The Nigerian Republic in a Ditch: The Rise and Tragic Fall of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa
How Nigeria’s First Republic Collapsed Under the Weight of Tribalism
On October 1, 1960, Nigeria gained independence as Africa’s giant: a federation of 45M, a diversified agricultural economy, and one of the most Africanized civil services on the continent. To outside observers, Nigeria looked like a model post-colonial state.
Six years later, a military coup ended the 1st Republic, and Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was found dead in a ditch, murdered by his own army. What appeared sudden was, in fact, the delayed consequence of unresolved political design flaws embedded at independence.
Balewa himself embodied those contradictions. A northern Fulani schoolteacher elevated by the British as a “compromise candidate,” he lacked an independent power base as he wasn’t part of the Fulani aristocracy. His authority rested not on mass legitimacy, but on fragile elite bargains.
This is part XII on my series on Nigeria. See the Context & Series Links below for the full journey from pre-colonial history to the mess of independence.
Context & Series Links
The Foundation: I (Overview) | II & III (The North) | IV, V, & VI (The South)
The Conquest: VII & VIII (British Invasion) | IX & X (Colonial Rule)
The Fight for Sovereignty: XI (Winning Independence)
Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (1960-1966)
I. Sovereignty with Training Wheels
Even then, Nigeria’s independence was formal but incomplete. Its borders were not finalized until June 1961, when the British Northern Cameroons were folded into the Northern region. The country was a Commonwealth realm with the British monarch as head of state, until October 1st 1963, when Nigeria became a full republic.
II. The Head Start & Hidden Problem
On paper, Nigeria entered independence with advantages most of Black Africa lacked:
Diversified Exports: While Ghana relied on cocoa for foreign exchange (FX), Senegal for peanuts, or Sudan for cotton in the 1960s, Nigeria was not a monocrop exporter. Nigeria earned FX from exporting peanuts, palm oil, & cocoa, with crude oil discovered in the Niger Delta in 1956.
Human Capital: Unlike Belgian/Portuguese colonies, Nigeria’s civil service was already largely Africanized by independence, particularly in the South where people were vastly more educated than in the North due to colonial policy.
Capital Markets: Nigeria opened a stock exchange in Lagos in 1961. Ghana, Tanzania, and Uganda wouldn't have one until the 1990s.
Infrastructure: In 1958, a $28M World Bank loan funded railway expansion to Bornu in the northeast. Apapa Wharf, Nigeria's first modern deep-water port, was already operational and expanded in 1961.
Yet the core issue was, Nigeria was never forged through national integration.
III. Three Nations in One
Nigerian independence was negotiated through elite ethnic bargaining. The result was three regional power blocs (the North, Southwest, & Southeast) sharing a single federal shell.
Each region viewed the others with suspicion. Southern elites derided the North as feudal and backward, while Northern leaders feared Southern domination of the civil service and erosion of Islamic culture. Even before independence, both the Yoruba-dominated Southwest and the Hausa-Fulani-led North had flirted with secession.
Federalism became a vehicle for patronage rather than integration. Politics followed a simple logic: win seats for your region, channel federal contracts and jobs to your people, and skim a ~10% kickback for yourself through the informal “dash” system. Losing federal power meant losing more bribe money contracts for your region.
At independence, authority rested on a fragile coalition. The Hausa-Fulani NPC governed as senior partner, the Igbo-led NCNC as junior partner, and the Yoruba AG as opposition.
IV. The Continental Policeman
While Nigeria fractured internally, Balewa projected confidence abroad. He positioned Nigeria as the voice of Black Africa: non-aligned in rhetoric, morally outspoken, and quietly pro-West:
Congo Crisis: Nigeria committed troops and funds to the UN mission in Congo. However, the murder of Patrice Lumumba by the Belgian-backed secessionists left Balewa livid. Nigerian peacekeepers remained until 1964.
Regional Stability: Nigeria co-founded the Lake Chad Basin & Niger River Commission to secure free water navigation across West African waters.
Anti-Nuclear Testing in Africa: When France tested atomic bombs in the Algerian Sahara, radioactive fallout drifted into Niger & Northern Nigeria. Balewa demanded an end to testing, but Charles de Gaulle ignored him. So, Balewa cut all diplomatic ties with France. Relations were only restored in 1965.
