Nigeria's Independence
Nigeria became independent from Britain on 1 October 1960, the largest country in Africa by population. It was a colonial construction. The territory had been assembled from the Lagos colony, the Oil Rivers protectorate and the northern emirates, and amalgamated in 1914 by Frederick Lugard largely for administrative convenience — joining a Muslim north governed indirectly through its emirs under Islamic law, a Yoruba south-west with a long tradition of urban kingdoms and early missionary education, and an Igbo south-east of decentralised village republics. Indirect rule preserved those differences rather than dissolving them, and the constitutions of the 1950s federalised them into three regions, each dominated by one group and each with its own party. The north held slightly over half the population and therefore the federal parliament, and had far less Western education; the south had the schools, the oil and the civil service. Independence came under a federal prime minister from the north, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, with Nnamdi Azikiwe as governor-general. The arrangement lasted six years. A coup in January 1966 by mostly Igbo officers killed the prime minister and two regional premiers; a counter-coup in July killed the new head of state; pogroms in the north killed thousands of Igbo; and the east seceded as Biafra in 1967. The civil war that followed ran to 1970 and killed perhaps a million people, mostly by starvation. Oil was found at Oloibiri in 1956 and has funded every government since, along with the corruption that is the country's other standing subject.
- Year: 1960 CE
- Category: Independence
