Word: balewa
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Less than a month after Queen Elizabeth II proclaimed self-government for Eastern and Western Nigeria, the tropic Federation got its first Prime Minister and installed its first all-Nigerian Cabinet in the capital of Lagos, beside the tepid green waters of the Bight of Benin.* Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, a Northern Moslem, became Nigeria's first Prime Minister. In a graceful speech opening Parliament, Balewa paid tribute to British statesmanship and the service of Christian missionaries, spoke of the "tremendous good will" that existed between Britain and Nigeria, but emphasized that he and his ministers are" "irrevocably committed...
...Nigeria gets home rule by 1960, he will probably not become independent Nigeria's first Prime Minister. Most likely to be chosen by the federal House of Representatives when it convenes next month is a leader from the more populous but less advanced Northern Region, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, currently federal Minister of Transport. Nigeria's north is Moslem, and so conservatively Moslem that its devout regard Egyptians, Turks and Pakistanis as irreverent backsliders and only Saudi Arabians as sufficiently pure in faith...
...Balewa, who sent his mother to Mecca last year and has just completed an air pilgrimage there himself, is that rarity in Nigeria, a successful commoner in an area still controlled largely by sultans and emirs. He studied at London University, and while no demagogue like Zik, is just as firmly committed to full independence for all of Nigeria by 1960-a date London's Colonial Office regards as too soon. Says Balewa quietly...
Last March, when Nigeria's Federal House of Representatives voted to seek independence, Abubakar Balewa, the Northerner, warned his countrymen against the results of such feckless politicking. "We must do all in our power," he said, "to protect our country from the civil discord and strife into which some countries-and here I am thinking of Indonesia-have fallen after achieving independence." The Colonial Office, in its anxiety to see that the transfer of power is peaceful, has an even more unhappy comparison in mind: that of India and Pakistan, whose baptism of freedom took place in a bath...
...Africa and an ardent champion of regional self-government for his own people; scholarly and ambitious Dr. Nnamdi ("Zik") Azikiwe, the rich and demagogic U.S.-educated favorite of some 3,000,000 Ibo tribesmen in the East; and last but far from least, the Moslem commoner Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, an oracle of moderation in a sea of local extremism, who might well wind up as Nigeria's first Prime Minister...