Word: sardauna
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Dates: during 1957-1957
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Bandwagons in Mayfair. Unity, if it comes at all, will have to be achieved by agreement among the colorful chief delegates: tall, aristocratic Alhaji Ahmadu, the Islamic and potent Sardauna of Sokoto, an Arabian Nights figure in a billowing green turban and red velvet robe, whose Moslem Hausas consider the pagans of the South no better than savages; boyish, chubby-faced Yoruba Chieftain Obafemi Awolowo, one of the shrewdest political minds in 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...
...national convention. Each installed a huge staff in a top Mayfair hotel and hired a pressagent to get the bandwagons going. Meanwhile, as spokesman for the proud and feudal Moslem emirs of the North, who want independence with no democratic folderol to go with it, the Sardauna let it be known that only a Northerner would be acceptable as Premier to the 17 million people of his region, who outnumber both other regions combined...
Gerrymanders in the Bush. To counter the Sardauna's majority, the leaders of the South hoped to gerrymander a "Middle Belt" out of the Moslem North, consisting of some 6,000,000 pagan tribesmen who since slave days have hated the Moslems. Zik himself nurtures a private plan to carve some non-Yoruba areas out of his chief rival's Western territories, while his opponents want to set up a new state among the non-Ibos in Zik's own Niger River delta...