Ultimately, the Federal Government dishonoured the designer of Nigeria’s flag, Taiwo Akinkunmi, who was finally buried on September 6, more than a year after he died on August 29, 2023, aged 87.
Following his death, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, had led a Federal Government (FG) delegation that paid a condolence visit to his family in Ibadan, Oyo State, where he was based.
“He designed one of the most powerful symbols of our collective existence as a country and a nation,” the minister said at the time, adding, “Mr President shares with them in this grief, and the FG is with them throughout this period, and whatever the request the family puts forward, the FG will look into it.” Also, the Oyo State government officially expressed its condolences in a letter to the family signed by Governor Seyi Makinde.
However, the public show of interest by the federal authorities turned out to be a show without substance. Perhaps it was simply done to get positive publicity. The expected action never happened.
Tired of waiting for the FG to participate in planning for his funeral, the Akinkunmi family eventually buried him on September 6, in Ibadan, without the participation of the federal authorities. Akinkunmi’s son, Akinwumi, said the family received funding for the funeral from the Oyo State government.
His interment at his Ibadan residence was preceded by a funeral service held at the Obafemi Awolowo Stadium, Ibadan, which was attended by representatives of the Oyo State government. The FG was unrepresented. The Oyo State Deputy Governor, Bayo Lawal, was reported saying Akinkunmi was a national figure and the FG should have been involved in his burial.
In June, Akinwumi told BBC they found out that the National Institute for Cultural Orientation was tasked with arranging a state funeral. The agency, he said, only phoned the family once.
In May, a concerned group, Yoruba World Congress (YWC), UK, wrote an open letter to President Bola Tinubu, saying Akinkunmi “did his best for this country and his body should not be allowed to remain in the mortuary without attention and without a befitting burial.”
The family had said they were paying N2,000 daily for mortuary services. They had initially planned the funeral for December 7 and 8. When there was no response from the federal and state authorities, they changed the dates to April 10, 11 and 12. This did not change the situation. The burial was further delayed.
Then the family decided to go ahead and bury their patriarch, and stop waiting for the federal authorities to get involved. “My late father was an easy-going person who didn’t want anything to tarnish his image,” his son was quoted as saying. At some point, the state government stepped in to provide support.
Akinkunmi was in his early twenties when he designed the national flag, after stumbling upon a newspaper advertisement calling for the submission of designs for the Nigerian flag ahead of the independence of Nigeria from British rule in October 1960. He was then studying Electrical Engineering at Norwood Technical College, now known as Lambeth College, in London.
His design was a vertical white band with a radiating red sun, which was flanked by two vertical green bands. It was selected from among about 2,000 entries as the winning entry because of its ingenuity and profundity. He got 100 pounds for his effort. The judges, however, removed the red sun, leaving only a green-white-green design for the national flag. The green colour signifies agriculture; the white colour stands for unity and peace.
“I was well known all over the place. Everybody was calling me Mr Flag Man,” he said. After his education in the UK, he returned to Nigeria in 1963 and rejoined the civil service in Ibadan. He had been employed by the government of the Western Region after he left Ibadan Grammar School (IGS) in 1955. He retired as a civil servant in the early 1990s.
Interestingly, it can be said that he became anonymous after some time, until one Sunday Olawale Olaniran, then an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan, helped to put him back in the spotlight. Olaniran, who called him a “hero without honour,” was doing research on Nigeria’s history for a pamphlet when he decided to search for the designer of the country’s flag.
“People said he was dead, that I should forget about looking for him and just write about the flag,” Olaniran was reported saying. But he kept searching until he found the flag designer in Ibadan. Akinkunmi was said to be living alone, and lacking proper care. When they met, according to Olaniran, he “was incoherent and kept talking to himself.”
The researcher was moved to tears. “So, I got in touch with a journalist and we went back two days before Independence Day,” he said. “Even the journalist couldn’t believe the man was still alive.”
Akinkunmi was a pensioner, but his pension payments were irregular, the researcher said, adding, “Some Nigerians went to him and donated foodstuff, clothes.”
When the story of his sad situation appeared in The Sun on October 1, 2006, Olaniran said, it attracted the attention of many Nigerians who were unaware of his plight. Two years later, in 2008, Olaniran was contacted through his blog by a representative of the organisers of the Nigerian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? They wanted to get in touch with Akinkunmi.
He later appeared on a special edition of the TV show, and got a cheque for two million naira. His son said the money “given to him by the telecommunications giant, MTN, when he was a guest on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in 2008,” enabled him to complete the building of his house in Ibadan. The house, painted in the colours of the Nigerian flag, made a strong statement about its owner.
His eventual appearance on the list of national honours’ awardees in 2014 was the climax of a difficult journey to deserved recognition. It was a long road to that juncture. Oddly, Akinkunmi received the country’s national honour more than five decades after he designed the significant symbol. The delay was inexplicable and inexcusable. The national honours were instituted four years after the flag was officially hoisted on Nigeria’s Independence Day, October 1, 1960, in replacement of the British Union Jack. The honours are for Nigerians who have rendered service to the benefit of the nation.
After a campaign by Nigerians who felt he deserved a national honour, Akinkunmi was finally honoured by his country in September 2014, under the President Goodluck Jonathan administration. He received the national honour, Officer of the Order of the Federal Republic (OFR), and was also symbolically appointed as a salaried honorary life presidential special aide. He was 78 at the time and a retired civil servant.
The Federal Government’s failure to choreograph Akinkunmi’s funeral demonstrated disconnected governance in Nigeria. The authorities should redeem this failure by naming a place after him.
