Nnamdi Azikiwe

Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe

[[Image:{{{image name}}}|225px|center|Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe]]
1st President of Nigeria
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Political party	National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons; Nigerian People's Party

Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe (November 16, 1904 – May 11, 1996), usually referred to as Nnamdi Azikiwe, or, informally and popularly, as "Zik", was the founder of modern Nigerian nationalism and the first President of Nigeria, holding the position throughout the Nigerian First Republic. From 1960 until 1963 he was Governor-General of independent Nigeria. From 1963 until ousted by a coup in 1966, he was Nigeria's first President. Educated in the ]United States, he edited the African Morning Post from 1934 until 1937, advocating pan-African unity. From 1937 until he edited the West African Pilot.

He entered politics in 1946 as co-founder of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons, which, based in Nigeria's Igbo dominated Western region, emerged as one of three main parties, each of which was regionally and ethnically distinctive. In the North, the Northern Peoples Congress was Hausa-Fulani while the Western Action Group was Yoruba. Entering the regional Assembly in 1947, he became leader of the opposition in 1951 to the Action Group, from which the NCNC had separated. In 1952 he moved to the Eastern region, where he was elected to the Assembly as Chief Minister.

Early life

Azikiwe was born on November 16, 1904 in Zungeru, northern Nigeria to Igbo parents. Nnamdi means "My father is alive" in the Igbo language. After studying at the Methodist Boys' High School in Lagos, Azikiwe went to the United States. While there he attended Howard University, Washington DC before enrolling in and graduating from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania in 1930. He obtained a masters degree in 1933 from a prestigious Ivy League institution, the University of Pennsylvania. He worked as an instructor at Lincoln before returning to Africa.

Newspaper career

After teaching at Lincoln, Azikiwe, in November 1934, took the position of editor for the African Morning Post, a daily newspaper in Accra, Ghana. In that position he promoted a pro-African nationalist agenda. Smertin has described his writing there: "In his passionately denunciatory articles and public statements he censured the existing colonial order: the restrictions on the Africans' right to express their opinions, and racial discrimination. He also criticised those Africans who belonged to the 'elite' of colonial society and favoured retaining the existing order, as they regarded it as the basis of their well being."

As a result of publishing an article on May 15, 1936 entitled "Has the African A God?" written by I.T. A. Wallace-Johnson he was brought to trial on charges of sedition. Although he was found guilty of the charges and sentenced to six months in prison, he was acquitted on appeal. He returned to Lagos, Nigeria, in 1937 and founded the West African Pilot which he used as a vehicle to foster Nigerian nationalism. He founded the Zik Group of Newspapers, publishing multiple newspapers in cities across the country.

Political career

Pre Independence

After a successful journalism enterprise, Azikiwe entered into politics, co-founding the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) alongside Herbert Macaulay in 1944. He became the secretary-general of the National Council in 1946, and was the following year elected to the Legislative Council of Nigeria. In 1951, he became the leader of the Opposition to the government of Obafemi Awolowo in the Western Region's House of Assembly. Nigeria's three regions were based on tribal configurations, with the Hausa and Fulani in the north), Yoruba in the south-west), and Igbo or Ibo in the south-east. Nigeria itself had been formed by combining the former Protectorates into a single colony in 1914. In 1952, Azikiwe, an Igbo, moved to the Eastern Region, and was elected to the position of Chief Minister, and in 1954 became Premier of Nigeria's Eastern Region.

Between 1957 and 1958, Nnamdi Azikiwe with the leaders of the other two main parties, Obafemi Awolowo of the Action Group and Ahmadu Bello of the NPC, led by Abubakar Tafawi Balewa who was Premier of the Federal Government and also a member of the NCP, took part in the Constitutional talks in London. Following independence, a NCP-NCNC coalition won the national election. Belawi became federal Prime Minister. Bello and Awolowo continued in office as Prime Ministers of the North and Western regions respectively. Awolowo also headed the official opposition at federal level. Azikiwe accepted appointment as Governor-General. Leadership of the Western region

Presidency (1963-1966)

On November 16, 1960, he became the Governor General and on the same day became the first Nigerian named to the Queen's Privy Council. With the proclamation of a republic in 1963, he became the first President of Nigeria, while Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was the Prime Minister.

