The late Hannah Idowu Dideolu Awolowo was the pillar of the Awolowo dynasty. She played this role more when her husband, the legendary Chief Obafemi Awolowo, died 28 years ago. Assistant Editor SINA FADARE examines how the matriarch’s exit will affect the family.
English poet William Shakespeare was right when he wrote many years ago that “When beggars die there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes”. In the last few days, prominent Nigerians have turned Ikenne in Ogun State to a Mecca of sorts, to pay their last respects to Hannah Idowu Dideolu (HID), the wife of the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo.
Twenty-eight years ago, the country stood still following Awolowo’s exit. Today, the exit of the woman he described as “my jewel of inestimable value” is the talk of the town.
To the family, the Lord is great. Awolowo is a household name and almost a deity in the Southwest.
In a tribute to her mother, Dr. Tokunbo Awolowo-Dosunmu, said: “She was a very quite person, very enterprising. After they got married, Papa initially said she should not work, but the business traits in her could not allow that. After some time, Papa permitted her to engage in trading. And since then, she had carried on working, she showed outstanding business acumen.”
She added: “The entire family will miss her leadership role. I will miss her wise counsel and motherly care. I am still trying to come to terms with the fact that she’s gone. I feel very disappointed and wished she had the opportunity to see how much she meant to everyone.”
The political family which Awolowo and his wife left behind will never forget the Sage’s legacies. Former Transport Minister Chief Ebenezer Babatope, who was Director of Organisation of the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, Awolowo was a man of many parts.
According to Babatope, Awolowo was a wonderful, great and highly disciplined person, who impacted knowledge on his associates and all those who took him as their leader.
“He was exceptionally disciplined and exceptionally programmed. When he woke up between 4.30 a.m. and 5 a.m., he would have itemised what he wanted to do for the whole day. And he would achieve it. Apart from that, when it came to food items, Papa ate very little breakfast; he didn’t take lunch at all but in the evening he was there for his dinner.”
On how the late sage valued time, Babatope said: “If you invited Awolowo for a function and it is to start at 1 o’clock, by five minutes to 1 o’clock, Papa would be there. If you are not ready after 20 to 25 minutes, Papa would leave. He was highly disciplined. He wrote great books out of a disciplined mind. ‘My March Towards Prison’ was written and then there was the volume 2, ‘Travails of Democracy’. The other was ‘Adventures in Power’. He couldn’t complete the third one which could have been titled ‘For the Good of the Man’. You cannot do this without being a disciplined person. I thank God for giving me the opportunity to serve under him because my life has been enriched with what I have been taught by the life and times of Papa Awo.”
Delivering the maiden edition of Awolowo memorial lecture in 2004 titled: “Awolowo and the longest goodbye”, erudite scholar Prof Adebayo Williams noted that for many years to come, the Awo dynasty will be a reference point.
According to him, “Chief Awolowo’s greatness was defined by the greatness of the historical circumstances that threw him up, the greatness of the expectations, and, of course, the greatness of the many historical figures he had to contend with, often in open confrontation but sometimes also in paradoxical complicity.
“Chief Awolowo left a legacy as a great planner and economic wizard. If he were to come back, he would have been greatly saddened by the pandemic of corruption and the economic disaster facing the nation today”.
The eminent scholar added: “In remembering Chief Awolowo and his legacy, we must also remember that the essence of Awoism is of a living body of ideas by which a people, or a nation, can lift themselves by the bootstraps in their quest for economic development and political emancipation. An ideology is not a religion or faith which is fixed and frozen in time.”
Williams noted that whenever political gladiators got to a cross road in the nation’s history, they referred to the late sage’s thoughts.” For at every tragic turn, at every miscue, be it at the level of structural deformities of this unfortunate nation, its suffocating and stifling unitarism, its economic malaise, its educational collapse, its spiritual bankruptcy, its corrupt and thieving political class, and its gradual descent into the anomie of ungovernability, we are confronted by the figure of the man with the horn-rimmed glasses. And until we come to terms with many of his ideas, either by transcending them through superior political engineering or working through them through a more rigorous intellectual engagement, the piercing eyes behind the lens will continue to haunt us, reminding us of our inadequacies as intellectuals, as philosophers, as politicians and as a nation”
