$Unique_ID{COW02623} $Pretitle{357} $Title{Nigeria Chapter 1D. Toward Independence} $Subtitle{} $Author{Robert Rinehart} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{region federal government action northern regional group new constitution ncnc} $Date{1981} $Log{} Country: Nigeria Book: Nigeria, A Country Study Author: Robert Rinehart Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1981 Chapter 1D. Toward Independence During the years that the 1922 constitution was in effect, it was altered only slightly to include northern departments in the administrative structure, and there was criticism that the system prevented the broadening of popular participation in local administration through representative bodies. British authorities acknowledged in the early 1940s that a revision of the constitution was long overdue. During the period between the end of World War II and the granting of independence to Nigeria in 1960, there was continuous experimentation with forms of self-government. Conferences were held regularly between the British government and Nigerian leaders to determine the lines along which self-determination should proceed. In 1946 a new constitution was approved by the British Parliament and promulgated in Nigeria. Although it did not extend the elective principle and reserved effective power in the hands of the governor and his appointed executive council, the so-called Richards Constitution (after Governor Arthur Richards, who was responsible for its formulation) provided for an expanded Legislative Council that was empowered to deliberate on matters affecting the whole country. Separate legislative bodies, the houses of assembly, were established in each of the three regions to consider local questions and to advise the lieutenant governor. The introduction of the federal principle with deliberative authority devolved on the regions was intended as a recognition of the country's diversity. Although realistic in its assessment of the situation in Nigeria, the Richards Constitution undoubtedly intensified regionalism as an alternative to political unification. The pace of constitutional change demanded by vocal Nigerian opinion quickly outstripped the original timetable for self-determination. Expected to remain in force for nine years, the Richards Constitution was superseded in only four. As early as 1948 the incumbent governor, John Macpherson, called for discussion of needed revisions. The main lines of a new constitution, based on recommendations from the regional legislatures, emerged from an interparliamentary conference held at Ibadan in 1950 and were embodied in the so-called Macpherson Constitution approved by the British Parliament the following year. The most important innovations in the new charter reinforced the dual course of constitutional evolution taken in Nigeria since the end of the war, allowing for both regional autonomy and federal union. By extending the elective principle and providing for a central government with a Council of Ministers, the Macpherson Constitution gave renewed impetus to party activity and to political participation at the national level. But, by providing for comparable regional governments exercising broader legislative powers that could not be overridden by the newly established 185-seat federal House of Representatives, the second postwar constitution also gave a significant boost to regionalism. Although the concepts of wider political participation and self-government were rapidly gaining acceptance, the idea of national unity was increasingly questioned by regional factions. Subsequent revisions were contained in a third constitution enacted in 1954, firmly establishing the federal principle and paving the way for independence. The 1954 constitution stipulated that ministers were responsible to the legislature in both the federal House of Representatives and the regional houses of assembly under a British-style parliamentary form of government. The three regions evolved along parallel lines, but each at a different pace. In 1957 both the Western and Eastern regions became formally self-governing under the parliamentary regime. Similar status was acquired by the Northern Region two years later. There were numerous differences of detail among the regional systems, but all adhered to parliamentary forms and were equally autonomous in relation to the federal government at Lagos. The federal government retained specified powers-such as responsibility for banking, currency, external affairs, defense, shipping and navigation, and communications-but the regions became the decisive centers of political power within the federation. Significantly the regional governments also controlled the budgeting of public expenditures to be based on revenues raised within the region. Social and Economic Development Constitutional developments to this point had aimed at providing Nigeria with elected officials and civil servants who had experience and training in self-government. Many steps taken under colonial rule, however, underscored the acute differences in social development and the disparities in education among major ethnic and regional groups whose members would compete within the federal structure for access to political and economic power. These anomalies stemmed in part from the unequal capacity of peoples of widely different cultures to make use of British tutelage