The West African Youth League (WAYL) was a nationalist movement founded by

Analyze the question: It asks who founded the West African Youth League (WAYL), a nationalist movement in British West Africa.

Explain the concept: The WAYL was founded in 1935 in Freetown, Sierra Leone, by I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson, a trade unionist, journalist and radical politician. He had earlier been active in the Gold Coast and Nigeria. The League campaigned against colonial rule, racial discrimination, and the Sedition Bill. It also pushed for workers' rights and youth mobilisation. Its newspaper, the African Standard (later the African Sentinel), spread its ideas.

Eliminate the other options:

• A. Bankole-Bright: H.C. Bankole-Bright was a Sierra Leonean politician who led the National Council of the Colony of Sierra Leone. He was more conservative than Wallace-Johnson and was not the founder of the WAYL.
• C. J.E. Casely Hayford: He was a Gold Coast lawyer and nationalist who founded the National Congress of British West Africa (1920). He died in 1930, before the WAYL began.
• D. Samuel Akisanya: He was a Nigerian nationalist linked to the Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM), not the WAYL.

Answer: The WAYL was founded by I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson, which is option B.

Exam tip: Link the names to their organisations:

• Wallace-Johnson → WAYL (youth, 1935)
• Casely Hayford → NCBWA (1920)
• Herbert Macaulay → NNDP / NCNC
• Bankole-Bright → National Council of Sierra Leone

Remember "Wallace-Johnson = Youth League" and you will not mix them up.