Action Group (Nigeria)

The Action Group ( AG) was a Nigerian political party 1951 until 1966.

In colonial times

The founding of the party, even during the colonial period, was essentially the work of the Obafemi Awolowo Nigerian trade unionist who built it was founded as a counterweight to the 1944 NCNC of the later first president of Nigeria Nnamdi Azikiwe. Both the NCNC and the Action Group came with the official claim that they wanted to represent the entire Nigerian nation, but in particular the Action Group moved from the beginning in the political- cultural and economic context of the Yorubavolkes, the dominant ethnic group in the west of the country. Awolowo had difficulty in establishing the party to a national organization, such as the NCNC succeeded partly because of that. The Action Group was known for its modern forms of agitation, which allowed her the big money, raise the Awolowo in the then comparatively rich western region knew. In regional elections the then divided into three administrative sectors colony, the AG claimed as the strongest party in the West Region. In 1954, Prime Minister Awolowo Western Nigeria.

In the general election of 1959, the AG could not prevail, and led the newly independent Nigeria from 1960 to the opposition.

The crisis of 1962

In 1962 there was a split in the party as a result of a conflict between Awolowo and Akintola Samuel a leader of the AG and the former Prime Minister of the Western Region. Akintola opposed the increasingly radical socialist rhetoric Awolowo, the ideologically oriented to the Pan-African ideas of the Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah government and on the other hand sought the support of the Conservative Party members and the alliance with the Conservative Party of the North, the NPC. Awolowo, who reckoned on getting rid of his Pan-Africanism, the stigma of a ethnicist party, succeeded Akintola from the AG ruled out, but he immediately founded a new party, the United People 's Party, which immediately began negotiations with the NPC. The exclusion Akintolas caused bloody riots in the West region, which were carried into to the parliament and the government made ​​a proclamation to the emergency. As a result of the AG and its leaders were put on trial for treason. Awolowo and several other officials were sentenced to prison, but the AG was allowed to continue as a party.

  • Historical Socialist Party
  • Historic Party ( Nigeria)
27966
de