Nigerian Independence Day: A Marriage of Convenience
Part XI: Institutions, Incentives, and the Unfinished Business of Nigerian State-Building
Introduction: A Fragile Union
On October 1, 1960, traditional war canoes raced across the Lagos Lagoon, celebrating Independence day.
It was a joyful moment, but the road to independence wasn’t a parade. It was a series of frantic compromises to stop a divorce.
Context & Series Links
This is Part XI in my series on Nigeria. For backstory:
Overview of Nigeria: Part I
Previously
Last time (Part X), I covered how Britain’s economic blunders in the post-WWII food crisis ignited Nigerian Nationalism. What started as elite debates exploded into mass strikes, riots, and urban chaos.
To ease the pressure, Britain reformed colonial rule with the Richards Constitution of 1946, which split Nigeria into three distinct regions.
This constitution was supposed to be a release valve, but it was also clever containment. It shifted power from fiery Lagos nationalists to more manageable chiefs and elites in Ibadan (West), Enugu (East), and Kaduna (North). Regional assemblies got budgets and debating chambers, but Executive power stayed British and senior posts stayed European.
But this constitution created the geopolitical tripod that would define (and haunt) Nigeria:
Beyond Simply “Tribalism”
Obviously, tribalism was an issue. The North generally saw the South as heathens and South thought the North was enabling British rule.
But, Nigerian “tribalism” is more sophisticated than ethnic monolithic parties for the Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa-Fulani. There were fierce ethnic cleaves even within each party. Remember, from my previous pieces, I told you that “Yoruba” and “Igbo” are actually meta-ethnicities that were crystallized by missionaries and colonialists.
For example, the people in Ijebu and Ibadan both speak Yoruba dialects, but they historically warred with each other (the Ekiti–Parapo War from 1877 to 1896). They saw themselves as distinct: Ijebu were merchants and Ibadan were warriors. In the 1950s, Ibadan Yoruba used to vote NCNC while Ijebu Yoruba voted Action Group (AG).
Meanwhile, minorities in every region hated being dominated by one of the big three.
In the South West, the Edo & Itsekiri resented Yoruba dominance
In the South East, the Ibibio, Efik, Igala, and Ijaw feared Igbo encroachment
In the North, the non-Muslim middle-belters (i.e. Tiv and Birom) feared being outsiders within the Muslim, Hausa-Fulani North
The National Question loomed: What is Nigeria, and who speaks for it?
The Education Gap: Lugard’s Legacy
Here’s what made the North fundamentally different: Frederick Lugard’s hands-off policy.
When Britain conquered the Sokoto Caliphate and named it Northern Nigeria in the early 1900s, Lugard feared endless jihadist revolts. His solution? Don’t mess with the Caliphate’s customs (except slavery). He restricted Christian missionaries & Western schools in the Muslim North. Some missionaries went to the pagan Middle belt(which was part of the North), but missionaries dominated the South:
By independence, less than 5% of the North were literate in Roman Script. In the increasingly Christian South, that number was closer to 20%. Look at the regional disparities in Roman script literacy below:
To be clear, the North did have literacy before and during colonialism. But instead of the Roman script, mainly male elites (clerics, poets, top merchants, emirs, judges, and court scribes) used Arabic script to write in Hausa Ajami, Fulani Ajami, Kanuri Ajami or Arabic. There were Koranic schools taught by Mallamai (Quranic teachers). But these schools did not prepare students for European-style civil services jobs.
As a result, the Northern bureaucracy was dominated by Southerners, especially Igbos. This fueled resentment, as the North saw them as infidel foreigners instead of fellow Nigerians.
In this post, I’ll explore:
Politics: constitutions, elections, riots, federalism
Economy: postwar boom, Britain’s 10-year plan, marketing boards, early industry
State-building: civil service “Africanization,” Northernization, the road to independence
The warning signs: minority fear, coercion, and the cracks visible before 1960
Macpherson Constitution of 1951: When Representation Turned Population Into Power
The nationalist leaders hated that Richards’ unilaterally imposed his constitution without their consultation. A period of militant nationalism called “Zikism” followed, inspired by Nnamdi Azikiwe’s dream of one Nigeria.
