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CIDOB International Yearbook 2008 Keys to facilitate the monitoring of the Spanish Foreign Policy and the International Relations in 2007 Country profile: Nigeria and its regional context Annex Biographies of main political leaders* * These annexes have been done by Dauda Garuba, Senior Programme Officer at the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) in Nigeria, in collaboration with CIDOB Foundation.

CIDOB INTERNATIONAL YEARBOOK 2008 Nigeria and its regional context

Biographies of main political leaders of Nigeria Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (1912 -1966) Prime minister 1960-1966

Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first and only Prime Minister of

independent Nigeria, was born in 1912 in Tafawa Balewa, present Bauchi State. He had early education at a Quranic School in Bauchi and also studied at the famous Katsina Teachers’ Training College between 1928 and 1933 before returning to Bauchi to teach at the Bauchi Middle School. He later became the headmaster of the school. He (along with Malam Aminu Kano) was among the few learned teachers who were selected in northern Nigeria to study at the University of London’s Institute of Education where he obtained a teacher’s certificate in History in 1944.

On return from the UK, Sir Balewa was appointed an Inspector of Schools, a position he held before he joined partisan politics and got elected by the Bauchi Native Authority to the Northern Region House of Assembly in 1946. He co-founded the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) with Alhaji Ahmadu Bello (through the fusing of the Bauchi Discussion Circle with other political associations he had also helped to found) and became the deputy leader of the party. He won the Tafawa Balewa seat in the Northern House of Assembly and the federal House of Representatives in 1951and became federal Minister of Works, and of Transport, in 1952 and 1954 respectively. He was also elected Senior Minister in a coalition government formed by the NPC

and the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) in 1957 and retained the position of Prime Minister when Nigeria attained independence in 1960. He was re-elected for the position in 1964 and retained it till he was assassinated in Nigeria’s first military coup in 1966.

Throughout his political career, Sir Balewa played a leading role in national policy making and participated with highly appreciable skills in the Nigeria constitutional reform processes up to the time the country attained a republican status in 1963. However, his critics believed that he was limited in his power, especially in the context in which he was remained theoretically answerable to his NPC President, Ahamdu Bello, who was also the Premier of Northern Region. This has been explained in the ‘incompetence’ he demonstrated in handling the series of crises that engulfed Nigeria in the first few years after independence.

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Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904 – 1996) Governor General 1960-1963 and President 1963-1966

Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, a foremost Nigerian nationalist and pan-Africanist,

was born of Igbo parents on November 16, 1904, in Zungeru, present Niger State, where his father had worked as a Clerk in the ‘Nigerian Regiment’. He studied in Onitsha, Calabar and Lagos, and thereafter worked briefly at the Nigeria Treasury in Lagos, before proceeding to the United States 1925 for further studies, where he obtained Bachelors in Political Science from Lincoln University. He also obtained advanced degrees from the same university and from the University of Pennsylvania in 1932 and 1933 respectively. In-between studying for his advanced degrees, Zik, as he was fondly called by admirers, worked as an Instructor in Political Science at Lincoln University before returning to Africa where he picked up a job as Editor of the Africa Morning Post in Accra, Ghana. Prior to this time, he had expressed a pan-African ideology in many of his writings, especially Liberia in World Politics (1934), In Defense of the Black Republic and Renascent African (1937). His writings did not only earn him the nickname ‘Great Zik of Africa’, they also spawned a philosophy of African liberation that became known as Zikism.

He left Ghana for Lagos, Nigeria in

1937 after he was acquitted of a treason charge in connection of an article by I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson entitled: "Has the African A God?" which he published on May 15, 1936. While in Lagos, he founded the West African Pilot, and many others that were later brought under the Zik Group of Newspapers, to push a nationalist agenda.