Against Apartheid: Following the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, Balewa stood against Apartheid South Africa. Balewa purged White South Africans from the Nigerian civil service, pressured the UK for South Africa's removal from the Commonwealth & the International Labor Association, and successfully campaigned to ban them from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
Yet beneath the non-aligned posture, Nigeria leaned West: Balewa signed a defense pact with the UK in 1961 (giving Britain continued access to Nigerian airspace and refueling rights in exchange for British military training and equipment), but backlash killed the pact the following year.
Balewa allowed the US to build a satellite tracking station in Kano in 1960, banned communist literature in Nigeria until 1961, and kept Nigeria’s currency within the sterling area, anchoring its Nigerian pound to the British pound (The anchor no longer exists, but it was similar to the CFA franc today).
Western firms dominated foreign investment. Soviet engagement was minimal until after Balewa died.
V. African Unity vs. African Nationalism
Africa had broadly three camps in the 1960s:
The Casablanca group(“Africa Unite Now”): Led by Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, along with Guinea, Mali, Egypt, and Morocco pushed for a United States of Africa.
The Brazzaville group (“The Francophiles”): Led by Felix Houphouet-Boigny of Ivory Coast, along with other French African states, wanted to maintain paternalistic ties with France while keeping national sovereignty.
The Monrovia group (“Nation First”): Led by Balewa, along with Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, & Liberia, prioritized national sovereignty while seeking continental cooperation.
Balewa had little patience for Nkrumah’s Pan-African vision, which he found theatrical and reckless without stable African nation-states first.
The tension between them peaked at the 1962 Lagos Conference. Nkrumah’s group boycotted the event because Algeria (still fighting for independence) wasn’t invited. Balewa’s reasoning was pragmatic but cold: inviting Algeria signaled a blanket endorsement of all African liberation movements, risking needed Western aid at a moment when UK still ruled Kenya, Zambia, and other African colonies.
The United States of Africa idea never materialized: Morocco turned toward irredentism (“Greater Morocco”), while Egypt drifted toward pan-Arabism. The Brazzaville and Monrovia blocs merged and outnumbered the shrinking Casablanca group. The Organization of African Unity (OAU), founded in 1963, became a forum for cooperation among nationalist states, not a vehicle for continental government. But Balewa came around to supporting African liberation movements by sponsoring the OAU liberation fund.
Balewa’s position against a United Africa reflected Nigeria’s own unresolved internal nationalism. A state still struggling to integrate Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, Igbo, and dozens of minority groups was in no position to gamble on supranational governance.
VI. Nation Building
Economic Strategy
Nigeria’s economic strategy was open to foreign capital and comparatively capitalist by African standards. Unlike state-dominated Nkrumah’s Ghana or Sékou Touré’s Guinea, Nigeria was open to private enterprise. The state stepped in only when private capital failed to materialize or was deemed insufficient.
Nigeria adopted a textbook infant-industry protection approach. Luxury imports faced high tariffs, industrial machinery received exemptions, and domestic manufacturing was encouraged through incentives. In 1962, Balewa launched the First National Development Plan, a ~€700M program scheduled to run through 1968. Roughly half was financed through foreign borrowing from the World Bank, UN funds, the International Finance Corporation, and bilateral foreign aid. The rest came from Nigerian private and state-owned banks, including the Nigerian Industrial Development Bank.
The plan prioritized communications, transport, and electricity, which together absorbed over three quarters of total spending.
Education was 10% but still expanded widely. Each region developed flagship universities: Nsukka (East), Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria (North), and the University of Lagos and Ife/Obafemi Awolowo University (West). Teacher-training colleges also expanded in Lagos.
But, First Development Plan had a flaw: investment flowed disproportionately to two places: Lagos (the capital) and the North (which led the federal coalition).
Defense spending, roads, education, and health infrastructure all tilted toward the North.
Northern leaders defended this as corrective policy. British missionaries had built schools and hospitals in the South for over a century while leaving the North to its own devices. Catch-up, in their view, was overdue. But, Southern elites saw these affirmative action policies as a slippery slope that institutionalized permanent Northern dominance.