To quell militancy, the new Governor John Macpherson consulted with the Nigerian leaders. This created the Macpherson Constitution in 1951, giving educated Nigerians a sense of authorship in finances & legislation while ultimate authority remained colonial. Key Changes:
House of Representatives: Seats by Region (68 North, 34 West, 34 East). Representation was based on population.
Ministerial roles: Educated Nigerians appointed to oversee transport, health, education, communications
Electoral politics: The new arena, replacing street protest
In the 1951 regional elections, the Hausa-Fulani NPC won the North, the Igbo NCNC won the southeast, and BOTH Action Group & NCNC claimed they won the southwest.
Yoruba Action Group ultimately won the Yoruba-dominated West by weaponizing ethnic politics. They claimed that an Igbo (Azikiwe) would not represent the interests of the majority of Westerners as well as a Yoruba. As a result, minority parties like the Ibadan People’s Party (another Yoruba party), “cross carpeted” from NCNC to the Action Group. Azikiwe then retreated to the East. Now each main party controlled its own region.
Also, population became power in this parliamentary system. Census tracking was no longer a neutral administrative exercise, but the determining factor of regional dominance. The 1952 census (54% Northern) was decried as fraud by the South, structurally tilting seats Northward.
1953: Constitutional Collapse
By 1953, the fragility of this union was exposed. Southern leaders (AG & NCNC) moved a motion for “Self-Government in 1956.” But, the North voted it down, saying they weren’t ready yet.
To the South, this looked like the North was acting as useful idiots for the British. But the northern perspective was more desperate than cynical. The North literally lacked the educated manpower to run an independent region. Northern elites feared that rapid independence meant the Southern Kafir (non-Muslim) would effectively rule the North’s railways, administration, hospitals, and security apparatus.
When the Northern delegates walked out of the parliament in Lagos, the Lagos crowds booed and jeered them. Humiliated, the Northerners returned home.
But, when the Action Group toured Kano shortly after, many in the North viewed it as an invasion. The Kano Riots of 1953 exploded.
For four days, inter-communal violence raged. The official death toll was 46 (mostly Southerners), though real numbers were likely higher. From the Igbo perspective, this wasn’t just a riot, it was an anti-Igbo pogrom.
This regional violence showed the deep problems in Nigeria. Bello flirted with Northern secession via his “Eight-point programme”. Awolowo in the West also made a threat to secede. Colonial governor Macpherson realized his constitution was dead, writing: “If Nigeria splits, it will not be into two or three parts, but into many fragments.”
The Lyttleton Constitution of 1954: A Federation to Stop the Breakup
To save Nigeria, the Colonial State Secretary, Oliver Lyttleton rushed to negotiate a settlement. The result was the Lyttleton constitution of 1954, which turned Nigeria into a clear federation with strong regional autonomy.
It barely worked. In the 1954 election, the NPC won the North, but the Igbo NCNC, won both the Igbo East AND Yoruba West. It was the last time a party would win outside its ethnic base in the colonial era.
Awolowo, the Western Premier, faced NCNC federal ministers (it’s like Democratic President Obama dealing with a Republican Congress). To avoid lose power in the 1956 election, Awolowo used his cocoa funds to execute popular policies: universal primary education, minimum wage hikes, and free child care. This points to the other transformation reshaping Nigeria: money.
Nigeria’s Economy
Economic Structure Before WWII
While the politicians were arguing over constitutions, the economy was undergoing a seismic shift. Before 1945, European giants like UAC and John Holt dominated important industries like shipping, insurance, warehousing and banking.
