Andre Uweh:

The AG under Awolowo made no secret of the fact that it was a regional party. This fact, the secrecy surrounding its formation, its connection with the Egbe Omo Oduduwa (society for the Descendats of Oduduwa), and its unrelating advocacy of a federal form of goverment for the country helped to label it as a Yoruba party and it has often been accused of ushering into Nigeria politics an era of ethnic nationalism.
OLUSANYA, G.0 (1980)'The Nationalist Movement in Nigeria', in Groundwork of Nigeria History edited by Obaro Ikime.
My response.

Katsumoto:

The fact remains that Egbe Omo Oduduwa became a political party which had a number of non-Yoruba amongst its ranks. All political start has ideas and then morph into something else. Abraham Lincoln was the Republican party elected president who fought to end slavery. The Christian Social Union of Bavaria is a Bavarian party that is the current coalition ruling Germany.

The question is ,'how did Awo start ethnic politics?'

Bear in mind the following

1. Egbe Omo oduduwa was formed years after the Ibo state union was formed with Zik as president.
2. The Nigerian youth movement of which Awo and Zik were members was dissolved as a result of the fallout of an election in 1941 between Samuel Akinsanya (supported by Zik) and Ernest Ikoli supported by Awo. Ikoli won said election and Zik's accusation at the time? That it was an Eko conspiracy against Ijebus! never mind that Awo was Ijebu.

You lot keep repeating these lies against the person of Obafemi Awolowo. They said he started ethnic politics with cross-carpeting, produce the results which says so, you can't. ACM10 is still on his way to his grandmother's library in her village riding a tortoise. Maybe he will produce the results by 2062.

Dede1:


I can not fathom where you pull some of the craps you post on this forum. I guess it makes you happy to feel you had monopoly on Nigerian history. What actually urged you to conjure a thing such as “Egbe Omo oduduwa was formed years after the Ibo state union was formed with Zik as president”?

This is not first time you have audaciously stated that Christmas comes in the month of November. In 1945 in the house of one Mr. Okunn somewhere in London, Egbe Omo Oduduwa was formed. One wonders how Igbo State Union, inaugurated in 1948, was formed several years before Egb Omo Oduduwa.

Did Igbo State Union morphed into a political party as did Egbe Omo Oduduwa into Action Group? Please, if you know any political party Igbo State Union preceded, I am all ears.

If Zik had supported an Igbo candidate instead of Samuel Akinsanya, a Yoruba, then silly insinuation of tribalism on the part of Zik would hold water. Nobody thinks Awolowo’s support of Ernest Ikoli, Ijo, was as act of tribalism.

naijababe:

Bros na, struggling to comprehend? Ok, imma help you out again.

In 1934, some elite Nigerians, Dr. Kofo Abayomi, H.O. Daniel, Ernest Ikoli, Samuel Musanya, (later Oba), J.C Vaughan, among others, formed the Lagos Youth Movement, later Nigerian Youth Movement, NYM, (1936) and by 1938, it was so popular that it was beating Herbert McCaulay’s NNDP to second position in the Council elections of the Lagos ownship and the Nigerian legislative Council. Came February 1941, when its member, Dr. Abayomi, had to resign for further studies abroad. This created an opening for a fresh election in which Ikoli and Akinsanya expressed interest to become the flag bearer of the Movement. Obafemi Awolowo’s group solidly supported Ikoli, an Ijaw; while Azikwe’s gave its backing to Akinsanya, an Ijebu Yoruba like Awolowo. Not much of tribal politics in those good old days even as the Movement was largely Yoruba dominated. But not when Ikoli won the flag. [size=16pt]Zik and Akinsanya charged that they lost because their candidate was Ijebu not minding that so was also Awolowo[/size]. They walked out along with some Igbo members. According to G.O. Olusanya, non-Igbo members became suspicious. "They reasoned that if the Igbos continued the policy of closing ranks on issues while the others remained divided, it was only a question of time before the Igbo dominated the rest." (Groundwork of Nigerian History - Obaro Ikime). "Azikwe’s defection virtually destroyed the multi-tribal character of the Movement" (Nigerian Political Parties- R. L Sklar) .

Katsumoto:

You will bend the truth to suit your silly logic.