Zik started his political career in 1944 when he co-founded (along with Herbert Macualay – the father of Nigerian nationalism) the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) where he was Secretary-general in 1946 and got elected to the Nigerian Legislative Council. He was the leader of Opposition

government of Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the Western Region House of Assembly in 1951, before moving to the Eastern Region in 1952, on grounds of ethnic marginalisation, to secure election to the position of Senior Minister in 1952 and Premier of the region in 1954. He became Nigeria’s Governor General after independence in 1960 and got named to the Queen's Privy Council. He was the first President of Nigeria, with Sir Tafawa Balewa being Prime Minister, when Nigeria’s attained of a republican status in 1963. He was swept from power by the first military coup of 1966.

He only got back to politics in 1978 as co-founder of the Nigerian People's Party (NPP). He contested the presidency, using the party’s platform in the

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1979 and 1983 general elections, but was not successful, though his party won two Eastern states. He was forced to quit politics after the military coup that brought Gen. Mohammadu Buhari to power on December 31, 1983. He died on May 11, 1996. Ahmadu Bello (1909 – 1966) Premier North Region, 1954-1966

Alhaji (Sir) Ahmadu Bello, a descendant of the renowned 19th Century Islamic scholar and reformer – Uthman Dan Fodio, was born in 1909 in Rabah in present Sokoto State. He had early Islamic education in Sokoto and western education at the Sokoto Provincial School and Katsina Teacher Training College. He taught for several years at the Sokoto Middle School before joining the Emirate Administration in 1934.

Sir Ahmadu Bello’s involvement in broader politics started in 1945 when he assisted to form the Youth Circle in Sokoto - a discussion group of Northern educators and civil servants which became affiliated to the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) that he led as president. As president of NPC, Sir Bello led the northern opinion in the 1949/50 constitutional debates and eventually got elected to represent the Sokoto Native Authority at the Northern House of Assembly in 1952. He served in the northern regional executive council and as Minister of Works, and of Community Development and Local Government in 1953. He became the first Premier of Northern Nigeria in 1954, a position he held after successive elections until he was assassinated in the Nigeria’s first military

coup in January 1966. Sir Bello was perhaps the most politically powerful person in Nigeria

during the first five years of the country’s independence. However, his distaste for ‘southern Nigerian style of politics’ and the apparently more fulfilling powers Nigeria’s federalism conferred on him as Premier of Northern Region made him conclude not to participate in the federal government at independence in 1960. Instead, he decided to remain as Premier of Northern Region, while seconding his deputy in NPC, Sir Tafawa Balewa, to become Prime Minister of Nigeria when the party was invited to form government at independence.

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Obafemi Awolowo (1909 – 1987) Premier West Region, 1954-1959

Chief Obafemi Awolowo was born on March 6, 1909. He had his early education in the mission schools of Ikenne, Abeokuta, and Ibadan. He had a poor humble background which warranted his having to do odd jobs to raise money for his education, including a University of London degree he obtained in Commerce through correspondence. His greatest ambition of becoming a lawyer was realized when he was called to the London Bar in 1946, after which he returned to Nigeria in 1947 to start what became a thriving legal practice.

Chief Awolowo’s political career dates back to when he founded the Action Group (AG) which was simply a transformation from the Egbe Omo Oduduwa (Society of the Descendants of Oduduwa)1 he had earlier helped to form. Prior to this time, he had served at the level of the Nigerian Youth Movement of which he was Western Provincial Secretary, and had launched himself into the Nigerian nationalist struggle with his first published book - Path to Nigerian Freedom – which was highly critical of British policy of Indirect Rule. In that book, he advocated rapid move of Nigeria towards federalism as the best suited form of government for ethnic diversity, Africanization of administration and self-government. All other of his books reiterated and further pushed this argument.

After a successful election into the

Western Region House of Assembly in 1952, Chief Awolowo held the Western Region’s ministerial portfolios of Local Government, Finance, and Economic Planning, as well as served as the Chairman of the Regional Economic Planning Commission. In 1954, he emerged the first Premier of the Region. He used his position to pursue AG’s welfare programmes of free education, increased health services, diversification of economy and democratization of local government.

