NIGERIA: Democracy, Its Pains

When the time came to vote in Nigeria’s first national elections last week, the candidates were too tired and hoarse for last-minute attacks on opponents, instead led their numbed election-eve audiences in singing tribal ballads, on the plausible theory that enough was enough.

For three months the country’s 9,000,000 voters had endured every variety of speech, parade and accusation. In the slums of Lagos, naked children ran through the streets blowing “ZEE-EEK” on whistles handed out by supporters of Eastern Region Premier Nnamdi (“Zik”) Azikiwe, or noisily deflated colored toy balloons producing the sound of a crowing cock, symbol of Zik’s N.C.N.C. Party. Overhead, imported skywriters drew a palm tree in the sky, symbol of Zik’s free-spending opponent, Obafemi Awolowo, premier of the Western Region. Twelve busloads of ringers from Ghana were discovered just in time, and turned back at the border before they could vote. In one outlying area, four chiefs were arrested for registering 500 children under ten years old. In Lagos, pols tried to register an entire high school en masse.

Two Flags. At stake was control of Africa’s biggest nation (pop. 35 million), which gets its independence from Britain next October. Taxi drivers shouted slogans at one another through the traffic; staffs of business firms, and even families, split into opposing camps. Two bickering brothers reached a compromise by flying Zik’s flag at the front of their house, Awolowo’s at the back.

The candidates bickered just as noisily. Zik suggested that Awolowo had the backing of British business interests with millions invested in Nigeria (correct: they distrust Zik). Awolowo, campaigning by helicopter, replied by calling Zik a crook and an oppressor. Both were under attack from the third major figure in the elections, the Sardauna of Sokoto, Alhaji Sir Ahmadu Bello, ruler of the big, populous Moslem-dominated Northern Region (his symbol: a hoe).

Presumably the North had the most votes, but—as an election last month showed in the neighboring Northern Cameroons—Moslems were restive under the ruling emirs. Alarmed, the Sardauna began a whirlwind electioneering bout, made 150 speeches in six weeks. The Sardauna did not want the federal prime ministership for himself, hoped for the honorary post of Governor General instead; his party’s choice for independent Nigeria’s top political job would be turbaned, scholarly Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, who has already held the post of federal Prime Minister under the British crown for two years. In his speeches the Sardauna cast gibes at Zik (“an unbelieving Ibo”), but his major aim was to defeat his bitterest enemy, Awolowo, who called the Northern ruler a backward feudalist.

Governor’s Option. With both Zik and the Sardauna against him, Awolowo, despite the most money and the best organization, trailed badly. As the ballots were counted, the Sardauna’s North swung ahead of Zik, but if no one got a clear majority, it would be left to the discretion of Governor General Sir James Robertson to name the nation’s first head of state.