Balewa’s Nigeria and Nkrumah’s Ghana

Although, superficially at least, Nigeria and Ghana had much in common, early in their post-independence years, they had evolved very different structures and produced very different leadership. Nigeria, with approximately 50 million people grouped within a diffuse federal system, based on three large tribes, maintained a multi-party system operating through parliamentary forms of government: Ghana’s 6 million people were organized on a unitary and one-party basis, and its parliamentary system had been modified to create a presidential order founded on a strong personality cult. The two leaders Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and Kwame Nkrumah, and their influence on the internal development and the external relations are discussed in this article. Ref.