1930s to 1941 · Africanspan
Nigerian nationalism splits along Yoruba and Igbo lines in 1941
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Herbert Macauley founded the Nigerian National Democratic Party and put anticolonial argument on a territorial footing, addressing Nigeria as a country rather than a set of localities. In 1936 younger men who found Macauley too cautious broke away and formed the Nigerian Youth Movement. Their demand was complete autonomy within the British empire, with a united Nigerian nation to follow. They drew wide support for a few years. In 1941 the movement tore itself apart over rivalry between Yoruba and Igbo members, each side convinced the other meant to dominate whatever state emerged. The same problem showed elsewhere. In Uganda much of the protest was aimed at the dominant position of the Ganda rather than at the British, and the standing quarrel over Buganda and its kabaka promised trouble for any future national settlement. What these movements shared was youth. Educated, mobile, often both, young Africans were forging the new political identities, and they carried their fathers' quarrels into them.
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