By Tatalo Alamu
- The crisis of unitary governance in Nigeria
To Glover Memorial Hall and its antique ambience this last Sunday for a fascinating and engrossing musical on the unforgettable Obafemi Awolowo, a political genius and visionary statesman, unarguably the most memorable figure thrown up in the crucible of Nigeria’s postcolonial politics. Almost twenty years ago at the Afenifere Inaugural Lecture, this writer described Awolowo’s departure from the Nigerian political scene as the longest goodbye ever.
Thirty four years after his translation to immortality, the situation remains very much the same. Hardly can a day pass in the turbulent world of Nigerian politics without Awolowo being directly referenced or his sterling record indirectly alluded to even by his remaining political adversaries. The man has become a living legend.
Such is the mystical and mesmerizing hold he continues to exert on his Yoruba people, such is the reverential awe in which he is held that the man who was once sighted waving from the moon has become an object of secular worship in many quarters. As his factual physical presence recedes from human memory, as he becomes a figure of remote antiquity, Awo is also transforming into a mythical personage; a semi-god in the pantheon of his people.
But how to get to Glover Memorial Hall this beautiful evening became a major problem and source of anxiety. When one got the card, one had thought that the advertised venue was a typographical error; a misprision for the iconic and refurbished Lagos City Hall which came back to life after a mysterious fire incident that gutted its entrails.
But on further investigation, it turned out that Glover Memorial Hall was for real. It is a measure of how far the country has journeyed from physical colonization that a national monument like Glover Hall would gradually fade away from memory. Despite this, complexities and cultural contradictions remain.
At this point the mind took over with its bag of tricks. Glover? Was that not the one hacked down by irate tribesmen somewhere in Keffi? No, in actual fact he was not. It was Captain John Moloney—not to be confused with the other more distinguished Sir Cornelius Alfred Moloney— whose murder invited a savage response by the colonial authorities. The saying, men are hanged not because horses are stolen but so that horses will not be stolen remained a standard fare of colonial justice.
Glover was a different kettle of fish, a tough but respectable and much admired colonial authority. The hall was built in 1887 in his memory after his departure by appreciative Lagosians led by Dr J.K Randle. But like most things else in the country, the memorial hall went into decay and desuetude. After a false start of rejuvenation, it was only recently reprieved from its “semi-derelict” state by a Nigerian artistic troupe.
Glover Hall was wearing a facelift after a make-over pioneered by Akin Ambode and later taken up by Jide Sanwo-Olu in his usual quietly energetic manner. But the approach from the business district perimeter remained cramped, clogged and utterly discomfiting, requiring unusual stamina and fortitude as you negotiated natural impediments and human obstacles put in place by a posse of half-crazed druggies who called one out by name as they demanded their own share of the birthday largesse.
The invitation to attend the show was a political summons, a coded message to an off-message son which bears eloquent testimony to the rich political culture of the Yoruba and the extraordinary capacity of its elders to speak in political tongues. The Agidigbo drum speaks in proverbs and riddles meant only for the wise and discerning.
Two VIP cards had landed in the house, sent by a representative of the premier sociocultural conclave of Yoruba cognoscenti otherwise known as Afenifere. Yours sincerely knew what it meant. Refusal or rejection was not on the card. Hurried arrangements had to be made to make sure that one did not miss the event.
In the event, it turned out to be a memorable feast of music, dancing and joyous singing. The cast was quite formidable. Awo’s mystical aura and politically electrifying presence was brought alive. Although it must be said that the attempt to portray Awo as an incurable romantic did not quite come off, this was more than compensated for by individual acting. The chap who played the late Ikenne titan was brilliant and impressive, capturing the Awo persona in all its dignified carriage and chilly aloofness.
There were unforgettable cameos of the leading figures of that convulsive and turbulent era: Samuel Ladoke Akintola, Chief Ayo Rosiji, Oba C,D Akran and the colourfully and fancifully attired Festus Okotie-Eboh, the Omimi Ejoh himself. If only there was more traditional music to reflect the subversive lyrics and counter-hegemonic drumming of the time. Akintola, a master of double-tongued panegyrics, would have picked out the ones slyly meant to put him in his place.
The crisis that rocked the Action Group and which eventually led to the destruction of the First Republic was vividly dramatized with the wily and pragmatic SLA acting as a historic foil to the implacable social prophet and unappeasable social reformer in Awolowo. It was to end in mutual political ruination of the contending forces as it ever so happens in history, with Awolowo escaping with a temporary reprieve.
In retrospect it all appears as if there is a ring of inevitability to the tragic denouement. Even at its most coherent and cohesive, the Action Group was at best an unstable ensemble of contending and mutually countervailing political forces with royalist, conservative and progressive elements jostling for supremacy. While this roiling cauldron of contradictory forces was kept under the lid for some time, the decision of its able and charismatic leader to move to the centre in order to join forces with the federal authorities was to prove a bridge too far.
