Afolayan Adebiyi

The Federal election of 1959 was around the corner. The National Council for the Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) and Action Group (AG) were the main parties in the race; at least in the Western Region. The area that is now known as Delta, Edo, Osun, Oyo, Ekiti, Ogun, and parts of Lagos and Rivers States. The other major party, the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) was practically non-existent, while the fringe parties, the Ibadan Progressive Party, the Mabolaje Movement, were not that effective since the demise of the stormy petrel of Ibadan politics, Adegoke Adelabu, popularly known as “Penkelemesi”. But the remnants of the Zikists movement were still active enough to heighten the electoral tension of the time.

There was a certain Ayo Adebanjo. He was a newcomer to the AG camp of Awolowo. He was initially a rabbid campaigner with the Zikists movement and the NCNC, before moving over to Action Group led by the visionary premier of the defunct Western Region in 1959 when the election was fast approaching and immediately was made one of the Organisation Secretaries at the Ward level, thus began his voyage in the progressive camp of the late sage, Pa Obafemi Awolowo’s school of political thought.

Pa Adebanjo, like his many other contemporaries of the time, such as Tony Enahoro, Lateef Kayode Jakande, Olabisi Onabanjo, Adekunle Ajasin, Bola Ige, Abraham Adesanya, Olanihun Ajayi and several others, always lay claim to and espoused the ideals and ideas of the sage, Pa Awolowo. The basic tenets of the group was founded on the welfareism principles of democratic socialism with progressive manifestos. The party’s credo in the ill-fated First Republic was ‘Freedom for All – Life More Abundant’.

It was this mentality of ‘life more abundant’ that distinguished the legion of Awolowo’s disciples from others, hence the sobriquet AWOISM.
Pa Adebanjo, in all his entirety, is built from this deep-rooted school of thought. Therefore, the principle of people-centered progressivism socialism is always pursued with iron-cast determination.
This socio-political philosophy, Pa Ayo Adebanjo has been espousing and professing, since he became an integral part of the group since First Republic. Now at an advanced age of ninety-four, he sits atop the apogee of the group’s pyramidal structure as the Acting Leader. He emerged the acting leader since the leader, Chief Reuben Fasoranti has been incapacitated by old age infirmities.

But, presently, Pa Adebanjo’s entire political gamut is under turmoil. His progressive credentials are seriously being questioned. Surprisingly this is not by outsiders or critics, but by his own immediate constituency, among the group he leads as the acting leader.
The question now is: has Pa Ayo Adebanjo abandoned the progressive democratic socialism ideology? Why is he abandoning a known subscriber to progressive credo to support a person with capitalist credentials? The question,Pa Adebanjo himself tried to downplay at a recent press conference where he said “not a few leaders of the Committee of Afenifere has questioned his decision and judgement on the issue of 2023 Presidential contest”.
Many groups that subscribed to the late Pa Awo’s political ideas and ideals, believed he had abandoned the ideology of the group. They are now alleging ‘political turn-coat’, when referring to him. And it all has to do with his stand on the 2023 presidential contest.
There are four prominent candidates jostling for the position of the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Dr. Rabiu Kwankanso of the NIPP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP, Mr. Peter Obi of Labour Party and Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressive Congress APC. The closest to the late Pa Awolowo’s ideas is Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The remaining three can be safely categorized as dye in the wood conservatives.
Former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar needs to profiling. He is a capitalist blue and black. All his pronouncements, in and out of government, are devoid of people-oriented welfareism.
Peter Obi’s Large scale importation business gives him out as a capitalist. When he was at the helm of affairs in Anambra State, he ran a pseudo-capitalist policies. government.
From Kano State, Dr. Rabiu Kwankanso needs to introduction. A two time Governor of the State, first from 1999 – 2003 and 2011 – 2015. Kwankanso clearly showed that he was no late Mallam Aminu Kano nor late Alhaji Abubakar Rimi. He clearly moved away from the Talakawa welfarist programme of the late iconic leaders and ran the State with conservative ideas.
Bola Tinubu’s progressive credentials displayed in his eight year tenure as the helmsman in Lagos State has been overtly documented. His successors have also been pushing the people-oriented programmes he initiated along the social Progressive ideas. He better espouses the late Pa Obafemi Awolowo’s welfareism tenets that Pa Ayo Adebanjo so much acclaimed, all the time.
However, since Bola Tinubu declared his presidential aspiration under the banner of APC, the acting leader of the Pan-Yoruba organization has not hidden his disdain for both his person and aspiration. He spared no harsh words in condemning him.
To further escerbate the issue, Pa Adebanjo came out a few weeks ago to endorse the presidential aspiration of Mr. Peter Obi of the rival LP. He did not stop at personal endorsement, but also claimed to have the authorization of the Pan-Yoruba organization to endorse Peter Obi.

