Nigeria’s First Republic did not collapse because of one politician, one ethnic group or one disputed election. Between independence in 1960 and the military takeover of January 1966, Nigeria experienced a succession of political and constitutional crises that steadily damaged confidence in elections, regional governments, federal institutions and the possibility of resolving political disputes peacefully.
Nigeria became independent on 1 October 1960 under a federal parliamentary system substantially modelled on Westminster. Nnamdi Azikiwe served as Governor-General, while Abubakar Tafawa Balewa remained Prime Minister and head of government. On 1 October 1963, Nigeria became a republic. Azikiwe became President, a largely constitutional head of state, while Balewa continued as Prime Minister.
Strictly speaking, Nigeria became a republic only in 1963. Historians nevertheless commonly use the term First Republic for the wider civilian political era extending from independence in 1960 until military rule began in January 1966.
The tragedy of that period was not that democratic government was doomed from the beginning. Nigeria possessed functioning legislatures, competitive political parties, influential newspapers, powerful regional governments and politicians capable of building alliances across regional boundaries. The danger grew as political competition increasingly became a struggle over institutions that opposing political blocs no longer trusted to operate impartially.
Regional Parties and the Struggle for Federal Power
The three most powerful political parties had strong regional foundations.
The Northern People’s Congress, NPC, dominated much of the Northern Region. The National Council of Nigerian Citizens, NCNC, was strongest in the Eastern Region, although it maintained support and alliances outside the East. The Action Group, AG, governed the Western Region and also cultivated relationships with minority organisations elsewhere in the federation.
Describing these parties simply as ethnic or tribal organisations would be misleading. They developed economic and social programmes, sought support outside their strongest territories and entered alliances whenever political circumstances made such cooperation useful.
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Yet Nigeria’s federal structure made control of regional power extraordinarily important.
The Northern Region was geographically immense and possessed the population advantage upon which much federal representation depended. The Eastern and Western Regions had strong political establishments of their own. Minority communities within the large regions frequently feared domination by regional majorities and often sought alliances with parties based elsewhere.
No single party secured an outright national majority in the 1959 federal election. The NPC subsequently governed at the centre in alliance with the NCNC, while the Action Group became the principal federal opposition.
Coalition politics therefore worked, at least initially.
The difficulty was that control of government increasingly meant more than holding office for a limited period. Political power provided influence over appointments, public institutions, economic opportunities, security agencies and the resources political parties needed to prepare for future elections. Losing office could therefore appear to political leaders not as a temporary democratic setback, but as a threat to their continuing ability to compete.
That atmosphere made every later crisis more dangerous.
Crisis One: The Action Group Split and the 1962 Western Region Emergency
One of the first major ruptures came from inside the Action Group.
By 1962, relations between Obafemi Awolowo and Western Region Premier Samuel Ladoke Akintola had deteriorated badly. Their dispute involved personalities and control of the party, but it also reflected a significant disagreement over national political strategy.
Awolowo and his supporters favoured continued opposition to the NPC-led federal establishment. Akintola increasingly supported political accommodation with northern leaders, arguing in effect that the Western Region risked isolation if its governing politicians remained permanently opposed to the dominant coalition at the centre.
The disagreement soon became a struggle for control of the Western government.
The Action Group leadership moved against Akintola, and Western Region Governor Sir Adesoji Aderemi removed him as Premier after concluding that he no longer commanded majority support in the House of Assembly. Alhaji Dauda Soroye Adegbenro was appointed to succeed him.
Akintola challenged the legality of his removal.
The conflict reached the Western House of Assembly, where proceedings on 25 May 1962 descended into disorder and physical confrontation. What had started as an internal party struggle had become a serious constitutional crisis.
On 29 May 1962, Prime Minister Balewa asked the federal parliament to approve the declaration of a state of emergency in the Western Region. Parliament approved the measure. The regional government was suspended, and Dr Moses Adekoyejo Majekodunmi, then Federal Minister of Health, was appointed Administrator.
The federal government possessed constitutional emergency powers, but the legality of the measure did not eliminate its political consequences.
The Western Region was the principal base of the federal opposition. For many Action Group supporters, federal intervention therefore appeared to demonstrate that the machinery of the centre could be turned against a hostile regional government.
