Reminiscences with Alhaji Lateef Femi Okunnu

Alhaji Lateef Femi Okunnu, who clocked 86 years on February 19, 2019, was the Federal Commissioner for Works and Housing from 1987 to 1974 when General Yakubu Gowon was head of state. In this interview with Daily Trust on Sunday, Alhaji Okunnu, a lawyer and senior advocate, who once represented Nigeria in hockey sport, recalls […]

Alhaji Lateef Femi Okunnu, who clocked 86 years on February 19, 2019, was the Federal Commissioner for Works and Housing from 1987 to 1974 when General Yakubu Gowon was head of state. In this interview with Daily Trust on Sunday, Alhaji Okunnu, a lawyer and senior advocate, who once represented Nigeria in hockey sport, recalls his childhood years on the old Lagos Island. The federal system of government, he says, died with the 1963 Constitution.

 

Could you recall your childhood days?

My earliest childhood memories go back to the not-so-late 1930s. I was born on February 19, 1933. My earliest memory growing up was when my father was living at Balogun Lane, off Balogun Street, leading to Balogun Square.

My earliest memories were centred on playing on Balogun Street as a very small boy, and then began attending Ansar-ud-Deen Primary School, Alakoro. Those were the earliest days I remember. My father later moved to Idun-Isagbe, that is Idoluwo, where his own mother’s father had settled down. His mother’s father was Umoru Tapa, the Imam of Ratibi Mosque in Idoluwo. When I was growing up,

I also lived at Idoluwo.

You mentioned Umoru Tapa. Does that mean you have links with Nupe people?

I don’t have links, I have them as part of my blood. The true

Lagosians, people who can rightly call themselves Lagosians, came from different parts of the country. Of course, the original inhabitants of the Lagos island and mainland came from Ota.

Then we had the Bini. The royalty in Lagos were all of Benin origin. The white cap chiefs, that is, the land-owning chiefs, or some of them, were also the original inhabitants of Lagos.

So apart from the first set of settlers and also the Bini, as I have said, we had the Nupe. The Mosalasi Jimo (Central Mosque) had a concentration of the Nupe people. Oshodi-Tapa and Epetedo were populated by Nupe settlers.

We had the Brazilians – those who came from Brazil and the West Indies, but mostly from Brazil. We called them oyinbo potoki, and they occupied the Brazilian quarters in Lagos. Then you had different settlers from Yorubaland  –  the Ijesha, the Ijebu, the Egba and others from different parts of the country. We had also those who came from Dahomey across the French-British border or across the

Nigeria-Benin Republic border, largely from Porto Novo. So Lagos was, and is a concentration of different people from different parts of the country. There are those who have settled here for centuries. Lagos is, indeed, cosmopolitan.

 

How would you describe your relationship with your grandparents?

I didn’t know my paternal grandfather and grandmother. They were dead and I can’t even tell when they died. I only knew my mother’s parents. My mother’s father was Gbadamosi Mogaji of Ita Garawu and Agidingbi village. My mother’s mother was an Ijaye. She had Ijaye marks. And incidentally, my paternal great-grandfather, Musa Okunnu, had Benin connection. On his mother’s side, his mother was a princess from Owu kingdom in Abeokuta.

You can see the connections from everywhere, though I am a Lagosian.

Lagos has been a centre of civilisation. Lagos was Nigeria before independence. If Lagos had remained as Nigeria, it would have been a wonderful country, a great country predominantly strong. Patriotism was Lagos of old, but, unfortunately, that is no more.

 

What was your primary school life like?

Well, there were very few primary schools in those days, just as there were fewer secondary schools. You could count the secondary schools in Lagos on your fingertips, as it were. The Ansar-ud-Deen Primary School, Alakoro, Lagos Island, which I attended, was the second Muslim primary school in Nigeria. The first was Ahmadiyya Primary School at Elegbata. The Ansar-ud-Deen school was established in 1929. The Christians too, especially the Anglican, Methodist, Baptist and Catholics, had their own primary and secondary schools.

The Ansar-ud-Deen school was founded by young members of the Ansar-ud-Deen Society of Nigeria. They came together to further Islam as their first major aim; the second aim was to spread education. The founders attended Christian schools and there was a great deal of discrimination at that time against Muslim children. Worse, some of those founders were converted to Christianity. This led to their coming together to establish their own schools to pursue those two aims and objectives: the spread of Islam and advancement of education.

The primary school which I attended had Christian headmasters, and there were also Christian pupils there. Most of the teachers were also Christians because at that time, the Muslim society had limited western education. But whatever the religion in Lagos, we lived as one big happy community. Muslims and Christians grew up together. We took part in Christian festivities, while the Christians took part in Muslim festivals. Families from both religions were intertwined.