The acting leader has came out openly to declared his support and allegedly that of the socio-cultural organisation’s for the aspiration of Peter Obi of LP, not a few senior members of the group has denounced the proclamation and distanced themselves from such. One of them is the former presidential candidate of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), a party founded and funded by the organization to contest the 1999 general elections, Chief Olu Falae. Another is a pan-Yoruba group known as the Yoruba Council Worldwide. Both Falae and the Yoruba Council group has unequivocally rejected the wholesale adoption of Peter Obi by the acting leader.

This nascent group has accused the leader of pan-Yoruba socio-political Afenifere, Pa Adebanjo, of embarking on a campaign of calumny against the presidential candidate of the APC, Bola Tinubu. “If you’ve been following Baba Ayo Adebajo’s approach, it is a campaign of calumny against Asiwaju. It is not because of his (Tinubu’s) aspiration now, he (Adebanjo) has always been on that. At any given instance, Asiwaju will always come to the fore,” the President of the group, Oladotun Hassan said Olu Falae distanced himself from Adebanjo sweeping endorsement of Obi as Afenifere acting leader.

According to Falae “as a responsible leader, one should consider all important parameters, including capacity, experience and proven track record before endorsing a candidate”.
The former Finance Minister insisted that this “correction is necessary in order not to mislead the public that I, Chief Olu Falae is supporting any of the candidates yet”.

He believed that “It is necessary to await the programmes and manifestos of the political parties and their candidates before arriving at a particular candidate to support”
Earlier, Adebanjo had again and again re-stated his support for the presidential ambition of the P’s Peter Obi over Tinubu, a fellow Afenifere man.
The 94-year-old Afenifere leader said to keep Nigeria one in 2023, every Nigeria should be “Obi-Datti compliant“. Obi is running for Aso Rock’s top job alongside Datti Baba-Ahmed on the platform of LP.
“We will not compromise this principle of justice, equity, and inclusiveness because one of our own Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is a frontline candidate,” Adebanjo said.

However, Hassan if the Yoruba Council Worldwide accused the Afenifere leadership of nursing a personal hate against the former Lagos State governor.
“Asiwaju is their albatross; that has been the campaign they are after. Their support for Peter Obi is at the instance of their hatred against Asiwaju.
“In the last election, Afenifere supported Atiku (Abubakar of the PDP). What is the driving force of Afenifere?” Hassan queried, adding that there is no consistency in Afenifere’s belief system and that the group’s statements could ignite ethnic violence between Yoruba and Igbo people. “As President of Yoruba Council Worldwide, we believe in Asiwaju, we endorse Asiwaju, we are giving Asiwaju continuous support,” he submitted.

However, an Afenifere chieftain, Gboyega Adejumo, countered Hassan, saying the stance of Adebanjo-led Afenifere is guided by equity, fairness, and justice.
“Afenifere has been the only socio-political organization with a high rate of success in uniting Nigerians. It was Pa Adebanjo who made Asiwaju governor. But this is not about a Yoruba man; it is about equity and what is right for Nigerians,” Adejumo said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.

Pa Falae although admitted that he once said that it was the turn of the South East to produce the President, since they had not had the opportunity of being Nigeria’s President, it’s for them to persuade other Nigerians that they can offer something better than candidates from other geopolitical zones. It’s not an automatic slot that can be filled without other important considerations.

He denied he had ever canvassed or claimed to be supporting Mr Peter Obi of the Labour Party for the 2023 race.
Pa Reuben Fasoranti is the leader of the Pan Yoruba socio-cultural and political organisation, The Committee of Afenifere. But since old age related informaties have grossly limited active participation in public affairs, the mantle fell, most naturally on another Pa Ayo Adebanjo. The Yoruba socio-cultural organisation is one founded on gerontocratic ideal.

And Pa Adebanjo is next in line in age to the leader. But his politics, his style of running the organization are drawing the ire of the Yoruba elders in various forums, not only in the Committee of Afenifere alone.
An elder of the Yoruba Unity Forum told www.focusmagazinesoline.com that nongenerian, Ayo Adebanjo is a well-schooled product of late Pa Obafemi Awolowo’s school of politic. He joined the group late 50s when the preparations for the Federal elections of 1959 were in top gear. Late Pa Awolowo’s type of political mobilization and organisation required mobile and active young men. He called them “Organisation Secretary”. Pa Adebanjo was one of them.

