Post-Colonial Nigeria Political History Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Post-Colonial Nigeria Political History - Essay Example Consequently, Nigeria not only remained dependent of the United Kingdom several years after the winning of freedom from the latter, but also turned out to be victim of ethnic-racial and religious conflicts after obtaining the status of a sovereign state. Hence, wide-scale corruption, red-tapism, nepotism, hoarding, lawlessness, unemployment and poverty remained the most dominant challenges faced by the country during its post-colonial years till today (Ihuegbu 2002). Like all the newly liberated nations on the map of the globe, Nigeria also experienced ethnic, racial, religious, regional and class discrimination in the country, where the communities belonging to eastern, western and northern parts of the vast country appeared to be determined to dominate over other ethnic and regional communities in one way or the other. Hence, Nigeria became the prey to civil war, and remained as the crowd of people after half century of breaking the shackles of slavery, which could not be stated as a nation in the real sense of the world. A coalition alliance under the title Nigerian People’s Congress came at the helm of the governmental affairs, through elections, in order to establish a conservative Islamic political system in the country. Since both Christian and Muslim communities are in majority in the country, the prominent leader of Christian-dominated National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904-1996) was nominated to be the first Governor General of Nigeria, who belonged to the majority Igbo ethnic group of Nigeria (Rustad 2008). Since the northern Yoruba community, having significant proportion in the national population, was not invited to participate in national affairs, they chose to form opposition alliance Action Group under the leadership of Obafemi Awolowo. Somehow, the differences among the Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo ethnic tribes turned into political rivalries, where all these regional groups were determined to obtain politi cal supremacy in order to enforce the system of their choice subsequently. Since the unrest was in vogue in different parts of the country, where the communities were at daggers drawn in Nigeria, a plebiscite was held in 1961 in order to decide the fate of southerner and northern Cameroon, where the former voted in favor of Cameroon, while the latter decided to remain as an inevitable part of Nigeria (Rustad 2012). However, instead of introducing improvements in political structure, the country was dragged to a long-lasting bloody civil war, called Nigeria-Biafran War (1967-70), which paved the way towards the further division of the country into sects and factions causing heavy losses in men and material subsequently. The military personnel also added their share in bringing an end to the civilian government with the alleged allegations of corruption and favoritism is every area of the state. Like other third world countries of Asia and Africa, Nigeria also fell into the hands of t he military regime during early 1970s, which ended in 1979, resulting in the ruination of the social and economic fabrics of the country. The military ruler General Obasanjo assured the peaceful transfer of power to the elected civilian leader Shehu Shagari.