in modern procedures. Some groups, notably in the northern emirates where advancement in many areas still depended on lineage, proved too tradition-bound to prepare themselves to compete in sufficient numbers for key positions in trade, industry, education, and government service. Others, notably the Ibo, were eager to take advantage of professional opportunities and economic incentives. Because of their training and ambition, southerners took a disproportionate share of public sector employment on the federal level in the years leading up to independence, and they also made significant inroads in private sector economic development in the north. Northern Muslims were particularly resentful of the Ibo, who obtained many of the higher civil service posts in the north, including some in local government. This animosity was intensified by the clash of two divergent cultures, value systems, and religions. Ethnic cleavages appeared to intensify in the 1950s. Political activists in the southern regions spoke of self-government in terms of expanding educational opportunities and of directing economic development in such a way that it would benefit a larger portion of the population. In the north the traditional rulers gradually grew more interested in modernization but not in change that might lead to challenges to their control over the dominant NPC and over local government and courts. Any activity in the north that might include participation by the federal government (and consequently by southern civil servants) was regarded as a challenge of this nature. Broadening political participation and expanding educational opportunities and other social services were also viewed as threats to the status quo. The northern elite's dislike of educated southerners in their midst and the presence of large numbers of immigrants from the south reflected in some part a concern that southern concepts of democratically elected local governments might prove attractive to northerners as well. The cleavage between the Yoruba and the Ibo was accentuated by their competition for control of the machinery of modernization. With the British presence receding, local officials and politicians gained access to patronage over government jobs, funds for local development, market permits, trade licenses, government contracts, and even scholarships for higher education. In an economy with many qualified applicants for every post, great resentment was generated by favoritism shown by authorities to members of their own ethnic group. In the immediate postwar period Nigeria benefited from a favorable trade balance. The growth of import costs lagged behind soaring export prices. But by the mid-1950s imports began to catch up with exports, and the large payments surpluses decreased. The increasing amount of capital in the rapidly growing nonagricultural sectors required large imports of machinery, transport equipment, and, eventually, intermediate materials for established industry. In time there were also increased administrative costs to be met. Although per capita income in the subsistence sector and in the country as a whole remained low by international standards, rising incomes among salaried personnel and burgeoning urbanization expanded consumer demand for imported goods. In the meantime public sector spending had been increasing even more dramatically than export earnings. It was supported not only by the income from huge agricultural surpluses but also by a new range of direct and indirect taxes imposed during the 1950s. The transfer of responsibility for budgetary management from the central to the regional governments in 1954 accelerated the pace of public spending on services and development projects. Total revenues of central and regional governments nearly doubled in relation to the gross domestic product during that period. The most dramatic event, having a long-term effect on the shaping of Nigeria's economic development, was the discovery and exploitation of petroleum deposits. The search for oil, begun in 1908 and abandoned a few years later, was revived in 1937 by Shell-British Petroleum. Exploration was intensified in 1946, but the first commercial discovery did not occur until 1956 at Oloibiri in the Niger delta. In 1958 exportation of Nigerian oil was initiated at facilities constructed at Port Harcourt. Negotiating Independence Elections for the new House of Representatives following adoption of the 1954 constitution gave the NPC a total of seventy-nine seats, all from constituencies in the Northern Region. Among the other major parties the NCNC took fifty-six seats, winning a majority in both the Eastern and Western regions, and the Action Group captured only twenty-seven seats. The NPC was called on to form a government, but the NCNC received six of the ten ministerial posts. Three of these were assigned to representatives from each region, and one was reserved for a delegate from the Southern Cameroons. As a further step toward independence the governor's Executive Council was merged with the Council of Ministers in 1957 to form the all-Nigerian Federal Executive Council (FEC). NPC federal parliamentary leader Balewa was appointed prime minister. Balewa formed a new coalition government that included the Action Group as well as the NCNC to prepare the country for the final British withdrawal. His government guided the country for the