Nigerians were shut out. With almost no access to credit from the British banking duopoly (Barclays & Bank of British West Africa), Nigerians were relegated to petty trading. There were almost no Nigerians that ran the “meaty logistics middle”: regional distribution networks, managed accounting across cities, or imported in bulk. To fill the gap in the middle, the British brought in Greeks, Lebanese, Indians and Syrians to run logistics and warehousing. In addition, the British brought Gold Coaster (Ghanaian) and Sierra Leonian migrants to work as clerks or artisans.
But after WWII, Nigerians pooled together in different regions and made their own banks. They were big lenders to the nationalist movements in their regions. Also after WWII was the British Investment Plan.
The British Investment Plan
Post WW2, London launched the 10 year development plan for Nigeria (1945-1955), investing:
£7.7M on education: specifically teacher training and building more high schools, which was not stressed pre-1945.
£10.4 million for medical and health services
£8 million to improve water supplies
Education
The British invested way more in schools. See the jump in school attendance below:
Not just primary school but high school too:
In terms of University education, the University College of Ibadan opened in 1948 as an extension of the University of London, meaning Nigerians could finally get degrees on home soil. The University of Ibadan did not become a fully independent university until 1962.
Across all of Sub-Saharan Africa in the late 1950s, there were roughly 8K graduates. Half of them were in Southern Nigeria & Ghana.
Health
The medical plan increased the number of hospitals, trained more medical staff, and provided more equipment.
Treatment facilities for leprosy and malaria were created, vaccination campaigns against smallpox were undertaken, and treatment for such epidemic and endemic diseases as yaws, scabies, and trypanosomiasis was expanded.
Economy
Post-WWII, Nigeria had an export boom from £24 million in 1946 to £130 million by 1955, due to the global post WWII recovery. This 21% growth rate was even before Nigeria struck oil!
This growth drove rapid urbanization & population growth. Lagos only had 126K people in 1931. By 1951, the population more than doubled to 274K. In addition, the vast majority of developmental aid went to the cities, while villages were neglected.
When each region gained self-governance in the 1950s, control of the marketing boards passed from colonial administrators to Nigerian politicians.
Marketing Boards & Corruption:
These boards were created as price stabilizers after European firms cartelized to crush farmer incomes. In reality, the boards just paid farmers below the global price for cocoa/palm oil/peanuts, and sold the commodity to trading firms at the international price at a profit(i.e. Unilever for palm oil, Cadbury Brothers for cocoa).
When Nigerian politicians gained control of these boards, they realized that they sat on a goldmine. They continued to underpay farmers and the surplus profit was kept as a slush fund for their political parties. This established the destructive concept of the “National Cake.” Politics became a zero-sum game: you didn’t enter government to serve; you entered to capture the Marketing Board revenue for your region and your party.
In the Southwest, the Yoruba-led, Action Group used cocoa profits to fund campaigns and made the National Investment & Properties Company. Corruption was already visible before independence. The company gave millions to company directors as “special donations”.
In the North, the peanut & cotton marketing boards provided funds to the Bank of the North, the Northern Nigeria Development Corporation (NNDC), and the Northern Nigerian Investments Limited (NNIL).
In the Southeast, the Igbo-led, NCNC used palm oil & palm kernel revenues to fund the African Continental Bank(ACB, which is owned by Zik) and Eastern Nigeria Development Corporation, which financed party-loyal firms. This led to the most famous scandal of the era.
Zik’s Scandal
In 1956, a tribunal found that Eastern Premier Nnamdi Azikiwe injected £877K of public funds into ACB (which he owned) to save it from bankruptcy, which was a conflict of interest. But instead of the censure destroying his career, this corruption scandal increased Zik’s popularity.
Zik framed the issue as economic nationalism. He argued he was using public funds to save a Nigerian-owned bank because the colonial regime was passing laws to crush African-owned banks. Igbo voters believed him and viewed the investigation as a colonial witch hunt. When Zik called a snap election in 1957, Igbo re-elected Zik in a landslide. This set a dangerous precedent for Nigeria: corruption could be excused if framed as “fighting for your people” or “fighting the imperialists”. The Economist said at the time that Nigerians had a “sunny and tolerant mentality” towards corruption.
