The Northern and Southern Cameroons in British Nigeria

The Chief Commissioner's Residence, Buea

Head Gardener At Commissioners Residence

Add caption

Empire Day At Victoria - No smiles

National Ideal Hotel - Seeing Is Believing

Nigeria's forgotten railroad history

 

Historian John Godwin walks between two abandoned train cars in Lagos, Nigeria, on Saturday, April 13, 2013. The Nigerian Railway Corp., while recently restarting service from Lagos to the northern city of Kano, still has relics from the past littering the grounds of its headquarters in Lagos. Historians hope to preserve some of these old locomotives and train cars for future generations to see. (AP Photo/Jon Gambrell)

Train horns now sound again across Nigeria's lush south and the encroaching desert of its north, but the history of the nation's 100-year-old railroad still sits rusting away.
Old steam locomotives and railway cars that hold special places in the story of Nigeria sit in large storage barns at the Nigerian Railway Corp. headquarters, a huge compound inside the megacity of Lagos.
One car once carried Queen Elizabeth II during her 1956 visit to Nigeria when it was still a British colony, historian John Godwin said. Another nearby transported Nigeria's first and only prime minister, the assassinated leader Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, through the country's northeast, Godwin said.
Today, though, much of the legacy of the railroad continues to rot away, including large locomotives bearing the names of Nigeria's military rulers, including the feared dictator Sani Abacha, whose death while in power ushered in a return to democracy for the nation in 1999.
Some, like Godwin and the historical preservation society Legacy1995, have made preserving the railroad's past a priority. Working with the state-run railway company, they have remodeled a colonial-era building to house a museum. Talks continue about how to save the other memorabilia and huge train cars and locomotives hidden in the tall grasses and barns at the railway's headquarters.
By JON GAMBRELL, Associated Press.

An Advert from a 1950s Magazine for the Nigerian Railway Corp

oration

Art: Out of Africa (TIME Magazine Monday, Sept. 04, 1950)

Monday, Sept. 04, 1950

 

Modern artists from Picasso to Jacob Epstein have found inspiration in carved African idols, masks and fetishes. Last week a London gallery was showing the works of bearded Ben Enwonwu, an African carver who reversed the process.
Born 29 years ago in Nigeria, Enwonwu carved his own toys as a child. He was teaching art at 18, and five years later the
N'gerian government sent him abroad for further study. Since then he has won a Diploma of Fine Art from the University of London, has been made a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and has become more European than African in his approach to art.
Enwonwu's ancestors carved for magic purposes, not for exhibition. They gave force to their whittled gods by using many of the tricks of modern art: violent distortion of figures into angular cubistic shapes, mingling of naturalistic features with wholly abstract ones, the surrealist shock-value of giving vaguely human figures some of the attributes of animals and birds. The results struck at least one art historian, Roger Fry, as "great sculpture—greater, I believe, than any we have made . . ."
Enwonwu has broken from the faith of his fathers: like most European artists since the Renaissance, he works to express human emotions, not to hint at supernatural forces. Suffering, supplication, exuberance were typical themes of his London show—themes ill-suited to violent distortion. Enwonwu sometimes let the shape and grain of the wood guide his chisel, to produce partial abstractions that merely pleased the eye. "Sometimes," he told admirers at the show's opening, "I see the form in my mind and it grows and grows as I work. I am happy when I am hacking out; I never want to stop." Smoothing the thigh of his Dancing Figure with a pink-palmed hand, he sighed and added: "But when I must finish off my work, smooth the surface and polish—then I get bored. The creation is gone."

London Sunday Times Critic Eric Newton decided that "only when hand and chisel and imagination are in complete harmony can such confidence [as Enwonwu's] occur." If the'same harmony existed between his African heritage and his European training, Enwonwu's art might have had punch to match its polish.

The Notorious Chief Nwiboko Obodo. Time Magazine Aug 04, 1958

NIGERIA: The Chief Says . . .

 

My facebook friend Ed Keazor posted this picture of a man called Chief Nwiboko Obodo. 

