Its members point out that the south-east has not produced a head of state since Nnamdi Azikiwe became independent Nigeria's founding president in 1963...
It also prompted the belief among some that the British authorities fixed the census and favoured Nigeria's conservative northern elite over more radical southern nationalist leaders such as Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe in the run-up to Independence...
In Nigeria despite the strong regional divisions between the traditionalist north (closely allied to colonial power Britain) and the ‘modern' south leading the nationalist struggle the political class was able to move constitutionally to Independence in 1960 under a south-eastern (ceremonial) President Nnamdi Azikiwe and a northern Premier Tafawa Balewa...
Shehu Shagari's National Party of Nigeria was denigrated as 'northern' by its opponents but it was more national than the opposition parties led by the late Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe; the NPN' s problem was not regionalism but its corruption...
In the first republic their most powerful leader was Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh the flamboyant Finance Minister whose alliance with the leadership of the Northern People's Congress superseded his allegiance to his own party the Nnamdi Azikiwe-led National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons...