next three years, operating with almost complete autonomy in internal affairs. The preparation of a new federal constitution for an independent Nigeria was carried out at conferences held at Lancaster House in London in 1957 and 1958 and presided over by the British colonial secretary. Nigerian delegates were selected in preliminary discussions to represent each region and to reflect various shades of opinion. The delegation was led by Balewa and included party leaders Awolowo of the Action Group, Azikiwe of the NCNC, and Bello of the NPC, who were also the premiers of the Western, Eastern, and Northern regions respectively. By the time the second conference convened in September 1958, it was clear that the problems outstanding would require compromise. The form and structure of government was not an issue, but a number of questions engaged the parties and regions in head-on conflict. These included: constitutional guarantee of fundamental rights, federal as opposed to regional control over police forces, protection of minorities and the related issue of forming new regions, and the extension of universal adult suffrage to all elections. The last issue was a bargaining point and was dropped during the conference. While universal suffrage would be the rule in the Eastern and Western regions, voting would be restricted to males in the Northern Region. Other questions were resolved to the apparent satisfaction of all participants. The constitution was to be provided with an enumeration of basic human rights. A federal police force was created, but local constabularies in the Northern Region and to some extent in the Western Region would remain under local control. Provision was made for reopening the minority and boundary issues by parliamentary means after independence, but no changes were to be undertaken in existing arrangements until then. Negotiators worked to smooth the path toward constitutional agreement; however, technical problems, coupled with British unwillingness to countenance undue haste, led to a delay in granting independence. The first postponement was from 1959, the date the Nigerians had requested, to April 1960, when the second delay, to October 1960, occurred. Elections were held for a new and greatly enlarged House of Representatives in December 1959; 174 of the 312 seats were allocated to the Northern Region on the basis of its larger population. The NPC, entering candidates only in the Northern Region, confined campaigning largely to local issues but opposed the addition of new states. The NCNC backed creation of a midwest state and called for federal control of education and health services. The Action Group, which staged a lively campaign, called for stronger government and the carving out of three new states, while advocating consideration of a West Africa Federation that would unite former British colonies. The NPC captured 142 seats, the NCNC eighty-nine seats, and the Action Group seventy-two seats in the new legislature. Balewa was called on to head a NPC-NCNC coalition government, and Awolowo became official leader of the opposition. Independent Nigeria By an act of the British Parliament, Nigeria became an independent country within the Commonwealth on October 1, 1960. Nnamdi Azikiwe was installed as governor-general of the federation, and Balewa continued to serve as head of a democratically elected parliamentary-but now completely sovereign-government. The governor-general represented the British monarch as head of state and was appointed by the Crown on the advice of the Nigerian prime minister in consultation with the regional premiers. The federal governor-general, in turn, was responsible for appointing the prime minister and for choosing a candidate from among contending leaders when the choice was not clearly indicated by a parliamentary majority. Otherwise the scope of the governor general's office, outside his ceremonial functions, was limited largely to signing federal legislation, acting as nominal commander in chief of the armed forces, and being available for consultation. The government was responsible to a parliament composed of the popularly elected 305-seat House of Representatives and the forty-four member Senate, chosen by the regional legislatures. At the apex of an independent court system stood the Federal Supreme Court, which had among its functions the judicial interpretation of constitutional questions. Appellants enjoyed the right to carry appeals from the Nigerian high court to the British Privy Council. In general the regional constitutions followed the federal model, both structurally and functionally. The most striking departure was in the Northern Region, where special provisions brought the constitution into consonance with Islamic law and custom. The similarity between the federal and regional constitutions was deceptive, however, and the conduct of public affairs reflected wide differences among the regions. In February 1961 a plebiscite was conducted to determine the disposition of the Southern and Northern Cameroons, which were administered by Britain as a United Nations (UN) Trust Territory. By an overwhelming majority voters in the Southern Cameroons opted for joining formerly French-administered Cameroon over integration with Nigeria as a separate federated region. In the Northern Cameroons, however, the largely Muslim electorate chose to merge with