Is an association formed on the day the founders meet for the first time? Even if we agree that Egbe omo oduduwa was formed in 1945, Ibo union was formed in 1934.

Please see the link below from Richard Sklar's book 'Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent African Nation'. You are a lying old man who refuses to verify facts before launching into embarrassing tirades. I continue to educate you by always backing my position with facts. Soon you will come back to tell us that you were there when Ibo union was formed after Egbe omo Oduduwa.


http://books.google.ca/books?id=Oi0aVR4YkmUC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=igbo+union+formed&source=bl&ots=xls8F0N0oJ&sig=a5-BhLWs4i5YmzESiWo3ux6AVtI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=BNmPUMSlD4jBygGzpIHYCA&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=igbo%20union%20formed&f=false


Last bolded item - Zik thought it was an act of tribalism. Read the links that have been provided just like he used tribalism as an excuse for his loss in 1951.

Dede1:


Again, I had to advise you to quit supporting your head with obscure publications. There was an era in the protectorates that trade unions were fad and people joined to protect their interest against colonialist skewed interest. The Igbo Federal Union was formed in 1944 among numerous unions of that ear which include Calabar Mercantile Employees Union and Ajijaawe Native Herbalist Union. Also, by 1940, Awolowo had formed Ijebu Ode Cocoa Traders Union and Nigerian Motor Transport Union- Agboro.

It was in 1948 that Igbo Federal Union changed to Igbo State Union with Zik as the president. Even as the picture stands, Igbo State Union did not morphed into any political party as did Quadriyya\Tijaniyya Sects and Pilgrim Association and Egbe Omo Oduduwa into NPC and Action Group respectively.

Katsumoto: It has been several hours and non of the proponents of 'Awo started ethnic politics' has been able to provide facts to support that notion.

They used to talk about the 1951 regional elections and since actual results of the elections have been provided, they have learned not to bring it up. Well at least one of the proponents, ACM10, reaches the library in his grandmother's village riding a tortoise.

On this thread, they have repeated the same lies and when challenged, they (OnlyTruth, Abagworo) have been silent. Yet they will claim to be honorable men.

The questions remain
1. How did a regional ethnic party increase its representation in other regions significantly?
2. How did a regional party manage to win more seats outside its base than in its base?

http://www.nigerdeltacongress.com/darticles/documenting_electoral_disputes.htm
Documenting Electoral Disputes

By

Al-Bashir

Dec 2003

A good friend thought he was giving me some hints. "The issue of local government reforms and fuel price increase", he said, "is intended to deflate public attention on the just concluded electoral exercises". He felt good as if he has made a new discovery. My response was stiff: "Well, Bafarawa said, the L.G. matter wasn’t on the original agenda. Another governor said, more or less, that it was an Abuja initiative. And when the media cornered the V.P, for response on the fuel issue, he replied that it was news to him. Whatever, I bluntly told him, I am not about to allow the issue force me to abandon this election matter for now, more so that these other issues are its by-products sort of.

It wasn’t me who coined that once you have the political kingdom everything else will fall in place as they are exactly doing so now. So, let us engage the political kingdom, with an appreciation of how electoral fraud has been engaging us in unpleasant ways. If you want to face the origin of electoral disputes, in Nigeria, think of 1941. It was the year that sowed the first seed of discord whose consequences are still very much with us to another election year. As J.S Coleman notes, in his Nigeria: Background to Nationalism, the crisis generated by the dispute "- was the first major manifestation of a tribal tension that affected all subsequent efforts to achieve unity".