This 1958 picture shows the notorious Nwiboko Obodo (L) head of the Odozi Obodo cult in custody awaiting hanging. 

He was convicted of decapitating his wife with a bicycle chain. He was also suspected of at least 400 other murders. 

Below is the TIME magazine article on the case.

Monday, Aug. 04, 1958 

In the vast British tropical colony of Nigeria, the back-country people of the Eastern Region have long been a troublesome lot to officialdom. Mostly half-naked farmers, they take unusual delight in staging bloody campaigns against vaccinations, and in setting schools on fire. Each time the police must come in to restore order. But of all the assignments that the police have undertaken, none has produced such eerie results as the search of the house of Chief Nwiboko Obodo.
For months reports had poured in of a high homicide rate around the tiny town of Abakaliki, about 50 miles from the Eastern Region capital of Enugu. Men would go to their farms of a morning and simply disappear; women went to market and never came home. Police found evidence that since 1954 there had been more than 100 murders in Abakaliki. But it was not until they raided Chief Obodo's house that they found the reason why.
Inside, they discovered rope, leg irons, and swords, as well as an assortment of juju charms bearing the warning that all men and women in the 14 villages around "must respect me and do whatever I say." It soon turned out that the chief was a member of a secret cult that inappropriately bears the name of Odozi Obodo, the "Committee of the Peacemakers."
The most powerful arm of the society was a sort of Murder Inc. squad called Exepute, meaning "the Chief says . .." It was the Exepute that carried out the grisly justice of the society against anyone who balked at paying the "taxes" the chiefs whimsically imposed, or against those whom the chiefs merely disliked. For the chiefs, murder was also a lucrative business: by tradition, they inherit "all property of the dead, including wives and children.
Last week, while Chief Obodo languished in jail and his British counsel, Dingle Foot (brother of Cyprus Governor Sir Hugh Foot), prepared his defense, one of his sidekicks, Chief Idaka Igboji, faced trial for murder, along with ten accomplices. A steady stream of witnesses —those who dared talk—told tales of death by drowning or burying alive. Finally there unrolled the story of the specific murder in question—that of a farmer named Nwakriko Abam. Abam, according to prosecution testimony, had been invited around for drinks by some of the chief's men. Suddenly his hosts seized him and slowly strangled him with a chain. His body was then brought before Chief Igboji, dismembered, tied to the victim's own bicycle, and flung into the river. Abam's crime: he had had the temerity to campaign against the chief in the last local parliamentary election.

Source Time
Photo Source. Ed Keazor

BEN ENWONWU (14 July 1921–5 February 1994)

Enwonwu with Festus Okotie, Eboh Johnson, and others

 

 

The Ben Enwonwu Foundation.

These pictures are from an exhibition which has passed but here are the details.... It was titled, Life and Times; a black and white photographic exhibition on the amazing artist and sculpture Ben Enwonwu.

The exhibition showcased carefully selected pictures from Enwonwu’s diverse photographic library that illustrated his private, public and most especially, his professional life.


Here is the link to the page enjoy! OMENKA GALLERY

"The Enahoro Affair" 1963

During the 1962 crisis in the old Western region, opposition party leaders of the Action Group found themselves accused of a coup plot and threatened with detention. One of the party leaders, Chief Antony Enahoro escaped via Ghana to the United Kingdom to seek political asylum.

Nigeria requested Enahoro's extradition under the 1881 Fugitive Offenders Act, preventing his application for political asylum.
The once best-known Nigerian politician in Britain was now a "fugitive offender". "The Enahoro affair"  triggered days of debate in the House of Commons, in 1963 as he battled against extradition.

"The Enahoro affair" became an issue of human rights versus the government's pusillanimous wish not to offend Nigeria, and put the Tory prime minister, Harold Macmillan, and his home secretary, Henry Brooke, in a difficult position.

He was extradited from the UK and imprisoned for treason. In 1966, he was released by the Military Government.

Here is a document highlighting the situation the UK government found themselves regarding the "The Enahoro affair".....I will post more declassified documents later.

