Word: nigeria
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...then they could challenge them." When they appealed to the courts to prevent their deportation, Nkrumah rushed through Parliament (where he controls 71 of 104 seats) a special bill authorizing their immediate expulsion, even though they were citizens of Ghana. Within two hours they were aboard a plane for Nigeria...
From London had come an Order in Council from Queen Elizabeth granting immediate home rule for Eastern and Western Nigeria. The cabled order caught Nigeria's regional premiers by complete surprise. Western Premier Chief Obafemi Awolowo was holidaying in Britain. Eastern Premier Nnamdi Azikiwe better known as "Zik" to his enthusiastic followers, was something less than exuberant. ''Falls so far short of the yearnings," complained his newspaper, "that it does not deserve to be noised abroad. The drums ought to be silent. The cymbals should be hidden away...
Actually, Zik's pique was probably directed less at the order providing home rule for only half of Nigeria than at the fact that if the rest of 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...
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...