The same logic governed personnel policy: from 1958, military recruitment followed a quota system, with half of all admissions coming from the North and the West and East splitting the remainder. This made a paradoxical force; at independence, the army was largely northern in ranks, but southern in command, a colonial hangover from of Western education-based promotion that favored the South.
In 1961, quotas extended to officer recruitment. Similar balancing rules applied across the civil service and public-sector recruitment.
These policies infuriated Southerners, especially Igbos, who saw merit systematically overridden by ethnicity. For the Igbo-led NCNC, the optics were disastrous. Despite being a coalition partner, federal resources flowed disproportionately to the North and Lagos (the West), not the East, and this is all before oil dominated politics in Nigeria. Let’s talk about oil’s emergence.
VII. The Emergence of Fossil Fuels
Once Shell struck oil in the late 1950s, Balewa moved to break its monopoly. The government forced Shell to surrender 50% of its unexploited concessions, then Nigeria subdivided the returned acreage for new bidders.
By the mid-1960s, Italian Eni, American firms such as Mobil, Gulf (Chevron), Phillips & Tenneco, and France's SAFRAP were all drilling in the Niger Delta. These firms made Nigerian subsidiaries, but Balewa did not mandate government ownership in oil operations yet. Nigeria acted as a landlord, not an operator.
The fiscal terms were straightforward: firms paid “rent” per square mile, a ~12.5% royalty on every barrel, and split profits 50-50 profit with Nigeria. During Balewa’s tenure, only Shell-BP were producing oil.
Natural gas followed a different path. Most Nigerian gas was associated gas, released when oil was brought to the surface. In a few localized cases, Shell supplied gas to industrial customers in Aba (East) through short, dedicated pipelines. Because production and demand were in the same spot, gas could be used without costly transport or processing.
Outside these pockets, gas had no market. Nigeria lacked a pipeline grid, gas-fired power plants, and processing facilities. Moving gas over distance was uneconomic. In most fields, flaring remained cheaper than capture, and large-scale gas monetization only became viable in the 1990s with offshore liquefied natural gas projects.
Nigeria also built downstream capacity. In 1965, an oil refinery opened in Port Harcourt, jointly owned by the federal government and the Eastern Region through the Nigerian Petroleum Refining Company, alongside Shell and BP. It produced petrol, kerosene, diesel, heavy fuel oil, and bottled gas.
At this time, however, oil did not yet dominate the economy, cash crops did.
VIII. Regional Self-Help
Nigeria’s regions retained significant fiscal autonomy. Beyond federal transfers, they levied import and export taxes and relied heavily on marketing boards to finance development.
Marketing boards functioned as implicit farmer taxes. By purchasing cash crops from farmers below world prices and selling them at global rates, regional governments captured large surpluses. Those funds underwrote infrastructure, industrial projects, rewarded political supporters, and enriched ruling parties.
Agricultural output initially rose. Cash crops like cocoa, peanuts, rubber, and cotton expanded through the early 1960s. But, food crops grew more slowly.
The Regional and Federal investment in extension services (government-paid agronomists promoting fertilizer, better seeds, and pest management to village farmers), while tying small loans to agronomic compliance pushed yields higher. Marketing boards increased prices paid to farmers over time.
The Western Region used the regional funds the hardest for development. In April 1965, Premier Samuel Akintola inaugurated the Ikeja Industrial Estate, Nigeria’s first industrial estate. Western Nigeria Marketing Board and the Western Nigeria Development Corporation used cocoa revenues to fund roads, power, and water. Foreign capital flowed in:
British Dunlop built a $4M tire factory.
Italian, American, and British investors put over $10M into textile mills.
Outside the industrial zone, Blue Circle built a cement plant at Ewekoro, an American flour company made a joint venture with Nigerian entrepreneurs to make a flour mill in Apapa, and foreign investors made a sugar cane plantation and refinery in the Western region as well.
In the southeast, US firm, Indian Head Mills, opened a textile operation in Aba. Canadian Alcan built an aluminum rolling mill in Port Harcourt. French Michelin made tires in Nigeria using Nigerian rubber.
Foreign capital flowed in. Between 1960 and 1964, Nigeria attracted ~$75M per year in foreign direct investment. 60% of paid-up capital was foreign-owned, 30% from the Nigerian government, and 10% from the Nigerian private sector. Fully foreign-owned firms outnumbered domestic ones nearly two to one.