Chief Awolowo resigned his Premiership of Western Region (to his deputy, Chief S.L. Akintola) to stand for the federal elections of 1959, which marked a turning point in his political career. While he won

the federal constituency seat he vied for in that election, his AG party was on the overall decisively defeated; thus precipitating his having to be the leader of Opposition in the Federal House of Representatives. As opposition leader

1 The pan-Yoruba cultural organization was named after Oduduwa, the mythical ancestor of the Yoruba ethnic group.

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Chief Awolowo was at his best. He never critiqued government policies without do so constructively and offering alternative position.

Power struggle between him and Chief S.L. Akintola who succeeded him as Premier in Western region led to the declaration of a state of emergency in the region to forestall a ranging breakdown of law and order in 1962 and the eventual ten years sentence handed down on him over allegation of conspiring to overthrow the government of Nigeria under Sir Tafawa Balewa in 1963. He was eventually released from prison by the Gowon regime in 1967 and made Federal Commissioner for Finance and Vice Chairman of the Federal Executive Council. He resigned from this position in 1971 to protest the continuation of military rule which believed should have ended after the end of the Nigerian Civil War. He contested the 1979 and 1983 presidential elections on the platform of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) which he helped to found, and lost to Alhaji Shehu Shagari on both occasions. He died on May 9, 1987. Anthony Enahoro (1923 – Date)

Chief Anthony Enahoro, a foremost anti-colonial and pro-democracy activist and campaigner, was born on July 22, 1923 in Uromi present Edo State. He was educated at Government Schools in Uromi and Owo, and King’s College Lagos.

Chief Enahoro had a distinguished

career in the press, politics and the pro-democracy movement. He was the youngest editor ever of a national newspaper – the Southern Nigerian Defender (Ibadan) at 21 in 1944. He was also the Editor of the Kano-based Comet between 1945 and 1949, Editor-in-Chief of Morning Post and Associate Editor of West African Pilot (Lagos) between 1950 and 1953.

He started his political career as a member of the Zikist Movement and sojourned on as a foundation member of the Action Group led by Chief Awolowo. He was a member of the Western Region House of Assembly and Minister of Home Affairs in the AG government of Chief Awolowo in the region. Following his election to the Federal House of Representatives at the same time with

Chief Awolowo in 1959, Chief Enahoro became Opposition party spokesman on Foreign Affairs and Legislative Affairs in the House. He was many times a delegate to the series constitutional conferences that culminated in Nigeria’s

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independence in 1960. He is most remembered for moving the famous 1953 motion that sought for Nigeria’s self-government in 1956.

Chief Enahoro, like his colleagues in the AG, was restricted by the emergency rule laws during the 1962 Western Region crisis. He however escaped to the United Kingdom in 1963 amidst accusation of treason during the Chief Awolowo alleged coup plot and trial, but was extradited from the UK and got imprisoned. This informed the publication of his famous treatise – The Fugitive Offender. He was also released along with Chief Awolowo by the Gowon regime. He served as the leader the Mid-West delegation to the Ad-Hoc Constitutional Conference of 1966, federal Commissioner for Information and Labour (1967-1974) and for Special Duties (1975).

Chief Enahoro joined the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the Second Republic politics (1979 –1983). He was also Chairman of the pro-democracy movement – National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) – that fought the Gen. Sani Abacha regime till his the later died in June 1998. He is today the Chairman of the Movement for National Reformation (the mother organization of the National Reformation Party – NRP) and the Pro-National Conference Organisation (PRONACO). Malam Aminu Kano (1920-1983)

Malam Aminu Kano was born to an Islamic scholar, Malam Yusuf, who worked as a Mufti at the Alkali court in Kano in 1920. He was trained at the Katsina Teachers’ Training College and taught at the Bauchi Training College before proceeding to the University of London’s Institute of Education, alongside Sir Tafawa Balewa, for further studies.