Jewish Troglodyte Family at Hadejia, Nigeria 1900

1900 Hadejia

Hadejia (also Hadeja, previously Biram) is a Hausa town in eastern Jigawa State, northern Nigeria. The population was approximately 47,400 as of 1991.The people of Hadejia are largely Muslim, although some follow indigenous belief systems. The town lies to the north of the Hadejia River, and is upstream from the Hadejia-Nguru wetlands, an ecologically important and sensitive zone.
Hadejia was once known as Biram, and is referred to as one of the "seven true Hausa states" (Hausa Bakwai),because it was ruled by the descendants of the Hausa mythological figure Bayajidda and his second wife, Daurama.By 1810, during the Fulani War, the Hausa rulers of the Hausa Bakwai had all been overcome by the Fulani.Hadejia Emirate itself had been founded two years earlier, in 1808, and lasted until 1991, when it was absorbed into Jigawa State. In 1906 Hadejia resisted British occupation, under the then Emir (Muhammadu Mai-Shahada)

Jews of the Bilad el-Sudan (West Africa)
According to the 17th century Tarikh al-Fattash and the Tarikh al-Sudan, several Jewish communities existed as parts of the Ghana, Mali, and later Songhay empires. One such community was formed by a group of Egyptian Jews, who allegedly traveled by way of the Sahel corridor through Chad into Mali. Manuscript C of the Tarikh al-Fattash described a community called the Bani Israel that in 1402 existed in Tindirma, possessed 333 wells, and had seven princes as well as an army.
Another such community was that of the Zuwa ruler of Koukiya (located at the Niger river). His name was known only as Zuwa Alyaman, meaning "He comes from Yemen". According to an isolated local legend, Zuwa Alyaman was a member of one of the Jewish communities transported from Yemen by Abyssinians in the 6th century CE after the defeat of Dhu Nuwas. Zuwa Alyaman was said to have traveled into West Africa along with his brother. They established a community in Kukiya at the banks of the Niger River downstream from Gao. According to the Tarikh al-Sudan, after Zuwa Alyaman, there were 14 Zuwa rulers of Gao before the rise of Islam in in the second half of the eleventh century.
Other sources stated that other Jewish communities in the region arose from migrations from Morocco and Egypt, and later from Portugal. Some communities were said to have been populated by certain Berber Jews, like a group of Tuareg known as Dawsahak or Iddao Ishaak ("children of Isaac"). They speak a language related to Songhay, live in northeast Mali in the region of Menaka and were formerly herders for Tuareg nobles. In addition, some migrated into the area away from Muslim rule in North Africa.

Information. Wikipedia

Photo source National Archives

Education: Prince with a Purpose- Prince Nwafor Orizu. ( TIME Magazine Monday, Jan. 01, 1945)

From Time Magazine Monday, Jan. 01, 1945

Akweke Abyssinia Nwafor Orizu, of Manhattan, is a tall, black, sober young man of 24 who calls himself "Prince Orizu." He uses the title only to impress whites with the fact that Africa has traditional governments of its own. His hearers are usually sufficiently impressed to ask what he is prince of. His answer: Nnewi.
Nnewi is a progressive monarchy in the British Protectorate of Nigeria. A. A. Nwafor Orizu was offered its throne in 1938, on the death of his father, Ezeng-bonyamba I. Last week in his Manhattan office he explained why he hardly warmed the throne before turning it over to his brother. His ambition: to educate in turn: 1) Orizu, 2) Nnewi, 3) Nigeria, 4) Africa.
Says deep-voiced Prince Orizu: "The type of education that is safe for our peace is the education that has no bitterness." His recently published Without Bitterness (Creative Age, $3) throws some bitter sidelights on the intellectual darkness of his native continent. The illiterate Nigerian man-in-the-jungle outnumbers his educated brother by more than ten to one. Orizu believes that only universal free education can help to stem the growing spirit of revenge in his long-exploited continent ("Can it be that my Africa is without brothers?").
Pragmatism and Polygamy. Though Europe's universities outrank the U.S.'s in Nigerian esteem, Orizu heard American universities praised by a fellow countryman, came to the U.S. in 1939, at Ohio State took his degree in government with honors, proceeded to an M.A. at Columbia. Through his American Council on African Education he has thus far secured 150 U.S. college scholarships for his countrymen. In a few months he expects to go home (where he may or may not resume the throne) and begin working at first hand to improve Nigeria's 36,626 schools, 380,305 pupils. Nnewi and three other Nigerian states, he reports, have already contributed more than $120,000 for new colleges.
A strong believer in cultural reciprocity, the Prince wants Nigeria's 23 accredited colleges to offer research-scholarships to U.S. students. Besides such hard-to-find courses as Arabic language and Nigerian history, they would provide Western visitors with insights into Nigeria's "stable family system and immaterial culture."
Prince Orizu is so literate that he has no time for the movies or dancing, once missed an appointment because he read himself to the end of the line in a Manhattan bus. His idol is Patrick Henry, one of his favorite words is American philosophy's "pragmatism," and he does not like to be called "chief." Pragmatically, Orizu has not yet decided whether polygamy, which was good enough for his father (at least 170 times a groom), is good enough for him.