Nigeria's Northern Region. Politics in the Crisis Years During the first three years after independence the federal government was a NPC-NCNC coalition, despite the conflicting natures of the two partners. The former was regionalist, traditionalist, and aristocratic, and the latter was nationalist, populist, and egalitarian. Moreover the NCNC supported opponents of the NPC in regional elections in the Northern Region. Although a more natural ideological alignment of the Action Group and the NCNC was called for by some Action Group leaders, it held no attraction for the NCNC as long as the NPC was assured of a parliamentary majority. Domination of the Northern Region by the NPC and NCNC control of the Eastern Region were assured. Action Group control of the Western Region, however, was weakened and then toppled because of divisions within the party that reflected cleavages within Yoruba society. This loss of stability in one region gradually undermined the political structure of the whole country. The leadership of the Action Group, which formed the official opposition in the federal parliament, split in 1962 as the result of a rift over party tactics between party leader Awolowo and Akintola, premier of the Western Region. Awolowo favored adopting a more radical policy to set the Action Group apart from the government party and argued for an evolution toward democratic socialism, following the pattern of Kwame Nkrumah's regime in Ghana. The radical ideology that Awolowo expressed was at variance with his earlier positions, however, and was seen as a bid to make the Action Group an interregional party that drew support from educated younger voters across the country whose expectations were frustrated by unemployment and the rising cost of living. Akintola, in reaction, attempted to prevent losing the support of conservative elements in the party who were disturbed by Awolowo's rhetoric. He called for better relations with the NPC and an all-party federal coalition that would take the Action Group out of opposition and give its leaders greater access to power. During complicated maneuvering for control of the party, Akintola was expelled from the Action Group by the radical majority under Awolowo's leadership. Taking his lead from the party action, the governor of the Western Region demanded Akintola's resignation as premier (although he had not lost a vote of confidence in the regional legislature) and named a successor recommended by the Action Group to head the government. Akintola immediately organized a new party, the United People's Party (UPP), which pursued a policy of collaboration with the NPC-NCNC government in the federal parliament. Akintola's dismissal in May 1962 sparked bloody rioting in the Western Region and brought effective government to an end as rival legislators, following the example from the streets, brought violence to the floor of the regional legislature. The federal government declared a state of emergency, dissolved the legislature, and named a federal administrator for the Western Region. One of his first acts was to place many Action Group leaders under house arrest. Investigations made by the federal administrator in the aftermath of the May disturbances led to accusations of criminal misuse of public funds being leveled against Awolowo and other Action Group leaders. A special commission found that several million pounds in funds from public development corporations had been funneled to the Action Group through a private investment corporation formed by Awolowo when he was premier of the Western Region in the 1950s. Awolowo was criticized by the commission for his role in the scandal, and subsequently the regional government seized the corporation's assets and pressed legal claims against the Action Group. In the course of the financial investigation, police uncovered evidence linking Awolowo with a conspiracy to overthrow the government. With a number of other Action Group leaders, he was arrested and put on trial for treason. It was charged that they had induced 200 activists to receive military training in Ghana and had smuggled arms into Nigeria in preparation for a coup d'etat. Awolowo was found guilty, along with seventeen others, and was sentenced to ten years in prison. Anthony Enahoro, Awolowo's chief lieutenant who had been abroad at the time of the coup, was extradited from Britain and was also convicted of treason and imprisoned. In the meantime the state of emergency was lifted and Balewa, determining that Akintola had been improperly dismissed, secured his reinstatement as premier of the Western Region at the head of a UPP-NCNC coalition. The legality of this action was contested in the courts by the Action Group, whose position was supported by the Privy Council on appeal, overturning a contrary ruling by the Federal Supreme Court. A retroactive amendment to the Western Region's constitution was quickly enacted, however, that proscribed the means by which Akintola had been dismissed and validated his reappointment. The appeal, Balewa told the parliament, "had been overtaken by events." Later in 1963 Nigeria became a republic within the Commonwealth. The change in status called for no practical alteration of the constitutional system. The president, elected to a five-year term by a joint session of the parliament, replaced the Crown as the symbol of national sovereignty and the British