To fully understand what happened, let us take a quick glance at history. In 1934, some elite Nigerians, Dr. Kofo Aboyomi, H.O. Daniel, Ernest Ikoli, Samuel Musanya, (later Oba), J.C Vaughan, among others, formed the Lagos Youth Movement, later Nigerian Youth Movement, NYM, (1936) and by 1938, it was so popular that it was beating Herbert McCaulay’s NNDP to second position in the Council elections of the Lagos township and the Nigerian legislative Council. Came February 1941, when its member, Dr. Aboyomi, had to resign for further studies abroad. This created an opening for a fresh election in which Ikoli and Akinsanya expressed interest to become the flag bearer of the Movement. Obafemi Awolowo’s group solidly supported Ikoli, an Ijaw; while Azikwe’s gave its backing to Akinsanya, an Ijebu Yoruba like Awolowo. Not much of tribal politics those good old days even as the Movement was largely Yoruba dominated. But not when Ikoli won the flag. Zik and Akinsanya charged that they lost because their candidate was Ijebu not minding that so was also Awolowo. They worked out along with some Igbo members. According to G..O. Olusanya, non-Igbo members became suspicious. "They reasoned that if the Igbos continued the policy of closing ranks on issues while the others remained divided, it was only a question of time before the Igbo dominated the rest." (Groundwork of Nigerian History). "Azikwe’s defection, says R.L. Sklar, "virtually destroyed the multi-tribal character of the Movement" (Nigerian Political Parties). Several issues emerged from this episode.

The first was that it recorded the first ever electoral dispute in our history. Two, as both Coleman and Sklar note, it sowed the seeds of Nigeria's tribal history. Third, it planted discord between the Igbos and Yorubas. Fourth, it allowed suspicion to creep into our body politik and fifth, it nailed the coffin of the Movement, then the only pan-Nigerian assemblage of its type, its restriction to Lagos notwithstanding. A careful examination will show that all the bubbles arose as consequences of an electoral dispute all of which are still subsisting and snowballing today over sixty years after the event had taken place! The tribal character of our polity, the long standing dispute between the Igbos and Yorubas, the issue of electoral dispute among others, have their roots in the Ikoli - Akinsanya contest of February 1941 and are still firmly on ground right to this moment. By the time it was revived with the name National Council of Nigeria and Cameroon, NCNC, at the Glover Memorial Hall in Lagos, on 26th August 1944, things were no longer the same. The fracture has never since healed. In London in 1945, prominent Yoruba students, among them Awolowo, formed the Egbe Omo Oduduwa - a pan Yoruba Movement, perhaps as a counter force to the Igbo Federal Union formed in 1936, from the Igbo Union of Lagos, established in 1934, which later became Igbo State Union in December 1948, after the Egbe was formed in June of the same year.

From all indications, the formation of the Yoruba Movement was a direct reaction to the electoral event of 1941, which Olusanya agrees, "it was one of the factors that led to the formation of the Action Group, AG, in 1950". Before then, the formation of Egbe drew fierce attacks from Zik’s West African Pilot and responses from the Daily Services, edited by Akintola. These unprecedented press wars are worthy of attention. "Henceforth", said the Pilot, "the cry must be bone of battle against Egbe Omo Oduduwa, its leaders abroad and at home, uphill and down the dale, in streets of Nigeria and in the residence of its adore. It is the enemy of Nigeria, it must be crushed (remember Audu Ogbeh’s words) to the earth. There is no going back on the Fascist Organization—has to be dismembered". (Coleman) . The Daily Service responded on behalf of the Yorubas: " We were bunched together by the British, who named us Nigeria. We never knew the Igbos. We have tolerated enough from the class of Igbos and addle-brained Yorubas who have mortgaged their thinking caps to Azikwe and his hirelings" (Coleman). According to the author, "at local height of the tension, both sides-bought up all available machetes" in the local markets, with the Igbos warning that "all personal attacks on Azikwe would be considered attacks upon the Igbo nation." Azikwe and his Pilot saw the Egbe as the direct challenge to the NCNC, which emerged on the ashes of the NYM, which the Yorubas were not prepared to go back to even in its battle for NCNC, which they left for the Igbo use. One of the direct consequences of the electoral dispute of 1941 was, therefore, the bitter animosity it generated between the Igbos and Yorubas, which was about to lead to violence, and caused severe division within the nationalist movement at the time. No less worthy of note was the emergence of the media as centres of animosity promotion along ethnic lines, a fact which is still much entrenched to this very moment at perhaps some worse level. That a mere electoral disagreement, that occurred in 1941, had the potentials to snowball into an ethnic war, seven years later, causing severe division within the nationalist movement, the ethnic fragmentation of the polity, the tribalisation of the media, as a tool for violent promotion, etc, is something we ought to worry about that all the vicissitudes are still very much entrenched in the system to this very day.

