Word: regionalization
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...killed or neutralized their superiors and grabbed control of big units of the army. Then, in simultaneous strikes throughout the nation, they killed or kidnaped Nigeria's most powerful feudal lord, the Sardauna of Sokoto; its two most corrupt politicians, Finance Minister Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh and Western Region Premier Chief Samuel Akintola; and its most prestigious international figure, Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa...
Handcuffs & Dash. A similar scene was occurring at the same time in Ibadan, capital of the Western Region, where the Sardauna's political ally, Regional Premier Chief Samuel Akintola, was shot and his house burned down...
Shoes & Paychecks. Like most African nations that inherited their boundaries from their former colonialist masters, Nigeria is not really one country at all. It has 250 tribes speaking 250 languages. Its vast Northern Region, in which live more than half its 55 million people, is predominantly Moslem; its three southern regions are Christian or pagan. Because of its size, the north has been able to dominate national politics from the start, a fact that the more advanced south actively resents...
...Congressmen saw their mandates as springboards to instant wealth. Ministers wheeled and dealed: Okotie Eboh almost openly accepted dash from large corporations in return for favored treatment, and used his position as Finance Minister to drive through prohibitive tariffs to protect his own private shoe factory. In the Western Region, all but one of the government party's 54 regional assemblymen drew fat extra paychecks for doubling as Ministers or parliamentary officials-a feat that President Nnamdi Azikiwe (who sat out the revolt in England, recuperating from a recent illness) once described in disgust as "a world record...
...that part of Nigeria, there are always spare emirs and wazirs eager to take the place of an assassinated Premier; the West must have a popular Yoruba and the East a popular Ibo Premier; in the Midwest a balance of power among several tribes must the kept. Each region, each major tribe must be given a sufficient stake in the Federation to make the idea of secession unthinkable...