Nigeria even imposed FX controls that limited capital repatriation (restricting the conversion of the Nigerian pound and transfer of profits/dividends abroad). Investors from U.S, Japan, U.K, and West Germany still came. Manufacturing expanded in textiles, cement, flour, food processing, and beverages.
IX. Political Crises
Ibadan Crisis of 1962
By 1962, the Yoruba-dominated Action Group faced a split between two leaders who were once allies. Samuel Akintola, the Premier of the Western Region, and Obafemi Awolowo, the party’s founder, now represented incompatible strategies.
Akintola favored cooperation with the Northern-led federal coalition to gain more access to federal resources. Awolowo rejected this as capitulation. When Awolowo attempted to remove Akintola and replace him with a loyalist, violence erupted in Ibadan. Fistfights in the Western Regional Assembly spilled into the streets.
Awolowo was arrested and later convicted of diverting ~₦5M in regional funds to political causes and private companies. Prosecutors also alleged that he had plotted to overthrow the federal government. The charges said Awolowo sent 200 supporters to Nkrumah’s Ghana for paramilitary training, smuggled explosives back into Nigeria, and planned to sabotage critical infrastructure in Lagos under cover of a blackout in order to capture Balewa during Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s visit. Awolowo denied these claims.
27 Action Group members were arrested, including Chief Enahoro, who fled to the UK, triggering a six-month extradition battle that drew international attention. He was returned to Nigeria, tried, and convicted.
When the emergency ended, Akintola returned as Premier, but now leading a new Yoruba-led party aligned with the North, the United People’s Party. The Action Group was reduced to a minority in what had once been its stronghold. A new precedent was set to utilize federal power to neutralize regional opposition.
The Census Wars
In Nigeria, population meant power. Census figures determined parliamentary seats and revenue allocations. Control of the numbers meant control of the state.
Southern leaders viewed the 1962 census as a chance to weaken Northern dominance. When preliminary results showed a 70% population increase in the South compared to 30% in the North, the Northern People’s Congress rejected the figures outright and forced a recount.
As an aside, between censuses in July 1963, the Mid-West, populated by Edo people from the former Benin Kingdom, voted 90% to break from the Western Region. By August, Nigeria had four regions instead of three. Oil discoveries soon followed in the new Mid-West.
On October 1, 1963, Nigeria became a republic. Balewa remained Prime Minister. Nnamdi Azikiwe shifted from ceremonial Governor-General to ceremonial President.
The 2nd census, conducted in November 1963, swung dramatically in the opposite direction. This time, Southern leaders accused Northern authorities of inflating their numbers by 8M. The most infamous claim was that livestock were counted as people. Despite Eastern Region protests and a Supreme Court challenge, the federal government adopted the new figures.
Official population: 55.6M, with 29.8M in the North.
For southerners, that census episode delegitimized the federal system to them.
The Middle Belt Crisis (1960-1964)
The first sustained violence of the First Republic did not erupt in the South. It began in the Middle Belt, the lowest region in the North.
The Tiv, Idoma, and Birom peoples resisted Hausa-Fulani domination of the Northern Region. Led politically by Joseph Tarka and the United Middle Belt Congress(UMBC), they demanded a separate Middle Belt region. Unlike much of the North, these communities practiced traditional religions or Christianity instead of Islam, deepening their sense of exclusion.
NPC-aligned chiefs were installed across the Middle Belt. Courts ruled against UMBC supporters. Licenses, scholarships, and jobs were denied. Bribes became routine. By 1960, resistance boiled over.
The Tiv launched the Nande Nande uprising, burning NPC offices and attacking government officials. Northern Premier Bello unleashed the Northern regional police to suppress the revolt and arrested UMBC leaders. Grievances remained unresolved.
Then in 1964, the conflict escalated. Tiv fighters adopted guerrilla tactics. This time, Prime Minister Balewa deployed a federal army battalion. Villages were burned and civilians displaced. Official figures claimed ~300 deaths. Middle Belt leaders estimated closer to 4K.