Here 4th from the right visiting the White House with K.O Mbadiwe and "Boycott king” Mbonu Ojike

NIGERIA: The Black Rock. (TIME Magazine Monday, Dec. 05, 1960)

(Cover Story)
At five minutes before nine the warning bell clanged, and the chattering parliamentarians in the lobby began to file into the House to take their seats. Precisely on the hour, a voice raised the traditional cry "Mistah Speakah," and the legislators froze as a bemedaled attendant solemnly descended the nine red-carpeted steps into the well of the House and laid a golden mace on the table separating the government front benches from those of the opposition. After a prayer calling down God's protection on the nation and Queen Elizabeth II, the Speaker, in his English-accented English, called "Odah, odah," and the debate began. Scarcely had it got into full swing when a proud, ascetic figure strolled slowly toward the government bench and all eyes converged on the ebony face of Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, O.B.E., K.B.E., C.B.E., LL.D., Prime Minister of Nigeria.
Along with its echoes of Britain's Westminster, the legislature over which Sir Abubakar presided last week had some of the flavor of a Pan-African Congress. On its benches tall, haughty Hausas, splendidly robed in green and scarlet, sat amongst volatile Ibos draped in white and azure gowns. Across the aisle were Yoruba tribesmen wrapped in gold, yellow and orange with little porkpie beanies on their heads. Between them, they constituted one of the world's noisiest Parliaments. Each speaker was greeted with cries of "Heah, heah" from his friends and derisory shouts of "Sit down, you wretched fool" from his foes; from the rostrum came the perennial plea for "Odah, odah!" But somehow, through the din, the nation's problems got discussed and decided.
In the hurly-burly of 1960's African avalanche of freedom, Nigeria's impressive demonstration of democracy's workability in Africa is too often overlooked. Next-to-newest of the 18 nations* to win independence this year (see p. 23), Nigeria entered the world community without noisy birthpangs or ominous warnings of its determination to avenge ancient wrongs. Since moderation and common sense are not the stuff that headlines are made of, the world's eyes slid past Nigeria to focus worriedly on the imperialistic elbowings of Ghana's Nkrumah, on the heedless plunge into Marxism taken by Guinea's Sékou Touré and above all, on the bloody chaos in the Congo.
In the long run, the most important and enduring face of Africa might well prove to be that presented by Nigeria. Where so many of its neighbors have shaken off colonialism only to sink into strongman rule. Nigeria not only preaches but practices the dignity of the individual. And where such other islands of order in Africa as Liberia. Togo and the former French Congo lack the size and power to overbalance thrusting Ghana and Guinea (combined population: 8,665,000), the Federation of Nigeria stands a giant among Lilliputians; last October, when Nigeria's 40 million people got their independence, the free population of Black Africa jumped 50%. Backed by such numbers, Nigeria's sober voice urging the steady, cautious way to prosperity and national greatness seems destined to exert ever-rising influence in emergent Africa.
The Perfect Victorian. No man better symbolizes the strengths and hopes of independent Nigeria than Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (pronounced Bah-lay-wah). At 47, he is slight of figure (5 ft. 8½ in., 136 Ibs.), and his wispy mustache and greying, crew-cut beard make him look older than he is. Reserved and unassuming, he is a rare bird in a land famed for flamboyant politicians, was once described by an African magazine as a "turtledove among falcons."
But for all his lack of drama, Sir Abubakar is an astute and impressive statesman. His rolling, resonant oratory and superb command of English have won him the nickname "The Golden Voice."
For his crucial role in Nigeria's advance to independence, Britain has heaped him with honors and his native admirers hail him as "The Black Rock of Nigeria." (As a devout Moslem, the title he prizes most is that of alhaji—one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca.) In his drive to lift his backward land into the 20th century, Balewa's piercing eyes exude calm and sureness, and he rarely speaks in anger. "He is," says a longtime British acquaintance, "perhaps the perfect Victorian gentleman. He simply will not be rushed."
Hershey Bars & Chickens. Sprawled along 580 miles of the choppy Gulf of Guinea, Sir Abubakar's Nigeria is a ragged rectangle the size of Texas and Oklahoma combined. Just behind the beach, guarded by a great green mangrove wall, lie sweltering swamps—and the mosquitoes whose deadly bite kept white men from settling Nigeria as they did Algeria, Kenya and the Rhodesias.* Beyond the swamps is the thick layer of tangled rain forest, where the natives pick cocoa pods for the world's chocolate factories and gather oil palms for the big soap firms. Then comes the undulating grass country, rising in the north to the crusty, arid, mile-high floor and then to the hot Sahara's edge, where by day nomadic cattle herders bow to Mecca and muffle their faces against the sun and grit-filled harmattan winds with robes that keep out the bitter chill when the sun goes down.

