International: These Are the Times …

A man got off the train from Montreal at New York’s Grand Central Station last week and asked, “How are the Pittsburgh Pirates doing?” What made the question a little surprising was that this Pirate fan —six feet tall, handsome and ebony black —wore a long white velvet gown which, when it flapped, revealed a startling blue-and-white-checked undergarment and a pair of tan brogues. He is the leader of millions of his fellow Nigerians who want independence from Britain. Some call him the Negro Gandhi, the jungle George Washington. His name is Nnamdi Azikiwe (rhymes with click away); he is the acacia thorn in the British lion’s paw, the Bertie McCormick (see PRESS) of the Niger Delta, a coconut grove Jim Farley, and one of the few people in the world who got a high opinion of the U.S. from washing dishes in a Pittsburgh waffle foundry and having Pugilist Jackie Zivic poke thumbs in his eyes.

A Man in the Way. They call him Zik. He was born in Onitsha in southern Nigeria on Nov. 16, 1904. His father was a hard-working Government clerk who carefully saved his money to educate his children. In 1925, with $1,200 of his father’s retirement gratuity, Zik reached the U.S., enrolled at Storer College.* His current U.S. trip is to get an honorary Lit.D. at Storer this week and to deliver the commencement address. His text: Tom Paine’s “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

As a student in the U.S., Zik stretched his father’s money by working at odd jobs. Besides working in Gammon’s Restaurant on Pittsburgh’s Liberty Avenue and as a sparring partner for one of the thumb-poking Zivic brothers, he once unwittingly signed on as a coal miner, found himself strikebreaking. He still thinks the U.S. “a country of opportunities for ambitious, energetic young people.”

After nine years away from Africa he returned in 1934 as editor of the Africa Morning Post in Accra, Gold Coast. It was here he first squared off with the British. Three years later, charged with being a political agitator, he was tried for sedition but the case was quashed. He wrote two books: Liberia and World Politics and Renascent Africa. With his royalties he returned to Lagos, Nigeria and founded Zik’s Press Ltd. in 1937.

A Man of Style. Nigeria is about twice the size of Spain. Its population of 22 million is jammed into 373,000 square miles of jungle, swamp and grasslands. Its people are divided into three main tribes: the tough Moslem Hausas who live along the lower edge of the Sahara and despise the southern Nigerians; the town-dwelling Yorubas; and the farming Ibos. Mutual antagonism, sometimes exploited by the British, has kept the tribes apart. Since Zik’s return, however, there has been a rapprochement. Zik, an Ibo, now wears a combination of Hausa and Yoruba style clothes to symbolize the new trend.

Nowadays, whenever Britain’s imperial eye turns south towards Africa, there stands Zik astride a large slice of rich Nigerian cocoa and palm nut holdings, coal and tin and bauxite deposits. Zik has a handhold on a rich chunk of the Empire and he will not let go.

A Man to Be Watched. His newspaper, the West African Pilot, has grown into a chain of five, spanning southern Nigeria with a total circulation of over 25,000. Ex-Strikebreaker Zik has been accused of inciting coalfield workers to strike and has won and lost a string of libel suits. By flamboyant and often crude tactics, Zik has built an enormous (7,000,000, says Zik) following among Nigerians, most of whom are illiterate. To keep tabs on him the British have CID detectives watching him constantly. He shrugs them off, says, “A man with a free conscience has nothing to worry about.”

A Visitor in the Night. To raise money for his political organization, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons, Zik spent months driving trucks over Nigeria’s bumpy roads, walking when there were no roads, visiting hundreds of villages. He collected £13,500. According to Zik the tour was a success. Says Zik, “Some of the Hausa emirs who were appointed by the British came to see me in the night. They promised me money and moral support.”

Zik’s dream is Nigerian independence. He would like to see it come in a 15-Year Plan: ten years of equal British-Nigerian government, then five years of Nigerian government with Britain standing by. Next to that he wants the country developed industrially. He doubts that the present-day Briton will do it. “The type of Britons who come . . . now,” he says, “are not as intelligent as those who came before. Either we have progressed or they have degenerated.”

A Gentleman & a Student. When Zik leaves the U.S. in four weeks, he will join six other Nigerians in England for a barnstorming tour to tell the Nigerian story. He hopes to say a few words about his preference for the next Governor of Nigeria. If it must be an Englishman, Zik hopes it will be the Duke of Windsor (see PEOPLE), whom he considers “a gentleman, a student of human nature, a man with a sense of justice.” But in the long run he wants an African governor for Nigeria and, like the Pirates on the day he arrived in New York, Zik might be only 2½games out of first place.

*Storer College at Harpers Ferry, W. Va., has a magnificent view of the Potomac gap, which Thomas Jefferson thought was “. . . worth a voyage across the Atlantic.” On Storer’s campus stands the Arsenal that John Brown held for 60 hours. Moved from the site in downtown Harpers Ferry where Major Robert E. Lee captured Old Osawatomie, it was presented to the college in 1909.