It is not easy to assess a leader without knowing his beacon, his shield and his buckler. Chief Obafemi Awolowo read, wrote and spoke a lot, and a lot has been read, written and spoken about him, particularly, since his transition on 9 May 1987. Awo was born on 6 March, 1909, a hundred years ago, this month, at Ikenne, Remo, in today’s Ogun State. He was born and named Obafemi Oyeniyi and later christened as Jeremiah, after the biblical Prophet Jeremiah, a diffident and sensitive lad who was called from the obscurity of his native village, Anathoth, some three miles from Jerusalem, to assume at a critical time in his nation’s life the overwhelming responsibilities of a prophet-leader of his people. Who says that there is nothing in a name?
Chief Awolowo was a man of humble birth who by dint of hard work, self denial and singleness of purpose, rose to become a legal and an economic luminary; a political organiser; a social engineer and reformer; a premier of his people, a political leader in Nigeria, a religious faithful who promoted religious development, irrespective of sect; an educational revolutionary whose singular educational purpose was to provide free and compulsory education at all levels, free health, full and gainful employment to all Nigerians. He was a founder, promoter and supporter of higher educational institutions, including Teacher Training Colleges, Colleges of Technology and Universities. He was in the process of completing the establishment of a Research Medical Centre when the cold hands of death snatched him away from us on the morning of 9 May 1987. He is best remembered in Nigeria and in the world, today, as the one Nigerian who, besides his political exploits, strove to provide for his native people that he led as Premier, and his nation that he sought to lead as President, free education at all levels; free preventive and curative health; full and gainful employment; and, integrated rural development within a strong, industry national alchemy.
It is these strivings that many of us, his political aides, associates and disciples have preached, are preaching and or have exploited to attain or retain political relevance and power during and after his death. Chief Awolowo was an embodiment of discipline, sagacity, nobility, integrity, forthrightness and hope for the future of a great people and a great nation like ours. In his own words, he always attended studiously to the affairs of Nigeria and to other important matters of its destiny while others were busy “carousing with women of easy virtue”. In the language in the book of my good friend and colleague, Professor Moses Akin Makinde, of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife, Awo as a Philosopher, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was a politician, political scientist, statesman, economist, Senior Advocate of Nigeria , a strategist of the highest order, a great intellectual, a man of wisdom, courage, reason and vision, a prolific reader and writer, and, above all, a great philosopher of 20th Century Africa, who was quite at home in science, technology, religion, and even in traditional medicine. Professor (Senator) Jibril Aminu, a favourite friend of mine, and the erstwhile Nigerian Ambassador to the USA, in his write-up on Awo describes him as a serious student of nexology which holds that whatever one wants in this world, one has only firmly to set one’s mind on it and some force would lead one, steadily and inexorably to it. More so, he describes Awo as a great family patriach.
Many admirers, adulators and biographers of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, however, often forget to recount that he was always the leader that operated in and with a team and in a group. He was the leader of a political party, called the Action Group. He was the leader, President, and Presidential Candidate of the Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN. He operated as the Premier of Western Nigeria, from 1952 to 1959, under a Parliamentary system of government, where, as Premier, he was only first among equals, unlike as in the present and nebulous Presidential system that we operate, where the President is a virtual dictator, noble or ignoble. Awo himself used to tell us that whatever modest achievements and attainments were ascribed to him should he largely ascribed to and shared by all those with whom he worked, the silent majority of Nigerians who adored him and whom he served and adored. Therefore, in discussing Awo’s Development Strategy, it is the discussion of Awo and of the groups that he led and who followed and supported him.
The leader of any successful group must not be a pedestrian leader. Awo was not pedestrian. He imbued in his team certain tenets that made his development strategy uniquely successful. Let me mention and discuss, briefly, a few of them:
He was a feisty democrat and believed in the development and in the ability of people as the engine of development. He believed in a developmental state, relied on and trusted the Public Service and the public servants. He believed in and worked for the corporate existence of a united and strong Nigeria. He believed in the integrity of the family, trusted man and he trusted God.