Scattered across this diverse land, Nigeria's cities throb with the vigor of noisy commerce and the color of exotic dyes. In the federal capital of Lagos (pronounced Lay-gahs), where gleaming buildings rise among the slums, the streets are a cacophony of honking autos and a torrent of heedless jaywalkers. Lagos' open-air market is a constant melee: picking their way through tall piles of blinding indigo or scarlet cloth, vast platters of red peppers on bright green leaves, and mounds of white salt, hordes of shrieking women peddle alum, alarm clocks, Hershey bars, live chickens, hair tonic—all from overloaded trays atop their heads.
Around the Y. But the central fact of Nigerian politics is not a clash between townsman and bush dweller. It is, instead, racial and religious rivalries pointed up by the mighty Y that is stamped across Nigeria's face (see map) by two great rivers—the winding Benue that pours from the cloud-ringed Camerounian mountains in the east, and the majestic Niger that comes in from the west to join the Benue in a single mighty stream running south to the Gulf of Guinea.
Under the Y's left arm, in the Western Region (pop. 8,000,000), live the most advanced of all Nigerians—the Yoruba tribesmen, who worship 400 different deities, including Shango, god of thunder, and boast a centuries-old tradition of political organization.
Under the right arm of the Y is the heavily forested Eastern Region (pop. 9,000,000), home of the Ibo. a fiercely independent people, half Christian, half pagan, and known, because of their get-up-and-go, as "the Jews of Africa."
Black Africa's first TV station and Nigeria's first university are in the Western capital of Ibadan, where three-quarters of a million people cluster noisily under a sea of tin roofs. Between them, the Yoruba West and bustling Ibo East dominate Nigeria's commerce and furnish most of the country's bureaucrats. But the real weight of the nation rests on the top of the Y. Here, in the Northern Region, live close to 20 million people, mostly Moslems, who still remember the jihad (holy war), in which, 156 years ago, the Fulani horsemen of Imam Othman dan Fodio overwhelmed the original Hausa inhabitants. Though it is still an essentially feudal society in which Hausa-speaking masses are ruled by stern Fulani emirs, the North today, by sheer weight of numbers, controls Nigeria's federal House of Representatives and, in the person of Sir Abubakar, lords it over the bright brats of the South.