His political career started with speaking

freely on political issues (against Native Authority administration) outside of his teaching duties. While in Bauchi he was a member of the Bauchi General Improvement Union and Secretary of the Bauchi Discussion Circle – a group known for its criticism of Indirect Rule.

Malam Aminu Kano later joined Jam’iyyar Mutane Arewa, but led a splitter group of radicals out of it to form the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) when it was transforming into Northern Peoples Congress (NPC). His NEPU was composed of teachers and intellectuals of progressive learning who tried to fill the vacuum of political radicalism and the vanguard for the liberation of the talakawa (peasants/masses) from the clutches of

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what he classified as an autocratic and feudalistic Native authority system in the North. The little success of the party in the 1951 Kano primary elections was wiped away by the formidable challenges posed by the NPC in the federal House of Representatives and Northern Region House of Assembly elections in 1954 and 1956 respectively. It was only in the 1959 parliamentary (independence) elections that he won the Kano East federal constituency seat under NEPU platform in alliance with the National Council of Nigeria and the Camerouns (NCNC). He emerged the Deputy Chief Whip in the House. Malam Aminu Kano also served in the military government of Yakubu Gowon as a federal Commissioner for Health from 1967 – 1974.

When the ban on partisan politics was lifted by the Obasanjo regime in September 1978, Malam Aminu Kano’s People’s Redemption Party (PRP) was one of the five political parties that secured government registration. Although he did not win the elections in which he was featured by his party as presidential candidate in 1979, his personality nevertheless won two gubernatorial seats (Kano and Kaduna) for PRP, while a few highly respected Nigerians such as Sam Ikoku, Michael Imoudu and Chinua Achebe were its prominent supporters. He died on April 17, 1983. Shehu Shagari (1925 – Date) President 1979-1983

Alhaji Shehu Shagari was born in Shagari village in present day Sokoto State in 1925. He had his elementary education at Yabo, after which he studied at the Sokoto Middle School and Kaduna College and taught as a teacher before joining politics.

Alhaji Shagari started his political career in the 1946 when he co-founded the Youth Social Circle in Sokoto with one Mallam Gambo through the support of such noble personalities as Ahmadu Bello, Ibrahim Gusau and Malam Ahmadu Dabbaba. Prior to this period, he had been known for his strong social views about development of Yabo where he had his elementary education.

The euphoria for the formation of political parties and consolidation of

ideas in the north in the late 1940s which led to the merger of many political organizations brought Shagari’s Youth Social Circle in the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) in 1948. Alhaji Shagari was elected on the party’s platform in the federal parliamentary elections that followed in 1959, after he served as Parliamentary Secretary to Abubakar Tafawa Balewa in 1958. He held the

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ministerial positions of Economic Development in 1960, Internal Affairs in 1962 and Works and Survey in 1965. After the coup that cut the First Republic short in 1966, he was brought back by the Gowon regime as a federal Commissioner for Economic Affairs in 1970 and later Finance when Chief Awolowo resigned from the regime in 1971.

Alhaji Shagari left government after the coup that overthrew Gen. Gowon in 1975, but returned to politics through his membership of the National Movement that was formed within the constitutional conference appointed by the Obasanjo regime to set Nigeria on the path to civilian rule in 1979. The National Movement metamorphosed into the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), the platform on which he contested and won Nigeria’s presidency.

