Behind Nigeria's Revolt

...but the NNA proceeded with the scheduled Ballotting and won 198 seats, while UPGA, though boycotting, gained 55 seats, with 54 remaining unfilled...

...Even more significant was the reaction of the leaders of the Ibo State Union, a federation of the myriad Ibo voluntary associations that have effectively aided the tribe's advancement for decades...

...IT WAS in these circumstances that the Ibo officers finally took action...

...Relations of this kind make many comparatively well-off Nigerians part of a communication network that reaches back to the village...

...While the latter was actually a leader of the Ibodominated National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC), there was strong opposition to him from the younger Ibo militants in the Council...

...Awolowo and other Action Group leaders deserved the blame they received for these shady dealings, but Akintola, who had been Premier of the West since 1960, should scarcely have been exculpated for his government's behavior...

...It is, therefore quite likely that the Ibo officers banked upon the support of the Tiv soldiers in their coup against the Northerndominated Federal regime...

...Ibo militants in the youth section of the NCNC, known as the Zikist Youth Movement, dismissed the NCNC leaders' participation in the Federal coalition as "a gross betrayal of those [Ibo] nationalists whose sacrifices had made independence possible...

...Akintola carried the central and northern Yoruba groups like the Oyo, Oshum, Ondo, Ife, and Illorin, which in general comprise the traditional political and religious hierarchy of the tribe...

...But Balewa gained the upper hand, largely because the Nigerian Army, still commanded by a British officer, General Welby-Everard, informed President Azikiwe that it took orders from the Prime Minister...

...Under the shrewd leadership of the Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, the NPC proceeded to place as many Northerners as it could into key bureaucratic posts and into such Ibo preserves as the officer corps of the Armed Forces...

...This involved the unwillingness of the dominant parties in each Region to permit their opponents to campaign freely, and from July to election day on December 30, 1964, political violence, organized by hired thugs euphemistically called "party stalwarts, was pandemic...

...The NCNC also acquiesced in less overt Federal actions designed to discredit Awolowo and the Action Group in favor of Akintola and the UPP...

...For wealth and position in modern society offers them a way to influence and penetrate the established hierarchy and use it for their own ends in national politics...

...It must also have been of some importance to the Ibo officers who launched the coup that Tiv tribesmen make up a large proportion of the Army's lower ranks...

...The Northern People's Congress gained control of the Federal government after the 1959 general elections through a coalition with the Ibo-controlled National Council of Nigerian Citizens...

...Martin Kilson, lecturer in government at Harvard, is author of the forthcoming, Political Change in a West African State...

...There followed a period of desperate uncertainty during which the future of the Federation itself was often in doubt...

...Clearly the NCNC'S acquiescence in the Federal government's systematic destruction of the Action Group under Awolowo was a gross failure in democratic responsibility and it was soon to reap the resulting whirlwind-as did, alas, the federation too...

...Yet the post-independence Nigerian experience did not offer the rebels very many alternative principles for organizing a coup...

...Thus, on the eve of the election UPGA announced that it would boycott the polls, and it did...

...faced increasing pressures from the local government and the Emirates, the feudal units that constitute the basis of power in the Northern Region...

...The election was fought by two large party alliances: One comprised the Nigerian National Alliance (NNA) organized in August 1964 from the NPC, a new Nigerian National Democratic party (NNDP) led by Akintola (which merged his UPP with the disbanded Western Region branch of the NCNC), the Midwestern Democratic Front, and the separatist Niger Delta Congress...

...the Eastern NCNC did not...

...Chief Samuel Akintola, Premier of the Western Region...

...Another rift quickly ensued, however, and it was never really resolved...

...They felt impelled to exaggerate their "Yorubaness" in order to counterbalance the accepted authority of the hierarchy...

...At least superficially, the crisis seemed over...

...total conscription or totalitarian mobilization of all the nation's cultural, spiritual, economic and political resources...

...Since 1954, Obi has propounded what he calls the ideology of the "regimental" state or "Kemalism"-"the only sane ideology for Negro (African) nationalists in general and Nigerian nationalists in particular...

...He was buried, rather symbolically, in the same grave with four Yoruba and Hausa officers who opposed the coup...

...Thus the military regime that has taken over in Lagos represents a victory for the Ibo tribe, which dominates the Army...

...The split within the Action Group soon degenerated into an intratribal feud...

...In 1962, Ibos constituted 80 per cent of Nigeria's 80 topranking officers in a total corps of 300-the remainder, in order of predominance, being Yoruba and Hausa (largely of the Kanuri tribe...

...In early 1963 too, the MidWest Region was instituted, further reducing Awolowo's power in the West...

...In early 1962, the Federal government passed legislation permitting the creation of a small fourth region, the Mid-West, to be carved entirely out of the Western Region and containing Awolowo's major sources of strength...