To the New World. It was in the North too that Nigeria's written history began—in the walled-caravan center of Kano, whose chronicles date back to A.D. 960 and whose big, modern airport today is one of the world's busiest. For coastal Nigeria the ages passed without written record until the late 15th century, when Portuguese adventurers sailed and marched up the creeks to Benin, whose 16th and 17th century bronzes (some of which depict Portuguese traders) are now among Africa's most treasured art objects. To the Portuguese—and the English who eventually displaced them—Nigeria's most valuable commodity was its people. Between 1562 (when Sir John Hawkins carried Britain's first slave cargo to Haiti) and 1862 (when the last Nigerian was sold in the U.S. South), Nigeria's chiefs sold so many hundreds of thousands of their countrymen into slavery in the New World that Nigeria became known as the Slave Coast.

With slavery's passing and the coming of the Industrial Revolution, Britain's interest in Nigeria shifted from people to palm oil. To get the oil, British trading companies began to penetrate the interior of Nigeria—and after them came the Union Jack. By 1903, when Sir Frederick Lugard (later Lord Lugard) began his campaigns against the Northern emirs, British rule in Nigeria was an accepted international fact. But even yet no one conceived of northern and southern Nigeria as having anything but a geographical connection; the word Nigeria itself was coined by a London Times contributor named Flora Shaw—who later became Lady Lugard. Not until 1914, when Lugard, one of Britain's great colonial administrators, took over as Governor General of both North and South, was modern Nigeria born.
A Matter of Chance. The man who rules Nigeria today is two years older than his country. He was born simply Abubakar, the child of Yakubu, a minor official in the regime of the emir of Bauchi. (According to northern custom, he later added to his given name that of his village—Tafawa Balewa.) Though Abubakar was not of the mighty Fulani—his family belonged to the Geri tribe—his father's position won him the rare privilege of schooling in a region almost totally illiterate. After secondary school he was even able to get into Katsina Teachers' Training College, normally open only to sons of the northern feudal elite.
Armed with his rare education, Abubakar returned to the windswept Bauchi Plateau and settled down on the staff of a Boys Middle School; he was a born teacher, and might have spent his life there except for a chance remark by a friend, who said that no northern Nigerian had ever passed the examination for a Senior Teacher's Certificate. Piqued by this reflection on northern intelligence, Abubakar took the exam and, to the astonishment of southern colleagues, passed it with ease. Impressed, London University's Institute of Education granted him a scholarship in 1945.
Ferment at Home. Uninterested in politics, Abubakar stuck to his books, never met such hot-eyed young nationalists as Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah and Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta, who were also in London then. When the BBC sought a Nigerian to read Nigeria's new 1946 constitution on its overseas service, Abubakar willingly took the job but had, he later confessed, not the slightest idea what the document he had read was all about.
Back home, there were plenty of noisy young men who did. Noisiest was the flamboyant Nnamde ("Zik") Azikiwe, a nimble Ibo spellbinder who had spent nine years in the U.S. working as a coal miner, professional boxer and gatherer of university degrees (Lincoln University, the University of Pennsylvania). Returning home, he became the loudest advocate of an independent, united Nigeria. Under the rising pressure, the British agreed to set up—as "advisory" bodies only—local Houses of Assembly in all three regions, plus a federal legislative council.
A Mere Intention. Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was hardly back from his year in London when the northern emirs, suddenly confronted with the need to find literate occupants for the northern seats in the federal assembly, pressed him into service. Like the emirs themselves, Abubakar started off with the fear that in a unified Nigeria the backward North itself would be swamped by the vigorous, better educated South. "Nigerian unity," he told the assembly, "is only a British intention for the country. It is artificial, and ends outside this chamber!"