Further development, not totally isolated from the events of that year, created regional fiefdoms out of the polity. As noted, the AF emerged in the West in 1950, the NPC in the North in 1951, while the NCNC was finally transformed into an Igbo limited liability company with a few Yorubas as shareholders, essentially as from 1952. Matters were not helped following happenings in the West between the AG and the NCNC on the floor of the Regional Assembly, which consequently compelled Zik to "flee" the West, leading to some muddling in the East between the Igbos and the minority groups again still very much around. That these minorities voted for the NPN in 1979-83 and not NPP is a pointer to this fact. But the better evidence is the complete regionalisation and tribalisation of the polity, such today that we equate the wishes of one area as that of the whole or see ethnocracy as one and the same with democracy. These developments, of course, are not necessary as a result of the direct consequences of the electoral dispute of 1941 but it can hardly be disputed that to same large measure, they had substantial roots in what happened that year and so it would be safe to assume that electoral dispute planted some of the animosities within the system we have been battling with since 1941 to date and ought, therefore, educated us on the serious dangers it has been posing over the years. The essence of history is to draw lessons from its experience and apply same in reacting to contemporary affairs. Because we have not been doing so, we have consistently been faulting, especially since independence, which we will document some other time as a continuation of this discourse. Suffice it for now to observe that we cannot claim to be leading the country to democratic greatness if we continue to be Maradonic with electoral matters such as to make its observable inadequacies its enduring habit and as part of our democratic culture leading to the complete regionalisation and tribalisation of the polity, such today that we equate the wishes of one area as that of the whole or see ethnocracy as one and the same with democracy. These developments, of course, are not necessary as a result of the direct consequences of the electoral dispute of 1941 but it can hardly be disputed that to same large measure, the tendencies are the rules rather than the exception.

True, democracy is not in the fashion of a graveyard, nor is it the tradition of a battlefield. Rather, it demands absolute loyalty and habitual attachment to its rules of engagement, which, unfortunately and painfully, we have been disrespecting, with brazen triviality, in such manner as to create extreme bitterness in the polity with visible consequences, which we could only ignore at our own peril. If the events narrated here don’t make much meaning to us, owing to time lapse, perhaps the subsequent ones would since many are living witnesses. Hopefully, we would appreciate that electoral fraud, no matter how much the tribunals try to cover things up, is a serious political disease, very pregnant with AIDS. We must learn how to control it, in our own collective interest



Dec 2003

http://www.zoominfo.com/CachedPage/?archive_id=0&page_id=202373392&page_url=//www.nigeriaworld.com/board/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=000630&p=2&page_last_updated=2001-08-29T16:11:15&firstName=Samuel&lastName=Akinsanya
D. Bolaji Aluko
May 2001

Big Steve:
Thank you for your note, but it is very clear from your write-up that there are very many information gaps in your knowledge of the history of Lagos, the Yoruba and the politics of 1920 - 1960 of pre-Independence Nigeria. Otherwise, many of the statements that you made would not have been made. In any case, you give me another opportunity to lay out some historical facts.

For example, you wonder how Zik ended up in the NCNC among "the Yoruba" if he was so tribal! Well, was he among people who considered themselves "Yoruba?"

Here goes.....please tighten your seat belts for a tour-de-force of Nigerian politics.

-----


In 1922, Herbert Macaulay, Nigeria's acclaimed foremost nationalist, supported by Dr. Adeniyi-Jones, Egerton Shyngle, Thomas Horatio Jackson, Karimu Kotun, J.T. White and Baulrick founded the first true political party - the Nigeria National Democratic Party NNDP - on Nigerian soil, with the express warrant of "enfranchising the people of Lagos."

First a lesson: in 1922, most of the elites of Lagos (Eko) did not consider themselves really "Yoruba" proper - as you can see from the names that I quoted above, including that of Herbert Macaulay. Rather, they were Afro-Brazilians living in Lagos, and a cut above the "natives" (Awori, etc.) on whose land they now lived. NNDP was initially formed not to enfranchise the Yoruba, or even Nigeria, but "the people of Lagos." In fact there was always resentment between the Yoruba "proper" and the "Ara Eko", who were derisively referred to as "native foreigners."