As president, Alhaji Shagari attempted to promote policies that advanced housing, industries, transportation and agriculture, but the economic crisis precipitated by the collapse of the international oil prices (glut) in the second half of 1981 and the widespread corruption in public life (including sharp and dubious practices in the issuance of import licenses), all combined to run down his government in the face of marked deterioration in the living conditions of Nigerians. The desire by his party (NPN) to perpetuate itself in power and even win more elected political offices in the face of the above failure was manifested in the 1983 electoral fraud, the outcomes of which were largely disputed by Nigerians. It is in this context that many Nigerians jumped into the streets to celebrate the overthrow of Alhaji Shagari in a military coup that brought General Muhammadu Buhari to power on December 30, 1983. Chief M.K.O. Abiola (1937 – 1998)

Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola was born in Abeokuta, present Ogun State, on August 24, 1937. He was educated at the Baptist High School, Abeokuta. He had an early professional career with the ITT Corporations where he rose to the position of Vice President overseeing Africa and the Middle East. He later grew to become a multi-billionaire with investments spanning airlines, shipping, oil, publishing, agriculture, banking among others. His philanthropism was not known to be matched by any Nigerian of his time, and he demonstrated this by the hundreds of chieftaincy titles he held across ethnically diverse Nigeria.

The most prominent aspect of the beginning of his political career was in the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) where he attempted to contest for the presidential ticket of the party against an incumbent Alhaji Shagari in 1983, but he failed. He thereafter quit active politics, only to return to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) ten years later and contested the June 12, 1993 presidential elections with Alhaji Baba Gana Kigibe as his running mate. He secured the overwhelming support of Nigerians in that election which he ran against Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention (NRC) – one the two parties that existed in the political transition of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida regime. However, the announcement of the results of what was considered by most Nigerians to be the freest and fairest elections in the

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annals of Nigerian election history was stopped in the mid-way, and annulled after 14 out of the 30 states had been declared and resoundingly won by Chief Abiola. In fact, he was poised to win the elections and the unofficially declared figures of the remaining 16 states ably demonstrated his victory. Subsequent events after resulted in change of governments from Gen. Babangida, to Ernest Shonekan and to Gen. Sani Abacha, all in 83 days.

Sequel to the endless wait for Gen. Abacha to hand over power to Chief Abiola, the latter declared himself the lawful president; an act for which he was arrested for treason. Gen. Abacha regime followed the arrest and detention of Chief Abiola without trial with the deliberate policies to liquidate his business empire. Things came to a heard when his wife, Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, was murdered via a drive-by shooting into her car, for doggedly organizing and pursuing the actualization of her husband’s electoral mandate. Chief Abiola died of ‘heart attack’ (even though in mysterious circumstances) in prison on July 7, 1998, the very day he was billed to be released to pave the way for Nigeria to move forward in the aftermath of Gen. Abacha’s death a month earlier.

Chief Abiola was no doubt a statesman. His record of philanthropism and generosity, which transcended ethnic and boundaries, sold and popularized him among them. He was also known for championing the Reparation Campaign in Africa and acting as the continent’s pillar of sports. Olusegun Obasanjo (1937 – Date) Chief of the Federal Military Government 1976 1979 & President 1999-2007

Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a retired General in the Nigerian Army and two times head of the Nigerian state (1976-1979 and 1999-2007), was born in Owu, present Ogun State, on March 5, 1937. Like Chief Abiola, he attended Baptist High School Abeokuta. He started his professional life in the military where he was enlisted in 1958 and rose to the rank of a General. He featured prominently in the Nigerian civil war (1967-1970) during which he commanded the federal troops that seized Owerri and brought the war to an end. Chief Obasanjo was second in command to the Nigerian Head of State, General Murtala Mohammed, as Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters. This

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was the ground upon which he succeeded the latter as Head of State when he (and the de facto number three man, General Theophilus Danjuma) escaped assassination, by chance, in the February 1976 military coup. As Head of State, Chief Obasanjo kept the chain of command established by his predecessor, continued with the reform programmes that were meant to improve the quality of public service, and above all, kept the promise to return Nigeria to civilian rule in 1979. In retirement, he monitored governance and made public statements whenever he considered things were going wrong. It was in this sense that he (and his old time friend deputy, Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua) was arrested, tried and imprisoned for allegedly participating in a coup d’etat by the Abacha regime. He was only released after the sudden death of Abacha in June 1998 and got sponsored to contest the 1999 transitional elections to civil rule under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which he won and got inaugurated as President of Nigeria on May 29. 1999. He secured a second term of another four years in office in flawed and tumultuously violent elections of 2003, but failed in a bid to amend the Nigerian constitution to run for Third Term, resulting in the worst elections in Nigeria’s history.

