Nigerian National Democratic Party

The Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) (Nigerian National Democratic Party) was a Nigerian political party from 1923 to 1944. From 1962 to 1966 a party existed under the same name.

Motto (old NNDP)

salus populi suprema lex - The good of the people is the highest commandment.

history

Colonial times

The party was founded on June 24, 1923 on the basis of the Clifford Constitution of 1922 and was the first political party in Nigeria and the West African Commonwealth. As an association of various interest groups within the Yoruba people , it should play a leading role, especially in the western region of Nigeria (the region within which the Yoruba population dominates). For fear of reprisals, the party’s founder, Herbert Macaulay , who was already prominent at the time, refused to hold any official office within the party until the 1930s, but he undoubtedly remained the mastermind and the driving force. Between the legislative periods from 1923 to 1938, the NNDP dominated the western region and the local council of Lagos.

The NNDP campaigned for an autonomous self-government of Lagos, the introduction of higher educational opportunities, compulsory schooling for children and the Africanization of the civil service and administration. The NNDP also insisted on racial equality in the development and promotion of private companies. Politically, she cooperated with various Yoruba cultural organizations as well as groups of influence, such as the powerful market women lobby organized in Alimotu Pelewura's Lagos Market Women Association . After the NNDP was defeated for the first time by the new Nigerian Youth Movement in the elections of 1938 , Macaulay changed the party's strategy and switched to an explicitly anti-colonial course, but was unsuccessful. This prompted Macaulay in August 1944 to the NNDP in a new national party, which by the later first president of Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe founded, NCNC to merge.

The new NNDP

In 1962 a faction that broke out of the Action Group founded an NNDP under SI Akintola , which, however, could hardly invoke a direct successor to Macaulay's old party. It appeared in the national elections of 1964 together with Ahmadu Bello's Northern People's Congress as the National Alliance (national alliance) and formed a governing coalition that lasted until the military coup of 1966.