The first democratic elections in pre-independence Nigeria was not 1951 (as some here have asserted) but in September 1923, when the NNDP won all the three seats in the Lagos Legislative Council. The NNDP held sway in Lagos for 15 years until 1938, when a newly formed party - the Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM, formed in 1937), which in turn had been born from the Lagos Youth Movement (LYM, formed in 1933) - defeated the NNDP and won all the three legislative seats.

Who formed LYM in 1933? Dr. James Churchill Vaughn, Ernest Sisei Ikoli and Samuel A. Akinsanya! Yes - the same Ikoli and Akinsanya over who Awo and Zik were to "fight" in 1941!

Notice, of course, that Zik was away in the US all of this time - from 1925 and did not return to Nigeria until 1937 when he started the West African Pilot, while long before now, Ernest Ikoli had become the Editor of the Daily Service newspaper, which had become the mouth-organ of the NYM.

When Zik returned from the US via Ghana in 1937, he joined the NYM and was immediately on its Executive Committee. However, he resigned from the Execo in 1939 - for "business reasons" according to him - ostensibly because he had wanted the West African Pilot to supplant the Daily Service as the mouth-organ of the NYM, a proposition that the NYM Execo did not accept.

But Zik remained in the NYM until 1941 when the Lagos Council seat for which there was a nomination battle between two founding members of the origingal LYM - Ikoli and Akinsanya - came up. Awo pitched his tent with Ikoli and Zik pitched his tent with Akinsanya. Ikoli won, Akinsanya lost - and Zik in a fit of pique took the football home, together with virtually all of his Igbo supporters within the NYM and a sprinkling of others.

So Big Steve, let us learn this lesson: I do not know why Awo supported Ikoli (whether he felt him more competent than Akinsanya; whether he felt it would be impolitic to support another Ijebu man like himself, or whether to spite Zik), and I do not know why Zik supported Akinsanya (whether he felt him to be more competent than Ikoli; whether he considered Ikoli too close a rival to him as a co-journalist in NYM; whether to spite Awo's support for Ikoli.) But their support for one or the other was PROBABLY more out of mutual dislike for each other than TRIBALISM, and for Zik, also probably due to business considerations! However, when in annoyance, ZIK managed to REMOVE with him virtually ALL the Igbo members of the NYM (then the ruling party in Lagos), making NYM a monolithic party, he actually SUCCEEDED wittingly or unwittingly in introducing tribalism into Nigerian PARTY POLITICS, if not into politics in itself.

There just is no two ways to think about it, is there?

Now how about Zik's entrance into the NCNC?

Between 1941 and 1944, Zik was not affiliated with any party in Nigeria, and the NNDP had been completely overshadowed by the NYM in Lagos. However on August 26, 1944, the NCNC was born in Lagos Glover Memorial Hall, with the primary task of mass-pressuring for political development and independence in the country.

And who were the initial provisional officers?

President - Herbert Macaulay
VP - Venerable J.O. Lucas
Financial Secretary - Rev. A.W. Howells
Legal Advisers - E.J. Alex Taylor, J.E.C. David, J.I. C. Taylor, Hon. E.A. Akerele, O.A. Alakija, Ladipo Odunsi)
Auditors - L.A. Onojobi and A. Ogedegbe
General Secretary - Nnamdi Azikiwe
Treasurer - L.P. Ojukwu


Looking at the names of the new NCNC officers, it is CLEAR to the naked eye that the NCNC was a re-warmed/re-heated NNDP! And so what we had was that Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe had crossed over from NYM to the very people that NYM had been set up to fight against in Lagos, and whom NYM had defeated - the NNDP!

Without understanding this political dynamics between the NYM and the NCNC, and between Zik, "native foreigners" and Yoruba politics, all of us Nigerians will just be fooling ourselves about the animosities that had been engendered before the 1951 elections.

But Zik was not done with more politicking in Nigeria. Let me end with a chilling quotation of a passage which led to the banning of the Zikist Movement by the British. THIS WAS IN FEBRUARY 1950, barely one year before the 1951 election encounters in Ibadan:

QUOTE
Schwartz, Page 64 ff:

The Zikist Movement was born in 1946 as a response by Azikiwe's militant supporters to ridicule by the NYM's newspaper [STILL BEING EDITED BY ERNEST IKOLI] of his charges that the British plotted his assassination. The Zikists vowed "nevermore [to] allow this evangelist [THAT IS ZIK] to cry his voice hoarse when millions of youths of Nigeria can....echo it all over the world." The movement became in effect an activist youth branch of the NCNC.