Nigeria in those days was great, even in politics. There was little ethnic rancour in the 1940s. The first ethnic union was by the Ibibio people – the Ibibio State Union. The aim was to send their own students, young persons, to study overseas. The first student the Ibibio State Union sent overseas was Sir Udo Udoma, who later became the Chief Justice of Uganda, apart from being the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

There was also the Igbo State Union in the 1940s. Still, the Lagos society was cosmopolitan; there was no discrimination among the various communities. Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first governor-general of Nigeria, was elected on the platform of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC). The Democratic Party was founded by, among others, Herbert Macaulay, a Yoruba, in 1923.

There was the new constitution, the Richard Constitution of 1946, which retained in the Legislative Council, three elected members. Then, if you had property you paid rate and you were eligible to vote. At that time, there was the NCNC-Democratic Party in alliance, and there was the Nigerian Youth Movement founded by Dr. Vom, and others in 1933; about the time I was born.

Under the Richard Constitution, there was provision for three elected members in the Legislative Council. There was one elected member from Calabar; the other African members were nominated, five from each of the three newly created regions, that is, the Northern Region, which used to be the Northern Protectorate in 1900. It was changed to Northern Region in 1936.

From the Southern Protectorate came the Western Region and Eastern Region. There was the Colony of Lagos since 1861, the only colony ruled by the British Government. The colony remained as one political entity until 1954 under the Littleton Constitution when Lagos City was excised from the colony and turned into a Federal Territory and the rest of the colony was merged with the Western Region until 1967 when states were created and the colony became Lagos State.

 

Would you say there was something in your primary school education and training that began preparing you for the success that you eventually became?

What prepared me? The home I came from and the schools I attended. As I said, my primary school was largely Muslims, but there were mostly Christian teachers. King’s College, which I attended, remains a great influence in my life. King’s College had students from different parts of the country and there was never a question of where we came from. We were just boys from different parts of the country, bound together by learning.

In 1952, some years after the students’ riot, the second in King’s College and the second in Nigeria, our principal, J.R. Bunton, introduced the teaching of Civics in Nigeria, that is, education to train you as citizens of the country moving towards independence. So it was about Nigeria, and we didn’t bother about where we came from. It wasn’t a factor. We were the first set of students to be exposed to Civics.

At that time, there was political fervour in the air. Sir John Macpherson, the governor from 1948 to 1953-54, was about to introduce his own constitution after the Richard Constitution; and his constitution was from 1950 to 1954. So the country was on the march towards independence; the sun was about to set on the British Empire.

India had been granted independence, Pakistan had been created, and so in Nigeria, students were being prepared for leadership roles, right from school to keep pace with post-independent Nigeria. The authorities were looking at how students could help in the governance and management of the school.

We had election for the post of secretary of the Students’ Council.

About five or six of us stood for the election and I happened to have won that election at King’s College. The principal allowed us to draft our own constitution and to govern ourselves, within limits, of course. We made rules to govern the lives of students at King’s College. We administered the training rules for citizenship.

Unfortunately, that experiment was not done country-wide by the British administration, and also by the Nigerian administration, until much later. If the sense of one nation and training students at schools, not in universities but in secondary schools, if not primary schools, in the art of governance, had been pursued, Nigeria would have been a different country today. All the mess we have in the country today  –  lack of patriotism, lack of tolerance, disobedience, huge corruption  –  would have been nipped if students had been taught a compulsory subject in civic education. It is not too late to teach people wherever they come from and whatever language they speak, that they belong to one nation and have been brought together as one people. There would be no question of Igbo-speaking, Hausa-speaking or Yoruba-speaking people. There would be no question of Ohaneze, Afenifere or Arewa.

Unfortunately, these are the issues of the day in Nigeria. The main issue in being a Nigerian is the absence of patriotism. We can’t manage ourselves, we can’t manage elections. We managed elections as students in 1952 at King’s College. And successive students have been managing governance there because the Students’ Council is still there at King’s College. It is still very much there. I will be with them for my birthday. Every year, the council is in session in my honour. So if this had been repeated in other schools, the political mess we have in the country would not exist.

 

It is believed that King’s College is an elitist institution and gaining admission there is highly competitive. How difficult was it for you to gain admission into the school?

It wasn’t difficult. There were few of us from primary schools all over the country. The country had a very small population then, compared to what it is now. But it was competitive.

 

What influence or combination of subjects at King’s College prepared you for Law that you eventually decided to study at the university?

At that time, professions were at their infancy, very much young. At the time I was taking off, Estate Surveying was unknown, even Engineering. Architecture was at its infancy. The most popular profession was teaching and public service. That was what education was geared towards at that time, but as time went on, other professions opened up.