The decision of Awolowo to move to the centre probably panicked the federal coalition into adopting a policy of proactive destabilization of both the old western region and its stellar ruling party. With generous federal assistance, the Action Group fractured into its component parts sending the region into a political tailspin which would eventually lead to the destruction of the First Republic and the advent of military rule. It will be recalled that the ruling authorities had earlier unilaterally and unitarily carved out the mid-West region just to whittle down Awo’s authority.
In all this, Awolowo’s main aim was to extend to the rest of the country the credo of life more abundant and the miracle of accelerated development he had performed for his native region. His driving political philosophy was Democratic Socialism. But his political opponents led by Akintola insisted that in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation political victories are driven by coalition, compromises and bargaining among the political elite and not fancy idealism and naïve sloganeering.
So while Awolowo took a sharp lurch to the left, his right-wing adversaries scrambled back to their conservative bastion. In retrospect, the mantra of Democratic Socialism was dead on arrival; a roaring oxymoron in a country dominated by a feudal elite who held this as a serious affront to their culture and politics.
A fiercely determined man, Awolowo was not going to be deterred by this political duel onto death. He had let it be known boldly and clearly that feudalism was the bane of modern Nigeria. Any compromise, bargain or deal with its scions was bound to end in political dilution and ideological diminution which would affect the mode of governance and the quality of service delivery itself. He simply went behind the northern power brokers to take his case directly to the northern masses.
The northern power masters were so outraged by this contumely which they saw as the equivalent of a death sentence that they decided to teach Awolowo an unforgettable lesson in political power play. The ensuing conflagration pushed the country along the path of thunder, as memorably phrased by Christopher Okigbo. This in turn drew the ire of mid-ranking Igbo military officers with their fiercely republican ethos. It ended the First Republic and led directly to civil war.
Almost sixty years after the politics of Nigeria continues to be framed along this perilous fault line of permanent confrontation and collision of shrines between two main antagonistic forces, with internal mutations and modifications as enacted in different forms, formats, formations and formulations.
About thirty five years ago, General Babangida noted that Awolowo was the main issue in Nigerian politics for the previous three decades. He was not resorting to hyperbolic ventilation. Sixty years after independence, Obafemi Awolowo’s ideals and ideas continue to frame the contours of national discourse whether as seen in his 1947 landmark intervention in the National Question, his ruminations on fiscal federalism, his discourse on the need for mental magnitude and his seminal disquisition on the strategies and tactics of the People’s Republic.
This is why whenever Nigeria finds itself in dire straits such as we are, the supersonic boom of Awo’s ideas, the thunderous artillery of his thinking, continue to echo and ricochet. Finally, it will be fruitful and profitable to imagine how the departed avatar would view the current circumstances of the nation, with its endless physical confrontations and legal contestations for the soul of the country.
In all probability, Awolowo would have donned his legal gown as he heads for the Supreme Court over the VAT imbroglio. But it is useful to disentangle facts from myths. Despite his apparent rigidity and unyielding stance on many political issues, Awolowo was not doctrinaire and inflexible in his thoughts. He was capable of changing his stance and yielding to superior political arguments.
This can be seen in his essay, “Rethinking in Prison”, his willingness to modulate and modify his romantic federalism so that Nigeria can move forward and his readiness to serve under General Gowon up to a point to save the nation from sure perdition. He was the only one among the titanic troika who insisted that a secessionist clause should be put in the constitution. But he dropped the idea after he was persuaded that it could open the Pandora Box of national disintegration.
But it is almost certain that were Awolowo to be alive, he would have nailed his colours to the mast of Nigerian masses and fought for their emancipation from political serfdom. In his very last interview, Awolowo told his interviewer that were he to die and come back in thirty years only to find Nigeria still a bastion of economic inequities and political injustice, he would certainly be at the head of the stone-throwing mob.
How then would this remarkable man view the current catcalls for the dissolution of the country championed by several self-determination groups? Awo would have understood their grievances, just as he would have appreciated their deep animus against the Nigeria postcolonial state and the hegemonic caste that had held it in thraldom since independence. He himself had been their serial victim. They sent him to jail and made it impossible for him to realize his dream of ruling the nation.
Yet despite everything, such was the gargantuan sum total of Awo’s psychic, emotional and intellectual investment in Project Nigeria that in all likelihood he would have baulked at the idea of a summary dissolution of his beloved nation no matter the provocation. This was the extraordinary personage we all gathered to honour once again last Sunday. It is proving impossible to bid Awo a final goodbye.
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