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NIGERIAN CRISIS    BARRETT

In order to ensure the preservation of their interests the large powers with economic interests invested in the nation as well as those with economic prospects in view in the nation, sought to woo and to win the allegiance of the nation's rulers. The pressures brought to bear on the leaders of the young nation in this wise led to the inevitable result of alienation between the masses who were led and the leaders who were supposed to lead. Corruption and disregard of the basic democratic principles of political action became the norm. One industrialist, an Englishman whose factory employed more than eight hundred Nigerians in Enugu before the war, admitted to me that in the post-independence political era just before the crisis broke his benevolence exercised a measure of control over local politics according to how many jobs he would promise to certain supporters of certain candidates. An oil executive, a Dutchman, has told me that similar influence was wielded by his company in Port Harcourt. While this syndrome, which was widespread in the nation was not the only factor responsible for the breakdown of the democratic experience in the nation, it is symbolic of the type of influence which foreign interests wielded in the political life of the nation. At the same time the Nigerian army was undergoing a process of change and growth having only been handed over to the full command of Nigerians in 1965. It must of course be remembered that African Armiers are for the most part inheritors of the colonial military tradition of oppression rather than protection. The change to an army of protection and defense from that of an army of oppression must give rise to traumatic problems, especially within the officer corps. The army has to identify on a benevolent level with people whom in its initial stages it was employed to coerce. Thus, when as a result of the machinations of the politicians who sought to remain in power by cultivating the support of the nation's economic enemies, the gulf between the nation's people and its leaders grew so wide that a full scale civil crisis was precipitated, the young officers, who saw in the ills of the nation the ills of their army, sought to remedy both by attempting to eliminate in one stroke retrogressive elements in the military and political institutions in the nation. Tactical errors brought down the first attempt in January 1966. The coup did not give rise to a Government led by those who started it. Instead it had the effect of eliminating a sector of the political experience of the country without being able to replace it with a planned political alternative. Hence it soon became obvious after the January coup that the Governmental direction forced upon the new leaders was 

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