His Democratic Tenets
The popular but wrong impression of Awo by his political adversaries was that he was a dictator, a man who imposed his views and his will on the parties and on the people that he led. Nothing was further from the truth. It would take an insider – member of the parties that he led – to discover the intermediate debates, the thesis and the antithesis, the argumentations and the compromises that went on at the caucuses of the Action Group and particularly in the Unity Party of Nigeria, and at the latter’s Federal Executive Council meetings, of which I was a member, for one to appreciate the democratic credentials of Awo. I myself used to be amazed at the ease with which Awo accommodated opposing and critical views, suggestions and modifications in order for him to carry along the overwhelming majority of his associates. The fact was that after decisions had been democratically reached at the caucuses, Awo stood by them religiously and executed them with tectonic rigidity. That strategy made him unique among his comperes. You could not go to Awo in secret to gossip or to try to change the template that all had agreed to in public. He did not suffer swappers gladly. That uniqueness made many of us eager, willing and ready to work with and for him for as long as he lasted. It made consistency and unity of actions and programmes possible for as long as he was with us. He was not a fair-weather leader, swayed by the titles and tattles of the moment.
People As The Engine of Development
Awo’s main development strategy hinged on the mental magnitude of people. He believed that a person must be educated, first for the development of his mind and secondly for the development of his body. That everybody must possess a sound mind in a sound body, which was why he led his party to make the first two of its cardinal principles, free education and free health. It was this belief and devotion that made his government invest heavily in education at the highest level. It was this that made him invest in the recruitment of the brightest and best minds into the Public Service of the then Western Nigeria over which he was first the Leader of Government Business and later the Premier of the Region. It was this that made him train and retrain serving public servants of Western Nigeria in various diplomas in Public Administration, at home and abroad; provide facilities for many of them to obtain higher degrees in Public Administration, in Economics, in Economic Planning, and Statistics, in Engineering and even for serving lawyers in the Ministry of Justice to obtain overseas training and attachment for Legal Draftsmanship and Litigations. Every sector of the Public Service of Western Nigeria under his premiership enjoyed personnel development and upliftment. Above all, his government was the first to introduce a minimum daily wage of five shillings from the then existing minimum wage of two shillings and three pence per day. It was his government that began the massive expansion of housing for serving officers in Nigeria during his time. He believed that educationally developed people are easy to lead but difficult to cheat. This is why, up till today, that legacy, that strategy has made the western part of Nigeria much easier to develop but much more difficult to override and over-awe. It will become increasingly so.
Developmental State Strategy
Unlike today, when our political leaders at all levels, supported by their minions and palace jesters, daily adumbrate that Government has no business in business, and that the market deregulation, privatisation, down-sizing of the public sector, and the private, are the engines of national economic development, Awo and his teams believed and acted with the greatest efforts at their command that the state should harness the resources of the nation and promote national prosperity, and an efficient, dynamic and self-reliant economy: control the nation’s economy in such a manner as to secure the maximum welfare, freedom and happiness of every citizen, on the basis of social justice and equality of status and opportunity; manage and operate the major sectors of the nation’s economy, while protecting the right of every Nigerian to engage in any economic activity outside the major sectors of the economy. To these ends, and in order to actualise the developmental strategy, he ensured the promotion of a planned and balanced economic development, so that the material resources of the nation were harnessed and distributed to serve the common good, and that the economic system was not operated in such a manner as to permit the concentration of wealth or the means of production, distribution and exchange in the hands of few individuals or of a group, to the disadvantage of the rest. It was these developmental paradigms that led to the adoption of Democratic Socialism as the philosophical underpinning of the parties that Awo led.
In order to operationalise the strategy, Awo’s government established and ran efficient and productive Industrial Estates in Ikeja, Yaba, Ibadan, Benin, Warri and Asaba, as the main industrial hubs of the then Western Nigeria. The government set up the Western Nigerian Development Corporation, WNDC, to establish various industries, agricultural plantations, in cocoa, rubber, commercial trees, cashew, palm trees and fruit trees. It established Farm settlements for the training of young and ageing farmers and for the production and distribution of farm products at affordable prices. It established a Housing Corporation not only to build residential and commercial houses for all levels of our people but also to lend money at not more than 3 per cent per annum to those who wanted to build their own houses inside or outside the Housing Corporation Estates in Lagos, Ibadan, Akure, Benin, Warri, Asaba and at such locations as the Housing Corporation might determine. It set up an Agricultural Credit Corporation to lend money to modern small and medium scale farmers at interest rate of not more than 2 per cent per annum. It set up an Industrial Loans Board to give loans to private industrialists who could not afford the suffocating loans from the banks. It acquired the commanding shares in Wema Bank and in National Bank, as a means of government’s active participation in the financial and monetary sinews of the nation. Finally, it embarked upon long-term development plans of 1951-55; 1955-60 and 1960-65, until the military terminated the democratic process on January 15, 1966.