...But by that time Aguiyi-Ironsi, presumably on his own initiative, had suspended both the Federal and Regional governments and declared a military regime with himself at the helm...

...In May of the same year the political dispute between the two warring Yoruba groups took a violent turn-fomented by the Akintola camp-and the Federal government, again with NCNC support, imposed an emergency administration, which in early 1963 turned over the reins of office in the West to Akintola and his newly-formed United People's party (UPP...

...Here then was a rebellionnot unlike many others-that set out to correct the glaring wrongs of a political system, but itself adopted the very fallacies responsible for the system's own problems...

...Whether the average Ibo, let alone other Nigerians, want General Aguiyi-Ironsi to be their Kemal is, of course, still unknown...

...the NCNC, the second largest party in Paliament, was amply supplied with able men, and readily joined the Cabinet, receiving 11 of the 23 ministries, including Finance, Foreign Affairs, Justice and Labor...

...A compromise was reached maintaining the previous 312 constituencies...

...Indeed, it was to facilitate such penetration that Yoruba-Ijebus like Awolowo, despite their greater modernity and broader political ambitions, precipitated the fiercely tribalist conflict in the Western Region...

...The Ibo role in the coup also reflects a deep-seated political discontent, brought to the surface during recent elections marred by violence and fraud...

...TRIBAL POWER STRUGGLE Behind Nigeria's Revolt By Martin Kilson The Nigerian rebellion, initiated in the early hours of Saturday, January 15 by junior officers professing disgust for the tribal factionalism and venality that have marked the country's politics since independence in 1960, has produced a persistent factional pattern of its own...

...The rebellious officers, all members of the Ibo tribe hailing from the Eastern Region in southern Nigeria, trusted only their own tribesmen in planning the coup, and no Ibo leaders were among the first victims-although they surely have been no less venal or tribalistic than other Nigerian politicians...

...Members of that tribe working in the North (clerks, traders, businessmen, junior civil servants, etc...

...The assassinations carried out by the young rebels decimated the political leadership of the non-Ibo North and West...

...The North received 26 more seats than the combined total of the other regions...

...If the disintegration of the Nigerian federation began with the intra-tribal dispute in the Western Region in 1962, the Federal elections in December 1964 sounded its death knell...

...A commission of inquiry, for example, investigating the use of public funds belonging to statutory corporations in the West-especially the Western Region Marketing Board, responsible for marketing cocoa and other crops, and the Finance Corporation-revealed that $56 million or more had been lent to Yoruba businessmen without any provision for protecting the public interest, and that at least $11.2 million was used to finance the Action Group itself...

...Chike Obi, a Cambridgetrained mathematician who teaches at the University of Ibadan in the West and leads the minor Dynamic party...

...Among those slain were Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, vice president of the Northern People's Congress (NPC) and Prime Minister of the Federal government...

...A pagan group from the Plateau Province in the southern tier of the North, the Tiv have never been fond of their Muslim overlords...

...Throughout this century the Tiv have rebelled time and again against Hausa domination (in 1906, the 1920s, 1939 and more recently in 1960, 1963, and 1964...

...The 1964 Federal elections, unlike those administered by the British in 1954 and 1959, was complete chaos with the contestants flouting every rule...

...Awolowo was backed by an alliance composed largely of southern and eastern Yoruba groups including Ijebu, Ijebu-Remo, some Egba, and some Benin...

...The other grouping was the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA) organized in June 1964 out of the NCNC (the Ibo-dominated group now the ruling party in both Eastern and Mid-Western Regions), the Action Group (now the minority party in the West under the leadership of Alhaji Dauda Adegbenro, an Egba-Yoruba businessman), and the Northern Progressive Front Alliance (a small radical party in the North...

...He spent the last academic year as visiting professor at the University of Ghana...

...But while the new composition of the Federal government appeared to satisfy the claims of the politicians, it failed to satisfy many of their followers, particularly the Ibo...

...Interestingly, the Ibo political leaders of NCNC seemed unconcerned about NPC actions as long as their own Federal largesse and Regional power lose were unaffected...

...What may be called the grass roots Ibo leadership elements-those, that is, who are in daily touch with the average Ibo man-saw the new Federal Cabinet as a setback for Ibo influence in Nigeria...

...That they would intimately sympathize with the daily plight of their tribesmen is of little surprise...

...In education and most modern skills the Ibo are well ahead of the Hausa and other Muslim and pagan peoples in the North, and perhaps a stride ahead of the Yoruba, their fierce competitors who dominate the Western Region...

...The NPC, however, was clearly the senior partner and quickly moved to execute its Federal strategynamely use of Federal power to widen Northern influence in Nigerian society as a whole...

...Compounding these reactions was the fact that throughout 1965 countless Ibo refugees, many of them penniless, were returning to Eastern Nigeria from the North, where the government and Emirates had harassed them in numerous ways...

...An Ibo who did not directly participate in the coup, he was nevertheless informed of its progress and succeeded in rallying most Army units to his side...

