INDEPENDENT NIGERIA (1960)

By a British Act of Parliament, Nigeria became an independent country (as a Commonwealth realm) within the Commonwealth on October 1, 1960. Azikiwe was installed as governor-general of the federation and Balewa continued to serve as head of a democratically elected parliamentary, but now completely sovereign, government. The governor-general represented the British monarch as head of state and was appointed by the Crown on the advice of the Nigerian prime minister in consultation with the regional premiers. The governor-general, in turn, was responsible for appointing the prime minister and for choosing a candidate from among contending leaders when there was no parliamentary majority. Otherwise, the governor-general’s office was essentially ceremonial.

The government was responsible to a Parliament composed of the popularly elected 312-member House of Representatives and the 44-member Senate, chosen by the regional legislatures.

In general, the regional constitutions followed the federal model, both structurally and functionally. The most striking departure was in the Northern Region, where special provisions brought the regional constitution into consonance with Islamic law and custom. The similarity between the federal and regional constitutions was deceptive, however, and the conduct of public affairs reflected wide differences among the regions.

In February 1961, a plebiscite was conducted to determine the disposition of the Southern Cameroons and Northern Cameroons, which were administered by Britain as United Nations Trust Territories. By an overwhelming majority, voters in the Southern Cameroons opted to join formerly French-administered Cameroon over integration with Nigeria as a separate federated region. In the Northern Cameroons, however, the largely Muslim electorate chose to merge with Nigeria’s Northern Region.

References

• John M. Carland, The Colonial Office and Nigeria (1985), pp. 1–2. “Crown Colony Government in Nigeria and elsewhere in the British Empire was autocratic government. Officials at the Colonial Office and colonial governors in the field never pretended otherwise. In fact, autocratic, bureaucratic rule was the true legacy of British colonial government in Africa.”
• · Carland (1985), The Colonial Office and Nigeria, p. 48.
• · Robin Hermann, “Empire Builders and Mushroom Gentlemen: The Meaning of Money in Colonial Nigeria”, International Journal of African Historical Studies 44.3, 2011.
• · Ken Swindell, “The Commercial Development of the North: Company and Government Relations, 1900–1906”, Paideuma 40, 1994, pp. 149–162.
• · Carland, The Colonial Office and Nigeria (1985), p. 90.
• · David Richardson, “Background to annexation: Anglo-African credit relations in the Bight of Biafra, 1700–1891”; in Pétré-Grenouilleau, From Slave Trade to Empire (2004), pp. 47–68.
• · See Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776), Vol. 2 p. 112. (Quoted in Richardson, 2004). “Though the Europeans possess many considerable settlements both upon the coast of Africa and in the East Indies, they have not yet established in either of those countries such numerous and thriving colonies as those in the islands and continent of America.”
• · Isichei, A History of Nigeria (1983), p. 362.
• · David Etlis, “African and European relations in the last century of the transatlantic slave trade”; in Pétré-Grenouilleau, From Slave Trade to Empire (2004), pp. 21–46.
• · Randy J. Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey; Harvard University Press, 2004; ISBN 0-674-01312-3; Chapter 1: “A Very Bloody Transaction: Old Calabar and the Massacre of 1767“.
• · Anietie A. Inyang & Manasseh Edidem Bassey, “Imperial Treaties and the Origins of British Colonial Rule in Southern Nigeria, 1860-1890”, Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 5.20, September 2014.
• · Asiegbu, Nigeria and its British Invaders (1984), p. xxiii. “After the Abolition Act in 1807 making the trade in African slaves illegal for British subjects, Britain did not stop there: For the next quarter of a century successive British Governments embarked on a kind of aggressive diplomacy, bullying and bribing other European nations, especially Spain and Portugal, to toe the anti-slavery line with England. / On the West African Coast itself British anti-slavery policy became very evident not only in the establishment of the free colony or Settlement of Freetown in Sierra Leone for the recaptives or freed slaves. A detachment of the all-powerful British Navy, the West African naval squadron, was stationed in West African waters to patrol along the coastline and to intercept any slave ships or vessels equipped for the slave trade, and to bring slave vessels captured for trial before British controlled courts in Freetown. At the same time Britain embarked on securing from African rulers, in consideration of payments to these rulers, what became known as anti-slave trade treaties. By these treaties the rulers engaged to stop the traffic in slaves in their respective territories. In the process of enforcing these anti-slave trade policies on the west coast with its powerful navy Britain discovered the military weakness or inferiority of the African states in relation to its own military power.”