The constitutional question surrounding Akintola’s removal eventually reached the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Adegbenro v Akintola. In May 1963, the Privy Council held that the Governor was not restricted to a formal vote on the floor of the House when determining whether the Premier had lost majority support.
Meanwhile, the political struggle widened.
Awolowo was prosecuted for treasonable felony and related offences. In September 1963, he was convicted and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment.
The conviction resulted from a formal judicial process, but its political consequences were enormous. The leader of the federal opposition was removed from active politics at a time when his party had already fractured and lost control of its regional stronghold.
Nigeria’s political system survived the crisis, but confidence in the neutrality of its institutions had been seriously weakened.
Crisis Two: The 1962 and 1963 Census Disputes
If the Western emergency damaged political trust, the census crisis struck at the foundations of federal representation.
Population was politically crucial because parliamentary seats and aspects of resource distribution depended heavily on demographic strength.
Nigeria’s first post-independence census was conducted in 1962.
The preliminary figures placed the country’s population at approximately 45.26 million. About 22.01 million were recorded in the Northern Region, while the other regions together accounted for roughly 23.25 million.
The figures immediately provoked fierce political controversy.
Southern political leaders broadly welcomed a result that appeared to reduce the North’s previous demographic advantage, while northern leaders rejected the figures. Accusations of manipulation and deliberate inflation were exchanged between the regions.
The 1962 count was cancelled.
Another census was conducted in 1963. This time the figures restored a substantial northern population advantage. Authorities in the Eastern and Mid-Western Regions challenged the results, including through litigation, but the federal government ultimately accepted them.
The dispute was about much more than population statistics.
Nigeria’s major political blocs no longer trusted one another to count the population. When parliamentary representation depended heavily on population, disagreement over the census became disagreement over who possessed the political weight to influence the national government.
The 1962 and 1963 census crises therefore deepened suspicion that even the basic rules governing political competition could become objects of sectional struggle.
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Crisis Three: The 1964 Federal Election and the Battle Over Legitimacy
By 1964, the political alliances that had governed Nigeria after independence had changed dramatically.
The Nigerian National Alliance, NNA, centred on the NPC and included Akintola’s Nigerian National Democratic Party, NNDP, and other allies.
Opposing it was the United Progressive Grand Alliance, UPGA, which brought together the NCNC, the Action Group and allied political organisations.
Federal elections were scheduled for 30 December 1964.
The campaign unfolded amid serious allegations of intimidation, obstruction of opposition candidates and abuses in the nomination process.
UPGA leaders complained that numerous candidates, particularly in the Northern Region, had been returned unopposed under circumstances the alliance considered improper. President Nnamdi Azikiwe favoured postponement of the election, while Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa insisted that voting should proceed.
UPGA then pursued a boycott, although the effectiveness of that boycott varied considerably across the federation.
The election did not immediately destroy Nigeria’s government, but its aftermath produced a serious constitutional confrontation. Azikiwe initially resisted inviting Balewa to form another government, while Balewa and his supporters maintained that the election result entitled him to continue as Prime Minister.
A political compromise eventually prevented complete constitutional paralysis, and supplementary voting followed in constituencies where effective polling had not occurred.
Balewa remained Prime Minister.
Yet something fundamental had changed.
The central argument was no longer merely about which alliance had secured more seats. Rival political blocs were now questioning whether the electoral process itself remained a legitimate means of deciding who should govern.
Once that confidence begins to disappear, elections lose their ability to function as peaceful mechanisms for transferring or confirming political power.
Crisis Four: The 1965 Western Region Election and Political Violence
The most explosive civilian crisis unfolded in Western Nigeria.
Regional elections were held on 11 October 1965. Akintola’s NNDP government faced an opposition convinced that it enjoyed greater popular support.
The election was accompanied by allegations of intimidation, obstruction, manipulation of ballot processes and falsification of results.
The NNDP was officially declared victorious.
Its opponents rejected the outcome.
Political violence escalated rapidly. Opponents were attacked, homes and other property were burned, people were killed and retaliatory violence spread across parts of the Western Region.
The violence became popularly associated with the expression “Operation Wetie”, particularly in connection with attacks in which victims or property were doused with petrol and set alight.