1964-1965 Elections and Collapse of the Republic
After the disputed 1963 census, opposition politics hardened. Southern parties joined anti-NPC northern groups like the United Middle Belt Congress to form the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA). In June 1964, the Igbo-led NCNC left its coalition with the North and aligned with the Southwest, Yoruba Action Group despite longstanding tensions between Igbo & Yoruba elites.
The North responded with the Nigerian National Alliance(NNA), pairing the North with Akintola’s Yoruba-based NNDP and smaller southern parties. The alliance played on Yoruba fears of Igbo domination.
Before campaigning even began, Nigeria ground to a halt. An initial national strike in 1963 over stagnant wages signaled growing unrest. But, in June 1964 for 14 days, a far larger strike involving ~800K workers shut down the ports, railways, power stations, and airlines. Lagos emptied.
The strike began in state-owned enterprises and spread nationwide to the private sector. Workers protested stagnant wages and elite corruption. Ultimately, the unions won concessions. But politically, the strike functioned as a vote of no confidence against Balewa’s government.
The December 1964 federal elections were catastrophic. The NPC-led alliance blocked, detained, or prevented UPGA opposition candidates from filing papers. Entire districts went uncontested. In Kano, the Northern coalition jailed UPGA candidates for months. Middlebelt leader, Joseph Tarka, was arrested, crippling UPGA’s Northern campaign in the middle belt.
UPGA boycotted. Eastern places like Enugu & Port Harcourt did not participate. The election proceeded anyway. The NPC-led coalition claimed victory. With new oil discoveries in the Southeast and no meaningful representation, some opposition leaders openly discussed secession. Foreign diplomats warned Nigeria was nearing civil war. Protesters in Lagos chanted “Free elections or chaos” and “No government by fraud.”
Whatever faith remained in electoral politics died in the 1965 Western Region elections. Fearing defeat, Akintola’s Northern-aligned party deployed systematic rigging. Reports circulated that Akintola brought Yoruba-speaking people from neighboring Dahomey (now Benin Republic) to vote for him. Ballot theft, multiple voting, and centralized counting enabled manipulation. Both sides declared victory.
Violence followed immediately. Riots, arson, and killings spread across Ibadan, Ogobomosho, and surrounding towns. To win, Akintola purposely paid high wages to cocoa farmers before the election, but they were slashed by nearly half afterward(£120 per ton to just £65). Farmers revolted. Political violence merged with economic fury.
Young men recruited by Akintola’s party patrons burned opposition homes with occupants inside in a practice known as “Operation Wetie”, where victims were doused with petrol and set alight. Hundreds died. Opposition aligned newspapers were destroyed.
Balewa refused to declare a state of emergency. Instead, federal forces were sent to prop up Akintola’s regional government. Civilian authority collapsed in the West.
President Nnamdi Azikiwe warned that Nigeria risked becoming “another Congo” (referencing the secession attempts by Katanga and South Kasai).
By late 1965, elections no longer transferred power. Courts no longer resolved disputes. Violence had become the final arbiter. Many southern elites concluded the ballot would never deliver power for them. Many military officers concluded civilians could not govern.
In January 1966, a group of young officers led by Major Nzeogwu acted on that conclusion. But we’ll discuss the coups and the civil war next time.
Conclusion
Nigeria’s first six years were not an economic failure. Output rose and agriculture expanded before oil became a big deal. Nigeria was catching up to Indonesia while staying ahead of Pakistan, China, India, Congo, and Ethiopia.
What failed was politics. Federalism without trust turned every census, quota, budget, and election into an existential contest. By 1965, ballots no longer decided outcomes. Violence did.
What do you think? What would you have done differently than Balewa? Do you think Nigeria should even exist as a unified state? We'll certainly discuss secession more next time.
"Nigeria’s first six years were not an economic failure. Output rose and agriculture expanded before oil became a big deal. Nigeria was catching up to Indonesia while staying ahead of Pakistan, China, India, Congo, and Ethiopia.
What failed was politics. Federalism without trust turned every census, quota, budget, and election into an existential contest. By 1965, ballots no longer decided outcomes. Violence did."
This is very instructive. People in NIgeria say that the modern day tribalism is only happening because things are hard. This shows that isn't the case. Ignoring nation building is dangerous.