Memories from the 49th Samuel Ladoke Akintola Memorial Lecture (l)

Last Thursday, January 15, the 49th Memorial Lecture held annually in the memory of the late Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, former Minister of Health of Nigeria, and former Premier of the defunct Western Region, was held. I was invited as one of the Guest Speakers on that occasion. It was an event, which depressed me […]

Last Thursday, January 15, the 49th Memorial Lecture held annually in the memory of the late Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, former Minister of Health of Nigeria, and former Premier of the defunct Western Region, was held. I was invited as one of the Guest Speakers on that occasion. It was an event, which depressed me to end because of the relatively poor attendance by many citizens of this country, especially members of the political class, who did not show up. The other two Guest Speakers did not also turn up. They are, Dr. Muazu Aliyu Babangida, Chief Servant of Niger State and Professor Bayo Okunade of the Political Science Department at the University of Ibadan. The absence of the other Speakers did not really worry me since, as it turned out to be, three speakers would have been a little over-ambitious for an event which was scheduled to last a few hours. My lone Lecture was just about more than enough for an audience which contained in the main, people who are not given to too much academic talk when there are merrier activities put on hold till the Lecture ran its course
What truly disturbed me was the near-total absence of members of the political class and state functionaries from the occasion. At a time, I heard some sirens renting the air and I was deceived, for a moment that my worry was unnecessary; that the ‘big people’ of power, who needed to be waited upon, were just arriving at their own chosen time, nearly two hours after the event had commenced. I later learnt that there were some important political/campaign rallies happening around town-much more serious than attending the event happening in the town of a deceased, formidable politician of the stature of SLA .On the invitee list were the President of the country, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and the former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo- incidentally the only two top men that sent written apologies due to earlier scheduled engagements. None of the Governors from the former Western States-serving or having served, showed up-not even Alao Akala, who hails from Ogbomoso, and who still needs the people’s vote for his return match, made an dayo Popoola, rtd.,  former Governor of the old Oyo State was there, actively and patiently involved in the proceedings. My senior colleague at the University of Ilorin, Dr. Saka Adegbite Balogun, who gave up the classroom for politics, was there in all his characteristic ebullience. Neither did their royal highnesses, including the Alafin of Oyo, whose predecessor (one of them) appointed Chief Akintola as the Generalissimo, the Are Ona Kakanfo of the Yorubaland, nor the Soun of Ogbomoso, grace the occasion. The most relieving and highly impressive attendant was made the two Emirs from the North, one of who came, expressly, to represent His Eminence, the Sultan of Sokoto, and who in his personal capacity is the Chairman of the Arewa Council of Emirs. And gladly the Olugbon of Ile-Igbon, a nearby kingdom was there and there actively, in praise-worthy style.   
Why did I have to go to this length to celebrate eminent absenteeism from an event where presences aplenty would have been desirable and historically apt.? We are in political times and there is feverish race by contestants to occupy/retain positions which are, at best, about a fifth in size, of what Chief Akintola occupied as Premier of the old Western Region. There is much in contention regarding the history of the Western Region when Chief Akintola was its Premier-1960-66, until he was cut down by the bullet of military coupists, following the bloody putsch that brought the military to power. There is abundant record of a certain level of unfairness to the man, given his contribution to the West and to Nigeria in general that there is scarse recognition of the memory of the man at the national level. The real issue is that there is a bewildering national amnesia of the great heroes of this country, such that young men and women growing up in Nigeria, born some three decades ago, know next to nothing about those who built this nation-or those who did not build the nation, such that most of our youth know nothing, or very little indeed, about the nationalists that won independence for this country-the Macaulay’s, the Azikiwes, the Ahmadu Bellos, the Balewas, the Awolowos, the Akintolas, the Okparas, the Aminu Kanos, and so on. These youth of our nation will never know, given the fact that, for some curious but cruel reason, history is no longer taught in our schools! What national monuments have been erected for immortalization purposes for any of these great men-and also women such as Olufunmilayo Ransome Kuti, Queen Amina of Zauzzau, Margaret Ekpo, Modemi, Efunsetan, and so on? But I felt that politicians who wish to be remembered, if they have that kind of noble thoughts, by history, should begin to honour celebratory events like the intellectual honorific event of a Memorial Lecture put in place by a committee of young men and women for Chief Ladoke Akintola of unforgettable memory in the history of our troubled nation.
Now, just excerpts of the opening statements of my Speech that links organically with my earlier remarks above.
‘It is courteous to begin with courtesies. I do this even now as I am still at a great loss at determining what qualifies me to be invited as a Guest Speaker in this very momentous and memorable event of yet another Edition of immortalizing one of Nigeria’s most illustrious sons, political leaders and inimitable nationalists, especially in the Western part of our country and in the very First Republic of our country’s evolvement as a nation-state. Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, Second substantive Premier of Western Nigeria and the Are One Kakanfo of Yorubaland, is an unforgettable name and heroic personage in the chequered annals of Nigeria’s history. Being neither a politician nor a historian, my knowledge of the history of the politics and politicians of the early years of our independence is rather rudimentary and secondary. However, I have developed, over the years, as a literary artist, scholar and public commentator, to grow in the knowledge that one cannot participate in the debates and discourses of one’s country as it is today without obtaining a working knowledge of the events of yesterday from where the reality of today has been shaped or mis-shaped and from where tomorrow’s outcome will be envisioned ad fashioned. And when we are building knowledge around immortals like SLA (as Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola was then popularly known, even as we were growing up, in the turbulent years of Western Nigerian political life of the early sixties, precisely, 1960-66, events which formed part of the latent and immediate causes of the nation’s cataclysm of 1967-70, must ramify in the landscape of historical consciousness, One would therefore have been relishing in heinous ignorance to have shut one’s inner and outer ears to the life and times of the subject of our Memorial events and Lecture. So, with all sense of trepidation and curious excitement, I accepted to bring myself here and talk on a topic that is also crucial and of cardinal import to the Regional Government of the defunct Western Nigeria under the formidable leadership  of the late-Chiefs Obafemi Awolowo and Samuel Ladoke Akintola-the only two substantive Premiers of the Western Region.    
Fortunately, the proud and worthy scions of this late illustrious political colossus have done the world a yeoman’s service by appropriately erecting a wall-less monument of the exploits and accomplishments on the national and global stage of their father in books and biographies such that a secondary school student like I was in those tumultuous aegis of Nigerian politics when Chief Akintola was a controversial practitioner as an inimitable, most eloquent political orator with a drinkable voice and unsurpassed competence in the flow and tropes of the Yoruba language, could quickly update himself, not to talk to children of the unborn generation then who now live in an age when history has been wantonly yanked off our school curriculum!