That phrase, however, captures only part of the wider crisis. Western Nigeria experienced political killings, assaults, intimidation, arson, destruction of property and reprisals involving rival political groups.
The violence was extensive, lethal and politically destabilising.
By late 1965, an important part of the federation had reached a point where significant numbers of citizens no longer believed that ordinary electoral and legal processes could settle the struggle for power.
That represented a profound crisis for Nigeria’s First Republic.
The January 1966 Coup and the End of Civilian Government
The breakdown of civilian politics created a dangerous political environment, but it did not make military intervention inevitable.
On 15 January 1966, a group of army officers launched a coup in several parts of Nigeria.
Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Northern Region Premier Sir Ahmadu Bello, Western Region Premier Samuel Ladoke Akintola and Federal Finance Minister Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh were among the senior political figures killed. Senior military officers were also killed.
Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu became the most publicly prominent coup leader after announcing military action in the North.
The coup plotters did not, however, succeed in establishing themselves as Nigeria’s new national government.
Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, the General Officer Commanding the Nigerian Army, emerged as the senior military authority after forces loyal to the army command contained much of the rebellion.
On 16 January, Acting President Nwafor Orizu announced that the Council of Ministers had decided to transfer administration to the Armed Forces. Ironsi subsequently assumed authority as head of the military government.
The officers who launched the coup on 15 January were not synonymous with the Nigerian Army as a whole, and Ironsi was not simply one of the junior officers who had initiated the rebellion.
Civilian constitutional government nevertheless ended.
The soldiers who planned the coup had made an independent decision to use military force against the political order. The failures of civilian politicians help explain the environment in which military intervention became conceivable, but they did not make military rule historically unavoidable.
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Conclusion
Nigeria’s First Republic collapsed through an accumulation of political failures rather than one decisive quarrel.
The 1962 Western Region crisis convinced many opposition supporters that federal power could be directed against a regional rival. The census controversies transformed population statistics into struggles over political supremacy. The 1964 federal election weakened confidence that national elections could be conducted fairly. The 1965 Western election showed how quickly an electoral dispute could turn into extensive political violence.
By the beginning of 1966, Nigeria still possessed constitutional institutions, but public and political confidence in several of those institutions had been gravely weakened.
Political rivals increasingly feared that losing power meant losing access not only to government, but also to the mechanisms required to challenge those who held it.
That was the deeper crisis.
Democracy depends partly on elections, but it depends just as heavily on the willingness of political actors to believe that temporary defeat does not permanently exclude them from power.
When census figures, legislatures, electoral processes and security institutions are regarded principally as instruments in struggles between political rivals, constitutional government becomes extraordinarily vulnerable.
Nigeria’s civilian political class helped create that vulnerability.
The coup plotters then made the separate and consequential decision to exploit it.
Author’s Note
The history of Nigeria’s First Republic is neither a simple story of corrupt politicians nor a romantic account of a perfect democracy destroyed without warning by soldiers. It was a functioning constitutional system weakened gradually by regional rivalry, institutional mistrust, disputed elections and an increasingly dangerous struggle over the consequences of losing political power. The experience shows that democratic government depends not only upon constitutions and elections, but also upon confidence that institutions will remain available to both winners and losers. Once that confidence deteriorated, the First Republic became dangerously exposed to those prepared to replace civilian politics with force.
References
Diamond, Larry. Class, Ethnicity and Democracy in Nigeria: The Failure of the First Republic. London: Macmillan, 1988.
Anglin, Douglas G. “Brinkmanship in Nigeria: The Federal Elections of 1964–65.” International Journal, Vol. 20, No. 2, 1965, pp. 173–188.
United States Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXIV, Africa, Document 358, “The Situation in Nigeria”, 30 December 1964.
United States Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXIV, Africa, Document 361, editorial note on the January 1966 coup and transfer of power.
National Population Commission, Nigeria. History of Population Census in Nigeria, official historical account of the 1962 and 1963 censuses.
Adegbenro v Akintola and Another [1963] AC 614, Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 27 May 1963.
Federal Government of Nigeria. Nigeria Year Book 1967. Official account of the transition from civilian to military administration in January 1966.
