Action Group

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

In colonial times

The founding of the party, still during the colonial period, was essentially the work of the Nigerian trade unionist Obafemi Awolowo , who built it up as a counterweight to the NCNC founded in 1944 by the later first President of Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe . Both the NCNC and the Action Group started with the official claim to want to represent the entire Nigerian nation, but the Action Group in particular moved from the beginning in the political, cultural and economic context of the Yoruba people , the dominant ethnic group in the west of the country . Awolowo therefore had difficulties building the party into a supra-regional organization, as the NCNC partially succeeded in doing. The Action Group was known for its modern forms of agitation, which enabled it to use the large funds that Awolowo was able to raise in the then comparatively rich western region. In the regional elections of the colony, which was then divided into three administrative sectors, the AG asserted itself as the strongest party in the western region. In 1954 Awolowo became Prime Minister of Western Nigeria.

In the nationwide elections of 1959, the AG was unable to prevail and led the opposition in the now independent Nigeria from 1960.

The 1962 crisis

In 1962 the party broke as a result of a conflict between Awolowo and Samuel Akintola, a leader of the AG and then prime minister of the western region. Akintola opposed the increasingly radical socialist rhetoric of Awolowos, which was ideologically based on the pan-African ideas of the Ghanaian state leader Kwame Nkrumah , and sought the support of the conservative party members and the alliance with the conservative party of the north, the NPC. Awolowo, who expected to get rid of the stigma of an ethnicist party with his Pan-Africanism , succeeded in excluding Akintola from the AG, but Akintola immediately founded a new party, the United People's Party , which immediately began negotiations with the NPC. Akintola's expulsion caused bloody riots in the western region, which were carried right into parliament and caused the government to declare a state of emergency. As a result, the AG and its leaders were tried for high treason. Awolowo and a few other functionaries were sentenced to prison terms, but the AG remained admitted as a party.