Young, Gifted and Radical

By the 1950s, across Nigeria, young people had been consuming the lofty rhetoric of communists like I. T. A. Wallace Johnson, and George Padmore; pan-Africanists like W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Ladipo Solanke; and anti-colonialists like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. The youth rallied with gusto and purpose, filled with ambitious ideas about how to build a glorious nation outside the controlling arms of the British Empire.

One such group of young people were the Zikists. Inspired by the ‘de-tribalized’ ideals of Nnamdi Azikiwe, young Nigerians, mostly those who were already active members of Azikiwe’s party, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), decided to form a brand-new campaign. They aspired to affect change where they felt existing pre-independence political platforms like the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA), Nigeria National Democratic Party (NNDP), the West African Students Union (WASU) did not.

Although Azikiwe was a leading anti-colonial voice, he never wanted to be a political messiah or to adopt a radical position in his independence movement. Still, Zikism held sway among young people like Kola Balogun, Raji Abdallah, K. O. Mbadiwe and Nwafor Orizu. In their youthful imaginations, Azikiwe loomed large as a revolutionary hero.