Obafemi Awolowo
Chief Obafemi Jeremiah Oyeniyi
Awolowo, GCFR (Yoruba: Ọbáfẹ́mi Awólọ́wọ̀; 6 March 1909 – 9 May 1987), was a
Nigerian nationalist and statesman who played a key role in Nigeria's
independence movement, the First and Second Republics and the Civil War. He was
the first premier of the Western Region and later federal commissioner for
finance, and vice chairman of the Federal Executive Council during the Civil
War. He was thrice a major contender for his country's highest office.[1] A
native of Ikenne
in Ogun State of south-western Nigeria, he started his career, like some
of his well-known contemporaries, as a nationalist in the Nigerian Youth
Movement in which he rose to become Western
Provincial Secretary. Awolowo was responsible for much of the progressive
social legislation that has made Nigeria a modern nation.[2] He was
the first Leader of Government Business and Minister of Local Government and
Finance, and first Premier
of the Western Region under Nigeria's parliamentary system, from 1952 to 1959. He was the official Leader of the
Opposition in the federal parliament to the Balewa government from 1959 to 1963. In recognition of all these,
Awolowo was the first individual in the modern era to be named Leader of the
Yorubas (Yoruba: Asiwaju Awon Yoruba or Asiwaju Omo Oodua)
Early life
Obafemi Awolowo was born on 6 March
1909 in Ikenne, in present-day Ogun State of Nigeria.[3] His father was a farmer and
sawyer who died when Obafemi was about seven years old. [4] He
attended various schools, including Baptist Boys' High School (BBHS), Abeokuta;
and then became a teacher in Abeokuta,
after which he qualified as a shorthand typist. Subsequently, he served as a clerk at the famous Wesley College
Ibadan, as well as a correspondent for the
Nigerian Times.[5] It was after this that he embarked on
various business ventures to help raise funds to travel to the UK for further
studies.
Following his education at Wesley College,
Ibadan, in 1927, he enrolled at the University of London as an External Student and graduated with the degree of
Bachelor of Commerce (Hons.). He went to the UK in 1944 to study law at the
University of London and was called to the Bar by the Honourable Society of the
Inner Temple on 19 November 1946.[4] [6] In 1949 Awolowo founded the
Nigerian Tribune, the oldest surviving private Nigerian newspaper, which he
used to spread nationalist consciousness among his fellow Nigerians.[7]
Politics
Awolowo was Nigeria's foremost
federalist. In his Path to Nigerian Freedom (1947) – the first systematic
federalist manifesto by a Nigerian politician – he advocated federalism as the
only basis for equitable national integration and, as head of the Action Group,
he led demands for a federal constitution, which was introduced in the 1954
Lyttleton Constitution, following primarily the model proposed by the Western
Region delegation led by him. As premier, he proved to be and was viewed as a
man of vision and a dynamic administrator. Awolowo was also the country's
leading social democratic politician.[1] He supported limited public ownership and limited central planning in government.[1] He believed that the state
should channel Nigeria's resources into education and state-led infrastructural
development.[8] Controversially, and at considerable expense, he
introduced free primary education for all and free health care for children in
the Western Region, established the first television service in Africa in 1959,
and the Oduduwa Group, all of which were financed from the highly lucrative cocoa
industry which was the mainstay of the regional economy.[9]
Crisis in Western Nigeria
From the eve of independence, he led
the Action Group as the Leader of the Opposition in the federal parliament,
leaving Samuel Ladoke
Akintola as the Western Region Premier.
Serious disagreements between Awolowo and Akintola on how to run the Western
region led the latter to an alliance with the Tafawa Balewa-led NPC federal
government. A constitutional crisis led to the declaration of a state of
emergency in the Western Region, eventually resulting in a widespread breakdown
of law and order.
Excluded from national government,
Awolowo and his party faced an increasingly precarious position. Akintola's
followers, angered at their exclusion from power, formed the Nigerian
National Democratic Party (NNDP)
under Akintola's leadership. Having previously suspended the elected Western
Regional Assembly, the federal government then reconstituted the body after
manoeuvres that brought Akintola's NNDP into power without an election. Shortly
afterwards Awolowo and several disciples were arrested, charged, convicted (of
treason),[10] and jailed for conspiring with the Ghanaian
authorities under Kwame Nkrumah to overthrow the federal government.[11]
Legacy
In 1992, the Obafemi Awolowo
Foundation was founded as an independent, non-profit, non-partisan organisation
committed to furthering the symbiotic interaction of public policy and relevant
scholarship with a view to promoting the overall development of the Nigerian
nation. The Foundation was launched by the President of Nigeria at that time,
General Ibrahim Babangida, at the Liberty Stadium, Ibadan.[12] However,
his most important bequests (styled Awoism) are his exemplary integrity, his
welfarism, his contributions to hastening the process of decolonisation and his
consistent and reasoned advocacy of federalism-based on ethno-linguistic
self-determination and uniting politically strong states-as the best basis for
Nigerian unity. Awolowo died peacefully at his Ikenne home, the Efunyela Hall
(so named after his mother), on 9 May 1987, at the age of 78 and was laid to
rest in Ikenne, amid tributes across political and ethno-religious divides.
Bibliography
- Path to Nigerian Freedom
- Awo – Autobiography of Chief Obafemi Awolowo
- My Early Life
- Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution
- The People’s Republic
- The Strategy & Tactics of the People's Republic of Nigeria
- The Problems of Africa – The Need for Ideological Appraisal
- Awo on the Nigerian Civil War
- Path to Nigerian Greatness
- Voice of Reason
- Voice of Courage
- Voice of Wisdom
- Adventures in Power – Book 1 – My March Through Prison
- Adventures in Power – Book 2 – Travails of Democracy
See also
References
- James Booth. Writers and politics in Nigeria. Africana Pub. Co., 1981, p. 52.
- Historical dictionary of the British empire, Volume 1
- Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent African Nation, R. L. Sklar (2004), Africa World Press, ISBN 1-59221-209-3
- Harvey Glickman (1992). Political Leaders of Contemporary Africa South of the Sahara: A Biographical Dictionary. Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313267819.
- "then British owned"
- Kevin Shillington (2013). Encyclopedia of African History 3-Volume Set. Routledge. p. 197. ISBN 9781135456696.
- "About Us". Nigerian Tribune. Retrieved 11 May 2011.
- Case For Ideological Orientation, O. Awolowo.
- "Obafemi Awolowo: The Man With a Plan"
- Siollun, Max. Oil, Politics and Violence: Nigeria's Military Coup Culture (1966-1976). Algora. p. 15. ISBN 9780875867090.
- Adventures in Power Book One: My March through Prison, O. Awolowo Macmillan Nigeria Publishers, 1985.
- "The Obafemi Awolowo Foundation".
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