Attempted Import Substitution Industrialization
While the 10-Year Plan primarily doubled down on cash crops, it also introduced an experiment on Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI).
ISI is the idea that the free market alone can’t turn a poor region of mostly illiterate peasant farmers into one that makes airplanes or semiconductor chips. The government must intervene in the economy offensively (via subsidies) and defensively (via tariffs) to nurture infant industries, hoping to replace imported manufactured goods with Nigerian-made ones.
The Carrots (Tax Incentives): Under the Aid to Pioneer Industries Ordinance (1952) and Income Tax Relief Ordinance (1958), investors who started new industries were granted “pioneer status,” enjoying tax holidays (zero taxes) for their first few years of operation.
The Shields (Trade Protection): To lower input costs, the government slashed import duties on the machinery and raw materials factories needed (Import Duty Relief, 1957). Simultaneously, they imposed heavy tariffs on cheap foreign finished goods to prevent them from undercutting the new local factories (Customs Duties Ordinance, 1958).
The result? The incentives helped make industry in Nigeria, but they did not help Nigerians.
The primary beneficiaries of these tax breaks were not budding Nigerian entrepreneurs, but European firms bringing foreign direct investment. However, foreign firms repatriated the profits (dividends & earnings) to European banks rather than Nigerian banks. Lastly, these factories weren’t really manufacturing hubs, but rather assembly plants. They put together parts imported from Europe rather than building local supply chains. So Nigeria ended up importing the “capital goods” (machinery & tech) anyway.
Discovery of Oil
Before 1956, “oil” meant palm oil in Nigeria. In fact, that’s exactly what the Niger-Delta fishing villagers in the town Oloibiri thought when Shell-BP arrived.
The British firm D’Arcy Exploration Company, a subsidiary of Anglo-Persian Oil Company (BP) had been hunting for oil in Nigeria since 1918 with zero success.
In 1938, D’Arcy formed a joint venture with Dutch Shell to make Shell-D’Arcy (which became Shell-BP in 1956). In the spring of 1956, Shell BP found commercial quantities of oil in Oloibiri.
It took two years to build a pipeline from the oil field in Oloibiri to the mouth of the Bonny River. By 1958, Nigeria was exporting crude oil. At this time, crude oil was at best 3% of exports, but production would explode post-independence.
The Regional Struggle
While the economy was growing, the civil service was quietly transforming.
Africanization of the Civil Service
In 1939, there were only 23 Nigerians in senior levels of civil service. By 1947, 182; by 1953, 786; by 1960, 2.6K. Gradually, Nigerians gained greater control over the day-to-day administration.
The Educational Gap and Igbo Domination of the North
Due to the educational gaps we discussed earlier, the Civil Service in the North was dominated by southerners, especially southeastern Igbos.
The Northern elite, led by Ahmadu Bello, were terrified. They feared that after the British left, the non-Muslim Igbos would permanently settle in their lands, sabotage Sharia law, control their bureaucracy, and leak sensitive information back southeast to gain political dominance.
In response in 1954, Bello launched the “Northernization Policy”, an affirmative action program that replaced Igbos & other Southerners with underqualified Northerners. 2000+ Southerners were dismissed from Northern Civil Service Positions. By 1959 there was just one Southerner left. This angered many Igbos who saw it as discrimination.
To his credit, Bello didn’t just purge, he aggressively invested in Northern human capital to get ready for independence. He launched a War on illiteracy (“Yaki da Jahilici”) and frantically built new teacher training colleges, technical & vocational schools. He also funded University sponsorships to study in universities in Nigeria, UK, Sudan, Pakistan, and India. Lastly, he founded a University in Zaria.
Frankly, he needed a generation or two, not six years before independence, but he set the foundations.
The Final Countdown: 1957-1960
In 1957, the endgame began. At the London Constitutional Conference, the British agreed to a time table for independence. The Southwest and Southeast were granted immediate self-government in 1957, while the cautious North waited until 1959. In a UN plebiscite in 1961, Northern Cameroon voted to join Nigeria, while Southern Cameroons voted to join French Cameroon.
