Word: balewa
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...party pattern that pervades Africa these days, Major General Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi, Nigeria's strongman since last January's bloody coup that toppled Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, announced on television last week that the job of curing his country's "fatal maladies of the past" will take no less than three years...
...freedoms instead of broadening them, bleeding their nations instead of building them, dividing their peoples instead of uniting them. Nkrumah was a petulant oppressor who demanded constant adulation for himself and the wild schemes that all but sent his country into bankruptcy. In Nigeria, Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, although personally respected, presided over a conspicuously corrupt regime that stayed in power by rigging the census, playing one tribe against another, and cheating at the polls...
National unity had been the question ever since the nation won independence in 1960, and it was no less a question after the rebels swept away the government of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. Ironsi proposed to deal with the old bogy of tribal rivalry by demoting Nigeria's four semiautonomous regions to "provinces," and by banning the old regional parties. The new provisional military governors cracked down on "laziness" in the civil service, restricted the use of government vehicles, opened drives against bureaucratic corruption and bribery. One provincial governor even decreed that "everybody should love one another...
...straight weeks, once even led his troops through a mock invasion of the sprawling white palace of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna (Emir) of Sokoto, religious leader of 12.5 million Nigerian Moslems, boss of the nation's ruling political party, and the real power behind the Balewa government. So accustomed had the city become to the sound of night gunfire during the maneuvers that not even the police bothered to investigate when Nzeogwu threw a hand grenade through the palace's front door, then, with his men, shot it out with the palace guards, dragged the Sardauna outside...
...exclusive lagoon-front district of Lagos, the commander of the presidential guard led a handful of troops to the homes of Prime Minister Balewa and his Finance Minister. Sir Abubakar, summoned from prayers, told his servant that "this means there is trouble," but submitted with dignity. He appeared fully dressed, arms above his head, wrists together, ready for handcuffs. Not so Okotie-Eboh, known throughout Nigeria as the king of "dash"-the word used throughout West Africa for the ever-present bribery. Producing a thick wad of bills, he tried to buy off his captors, then, dressed in pajamas...