By Muyiwa Adeyemi
On Wednesday, December 18, 2024, Pa Ayo Adebanjo called a press conference at his Lekki, Lagos State residence to address the state of the nation and warn the government against tampering with freedom of speech. But he could not physically attend to the newsmen who honoured his invitation. He was on his bed, from where he was given instructions to his aides that read his prepared speech.
Some of the newsmen that attended the press conference knew that age had caught up with the fearless politician, democrat and human right activist.
The death of Pa Adebanjo, leader of Afenifere, a Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, yesterday, ended another era in Nigerian politics.
In fact, any story narrating the gladiators who shaped political events from the first to fourth republics without mentioning several roles Adebanjo played is incomplete.
He was a leader of progressive wings of politics and fought severally for the enthronement of democracy in Nigeria. He was among the patriotic leaders that ended military rule in 1979, when the military struck again in December 1983, he didn’t support them but joined democratic forces to end their dictatorial regime in 1999.
When the June 12, 19993 election, won by Bashorun MKO Abiola was annulled, Pa Ayo Adebanjo was among the founding fathers of NADECO that were in trenches to fight the military until they handed over power back to the civilian in 1999.
A staunch disciple of the late political sage Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Until Pa Adebanjo breathed his last, he defended political philosophies and values as expounded by Awolowo as the best blueprint to get Nigeria and Africa out of doldrum.
For Adebanjo, progressive politics and Afenifere should not be limited to fighting the political interest of the Yoruba alone but its values are anchored on fairness, justice and equity. This underscored his support for Mr Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 general elections, which pitched him against many Yoruba politicians especially, other chieftains of Afenifere who queued behind Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Pa Adebanjo fought many political battles in his lifetime, the first with the military saw him in exile to Ghana in 1966 and second one against Abacha’s administration saw him in the United Kingdom between 1994 and 1998, but political events leading to the last presidential election were his defining moments. This is because his convictions that the Igbo that had never produced the president of the country should succeed Muhammed Buhari, polarised Afenifere leading to withdrawal of its headship from him.
Pa Reuben Fashonranti had willingly, due to his old age, surrendered Afenifere leadership to Adebanjo who was his deputy. But when the crisis ensued over the support for Tinubu, some Yoruba leaders compelled Pa Fashoranti to withdraw the mantle already given to Adebanjo. But the fearless politician was unperturbed and continued his support for Obi. He even rallied the leaders of the Middle Belt and South-South to support the Labour Party Presidential candidate.
He said, “Am I not the first to say that for equity and justice and for peace, it’s the South-East? I don’t know any other candidate from the South-East other than Obi and I have been very specific about Obi. It is only Peter Obi that can rule independently without the influence of these criminals in the government. Tinubu will only give continuity to Buhari’s incompetence.
“We know Peter Obi very well, that’s why we endorsed him. He will not disappoint Nigerians, let’s put tribal differences apart and vote the right leader in.”
Adebanjo as a federalist If there is one thing, Pa Ayo Adebanjo would have loved to see what happened in Nigeria in his lifetime, it is restructuring that will usher in true federalism as agreed upon by the founding fathers of the country during independence in 1960. However, the 1963 Republican Constitution was suspended by the Military government that ended what many termed as the “golden era of Nigeria” through Decree 1 of January 17, 1966.
To Adebanjo, the unification decree that suspended true and fiscal federalism was the root cause of socio-economic challenges Nigeria is facing and was persistent in the call for the change of the 1999 Constitution. Speaking about restructuring he said, “The beginning of our problem in this country was the military coup of 1966. The people who want to do mischief, particularly our brothers from the North, are cheating us under the present structure imposed on us by the military in 1966.
“As long as that constitution exists, those of us in the South, who took part in the founding of this nation under our constitutional democracy, would not accept it.”
“The Constitution created local government councils through which they distribute resources. The North is in the advantaged position by the creation of that constitution. This is a country where a section is imposing its will on the rest. They are using false population (figures) to claim the majority of seats in the parliament. Return to genuine federal structure is imperative in order to liberate the rest of the country from servitude.”
“Even some of the professors do not understand what we are talking about. Federalism is federalism. What we are saying is that it is federalism as envisioned under the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Federalism says that every unit of the federation must be cohesive and independent. Every unit of the federation must be able to stand alone. The regional government is not submissive to the Federal Government; it is independent of the Federal Government.
“That is why the Federal Government allocates the functions to the units which can be a state or a region. The regions under the Federal Government are the cultural units under a federation that are related in culture or tradition. A unit of the federation under regional autonomy has parallel functions. That is what they are confusing.
“Unfortunately, the present governors because of selfish reasons, will be opposed to regional systems because a lot of them will need to be back together in the same region to be viable. If they want to stay together as a federation, they can’t be viable.
