Word: awolowo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Rebel's Conversion. By then Nigerian politics had taken on a permanent three-way stretch. In the Ibo East, Zik's National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons held sway. In the West, the Action Group, headed by shrewd, stodgy Chief Obafemi Awolowo (pronounced Ah-Wo-lo-wo), spoke for the Yoruba people. Northern power then (as now) meant tall, solemn Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna (commander) of Sokoto and boss of the Northern Peoples Congress...
...most stable and genuinely representative governments in Africa. To ensure the votes necessary to push through his programs, Abubakar brought Zik's N.C.N.C. into coalition with his own Northern Peoples Congress. As payment, longtime Firebrand Zik unpredictably accepted the ceremonial job of governor general. Chief Awolowo resigned himself to the role of Opposition leader...
...single, indivisible nation will require not only time but tolerance. With only 175,000 pupils receiving secondary education, schools are desperately needed. In terms of university graduates, Nigeria is better off than the Congo, but there are still only 532 qualified Nigerian doctors, 644 lawyers, 20 graduate engineers. Awolowo and others are demanding that Abubakar throw out the British holdovers who still occupy half of Nigeria's senior civil service posts; yet, as Abubakar points out, "Nigerianization" of the civil service cannot sensibly be completed until enough Africans themselves can be trained...
...jolted Nigerian journalism out of its somnolent past. As Premier of Nigeria's Eastern Region, Zik aspired to lead the way to national independence-and to become free Nigeria's first Premier. So in the Western Region did rival Premier Obafemia Awolowo. Their press became their weapon: with Zik's Pilot expanded to five papers, and with a ten-paper group owned and controlled by Awolowo's Action Group party, Nigerians were treated to the regular spectacle of Awolowo and Zik slugging it out fiercely and brightly on their front pages...
...rioting by spear-carrying Tiv tribesmen of the north had led to more than a dozen deaths and scores of injuries. Even in the capital, the regional spirit is far from dead, and much of Zik's loyalty to his eastern Ibos inevitably will remain, just as will Awolowo's to the west, and Abubakar's to the north. But this also has the advantage of discouraging the development of monolithic one-man authoritarianism on the model of Nkrumah's Ghana and Toure's Guinea...