At the end of 1948, growing impatient with the NCNC, the Zikists stepped up the call for revolution. Included among their plans was an effort, apparently unknown to Azikiwe, to get the Government to jail him in the belief that that would set off a revolution. But the Government instead arrested ten of the most militant Zikists on charges of sedition; most were convicted and sentenced to prison.

Zikist activity, though hampered, did not end. In November 1949, twenty-one Nigerian coal miners [IN ENUGU] were shot and killed by policemen under the orders of a jittery European police officer. The shooting led to a revival of ZIkist militancy. [It also led to a temporary truce between the NCNC and the NYM. Together they formed the National Emergency Committee, but it fell apart within a year.] In four Eastern towns, Zikist leaders stirred the people to riot and the people assaulted Europeans, looted European-owned stores, and damaged Government property. In each town the police were called upon to disperse the mobs, and they fired upon the leaders. Then in February 1950, a Zikist tried to assassinate Hugh Foot, a high Government official who later won reknown as a tough Governor of Cyprus, and still later became the Labour Party Ambassador to the United Nations after leaving British Government service in protest against its power to African nationalists in the Rhodesias. Again, there was a governmental crackdown culminating in an order declaring the Zikist Movement illegal.

Though the movement reorganized under another name, it and militant nationalism as a whole became less significant. For that there are three reasons, the least important of which was the vigilance of the Colonial Government. More important, Azikiwe, the national catalyst of any revolutionary movement, never gave his full support. He wavered between creating the Order of African Freedom to be awarded to all imprisoned for sedition and warning against "high sounding slogans and plans that fizzle out into a nine day's wonder" Because of his substantial business interests, Azikiwe would have risked much in a violent revolution....."

END QUOTE

So my friends, when people write that thuggery was started by the AG in Lagos and the West, perish the thought: it was started IN THE NAME OF AZIKIWE via the Zikist Movement, even though one cannot directly say that Zik supported it - but he "wavered....." - as usual.

You can also see why the Colonials FORCIBLY moved Lagos territory into Western region in 1951 - the dilute the rising profile in Lagos of the NCNC, headed by the "troublesome" Zik, whose "Zikist movement" had just been banned in mid-1950!

Now in the midst of all of this, when Zik was President of the NCNC and Patron of the Zikist Movement, he was also the President of the Ibo State Union. In one of his first speeches to the ISU in 1949 (as reported in the West African Pilot of July 6, 1949), barely two years to 1951, he stated as follows:


QUOTE

"The God of Africa has specially created the Ibo nation to lead the children of Africa from the bondage of the ages.....The martial prowess of the Ibo nation at all stages of human history has enabled them not only to conquer others but also to adapt themselves to the role of preserver...The Ibo nation cannot shirk its responsibility."

UNQUOTE


Now tell me in all honesty: How did you expect the Yoruba in Western Region of 1951, with capital in Ibadan, to react to a "troublesome" man who had been forcibly sent into their midst by the British, who had left the NYM (of which Awolowo, now leader of AG was a constant member) to pitch his tent with NCNC (a warmed-up NNDP), a man whose Zikist movement had just been banned under a year before for nearly causing a revolution, a man who boasts about his ethnic group's "conqureing prowess" now to become Leader of their Government? Do we in all honesty also believe that the Colonials would have been happy to see that happen?

So my fellow countrymen, there was more than mere tribalism in the 1951 elections: suspicion of ego-tripping, fear of "conquest", etc.. There was a WHOLE SOUP of issues involved, and to simply dismiss it as a tribal ploy is to be either dishonest or disingenous - or both.

Unless we look at a whole picture in Nigeria, we will for ever confuse the trees for the forest. This is why I support a Sovereign National Conference, where all of these facts will be tabled once and for all.
As you can see, I have been doing my homework, and I will not let ANYBODY bamboozle me about Nigeria's historical facts. Please do yours, so that we can all stop emoting. Our interpretations might be different, but we must first establish the facts.

I rest my case for now.


Bolaji Aluko