Nnamdi Azikiwe
Before he became a journalist, Nnamdi Azikiwe did well in school. He moved from Nigeria to the Gold Coast (Ghana) and was editor of the African Morning Post for three years. Renascent Africa is a book that was made from a collection of his articles for the Post. Around this time, he wrote that he wanted to shock Africa out of its “arrested mental development” and state of stagnation caused by British colonialism. He was charged with publishing a seditious article but was found not guilty because of a technicality. In 1937, he moved to Nigeria and started Zik’s Press, Ltd.
In November of that year, he put out the West African Pilot for the first time. The Pilot called itself “a sentinel of liberty and a guardian of civilization.” It used a sensational and aggressive style to praise Africans’ achievements and criticize the colonial government. Nnamdi Azikiwe also joined the Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM), which was the country’s biggest nationalist group and won all three Lagos Legislative Council seats in 1938. But “Zik,” as he was now known, quickly decided that the NYM leaders, who were mostly older than him, were too moderate.
Zik got along well with Governor Sir Bernard Bourdillon before the war broke out in 1939. He helped Zik get land from the government for his printing presses and put him on a number of official committees. But the high inflation during the war against Nazi imperialism made Zik much more critical of the British government. Nigeria had a lot of trouble between 1944 and 1948, and Nnamdi Azikiwe was at the center of it. Sir Arthur Richards, who was stricter than Bourdillon, took over as governor, and he was determined to fight the growing nationalist movement led by Azikiwe.
Between the two men, something like a personal grudge grew. The National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons was started by Nnamdi Azikiwe and the veteran nationalist Herbert Macaulay in 1944. (NCNC). Nnamdi Azikiwe wanted self-government in 15 years, but the new Richards Constitution, which was about to be put into place, was meant to keep British control, even though it gave the Legislative Council an unofficial majority. Zik backed a “general strike” of 30,000 workers in June 1945, and the government banned two of his papers in July. A week later, Zik said that he had found out that the government was planning to kill him.
The Colonial Office didn’t think much of these claims. But Zik might have taken the story seriously. There is no doubt that he used his skills as a journalist to get the word out about his cause. He was tall, handsome, and charismatic, and he was a great speaker. The Igbo had liked him for a long time, but now many people saw him as a hero. Richards thought Zik was “an irresponsible lunatic,” so he sued Zik’s newspaper, the Daily Comet, for libel. The editor of the Daily Comet was sent to prison, but Zik was left alone.
But the governor was glad that when he left office in 1947, his constitution was still working pretty well. Even Nnamdi Azikiwe, who won a seat for Lagos, didn’t stay away from the Legislative Council for very long. But Richards’ happiness didn’t last long. In August 1948, the British said that the constitution would be changed (and within a few years, the appointment of Nigerian ministers signaled internal self-government for Nigeria and the beginnings of speedy decolonization). Some historians say that Zik forced the British to speed up the reform process.
The British were worried about the rise of the radical “Zikists,” who were originally a group of young men who promised to protect their hero during the assassination scare. However, they didn’t understand “Zikism,” which lacked rigor. But no one forced anyone to decide to get rid of the Richards Constitution. The riots in Accra in February 1948 led to the creation of a commission that called for a lot of changes to the Gold Coast’s constitution. The Colonial Office decided that Nigeria had to follow suit.
Azikiwe was pushed into the background almost right away. Non-Igbos were upset by the fact that he was able to become Nigeria’s most famous nationalist and get a lot of attention for himself. Zik always said that he spoke for all of Nigeria, but the emirs of northern Nigeria disowned him early on, and in 1941 he got into trouble with the NYM. After the war, constitutional reform opened up politics in a way that made the NCNC’s rivals, such as the Action Group in the west and the Northern People’s Congress, possible.
Because the northern region was so big, it had more power in the Nigerian federation, and Zik had to be happy with being the premier of Eastern Nigeria from 1957 to 1959. Regional self-government was put off for a year because the Foster-Sutton Commission looked into his decision to put £2 million of public money into the African Continental Bank. As a result, he was given a mild reprimand. When Nigeria became independent in 1960, he was president of the Nigerian senate and, soon after, governor general, but these were mostly ceremonial roles.
The real power was in the regions and with the prime minister of the whole country. Zik helped start the University of Nigeria at Nsukka after the country became independent. After the coup of 1966, he was a consultant to the military government of the eastern region. Until he died in 1996, he was a respected elder statesman.
Also Read: The Nationalist Leader Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Biography (1909-1987)
