People's Choice

Almost next door to the new Gold Coast state of Ghana lies a far bigger British colony working toward independence. Last week in Eastern Nigeria, one of the three great regions of Britain's West African colonial protectorate, Premier Nnamdi Azikiwe (known as "Zik") won a decisive election on the wrong side of a scandal.

The issue was Zik's handling of the funds of the African Continental Bank, which he controls. Last January a tribunal headed by Nigeria's Chief Justice found that Zik, in his function as Premier, had transferred public money, equivalent to one quarter of the 1955-56 revenue of the Eastern Region of Nigeria, to his own bank, thereby saving it from collapse. "Guilty of misconduct as a minister," declared the tribunal. Advised the far-off London Times: "He should resign and, in so far as it is possible, make restitution. He can then ask the people to give him a new mandate."

At first, Zik (who got a U.S. education at Howard and Lincoln Universities and

West Virginia's Storer College) seriously thought of quitting. Then he began to hear the voice of the people, and found himself regarded as a hero. Shrewdly he called a general election, selflessly offered the British Colonial Office all his shares in the African Continental Bank (the Colonial Office politely declined), and hit the stump. While tireless British colonial officials went into the jungle to persuade 3,000,000 eligible voters to register, and to show them how to cast their ballots, whispers went forth that the tribunal had been an "imperialist plot" to discredit the Nigerian nationalist movement, that Zik had in reality been building a bank for Africans which would "break the British banking monopoly."

In the voting last week, Zik and his party picked up a probable 77 out of 84 seats in the Eastern Region's legislative assembly. Zik was already demanding full self-government for his third of the nation, no longer willing to wait for all of Nigeria to get its independence at once. Said the ever-cocky Zik: "After 96 years of tutelage, to say we cannot now run ourselves is a reflection not on the student but on the teacher."

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