

It accused Awolowo’s party of orchestrating ‘Yoruba attacks on Dr Azikiwe’ and spreading false rumours about plans for ‘Ibo domination’ among Yoruba voters. Moreover, AG had ‘husbanded itself to perfidious imperialism’ by deploying divide and rule tactics to ‘Balkanize’ Nigeria.

An NCNC campaign message proclaimed:
"Nigeria is one and must remain one. We will have no Pakistan here or hereafter. Vote for NCNC. The true nationalist party."

The danger of ‘Pakistanization’, a metaphor for the potential violent break-up of Nigeria along ethnic and religious lines similar to the 1947 India-case, was a recurring threat-scenario in the discourse of Azikiwe’s political party and media outlets which often accused Awolowo

and his party of working towards a ‘Pakistanized’ Nigeria rather than genuinely attempting to foster a common nationality. AG, meanwhile, did openly appeal to ethno-regional sentiments as evidenced in their campaign messages.

AG's campaign poster urged people in the West to:

"Vote for the Action Group because it stands for Western solidarity… vote only for the AG if you are a true born Yoruba, a true born Benin, a true born Itsekiri, Urhobo, Western Ijaw, Western Ibo and Yes A true born Nigerian."

Revealingly, when campaigning in the Yoruba heartland, NCNC politicians felt the need to emphasize their party ‘was founded in Yorubaland by the Yorubas’ and ‘its first president was a Yoruba, the late Herbert Macaulay.' Also, there were ‘more Yorubas than Igbos in NCNC cabinet’.

This suggests NCNC leaders de-facto feared AG’s message of Western (read: Yoruba) solidarity was resonating in the region and were wary of being perceived as an Igbo-dominated party.

Perhaps, we shall stop there for today, tomorrow, we'll discuss the results of the 1951 elections and why there were many accusations of 'tribalism', especially following the results in the Western Region. A good day to you!