In the process of formulating, prosecuting and executing these strategies, Awo and his team were not oblivious of the fact that there were no free lunches anywhere. They strenuously harnessed the resources of Western Nigeria to finance the huge development programmes through taxation and the resources of the Marketing Boards of Cocoa, Palm Oil and Palm Kennel, and Rubber, which were then the only exportable products of Western Nigeria. They imposed an additional capitation tax (per head tax) on every adult in Western Nigeria, for the funding of the Free Education and Free Health programmes because they believed that though the beneficiaries might receive them free, the society must bear the burden of their funding. The additional taxation initially caused ripples and riots in some localities in Western Nigeria, which the government was able to surmount because of the overwhelming support from the majority of the people. Awo and his team believed that the rich must always support the poor and the strong should also support the weak. An Awolowo would not adumbrate the philosophy of deregulation at this time but one of using the state to ensure that the commanding heights of the economy are sufficiently harnessed to response to and reduce the pangs arising therefrom.
Reliance on the Public Service
Awolowo and his team believed that a Development State is a Public Service-engineered state: that any government that comes into power but does not honour, humour, encourage and empower the Public Service will come to power in hope and leave in pains. The public servants were assured of the permanency of their tenure. The Permanent Secretary was the arrowhead of the execution of the programmes and the projects in his Ministry. He attended Cabinet meetings; was responsible largely for the main Ministerial Memoranda that went into Cabinet discussions and was the chief adviser of his Minister. The Public Service served the public unlike today when, because the Service has been beheaded, humiliated and sidetracked, it mainly serves itself. Awo’s public service was essentially incorruptible and efficient and it took pride in ensuring the success of the programmes of the government of the day. The Universities were respected and respectable and the administrators and the lecturers, and professors therein, served the government of that time without any additional remuneration besides their University salaries. In fact, one of the conditions of our service in the University then was that we must not engage in external duties that earned us extra-incomes, without the expressed permission of the University. The University academics constituted the intellectual power-house of Awolowo’s parties and administration. Today, the politicians have taken over the public service, downgraded it: harassed it with incessant retirements, retrenchments, bilks and humiliations. The Universities have been sidelined by the political parties that do not believe in the adumbration of cardinal programmes nor in intellectual inputs into their political parties and governance. Consequently, the Univerisity staff have become silent, in spite of the ever-increasing national and global problems that stalk our governments at all levels. This irredentist resistance to intellectualism is contributory not only to the ever-increasing brain drain from our country but also to the incessant restiveness in our University campuses. If Awolowo and his team could achieve that much when there were only five Universities in Nigeria–Ibadan, Ife, Lagos, Ahmadu Bello and Nsukka–it can be imagined what a similarly placed strategic team would be achieving today with 95 Universities, not to talk of an array of Polytechnics and Colleges of Education!
United Nigeria Strategy
Chief Awolowo was often accused of Pakistanising Nigeria and being more a Yoruba irredentist than a nationalist, mainly because he and the Action Group that he led championed Federal form of Government for Nigeria while their main political opponents, the National Council of Nigeria and the Camerouns–later National Council of Nigerian Citizens, NCNC–championed Unitary form of Government for Nigeria. It is true that Awo believed that charity should begin at home but that it should not end there: that if your people reject you, your chances of succeeding elsewhere will diminish. But as he consolidated Western Nigeria, Awo and his team became the main advocates of a strong and united Nigeria, through attendance to the needs and aspirations of the multitude of nationalities that inhabit our one nation-state. The Action Group and the UPN championed the creation of more states in Nigeria, in place of the rigid and monolithic Western, Eastern and Northern Regions of Nigeria that were at one another’s throats, and whose unwholesome rivalries led to the first military taste of power that occasioned the subsequent military interventions in the polity of Nigeria.
Occasionally, there were elements within the ranks of the Action Group and of the Unity Party of Nigeria, then, that felt and advocated that the break-up of Nigeria into autonomous countries, like the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR, would be the best option for Nigeria, and particularly for the Yoruba race. But Chief Awolowo always pooh-poohed such advocacy as that of the defeatist, and that the best option is for his followers and colleagues to strive to rule Nigeria and make it a better country for all, rather than recoil into a sectional cocoon. His major writings – The People’s Republic: Tactics and Strategies of the People’s Republic; Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution, and, his various speeches in his later life, removed any doubt about his nationalism enunciated in his 1947 book, Path to Nigerian Freedom, in which he described Nigeria as a mere geographical expression.
