The minority claims made by the various minority movements that emerged in the 1950s coalesced in separate state movements. Separate states claims were made by minority communities in all three major regions and these claims were championed by their political elites who strategically occupied seats in the regional houses of assembly, starting in 1953. Niger Delta elites formed provisional alliance, supressing local disputes and differences, in order to keep their claim for a separate Mid-West state alive in the constitutional reform process. Their efforts succeeded in halting the final constitutional conference, which was to be held in London in 1957. The push for separate states was strong enough to threaten the decolonization process altogether, and the British government decided to establish a Minorities Commission to address and resolve these claims prior to formal independence.

The Minorities Commission of 1957-58 demonstrated the degree to which people had aligned their ethnic affiliation with the newly articulated political identities by the late 1950s. Even though each region contained significant heterogeneous populations, each of the major political parties aligned with the numerically major ethnic group, which also conformed to colonially construed majorities (i.e., Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo). This further exacerbated the growing sense of alienation minorities felt amid nationalist fervor during this period. In the end, the Minorities Commission recommended that Nigeria enter independence with the existing tripartite regional structure. However, it did recommend the new Nigerian state set up “special areas” or “minority areas” in the Western and Eastern Regions under the jurisdiction of the federal government; the idea was that these would receive special consideration for further development. Addressing the minority question would have required more time and resources than the British government was willing to give to this colony.