To manage the transition, the British appointed Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, a Fulani Northerner, to be Nigeria’s first Prime Minister.
Balewa was an interesting choice. A former high school teacher, university-educated, incredibly eloquent, and Bello’s VP. Though Fulani, he wasn’t aristocracy; he came from humble origins and lacked an independent political machine. He didn’t threaten the South.
But his appointment revealed a fatal flaw in the constitution since Bello refused to be Prime Minister. To Bello, Premier of the North was more powerful than Prime Minister of Nigeria. He viewed Lagos as a distant outpost. His patronage network was in Kaduna.
This set a dangerous precedent: the most powerful man in the ruling party wasn’t even in the federal government.
Final Election before Independence
A final election was held in 1959 to decide who would lead independent Nigeria.
The Result: The NCNC and AG won more total votes than the NPC. But NPC had the won the most seats (Seats were allocated based on the Census. The game was tilted for the North to win).
The NPC lacked an outright majority, so the Igbo-led NCNC formed a coalition with the Hausa-Fulani NPC. Balewa remained Prime Minister, and Nnamdi Azikiwe settled for the ceremonial role of Governor-General.
Also, in 1958-1959, Nigeria established a Central Bank and adopted its own currency, the Nigerian pound, anchored one-to-one to sterling.
Independence
On October 1, 1960, Nigeria became independent. Balewa declared confidently that “history will show that the building of our nation proceeded at the wisest pace… and Nigeria now stands well built upon firm foundations.”
He even spoke warmly of Britain’s colonialism “first as masters, then as leaders, finally as partners, but always as friends.” This was the opposite of what other colonies said at Independence day. For example, Patrice Lumumba, gave a scathing indictment of Belgian rule on Independence day.
At independence, Nigeria had roughly 45 million people and felt pollyannish about their prospects.
At the time Nigeria had a diversified agricultural economy instead of being a monocrop colony (70% of Ghana’s exports were cocoa, most of Gambia’s exports came from peanuts, and Mauritius depended on sugar). See Nigeria’s exports at independence below:
Also, more oil firms were drilling, and Nigeria had a functioning-African-led civil service. Lastly, Nigeria was one of Britain’s best colonies.
The average Nigerian was richer than most other colonies including Indians and Kenyans. It was right below white-ruled Rhodesia (modern day Zimbabwe).
What could go wrong?
Everything unfortunately. There were many warning signs.
Besides the factionalism and corruption, in 1957, the Willink Commission acknowledged that minorities in each region (the Edo, Ijaw, Efik, Ibibio, Tiv, and others) feared domination by the “Big Three” ethnic groups.
In the decade leading up to independence, there were land clashes between the Tiv & Jukun. Also, in the 1959 election, the Tiv voted for the Action Group because AG promised to support a Middle Belt state seceding from the Muslim North.
The NPC government was furious. They unleashed the native authority police on the Tiv: arrests, floggings, arbitrary taxes. The Tiv endured this abuse for months.
Britain suggested delaying independence for a few years to establish new minority states. The Nigerian leaders ignored the report. That decision planted seeds for the post-independence Tiv riots in the Middle Belt.
Conclusion
Nigeria at independence was a country of 45 million people held together by British glue, marketing board money, and fragile compromises.
The North controlled the seats but lacked the education. The South had the education but not the seats. The minorities had neither. Corruption was already endemic, excused as ethnic solidarity. Igbos in the North were being purged and felt like foreigners. The Tiv were being beaten for voting wrong.
Next time, we’ll discuss Nigeria after independence.
Sources
Nigeria: A Study
A History of Nigeria by Toyin Falola & Matthew Heaton
Nigeria: Background to Nationalism by James S. Coleman
Fortunes of Africa by Martin Meredith
Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith
Dictatorland by Paul Kenyon
The History of Political Change Among the Tiv by Tesemchi Makar
