In the 1920s, Nigerians began to form a variety of associations, such as professional and business associations, such as the Nigerian Union of Teachers; the Nigerian Law Association, which brought together lawyers, many of whom had been educated in Britain; and the Nigerian Produce Traders’ Association, led by Obafemi Awolowo. While initially organized for professional and fraternal reasons, these were centers of educated people who had chances to develop their leadership skills in the organizations, as well as form broad social networks.
Ethnic and kinship organizations that often took the form of a tribal union also emerged in the 1920s. These organizations were primarily urban phenomena that arose after numerous rural migrants moved to the cities. Alienated by the anonymity of the urban environment and drawn together by ties to their ethnic homelands—as well as by the need for mutual aid—the new city dwellers formed local clubs that later expanded into federations covering whole regions. By the mid-1940s, the major ethnic groups had formed such associations as the Igbo Federal Union and the Egbe Omo Oduduwa (Society of the Descendants of Oduduwa), a Yoruba cultural movement, in which Awolowo played a leading role. In some cases, British assignment of people to ethnic groups, and treatment based along ethnic lines, led to identification with ethnicity where none had existed before.
A third type of organization that was more pointedly political was the youth or student group, which became the vehicle of intellectuals and professionals. They were the most politically conscious segment of the population and created the vanguard of the nationalist movement. Newspapers, some of which were published before World War I, provided coverage of nationalist views.
The 1922 constitution provided Nigerians the chance to elect a handful of representatives to the Legislative Council. The principal figure in the political activity that ensued was Herbert Macauley, often referred to as the father of Nigerian nationalism. He aroused political awareness through his newspaper, the Lagos Daily News. He also led the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), which dominated elections in Lagos from its founding in 1922 until the ascendancy of the National Youth Movement (NYM) in 1938. His political platform called for economic and educational development, Africanization of the civil service, and self-government for Lagos. Significantly, Macauley’s NNDP remained almost entirely a Lagos party, popular only in the area whose people already had experience in elective politics.
The National Youth Movement (NYM) used nationalist rhetoric to agitate for improvements in education. The movement brought to public notice a long list of future leaders, including H.O. Davies and Nnamdi Azikiwe. Although Azikiwe later came to be recognized as the leading spokesman for national unity, when he first returned from university training in the United States, his outlook was pan-African rather than nationalist, and emphasized the common African struggle against European colonialism. (This was also reflective of growing pan-Africanism among American activists of the time.) Azikiwe had less interest in purely Nigerian goals than did Davies, a student of Harold Laski at the London School of Economics, whose political orientation was considered left-wing.
By 1938 the NYM was agitating for dominion status within the British Commonwealth of Nations, so that Nigeria would have the same status as Canada and Australia. In elections that year, the NYM ended the domination of the NNDP in the Legislative Council and worked to establish a national network of affiliates. Three years later internal divisions arose that were dominated by major ethnic loyalties. The departure of Azikiwe and other Igbo members of the NYM left the organization in Yoruba hands. During World War II, Awolowo reorganized it as a predominantly Yoruba political party, the Action Group. Yoruba-Igbo rivalry became increasingly important in Nigerian politics
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