With Zik & Co. sowing the seeds of rebellion in the South, the days of British rule in Nigeria were clearly numbered. But at conference after conference, the bemused British could only sit apart and smile as the Africans themselves delayed independence by interregional quibbling. Not until 1951 did the shape of the ultimate solution begin to appear: in return for accepting a federal legislature with real power, the North would get as many seats as the East and West combined.
A Rebel's Conversion. By then Nigerian politics had taken on a permanent three-way stretch. In the Ibo East, Zik's National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons held sway. In the West, the Action Group, headed by shrewd, stodgy Chief Obafemi Awolowo (pronounced Ah-Wo-lo-wo), spoke for the Yoruba people. Northern power then (as now) meant tall, solemn Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna (commander) of Sokoto and boss of the Northern Peoples Congress.
Since the Sardauna had no interest in settling in Lagos among the "southern barbarians," Abubakar became the protector of northern interests in the capital. Grudgingly, he went along with federal unity to the extent of becoming Minister of Works. "From the start he was the best minister of them all," recalls a British civil servant. "He did his homework and sent his paperwork through swiftly." But he remained a northerner, not a Nigerian.
A Single Pride. His moment of enlightenment came in 1955, when Abubakar journeyed to the U.S. to find out whether what the U.S. had done to develop water transport on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers could be applied to the sand-clogged Niger. One night, as he sat in a Manhattan hotel room, he got to thinking about what he had seen in the U.S. His thoughts as he recalls them: 'In less than 200 years, this great country was welded together by people of so many different backgrounds. They built a mighty nation and had forgotten where they came from and who their ancestors were. They had pride in only one thing —their American citizenship." That night he wrote to a friend in Nigeria: "Look, I am a changed man from today. Until now I never really believed Nigeria could be one united country. But if the Americans could do it, so can we."
Day of Freedom. With that, a united, independent Nigeria became only a matter of constitution writing and tidying up the details of transferring power. The British, their long and successful work of tutoring done, were ready. In 1957 Sir Abubakar stepped in as Nigeria's first Prime Minister, to prepare the nation for full freedom. Last October 1, as drums rumbled, guns blared and exuberant citizens gleefully shuffled through the high-life dance, Nigeria's green and white banner rose over Lagos in place of the Union Jack.
Along with independence. Nigeria acquired one of the most stable and genuinely representative governments in Africa. To ensure the votes necessary to push through his programs, Abubakar brought Zik's N.C.N.C. into coalition with his own Northern Peoples Congress. As payment, longtime Firebrand Zik unpredictably accepted the ceremonial job of governor general. Chief Awolowo resigned himself to the role of Opposition leader.
Time & Tolerance. Despite the favorable omens under which Nigeria was born, the burdens on Sir Abubakar's slender shoulders are awesome. The diversity that gives Nigeria's government a kind of built-in system of checks and balances also poses the ever-present threat of fragmentation; to weld Nigeria's 250 major tribes with as many languages into a single, indivisible nation will require not only time but tolerance. With only 175,000 pupils receiving secondary education, schools are desperately needed. In terms of university graduates, Nigeria is better off than the Congo, but there are still only 532 qualified Nigerian doctors, 644 lawyers, 20 graduate engineers. Awolowo and others are demanding that Abubakar throw out the British holdovers who still occupy half of Nigeria's senior civil service posts; yet, as Abubakar points out, "Nigerianization" of the civil service cannot sensibly be completed until enough Africans themselves can be trained.

Economically, Nigeria is a "have" nation by African standards, is close to self-sufficiency in food. But with a per capita income of only $84, capital is lacking to move the economy beyond its present agricultural base. Tin, columbite (for jet-engine alloys) and coal are all being exported, but there is no money to develop the lead, zinc and iron ore that have been found in quantity. Abubakar dreams of building West Africa's first steel mill and a huge dam on the Niger. But the big hope is oil. After 25 years, Shell finally hit a gusher in 1956, figures the Niger Delta swamps contain reserves of perhaps one billion barrels.