 

It is also believed that King’s College was too serious about learning and sports. Did you have any time for romance and fun?

Not really. We were small boys, though we had girlfriends at Queen’s College. Games were as important to us as academics. I played hockey for Nigeria as a schoolboy in 1952 against the then Gold Coast. Two of us from the same school  –  the late A. K. Amu, who was my classmate, and I  –  were chosen to be part of the Nigerian team in 1952. We played matches at Accra, Kumasi and other parts of Ghana, weeks before the Cambridge School Certificate examination.

 

Didn’t that affect your preparations for the Cambridge examinations?

It didn’t. The principal wrote letters to our parents, informing them that we had been chosen and asking if they would allow us to go. My father and Amu’s father both consented to it.

King’s College was well known for dominance in cricket. Did you play cricket?

I represented King’s College in cricket, as I did in hockey. In those days, we had the All Secondary Schools competitions in the Western Region. We had full life in games and academics. Also, we had societies – Photographic Society, Red Cross Society, Boxing, etc.

 

Did you go straight to the university from there?

No. When I left, I stayed on for a new course called the Higher School Certificate, Cambridge. It was new in my time and we didn’t know the importance of HSC. We didn’t know that with a good grade in HSC you could get direct entry to any British university. I was persuaded by our principal to stay on for HSC Science because in my set, out of the five of us, only two wanted to do Arts. But the college was not ready for only two students to do Arts subjects.

So I stayed on for science subjects between January and June, though science was not my ambition. I had made up my mind to do Law, with a view to playing some roles in public life. In June or July, I joined the Post and Telegraph (P&T) Department. In October, I was again invited by the principal to occupy a post, which was before me occupied by the late Vice President Alex Ekwueme as the school’s technical officer. We were to receive science equipment from

London and look after them. But I ended up teaching History, Civics and English in junior classes because the college was short of staff. I eventually went to England at the end of February, 1956 to study Law at the University College, London.

 

As a black student, did you experience any discrimination from the whites in London, as was the practice then?

Yes, there was a lot of discrimination against blacks in London, and it happened to me. For instance, if you wanted accommodation, you would see an advertisement in newspapers. If you went to the home and the landlady opened the door and saw a black man, she would say ‘no, no, no’ and slam the door in your face. I experienced that on a few occasions.

 

How would you say your appointment as Federal Commissioner for Works and Housing for seven years impacted on development in the areas of Nigerian roads, works and housing?

Well, I normally leave that for people to judge. But what I can say is that when I was appointed Federal Commissioner for Works and Housing on May 27, 1967, I had before me about 6,000 miles of federal roads throughout the country. When I left on December 21, 1974, I had increased the mileage of federal highways in the country to almost 21,000, about three times what I met. At the time I left, most of the roads had just been reconstructed; some were under construction while other constructions were soon to begin. I am very proud to say that I opened up part of the country, also in terms of federal highways. I met two North-South major roads, that is, Lagos, Ibadan, Jebba, Kotangora, Kaduna, Zaria and Kano; and the second one, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Makurdi, Jos and Kaduna.

I added Warri, Benin and Koton Karfe, which now goes to Abuja and to the North. The second one I added was Calabar and Yola to Maiduguri. I did the same thing with the West-East. One thing I can say is that I left the federal road network in the country in very good conditions. I feel very sad that years after I left the ministry after the Gowon government, most of the roads I am talking about were neglected, let alone rehabilitated or reconstructed for 30, 40 years. Some of them, up till today, are still as I left them. That is unfortunate.

I changed the traffic from left to right in 1972. Nigeria, a former British colony, had been driving on the left with British-imported right-hand-drive cars. Many people didn’t believe that it was necessary, and doubted we could achieve it. But I thought it was necessary because Europe drove on the right, apart from Great Britain. The French-speaking African countries drove on the right, except

Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone and others. I felt that the trend was to change over, and we did it successfully in 1972.

I left a few other things which still make me proud. There are landmarks, like office blocks and many others, as well as surveys. The Federal Mortgage Bank was part of my creation. I bought over the British government interest in the Nigerian Building Society, and the result is what you now have as the Federal Mortgage Bank to help in housing finance. I set the ball rolling on changing to the metric system. I felt that we should go metric and I set the ball rolling, leading to the change from the British to the metric system.

I look back with happiness that I set up professional bodies like the Architects Registration Council (ARCON) to regulate the profession of architecture, and the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN). Estate surveyors have their own registration council also. You can see the honour they did me by making me the first Fellow of the Councils, of the societies in the construction industry. So I looked back with happiness that I laid certain foundations. But the sadness is that there is little or no follow-up over the years.

 

Some say that Lagos, where you hail from, could have been better planned in your era as a public officer. What was the setback?

