ABSTRACT
The Federal Republic of Nigeria with about 70 million people and over 250 ethnic groups is Africafs most populous state and one of the leading members in the Organization of African Unity. In January 1914 Sir Frederic Lugard, then governor of Nigeria, amalgamated the two areas, the North and the South, under one governor-general and with this act laid the foundations of one of the worst colonial errors in the country’s history. There was no conception of a future independent Nigeria, no plan for the predominant ethnic groups and numerous minorities — with very different histories — to attain mutual accommodation, nor, of course, for any government. The National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC). The NCNC was formed in 1944 from a collection of associations, clubs, and labor and ethnic unions with the express purpose of obtaining independence for Nigeria within the Commonwealth; it advocated a “socialist commonwealth.”
