A Brief Introduction
Nnamdi Azikiwe, PC (16 November 1904 – 11 May 1996), usually referred to as "Zik", was a Nigerian statesman who was Governor General of Nigeria from 1960 to 1963 and the first President of Nigeria from 1963 to 1966 (when Nigeria became a republic). Considered a driving force behind the nation's independence, he came to be known as the "father of Nigerian Nationalism".
Born to Igbo parents in Zungeru in present-day Niger State, as a young boy he learned to speak Hausa (the main indigenous language of the Northern Region). Azikiwe was later sent to live with his aunt and grandmother in Onitsha (his parental homeland), where he learned the Igbo language. A stay in Lagos exposed him to the Yoruba language; by the time he was in college, he had been exposed to different Nigerian cultures and spoke three languages (an asset as president). Azikiwe traveled to the United States where he was known as Ben Azikiwe and attended Storer College, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania and Howard University. He contacted colonial authorities with a request to represent Nigeria at the Los Angeles Olympics.[4] He returned to Africa in 1934, where he began work as a journalist in the Gold Coast. In British West Africa, he advocated Nigerian and African nationalism as a journalist and a political leader.
---Wikipedia, The free EncyclopediaThis is the timeline of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe
- 1904 - Born in northern Nigeria in 1904, Azikiwe was the son of a member of the Ibo tribe who worked for the government. His early schooling was at the English-run Church Missionary Society’s Central School at Onitsha and the Hope Waddel Training Institute at Calabar.
- 1925 - After Azikiwe graduated from the Methodist Boys’ High School in Lagos at the top of his class, his father granted him some funds so that he could travel to the United States and further his education. Azikiwe’s American studies began at Howard University, where he played soccer and was taught by Ralph Bunche, who later achieved fame as a diplomat. He also studied at Storer College in West Virginia, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and Columbia University in New York City while in the United States.
- 1930 - After receiving his B.A. degree from Lincoln University, Azikiwe stayed on for two years as an instructor and to pursue undergraduate work. He cut his teeth as a journalist during summer jobs as a reporter with the Baltimore Afro-American, Philadelphia Tribune, and the Associated Negro Press in Chicago.
- 1931- served as instructor at Lincoln University.
- 1934 - He returned to Africa after five years in the United States and made his debut as a journalist there, becoming editor-in-chief of the African Morning Post.
- 1940 - Azikiwe pressed his cause for Nigerian autonomy on the political front as well. He played a key role in the founding of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC).
- 1944 -Becoming NCNC's first secretary general and then its president in 1946. The prominence of the NCNC and the Ibo people grew under Azikiwe’s leadership. He used the NCNC to push for various reforms, including universal adult suffrage, direct elections, control of the civil service by African ministers, and Nigerian control of the territory’s armed forces.
- 1947 - Azikiwe became more of a thorn in the side of the status quo in 1947 when he became a member of the legislative council in Nigeria. In this position he strove to improve conditions for his people via changes in the constitution. During a 1947 visit to England, he told the British that big problems would result if Nigeria was not granted freedom in 15 years, according to an article in the York Herald Tribune.
- 1951 - After a new constitution for Nigeria was drafted in 1951, the interests of the three regions of the country took precedence over the interest of the whole country. Azikiwe maintained a political balancing act during this period in order to maintain his power.
- 1952 - he had become the first NCNC opposition leader in the Western House of Assembly, then he was elected to the eastern region assembly in 1953. In the summer of that year, he traveled to London with a Nigerian delegation and demanded that Nigeria become self-governing within three years. Disputes arose over Britain’s demand to separate Lagos, which was Nigeria’s capital and chief port, from the western region. Further discussions were held among the various parties in Lagos in early 1954, at which time it was agreed that a more conclusive conference on Nigeria’s future would be conducted in 1956.
- 1954 - Building his power in the Eastern Region, Azikiwe became its premier in 1954 after a new constitution was put into effect. He instituted a new education program in his region, and had a major role in Nigeria becoming the leading exporter of students for study abroad in Africa. In 1954 Azikiwe visited Europe, England, the United States, and Canada with members of the Eastern region economic commission in order to promote investment for developments in textile, vegetable oil refineries, steel, and chemicals.
- 1957 - Azikiwe was still reelected as premier when he dissolved his legislature under pressure and called for a new election in 1956. “When, five years before independence, Azikiwe was exposed as having used his political position to further his financial interests through the African Continental Bank, he still retained the support the Ibo in the Eastern Region; for they believed that he was working for them and so entitled to become wealthy,” noted John Hatch in Africa Emergent.
- 1959 - helps seven African countries dramatically increase their maize and sorghum yields
- 1984 -Azikiwe’s alliance with Abubakar Tafawa Balewa helped him be named president of the senate in 1959, then governor-general.
- 1960 - Azikiwe was named president and Balewa became prime minister. While new elections in 1964 kept Azikiwe in office, political instability led to agitation throughout the country. In January of 1966, a military coup d’état ousted Azikiwe from power.
- 1967 - After Biafra tried to secede from Nigeria in 1967 and created a civil war in the country, Azikiwe backed his fellow Ibo and traveled widely in other African nations to seek recognition of Biafra as an independent nation. Then he incurred the wrath of his former supporters in 1969 when he began backing the federal government in the war. In the years following the war, Azikiwe became a key opponent of the ruling party. Following the creation of a new constitution in Nigeria in 1978 that ended a 12-year ban on political parties, he ran as a candidate for the new Nigerian People’s Party but was defeated.
- 1996 - Throughout his career, Azikiwe used his nationalist press, political connections, and kinship of his tribe to promote education, self-government, welfare, and progress. He also wrote over a dozen books on the struggle for African nationalism and other topics. He died in 1996 after a long illness, at the age of 91. Marking his death, the New York Times commented that Azikiwe "towered over the affairs of Africa's most populous nation, attaining the rare status of a truly national hero who came to be admired across the regional and ethnic lines dividing his country."
"The realization of New Africa can only be possible by the African cultivating spiritual balance, which leads to the practicalization of social regeneration, to realizing economic determination, becoming mentally emancipated, and ushering in a political resurgence."
-- Quoted in A Life of Azikiwe by K. A. B. Jones-Quartey (Penguin, 1965), p. 116