Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was a Nigerian politician, deputy leader of the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC), and the first federal prime minister (1957–66).
A commoner by birth, an unusual origin for a political leader in the NPC, Balewa was both a defender of northern special interests and an advocate of reform and Nigerian unity.
Born in December of 1912 in Bauchi in Northern Nigeria, Balewa’s father, Mallam Yakubu, was a minor official in the Native Authority, part of the British colonial administration.
Balewa received his primary education in Tafawa Balewa from 1922 to 1925. He then attended Bauchi Middle School in Bauchi from 1925 to 1928.
Following this Balewa attended Katsina Teachers Training College from 1928 to 1933 where he received his teaching certification. Balewa was a teacher by profession and was one of the first Northern Nigerians to be sent to London University Institute of Education (1945).
From 1952 until his death, Balewa served in the federal government. He was minister of works and of transport in the middle 1950s, and then, as leader of the NPC in the House of Representatives, he was made the first prime minister of Nigeria in 1957.
After the pro-independence elections of 1959, he again became prime minister in a coalition government of the NPC and Nnamdi Azikiwe’s National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons, and he continued to hold that position after Nigeria was officially granted independence in 1960.
From the Muslim North of Nigeria and considered a pro-British conservative, Balewa often clashed with Azikiwe. While in office Balewa worked to develop Nigeria’s transport systems by helping to build ports, river transport systems, and railways.
As Prime Minister Balewa helped shape the early foreign policy of Nigeria. In 1960 he was instrumental in negotiating a settlement between factions in the Congo Civil War. He led his government in a vocal protest of the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa and attempted unsuccessfully to persuade other British Commonwealth nations to expel South Africa because of its apartheid policies.
Balewa also was one of the African leaders who encouraged the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). He was killed in the first of two Nigerian army coups in 1966, which ended The First Republic, Nigeria’s first civilian government.