Family Integrity As A Strategy
The most admirable part of the life and works of Chief Awolowo was the love of the family. He always wanted us, his followers, to be in tandem with our families, our wives and our children and be publicly seen to be so. There was the case of one of Chief Awolowo’s closest colleagues in the Western Nigeria Cabinet of 1954-1956. The Queen of England was visiting Nigeria, and on her visit to Ibadan, Chief Awolowo was to present the members of his cabinet to the Queen at a state banquet. The colleague brought a girlfriend in place of his wife. Chief Awolowo told him that though as a colleague he had no power to prevent his erring member, he would not introduce the minister to the Queen but that the minister concerned could introduce himself and his illegal spouse to her. The minister left the banquet and subsequently decided to quit the Action Group. Although the matter was later resolved, it was agreed that cabinet colleagues must maintain the integrity of their families if they were to remain authentic and respectable members of the cabinet. Chief Awolowo and his wife remained a model of family unity during their earthly lives together. Even today, Chief Mrs. H.I.D. Awolowo remains a “jewel of inestimable value”. Compare that with the idiosyncrasies of most of the political leaders that, today, straddle our national terrain and rule us and violate our youths at their interminable ‘retreats’ and campaign trails! A leader who cannot maintain the integrity of his family cannot sustain the integrity of our nation. Much of the corruption that bestrides our nation, today, arises from moral corruption and the need to maintain a series of harems and concubinages. That was why Awo said that while he devoted his time, energy and intellect into finding viable solutions to the problems and prospects of Nigeria, many other leaders were carousing with women of easy virtue. Unless such leaders respect and mend their ways, our nation will continue to wallow in obscurity and squalor.
Trust As A Strategy
Trust in the political process is indescribably important: trust among the leadership and trust by the followership. What made Awo and his group unique was that when they promised to do something for the populace they would do it. The Action Group implemented its annual budgets to the letter. It never padded its annual budgets with projects so as to curry the favour and the support of the electorate, as is now the common practice among our rulers, at local, state and federal levels. Awolowo was taken on his word, he was trusted and was trustworthy, and so were the political parties that he led. Today, at federal, state and local levels of our government, budgets are mere rituals, not meant to be implemented faithfully, except those aspects that deal with the purse-strings of the political office holders and their multifarious minions. Even within the same ruling political parties, today, the distrust, the cliques, the factions and the schisms are such that they infest the nation with retrogression and chaos. Nor do the people have any more confidence in their rulers and vice-versa, which is why election rigging and political violence have increased, for fear that as non-performing, non-trusted leadership and parties, they might be voted out of power.
As for trust in God, Awo and his group, while not being fanatically partisan religionist, respected God, which was why Chief Awolowo’s Government of Western Nigeria was the first to sponsor Christian and Muslim pilgrimages abroad: which was why, even today, Christians, Muslims and traditional religious adherents live peaceably side by side in Western Nigeria, unlike in some part of Northern Nigeria where Christians and Muslims are always at each other’s throats and on tenterhooks, largely because of the intolerance of the political leaderships in those areas. A people that cannot live at peace with their neighbours can neither trust man nor God. That is one of the banes of our nation, today, and which is tearing communities apart. Unless the leaders nip the situation in the bud, political and/or military cataclysms may continue to bedevil our nation. A word is enough for the wise.
Ladies and gentlemen, do not let me bore you further with my tirades, jibes and additional pitches. But let me make a confession. The day that Chief Awolowo died, on 9 May 1987, partisan politics died in me. Ever since, I have not been associated with any political party or any political association, even though I have continued to talk and write economics to whoever cared to listen. The reason is because increasingly, partisan politics has become mercenary, anti-people and unduly personalised. We used to talk of the Action Group programmes and the four cardinal programmes of the UPN. But today, all you hear is the programme of the Governor, the seven-point Agenda of the President, and the minimisation of the political parties, except as the instrument of election rigging, violence and murder. Recently, I visited a secondary school in Ondo State and after I had been introduced to the highest class pupils, I was asked to address them. I then began by asking, “which is the political party that is ruling Ondo State?” The leading boy said ‘Governor Agagu.’ Today, he may say Governor Mimiko. I then asked, which political party is ruling in Abuja’s Federal Government? The answer that I got was Umar Musa Yar’Adua. Government has, today become the property of the ruler. The people no longer matter. Their views are minimally important. Although we, today, adore Awolowo, during his era, it was either the Action Group or the Unity Party of Nigeria that was known to the rank and file of our people. That is how it should be. That is not how it is today. That is why the strategy of our development is in askance and wrong. How to restrategise it lies in the laps of God.
The lecture was delivered by Prof. Sam Aluko, at the Adetiloye Hall, Ado Ekiti, on Friday, 3 March, 2009, during the centenary celebration of the birth of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo.
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