The Cold Stare. Within Nigeria's brand-new government, corruption flourishes—to the chagrin of Sir Abubakar, who startles his colleagues by actually handing back the surplus of his expense-account money when he returns from a trip abroad. And where honesty exists, talent is often lacking. To get results, Sir Abubakar, normally mild and patient, hounds his ministers, occasionally displaying to inept underlings a towering temper never seen in public. An error can bring simply a long, cold stare; it can also bring an explosion, as it did recently when a minister tried to justify an obvious goof. "That is quite enough," snapped the Prime Minister. "Shut up and get out!"
To avoid wasting time in the horrendous Lagos traffic—where auto trips are measured in the number of cigarettes consumed rather than in minutes—Sir Abubakar lives in a modern, two-story cement house near his office with his wife and nine children—plus the swarming families of his chauffeur and police orderly. In the Moslem tradition, his wife does not appear in public; for formal dinner parties, Abubakar borrows the Irish wife of a fellow minister to act as hostess. Up for prayers at 6:30, Abubakar breakfasts in time to arrive at his office precisely at 8:15, heads home again at 2:15 in the afternoon with enough folders full of state papers to keep him busy until bedtime. Once a heavy smoker, Abubakar swore off after his 1957 pilgrimage to Mecca, now combats the tensions of his job by chewing the bitter kola nuts that he keeps in the pocket of his long white riga.

The Christian Virtues. In his public contacts, Abubakar is quiet and self-effacing, but in Parliament he has lately begun to vary his usual restrained tactics. Fortnight ago, when the House of Representatives was debating a mutual defense pact that would allow Britain's R.A.F. to retain facilities at Nigerian airfields, Opposition Leader Awolowo, intent on embarrassing the government, cried out in outrage that the proposed pact was a "swindle" that would automatically involve Nigeria in war if Britain got in trouble. In his rich, rolling bass, Sir Abubakar fired back: "I have always regarded the leader of the Opposition as a good Christian; in Christianity as in Islam, it is a sin to tell a lie." While Awolowo stared grimly at the ceiling, the Assembly ratified the treaty by a vote of 166 to 38.
Last week, on the heels of the defense-treaty debate, the avant-garde of Nigeria's young intellectuals were sneering at Abubakar's open admiration and affection for Britain. And all across Black Africa, the smart set of extreme nationalism accused Abubakar of the African version of Uncle Tomism. They were distressed by the instinctive anti-Communism that prevents him from joining in the delightful game of giving the "colonialists" the shivers by cozying up to Moscow. (At Nigeria's independence celebrations, when Russia's Jakob Malik cheerily announced that the Soviets planned to open a Lagos embassy immediately, Abubakar bluntly told him: "As a diplomat, you must understand that things are not done that way. You must submit an application for diplomatic relations, and we shall judge it on its merits.") Above all, the extremists are shocked that Abubakar can barely conceal his contempt for showboating Kwame Nkrumah and his schemes for Pan-African unification, instead urges that for the time being, African cooperation be limited to such practical steps as technical and cultural exchanges, a common U.N. front and, perhaps, economic agreements.
But for all of Ghana's contempt for its bigger Johnny-come-lately rival, Nigeria, less than two months after winning its independence, is on its way to becoming one of the major forces in Africa. Nigeria's dynamic U.N. Ambassador Jaja Wachuku is chairman of Dag Hammarskjold's Congo Conciliation Commission. A number of African nations, notably those of the French Community, are beginning to sidle up to Nigeria in visible relief at the emergence of a counterweight to the firebrands of Ghana and Guinea. And Abubakar himself has begun the wheeling and dealing abroad expected of a sovereign nation's leader; at last week's end he headed for London to mull over Commonwealth problems with Harold Macmillan, stopped off en route to discuss the Algerian war with Arab leaders in Tunis.

Like everything else about him, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa's basic foreign policy principles are unpretentious: "We consider it wrong for the Federal Government to associate itself as a matter of routine with any of the power blocs . . . Our policies will be founded on Nigeria's interests and will be consistent with the moral and democratic principles on which our constitution is based." If Nigeria lives up to his words, Africa and the world will have cause to be grateful.

^{*The 18th, Mauritania, becomes independent this week.
*In tribute to this involuntary ally against colonialism, the flag of Nigeria's Western Region today bears a symbolic mosquito.}