Chief Obasanjo spent much part of his first term globetrotting western capitals to restore the long bantered image of Nigeria by the military, which has earned it a series of crippling sanctions. His second term was spent in undertaking serious reforms in virtually all spectres of the country’s life, including the war against corruption.

Chief Obasanjo was seen outside of Nigeria, especially by the West, as an astute crusader against corruption, a touch bearer of genuine economic reform in the country, and a champion of debt relief and restoration of democratic structures in Africa. However critics of his administration argued that his anti-corruption policies were selective and only directed at his enemies, especially those who stood on his way to actualize the Third Term dream. Recent revelations since he left office,

especially about how the due process was by-passed to spend public funds in the power, oil and rural telephony sectors, point to the fact that Chief administration may have been really enmeshed in corruption. Added this is that his reforms did not trickle down to the benefit of the ordinary Nigerian, in spite of the fact that the country’s GDP grew by 3% in 1999/2000 to 6% at the time he left office in 2007.

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Umaru Yar’Adua (1951-Date) President 2007- Date

Alhaji Umaru Yar'Adua, Nigerian president since May 29 2007, was born into a prominent political family in Katsina in 1951. His father was a minister for Lagos in Nigeria’s First Republic, and his elder brother (Shehu Musa Yar’Adua), a retired General in the army and later a high profile politician. He had his primary education at Rafukka Primary School and Dutsinma Boarding Primary School. He also attended Government College, Keffi between 1965 and 1969, and Barewa College Bauchi where he graduated in 1971. He had his university education at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria from 1972 – 1975 and in 1978 where he obtained Bachelors of Science (B.Sc) in Education and Chemistry and Master Science (M.Sc) in Analytical Chemistry.

President Yar’Adua started his professional career as a Chemistry teacher at Holy Child College in Lagos, after which he proceeded to Katsina College of Arts, Science and Technology where he lectured between 1976 and 1983. He also worked as pioneer General Manager of Sambo Farms Ltd in Funtua, Katsina State between 1983 and 1989, and served in several positions such as: Board Member in Katsina State Farmers’ Supply Company, member of the Governing Council of Katsina College of Arts, Science and Technology and Katsina Polytechnic between 1978 and 1983, and Board Chairman of Katsina State Investment and Property Development Company (KIPDECO) from 1994-1996.

President Yar’Adua started his political career in Nigeria’s Second Republic as a leftist in Malam Aminu Kano’s People’s Redemption Party (PRP), while his father served as National Vice Chairman of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN). He was also one of the foundation members of the People’s Front of Nigeria, a political association that was launched by his elder brother (Shehu) and his associates, which eventually empted into the Social Democratic Party (SDP). He was the Secretary of the Katsina State chapter of SDP and contested the governorship election under the party, but lost to Saidu Barda of the National Republican Convention (NRC).

The opening of the political space at the death of Nigeria’s maximum dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha in 1998, threw up Umaru

Yar’Adua as governorship candidate. He won the elections and got re-elected in 2003. He was drafted into the 2007 presidential race by Chief Obasanjo after the botched constitutional amendment process in which the latter was accused of nursing a Third Term Agenda. He was declared winner of the

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elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the elections adjudged by local and international observers as the worst in Nigeria’s history of elections. He did accept that there were flaws in the elections on his inauguration and promised to reform the country’s electoral system to guarantee it of minimum international standards. He has since inaugurated a panel to work on this, while he has set out reversing a good number of the policy discussion of his successor.

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