Thread by @RemiAdekoya1

Morning All! Day 13 of our #NigerianPoliticalHistory sessions based on my thesis research.

Today, we'll be discussing the 1964 federal elections, the first nationwide elections organized in independent Nigeria and an ominous sign of things to come.

Yesterday, we discussed the efforts of Southern political leaders to remove the North's representative advantage at the political centre via cooked-up census figures in 1962 and the back and forth that ensued. As we concluded, Bello's NPC was finally able to force through census

results that showed the North with a majority 29.7m of the 55.6m Nigerians recorded in the 1963 repeat census. Southern leaders were thus back to square one, facing the prospect Bello would lead NPC to a majority victory in the upcoming 1964 elections or something very close to

it, allowing him to essentially pick and choose a junior coalition partner and call the shots as had been the case with the Balewa-led government so far.

So Southern leaders looked for a new strategy. Meanwhile, in 1963, Nigeria was transformed into a constitutional republic

and Zik was made president, again a largely ceremonial position with very limited powers.

In 1964, Zik's NCNC party decided to team up with their former bitter rival, Action Group, battered and weakened, with their historical leader Awo in jail, but still standing.

The new NCNC-AG electoral coalition was called the United Progressives Grand Alliance (UPGA).

The main goal was to wrest control of the centre from NPC, rendering the stakes very high for Bello's party, which faced potential national-level marginalization if UPGA triumphed.

This was the nightmare scenario Bello had envisaged could happen one day in his 1962 autobiography where he said he knew there was always the possibility of the Southern parties eventually teaming up against NPC and winning power at the centre. Now they had indeed teamed up.

In response, Bello joined forces with his Yoruba ally, Western Premier Akintola who had a new party called the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP). He also co-opted a few other small Southern parties.

Together they formed the Nigerian National Alliance (NNA) coalition.

NNA's objective was to maintain the status quo. Intimidation tactics were employed against UPGA politicians who were sometimes physically prevented from entering the North to campaign or even from being able to register their candidacay. Fact UPGA was an NCNC-AG alliance meant

Bello and his party could portray it as a Southern conspiracy to win power and dominate the North.

In the first four years of independence, Bello's NPC ruled Nigeria in combination with the Igbo-led NCNC as a junior partner. During this period, he had no plausible or political

grounds to suggest Southern or Igbo domination. However, by latter half of 1964, the NPC- NCNC coalition had unravelled and in July, Bello announced his party would have no further dealings with NCNC because "the Igbos have never been true friends of the North and never will be."

Bello now portrayed his former coalition partner NCNC as a party interested solely in Igbo interests. On October 31, 1964, Bello held a stadium rally in which he stated NCNC wanted to "impose a new form of imperialism on us...the NCNC knows it is only the NPC and its allies

which prevent it from imposing a cruel dictatorship of a section on the rest of Nigeria." He also referred to the few Northern politicians who were part of UPGA as "being used as tools to accomplish their master's ambition for a section to dominate the rest of Nigeria."

Here:

Bello and NPC were not the only ones playing the Igbo-domination card. So was Premier Akintola, Bello's ally in the West. As a December 1964 editorial in The Times observed:

"Party manifestos have long since been forgotten in the heat of the battle. The overwhelming emphasis

laid by all campaigners on tribal and regional disputes and prejudices indicate the real points at issue. The Northerners are concentrating their fire on fears of everyone else of 'Ibo-domination'...wooing Yorubas of Western Region by playing on their dislike of the Ibos and

arguing that victory for Akintola [in West] would enscone Yoruba influence in the government whereas votes for the Action Group merely tie the divided Yoruba people to the chariot wheels of Ibo aggrandisement, or more likely to their impotence and unpopularity in defeat."

Here we see how, due to the fall-out between the former coalition partners, NCNC and NPC, Igbos once again resumed their role as enemy number one of the North.

Meanwhile, Yemi Babatunde, The Guardian's Nigeria correspondent so commented the 1964 election campaign in the Western

Region where Awolowo's AG party had lost power to Bello's new ally, Akintola and his NNDP party:

"An unpopular [Western] government regarded by many people as stooges of the North must try to cajole or threaten the population to vote for it...[AG and NNDP] adopted long before

the elections the system of creating private armies of thugs under the name of 'party stalwarts.' They are on the payroll of the party; they are mobilised and they are armed with knives and guns. Their job is to break up rival party meetings, to intimidate the population

in general...thugs beat up opposition leaders or members methodically...it is already public knowledge how the elections are to be rigged....voters are instructed not to put their ballot papers in the ballot box but to hide them...they are told to hand the paper to the head of

their compound. He in turn is expected to deliver all the ballot papers of his compound to a party official who will then put several hundred papers into the government box."

In the end, 88 of 174 seats were declared "unopposed" in the North after local officials hindered the

registration of UPGA candidates. Likewise, Akintola's NNDP declared 30 percent of the seats in the Western Region unopposed using similar tactics. Frustrated, UPGA leaders called for a late boycott of the election. However, voting still went ahead in many places and the

Bello-Akintola NNA alliance declared victory. PM Balewa called on President Azikiwe to invite the creation of a government. Zik refused at first due to the events surrounding the elections, and many other Southern leaders also refused to accept the results.

A crisis ensued and again there was talk of civil war. Here are some articles covering the 1964 events:

In the end, Zik relented and the Bello-led NNA claimed 198 of 312 seats in the assembly, going on to form a national government.

Perhaps we'll end there today folks. Tomorrow, the 1965 Western Regional elections which eventually led to the 1966 January coup. Have a great week!