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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.
As ethnic competition gained momentum on the local level, similar developments occurred at the regional level. Decolonization in the postwar period involved constitutional reform and the slow development of African political parties. The British government used constitutional reform to ensure its political and economic interest to maintain the status quo, while emerging African political parties engaged constitutional reform to make various claims for self-determination. The British government insisted African political parties operate at the regional level and discouraged any efforts to form broad, multi-ethnic, cross-regional nationalist parties, such as the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) had aimed for. By 1952, broad nationalist sentiments had distilled into a regionally focused politics. In this context, ethnic majorities within each region had more power than their minority counterparts. The emerging regionalist politics informed the development of a minority consciousness among Niger Delta elites in the 1950s, and they engaged the constitutional reform process through their positions as minorities to claim the right to self-determination.
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