monarch as head of state. Azikiwe, who had been governor-general, became the republic's first president. Except for revoking the right to appeal from the Federal Supreme Court to the Privy Council, the constitution remained unchanged by the transition. New State Movements After independence, organized minority-group political sentiment was directed against regionally dominant ethnic groups. The attitudes of the major parties toward the formation of new states that could accommodate minority aspirations varied widely. The NCNC espoused self-determination for ethnic minorities but only in accordance with its advocacy of a unitary state. The Action Group also supported such movements, including the restoration of northern Yoruba areas (Ilorin) to the Western Region, but as part of a multistate, federal Nigeria. The NPC steadfastly opposed separatism in the Northern Region and attempted with some success to win over disaffected minorities in the Middle Belt. Proposals were introduced for the creation of three new states as a means of restructuring the regions to give them a more clear-cut ethnic profile. The most extensive revision sought was the separation from the Northern Region of the Middle Belt, a vast non-Hausa area incorporating the southern half of the region along the Niger and Benue rivers. The proposal was backed by ethnic groups in the area. But their political coalition, the United Middle Belt Congress (UMBC), was badly fragmented, and the NPC was active in reconciling its splinters to the continuance of existing boundaries. Another plan was put forward by the Edo and western Ibo to create the Mid-Western Region by separating the whole tract adjacent to the Niger River from the Yoruba-dominated Western Region. At the same time, Ijaw and Efik-Ibibio ethnic groups proposed that the entire coastline between the Niger delta and Calabar be formed into a new region in order to end Ibo dominance in that area. In 1962 the federal parliament gave final approval to the plan against opposition from the Action Group for creating the Mid-Western Region. The next year a plebiscite confirmed popular support in the region for the measure (see fig. 9). The creation of a fourth region, the Mid-Western, reopened the question of the internal restructuring of Nigeria. One motivation for this scheme was the desire to break up the Northern Region which, having over half the country's population, controlled a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives. Traditional ethnic animosities were exacerbated by the expectation that the Ibo-based NCNC would gain control of the new regional legislature and become the clearly dominant party in the south. A new political coalition, the Mid-West Democratic Front (MDF), was formed by leaders of the Action Group and the UPP to contest the regional election with the NCNC. During the campaign the conservative UPP accepted support from the NPC, a fact that NCNC candidates stressed in their call to keep northern influence out of the new region. Many Action Party workers withdrewesupport from the MDF in protest, and some allied themselves with the NCNC. In the regional elections the NCNC won a landslide victory, and was called on to form the Mid-Western Region's first government. The Census Controversy Because seats in the House of Representatives were apportioned on the basis of regional population distribution, the constitutionally mandated decennial census had important political implications. The Northern Region's political strength, marshaled by the NPC, had arisen in large measure from the results of the 1952-53 census, which had located 54 percent of the country's population in that area. When a national campaign was prepared early in 1962 to educate the public on the value of the forthcoming census, its demographic aspects were not the only facts emphasized. Politicians stressed the connection between the number of heads counted and parliamentary representation and the amount of financial support for regional development to be received. The census was taken by head count, but there was evidence that many enumerators obtained their figures from heads of families, and many persons managed to be counted more than once. Southern hopes for a favorable reapportionment of legislative seats were given a boost by preliminary results, which gave the south a clear majority. A supplementary count was immediately taken in the Northern Region that turned up an additional 9 million persons reportedly missed in the first count. Charges of falsification were voiced from all sides and led to an agreement among federal and regional governments to nullify the count and conduct a new census. The second nationwide census reported a population of 60.5 million, which census officials refused to accept as being impossibly high. A scaled-down figure of 55.6 million, including 29.8 million in the Northern Region, was finally submitted and adopted by the federal government, leaving legislative apportionment virtually unchanged. Demographers generally rejected the results of the 1963 census as inflated, arguing that the current figure was as much as 10 million short of that confirmed by the government. Controversy over the census remained a lively political issue with NCNC leaders publicly charging the Northern Region's government with fraud, a claim that was denied both by Balewa and Bello, the regional premier.