“That is what some people do not understand but when we get to the stage where we will discuss these things, they will know.
His political trajectory His journey to politics began as a journalist with the Daily Service and it was from there that he was drafted to the Action Group (AG) as the General Secretary. He said, “I enjoyed being a journalist, because I interviewed personalities and that exposes you to a lot of things, you learn many things and you gain access to many places that you ordinarily wouldn’t have access to.
“It was through my activities in the party, Action Group. At that time, I had become the secretary of the Action Group Youth Association and I worked with the late Remi Fani-Kayode, the father of Femi Fani-Kayode. At that time, anytime we were to have a rally in Lagos, as the secretary of the local branch, I was responsible for organising the rally. I didn’t know that Chief Awolowo was taking note of my activities.
“So, the party decided to have a full time organising secretary and when they were interviewing people for organising secretary in each division of the western region, he requested for me to be posted to his own division. That was how it started. Interestingly, before then, I was a Zik’s fan and my political activism was developed through reading the articles of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. You would be surprised that as a primary five pupil in 1942, I was buying a newspaper; The West African Pilot at that time. We all admired Dr. Azikiwe. He had a column in The Pilot, named ‘Inside Stuff by Zik.’ When I read his piece, I would commit it to my memory. In The Pilot then, there were so many articles coming out, including articles of people like the late Magnus Williams. He had a column too in the Pilot known as ‘Between Ourselves’. Those were the columns we looked out for then.
His Travails in Politics In 1962, during the travails of the Action Group and Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s trial for treasonable felony, Adebanjo was charged for felony, along with 30 others. He had to flee to Ghana where he was detained more than once for his political beliefs, but this did not alter his resolve. Following the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election, which was won by Chief MKO Abiola, he joined protests, stood at the barricades and made his voice heard. Members of the democratic coalition and other groups in civil society were shot at, harassed, humiliated and their family members were intimidated. Used to the dangers of a political life in a dangerous society, Adebanjo’s resolve remains unshaken, even in the winter season of his life.
When he fled into exile in 1962, his father was arrested, detained and rough-handled by the state. Many of Adebanjo’s colleagues died in the course of the struggle. Some moved to the other side of the fence. Others adjusted in later life. The very essence of Chief Adebanjo’s politics lies in his consistency, his unwavering commitment to ideas rather than opportunism, his courage in the face of fire and intimidation, the life of sacrifice that he lived, and his loyalty to Awo and Awoism. On this last score, he may in fact be described as the last of the original Awoists.
This emphasis on ideology, party politics, and Awoism is important, as an entry point into the interrogation of Chief Ayo Adebanjo’s politics. The kind of post-politics reality that has developed in Nigeria since the early 2000s has been a politics that is not driven by any ideology or principles or core beliefs, but by the desperate search for power by any vehicle possible. For this reason, there are many politicians in Nigeria today who cannot effectively articulate what exactly they believe in or stand for, and there are many of them who in less than a decade have used up to about five political platforms of disconcertingly contradictory impressions. This is probably the reason Pa Adebanjo has stayed away in the last few years from direct party politics.
In 1951, he joined the Action Group, in the Second Republic, he was a member of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), in the 90s, he was a member of the progressive democratic coalition; with the return to party politics in 1998, he was a member of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) which was more or less an Awoist party. When the AD seemed to have transmuted, or well, to something called the ACN, Adebanjo kept his distance and functioned more as a leader of the Afenifere, cultural group, which he said, is committed to the Awoist ideology. What is this ideology?
The Action Group, the Unity Party of Nigeria, the Alliance for Democracy had consistently preached the same ideology of public good: free education, health, and prosperity for all, rural development and welfarism. It was on this platform that Awolowo transformed the Western region as leader in the First and Second Republics and it is these same principles that have continued to guide those who profess to be Awoists. But Awoism in a real sense is not just about service delivery, it is also a mode of engagement with the rest of Nigeria by a group of political actors in the Western region. These actors are committed to federalism, a restructuring of Nigeria, regional autonomy, and a re-negotiation of the mandate of 1914. In real terms, these are the same issues that have caused much political difference in Nigeria.
As a true Awoists, Pa Adebanjo naturally aligned with minorities across Nigeria, historical circumstances, particularly the civil war pitched them against Igbos, and hegemonic politics pitted them against the mainstream Northern political establishment. When this is disaggregated, the researcher will find in-between, much that relates to the ethnic, regional and religious politics in Nigeria.
Born on April 10, 1928, barely six years after the Clifford Constitution and the first legislative elections in Nigeria, Adebanjo lived through the finest and ugliest moments of Nigerian history: the constitutional processes, the struggle for independence, party politics leading to independence and after, the civil war, military rule, return to democracy, the struggle for the protection of democracy and civilian rule, and the bigger struggle of ensuring the survival and development of Nigeria.
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