Word: nigerias
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Independence is often a searing experience to new nations, bringing on along with the proud new flags, inept governments, shattered economies, confused people and misery all the deeper because exposed by freedom. But on Africa's west coast, the continent's newest and largest free state, Nigeria, last week was settling down to self-government with the same solid serenity that had marked its birth a fortnight ago. It is no coincidence that peaceful Nigeria possesses the freest and most responsible press in black Africa...
...Despite a national literacy rate of only about 15%, the country prints 20 daily newspapers and 36 weeklies, with a circulation approaching 755,000. Copies of the leading dailies, going out by motor lorry and dugout canoe, eventually reach even the remotest regions-a much-needed unifying influence on Nigeria's mosaic of 250 tribes. And by being free itself, under the long years of benevolent British tutelage, the nation's press has taught Nigerians valuable first lessons in the meaning and the duties of freedom...
Slugging Matches. Until 1937, Nigeria's few newspapers played a minor role in the national life, hardly going beyond their mid-igth century origins as shipping news and commercial circulars. But that year a fiery young Nigerian named Nnamdi ("Zik") Azikiwe returned from the U.S., where he had studied political science and journalism at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and founded a new daily in Lagos, the West African Pilot...
...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...
...modest daily dose of unadulterated news. In 1947, observing with interest the growing Nigerian appetite for news, British Tabloid Publisher Sir Cecil Harmsworth King (the London Daily Mirror-Sunday Pictorial group) picked up the Daily Times, an unimpressive Lagos paper of 7,000 circulation, which had stayed out of Nigeria's East-West...