Akinyemi on Independence: Why Britain Overlooked Azikiwe, Awolowo, and Others

Bolaji Akinyemi, Nigeria’s former foreign minister, revealed that the British gave authority to a group of persons they could manage in 1960.
Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Kingsley Ozumba Mbadiwe, and others like Michael Okpara were reportedly shunned by the British because they wished to maintain control of the nation after independence, according to Professor Akinyemi.
“There has always been a grand plan to destabilize Nigeria,” the former minister said in an interview with Arise News on Monday.

Speaking about the claim that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) provided funding to the terrorist group Boko Haram, he made this revelation.
Before we ever gained our independence, Nigeria was a target, so the British even planned to transfer authority to the least developed region of the country and chose an elite they believed they could control. That was even before to our independence.

Not the Azikiwes, Awolowos, Mbadiwes, or Okparas were singled out because the British knew they couldn’t control them, and they had already determined in 1945 who they would cede power to.

In that sense, when Jawaharlal Nehru’s India was able to break free from their rule, they learned their lesson. They learnt their lesson, and going forward, if any of their colonies get independence, they must make sure that the person they are entrusting authority to is someone they can manage so they can maintain control over those nations. Nigeria was one such country, he added.

Additionally, the former minister revealed that he learned during a conference in Washington that the developed world did not want a superpower to emerge from black nations.

In my opinion, they are attempting to destabilize Nigeria by utilizing any agency they can establish or bring about. The idea that no nation in the global north wants a black nation to become a powerhouse because it will impact their own racial dilemma was brought up at a conference I once attended in Washington. It was Kwame Nkrumah’s experience. Remember Mandela? Until Nigeria succeeds, no nation with a Black population would succeed in our world, he declared.