I don’t think there is any setback in the physical development of Lagos State. If anything in recent years in physical terms, Lagos has changed. The Lagos I grew up consisted of only the Island. There was no Surulere. Life ended at Yaba. Ikorodu road down to Ikeja was all bush. But Lagos grew up rapidly after the war, and it is still growing at a very fast pace. There was no Lekki, there was no

Oniru Estate. Victoria Island was in my younger days, in my primary school days, mostly water. It was sand and we used to, after school holidays, come over through the swampy Victoria Island to the Bar Beach to have picnic. That was Lagos of those days. There was no FESTAC town. Isolo consisted of 10 to 15 huts of tin roof or thatched materials built with mud. The whole of Isolo had not more than 15 huts in the 1940s and 1950s. Not that I was told; I went there when Ansar-ud-Deen Society acquired the land on which the society built the Ansar-ud-Deen College and the turning of the sod ceremony was done. My father was a strong member of the Ansar-ud-Deen Society. We went there with other children. Vehicles had to stop on the main road, that was the Mushin road, and we had to trek to the village that Isolo was then.

Looking back, Lagos has grown very fast. When I was in office, the tallest building in Victoria Island was the house of one of my late friends, Ade Thomas. His house had only three floors. The building regulation then in Victoria Island was even for only two floors. You couldn’t go beyond two floors, but the Ade Thomas family went beyond two floors. The commercial part of Victoria Island was the area bounded by Sanusi Fafunwa and Adeyemo Alakija; all the others were residential. But today, many of us live in Victoria Island. You know very well, as much as I do, that we have 10 to 15-storey buildings and so on. How can anybody say Lagos has not grown? The growth of Lagos in physical planning has been tremendous.

 

But don’t you agree that Lagos Island itself – the Idumota, Ereko, Balogun, etc areas –  where you grew up, remains unplanned and unorganised?

That is an issue of traffic control. When I was Federal Commissioner for Works and Housing, I took traffic control and road safety very seriously. I took over the function of road safety from the Ministry of Information and made it a major function of government. The problem of traffic in Lagos can be solved if the authorities do two things. The first is effective traffic control. The traffic authority or personnel should be able to tell drivers, ‘you can’t park here,’ ‘you can’t stop here’ and ‘keep moving.’ There should be strict enforcement of traffic laws. What we see now are drivers brazenly driving the wrong way (one way) and nobody stops them to enforce the law. Nobody is arrested for doing the wrong thing. Every inch of the road is a bus stop; that is what is happening in Idumota.

 

Nigeria is regarded as the giant of Africa but still lags behind in many areas. Where did we get it wrong?

Patriotism is lacking. In a country where everybody regards himself as either a Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Tiv, Ijaw or any ethnic identity but nobody is proud to call himself a Nigerian, how can such a country build a nation? Nobody is thinking of Nigeria as a nation, let alone putting it into action. We can never be great until we have great people with the vision that they are Nigerian first, Nigerian second and Nigerian third, and not Yoruba, Hausa, Ijaw or Fulani. That is one big problem we have in this country. The Indians, with a 1.3 billion population, would say, ‘I am from Madras Local Government or so’.  Also, I have never heard a Chinese say he was from an ethnic group. But in Nigeria, we will state our identity up to local government area and even ward. How many Nigerians are proud to say they are Nigerians? That is one big problem we have, and we will never make a nation with this attitude.

 

What is your take on the singsong on restructuring?

We should go back to the 1963 Constitution. Over the years, the Federal Government had stolen some powers from the state, and that is now one big problem. We should go back to what it was in 1963. Gowon followed the 1963 Constitution, though that was a military government. In fairness, the Murtala/Obasanjo regime also followed the 1963 Constitution until 1979. One of the pitfalls in the 1979 Constitution was to remove the revenue allocation system in 1963, which ensured that 50 per cent of the profit from sale of any commodity, whether mineral or agricultural, went to the states of origin. The Federal Government took only 20 per cent while the remaining 30 per cent was in the distributive pool, shared by the region or states when states were created.

But under the 1979 Constitution, the states of origin had zero and it was left to the National Assembly to decide what percentage goes to the states of origin. That is why you still have unrest in oil producing states in the country. We need to correct that. Today, the Federal Government keeps 52-54 per cent for doing little, for carrying out more or less the same set of functions it was carrying out in 1963. Now, the Federal Government has too much money when it’s the states that should have much money to carry out their projects.

Education, especially primary and secondary education, is essentially a state matter. Primary health is a state matter, not federal. These, including housing, are money-consuming functions of government. Today, you have governors with begging bowls in hand, crawling to Abuja to get money. That is not a federal system of government, it is unitary.