In 1960, the Federation of Nigeria became independent from the British Empire, later evolving into the First Nigerian Republic under the parliamentary government of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. During this period, left-leaning factions within Western and Eastern regional governments established a program of farm settlements, based on the Kibbutz system, with the intention of recreating the pre-colonial communal way of life. These self-managing settlements were made up of farmers and their families living on collectives, where the means of production were held in common and the produce yielded was distributed equally among the inhabitants, while agricultural surplus was exchanged by cooperatives. However, the egalitarian principles of the program were eventually eroded away, after the First Republic was overthrown in a "coup d'état", which instituted the first Nigerian military junta under the Supreme Military Council, led by Yakubu Gowon. The coup was followed by a counter-coup and an anti-Igbo pogrom, during which thousands of Igbo people were estimated to have been killed, with a further 1 million Igbos fleeing from the Northern Region to the Eastern Region.