...Emerging imperiously from the near pandemonium of the week following the uprising was the commander of the Army, General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi...

...The Ibo role in the coup reflects the tribe's dominant position in Nigerian development...

...Chief Obafemi Awolowo, leader of the Action Group, favored national competition and fervently hoped to win control of the Federal government...

...Though traditionally inferior in social and political standing to the central and northern groups behind Akintola, the southern and eastern groups behind Awolowo and his national ambitions have more eagerly and successfully adopted the conventions and techniques of modernization...

...It was against this background of a political and cultural split within the Yoruba that the 1962 crisis convulsed the Action Group...

...Though little that is known about the Ibo officers would indicate the shape or content of such a development, it is not insignificant that all of those who participated in the coup came from the same area in Eastern Nigeria, Onitsha...

...and Chief Festus OkotieEboh, Federal Minister of Finance and member of the Urhobo tribe in the Niger Delta...

...The Ibo, in fact, were a prime target of the NPC'S "Northernization" policy, even though the NCNC was a partner in the Federal Cabinet...

...A rift developed on the results of the 1963 census, which showed an increase from 35 million to 55 million over the census a decade before and kept the North with nearly twice the population of the southern Regions...

...That is also the home of Dr...

...He was reported dead shortly afterward...

...Akintola's government accepted the figures along with the NPC, but the NCNC rejected their use to reapportion the electoral constituencies...

...The UPGA accepted the arrangement, agreed to participate in a new election for the 54 vacant seats in Parliament, and last March won 52 of them...

...Not only were the Yoruba-especially the strongly anti-Ibo ones under Akintola-now well-placed to check Ibo advancement, but the Northerners were more favorably situated than ever to assert their sway throughout the country...

...In April, Balewa announced his new Cabinet of 80 members, of whom 33 were from his own Northern NPC, 21 from the Western NNDP, 23 from the Eastern NCNC and 3 Independents...

...Only in the North did the rebellious officers resist him, and their opposition collapsed by Monday when their leader, Chukwama Nzugwu, a young Sandhurst-educated Major of Ibo parentage, announced his return to the fold...

...The NPC itself lacked both a clear majority in Parliament or enough men capable of running the country...

...Sir Ahmadu Bello, president of the NPC, Premier, and Sardauna of Sokoto (or chief Muslim religious official) in the North...

...But considering the obviously devastating blow dealt the Nigerian federation by the coup, Aguiyi-Ironsi may have little choice but to prove the man on horseback that Chike Obi has dreamed of for a decade...

...The UPGA persuaded Dr...

...When the NPC decided to counter Awolowo's ambition for Action Group influence beyond the Western Region, the Northerners received support from the Eastern NCNC...

...Chief S. L. Akintola, deputy leader and Regional Premier in 1962, urged instead consolidation of the party in the West and formation of a Federal coalition that would respect the regional supremacy of each party (the Northern NPC also supported this line...

...Accordingly, Azikiwe capitulated, and Balewa, in return committed himself to a broadly-based Cabinet...

...At the annual conference of the Action Group in January-February 1962, Akintola rallied a major part of the party leadership, especially the traditional rulers (on whom the party relied heavily for its electoral support) and many wealthy Yoruba businessmen...

...Disintegration of the Nigerian federation began in 1962...

...With a few minor changes to accommodate the new Mid-West Region...

...Their President-General, Chief Z. C. Obi, damned the new regime as "a conspiracy and a carefully laid out plan to reduce the Ibos to second class citizens if not to annihilate them...

...And the intervention of the NPCdominated Federal government on the side of Akintola and the traditional Yoruba establishment turned the tribal cleavage into a national issue of far-reaching consequence...

...In that year the Action Group, ruling party in the Yoruba-dominated Western Region, was convulsed by an ideological and tactical dispute over whether it should compete for office in other Regions...

...Nnamdi Azikiwe, founder of the NCNC and President of the Republic, to refrain from calling upon the NPC'S Federal leader, Balewa, to form a government until new and free elections were held...

...Ibo officers, like Ibo lawyers, doctors and businessmen are involved with the daily affairs of poorer kin who often move near them or even join their households...

...The NCNC-controlled UPGA stood to lose most in this struggle, for the restrictions against it in the North and West meant it had no chance of winning Federal officea goal long cherished by the Ibo...

...In African society kinship obligations can often overcome social stratification...

...The declaration by General Aguiyi-Ironsi's military regime against the return to power of the ousted political class could portend a radical turn in Nigeria's future...

...This, combined with the rigged defeat of the NCNC and its allies in the October Western Region election-which caused killings in the hundreds that continued down to the recent coup-further strengthened the fears of many articulate Ibos about the tribe's future in Nigerian politics...

...In September, the Ibo State Union protested to the Prime Minister over such treatment of Ibos in both the North and the West, but to no avail...