Constitutionalevent★ Pivotal · legal1954· Chapter 47

The Lyttleton Constitution

Converts Nigeria from a unitary state with regional governments to a true federation. Each Region gets a Premier; the centre gets a Federal Prime Minister. The immediate ancestor of the 1960 Independence Constitution.

Listen to this story0:00 / —:—

The Lyttleton Constitution of 1954 — named for the Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttleton — converted Nigeria from a unitary state with regional governments to a true federation. Each Region (Northern, Western and Eastern; Southern Cameroons joined as a quasi-Region) had a Premier and a House of Assembly; the centre had a Federal Prime Minister.

Lagos became a Federal Territory separate from the Western Region — over Awolowo's protest. The Constitution was the immediate ancestor of the Independence Constitution of 1960 and bequeathed to independent Nigeria its three-region structure, regional revenue allocation, and the centre-regions tension that would explode in 1966.

Era context

The political and economic reality

The government(s), economy and national reality across the period 1954–1954.

British colonial administration

Sir Frederick Lugard → Sir James Robertson

1900–1960

National reality

Amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates (1914) under indirect rule. Marketing boards extracted cocoa, palm oil and groundnut surpluses; political agitation built through the press and the trade union movement.

Crises of the period

Aba Women's War (1929)
Iva Valley shooting of striking miners (1949)
Kano riots (1953)

GDP (World Bank)

Pre-independence; no national accounts series

Cabinet (selected portfolios)

Full ministerial roster being compiled.

Government administered by Governors-General and Residents. The first indigenous federal ministers were appointed under the 1954 Lyttelton Constitution.

Source · Toyin Falola, A History of Nigeria (CUP, 2008)

Methodology

Tier 1 · primary

Courts. Gazettes. National archives.

Tier 2 · corroborating

OCCRP. HRW. BudgIT. TheCable.

Tier 4 · tertiary, flagged

Wikipedia only where primary is pending. Always labelled.

The political and economic reality

The Republic — Weekly