Nigeria's political parties were pulling in different directions. The constitution allocated seats in the federal assembly based on the population of each of the regions. When the former Southern Cameroon joined Nigeria as part of the Northern region in 1961, this guaranteed the North a larger number of seats. The NCNC favored the creation of smaller states to replace the regions and a weaker central government. The Action Group favored a strong central government and also the formation of a West African Federation in which Nigeria, Ghana and Sierre Leone would unite as a single entity. The NPC was criticized for privileging Northern concerns and for unfairly distributing the oil revenue, which came from the North. In December 1964, Nigeria held its second general election. Two coalitions emerged to contest the election, the Nigerian National Alliance (NNA) consisting of the NPC and the Nigerian National Democratic Party, which contested the Action Group in the West (broadly federalist) and the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA) consisting of the NCNC and those members of the Action Group who had not defected to the NNDP. Before the election, controversy about the accuracy of the electoral registers led to allegations of vote-rigging and the UPGA called a boycott. Due to the boycott and widespread dissatisfaction with the electoral process, only four out of fifteen million people eligible to vote did so. Manly polling stations in the East did not open, honoring the boycott. In March, 1965 an election was held in those constituencies that had boycotted the December poll. The UPGA ended up with 108 seats, the NNA with 189 of which 162 were held by members of the NNC. Even before the supplementary election was held, Balewa was invited to form his second administration. In November, 1965 election were held in each region. The UPGA, in opposition at the federal level, was determined to consolidate its power in both the Southern regions, the East and the West and the federal territory surrounding the capital. However, these elections were won by the NNA-coalition, despite the opposition's strong campaign.

Allegations of corruption and fraud followed, as did riots and demonstrations in which about 2,000 people died mainly in the West. Politicians campaigning outside their own regions even found the hotels refused to accommodate them. Responding to this violence, Belawa delegated extraordinary powers to each regional government in an attempt to restore stability.

Azikiwe and his civilian colleagues were removed from power in the military coup of January 15, 1966. During the Biafran (1967–1970) war of secession, Azikiwe became a spokesman for the nascent Igbo republic and an adviser to its leader Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu; in 1969, however, he switched to the side of the Nigerian government. After the war, he served as Chancellor of Lagos University from 1972 to 1976. He joined the Nigerian People's Party in 1978, making unsuccessful bids for the presidency in 1979 and again in 1983. He left politics involuntarily after the military coup on December 31, 1983. He died on May 11, 1996 at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, in Enugu, Enugu State, after a protracted sickness.

His time in politics spanned most of his adult life and he was referred to by admirers as "The Great Zik of Africa". His motto in politics was "talk I listen, you listen I talk".

The writings of Azikiwe spawned a philosophy of African liberation Zikism, which identifies five concepts for Africa's movement towards freedom: spiritual balance, social regeneration, economic determination, mental emancipation, and political resurgence. [1]

Places named after Azikiwe

Places named after Azikiwe include the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja, the Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium in Enugu, and the Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka, Anambra State. His portrait adorns Nigeria's five hundred naira currency note. Several streets and university campus hostels are also named after him including Nnamdi Azikiwe street in Lagos, Zik Avenue in Enugu, Ziks Flat at University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Azikiwe Hall at University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

Works

• Zik (1961)
• My Odyssey: An Autobiography (1971) — ISBN 0900966262
• Renascent Africa (1973) — ISBN 071461744X
• Liberia in World Politics (1931) — ISBN 0837137748
• One hundred quotable quotes and poems of the Rt. Hon. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (1966) — ISBN 9782736090

Notable quotes

"There is plenty of room at the top because very few people care to travel beyond the average route. And so most of us seem satisfied to remain within the confines of mediocrity" — from My Odyssey, No. 5

Further reading

• Zikist philosophy
• Zik of New Africa (1961), by Vincent Ikeotuonye
• A Life of Azikiwe (1965), by K.A.B. Jones-Quartey

Trivia

• Nnamdi Azikiwe and Kwame Nkrumah, first Presidents of Nigeria and Ghana respectively, were educated at the same tertiary institutions: Lincoln University and the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania.
• Both Azikiwe and Nkrumah were members of the Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Incorporated. [2]

=References

• Azikiwe, Nnamdi. 1968. Renascent Africa. Cass library of African studies. Africana modern library, no. 6. London: Cass. ISBN 9780714617442
• Azikiwe, Nnamdi. 1994. My Odyssey: an autobiography. Ibadan: Spectrum Books. ISBN 9789782462275
• Collins, Robert O. 1990. Collins, Robert O. 1990. Western African history. Topics in world history. New York: M. Wiener Pub. Topics in world history. New York: M. Wiener Pub. ISBN 9781558760158
• Igwe, Agbafor. 1992. Nnamdi Azikiwe: the philosopher of our time. Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension Pub. Co. ISBN 9789781560019

Preceded by: Position created	Senate President of Nigeria 1960–1960	Succeeded by: Dennis Osadebey
Preceded by: Sir James Robertson	Governor-General of Nigeria 1960–1963	Succeeded by: Position abolished
Preceded by: Position created	President of Nigeria 1963–1966	Succeeded by: Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi

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