At midnight on 30 September into 1 October 1960, the Union Jack was lowered and the Nigerian flag — designed by Michael Taiwo Akinkunmi, a 23-year-old student — was raised at the Race Course in Lagos. Princess Alexandra of Kent read the Queen's message of independence. Tafawa Balewa became Prime Minister of a parliamentary federation of three regions: Northern (Sardauna of Sokoto, Premier), Western (Awolowo, then Akintola), and Eastern (Azikiwe, then Michael Okpara). Nigeria remained a Commonwealth realm with Elizabeth II as Queen until 1 October 1963 when it became a republic.
Independence carried genuine grounds for optimism: an economy with diversified regional strengths (palm oil and coal in the East, cocoa in the West, groundnuts and cotton in the North), a relatively well-regarded civil service inherited from the colonial period, and leadership figures with significant nationalist credentials. However, the federal structure inherited at independence — including a Northern Region whose population exceeded that of the Western and Eastern Regions combined — embedded regional imbalances that would contribute directly to the crises of the mid-1960s.