Pa Adebanjo put up a strong defense of his actions thus: “Before the political parties conducted their primaries, a journalist asked what is my view about the 2023 general election? I answered and said the country should be restructured before the general election, and he followed up by asking if there should be an election, which zone should the Presidency come from? And I unhesitatingly said, of course, the South East. He continued his defense: “when the primaries and the candidates emerge with Asiwaju Bola Tinubu from the South West, APC, Atiku Abubakar on the platform of PDP and Peter Obi on the platform of Labour Party and I announced Afenifere’s support for Peter Obi, not a few Yoruba leaders question why I should be supporting Peter Obi a candidate of Igbo extraction against Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a Yoruba”. According to him “I took my time to explain that the presidency is not a contest between the Yorubas and the Igbos and to a large extent I was able to convince many.
“But ever since social media has been filled with comments tending to ethnicize the campaign instead of making it issue-based.

Afenifere has therefore decided to address you today and through you educate the public on the ideological and equitable principles which have influenced our decision.
He alluded to the core idea of the group, arguing “let me state here for the benefit of those who may not know that Afenifere is the Yoruba interpretation of the social welfarist ideology of Action Group, a political party founded by Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his colleagues in 1951 with strong advocacy for federalism as the best form of government to give the federating units the requisite autonomy to thrive and peacefully compete among themselves for the ultimate development of Nigeria.
“The system was eventually agreed to by our founding fathers, Sir Ahmad Bello, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and endorsed by the Colonial Secretary, Sir Oliver Littleton in 1954 and embodied in the 1960 independence constitution.

This is the modest contribution of Afenifere in shaping Nigeria into a federation where no person or ethnic nationality is oppressed.
Pa Adebanjo veered into the background of his decision to jump ship his progressive camp. “In the countdown to the 2023 General elections, long before the parties conducted their Conventions to elect their National Executives and candidates, we had insisted and still advocate restructuring before the elections proposing a synthesis of the identical Resolutions of the 2014 National Conference and the APC El Rufai 2018 True Federalism Committee. We did this as Afenifere and on the wider spectrum of the Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum (SMBLF). We did this, when politicians, in spite of the monumental crises confronting the nation, carried on as if the attainment of power was all that mattered, the SMBLF unanimously proposed that the minimum condition for a peaceful transition from the disastrous 8years of Buhari’s government headed by a President of northern extraction was to have the next President from the South.

Be further stated that this position was supported by all the southern governors, irrespective of their political parties at a meeting held in Asaba, Delta State.
He added that “incidentally, this North/South consideration which is at the very root of our amalgamated federation is also the most important testament of all political parties in Nigeria. The principle of federal character enshrined in the constitution dictates that the government of the federation or any part thereof shall not be concentrated in any ethnic group or a combination of such groups.

The Afenifere leader argued that “It is therefore preposterous to adopt this principle for employment in public service admissions in educational institutions, political appointment, the composition of the executive committee of a political party only to jettison it in the most important question of rulership of the federation.

He believed that if the country is to hold firm to her “quest for peace, based on equity and inclusiveness, the Yoruba took the first turn at the zoning arrangement in 1999, and that led to the emergence of Chief Obasanjo, the current Vice President is a Yoruba man and equity forbids us for presuming to support another Yoruba person for the presidency in 2023. The current President is a Fulani from the Northwest and by virtue of the zoning arrangement that has governed Nigeria since 1999, power is supposed to return to the south imminently. The southwest as I have pointed out has produced a president and currently sits as VP, the South-South has spent a total of 6years in the Presidency, but the Igbo people of the South-East have never tasted presidency in Nigeria, and now that the power is due back in the South equity demands that it be ceded to the Igbo.

Continuing, he added “we cannot continue to demand that the Igbo people remain in Nigeria, while we at the same time continue to brutally marginalize and exclude them from the power dynamic”.
“Peter Obi is the person of Igbo extraction that Afenifere has decided to support and to back, he is the man we trust to restructure the country back to federalism on the assumption of office.
“We will not compromise this principle of justice, equity and inclusiveness because one of our own Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is a frontline candidate. “It is on this same principle, we condemn the PDP for sponsoring Atiku Abubakar, a Northern Fulani Muslim to succeed General Muhammadu Buhari another Fulani Muslim who will soon complete 8 years of uneventful and disastrous rule. One can imagine such a high degree of political insensitivity. “On our part, we are certainly not alien to sacrificing personal interests in the quest for a National coalition to put Nigeria on the proper pedestal.

In this regard, the starting point is Southern solidarity for which we first enacted a handshake across the Niger, which had dovetailed to the Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum. We enjoin the labour movement, students, youth organisations, women associations, and every institution whose foundation is built on fairness and justice to join hands in this task of enthroning a democratic government by supporting Peter Obi. If we are sincere and honest about keeping Nigeria together in peace, the slogan henceforth should be
‘To keep Nigeria one, everyone should be Obi/Datti compliant.’

In the final analysis, let it be said that we have no apologies but due courage of our conviction that Nigeria can only prosper in righteousness.
“For me, in the twilight of my sojourn on earth at 94, it is too late to derail me on the track of true federalism and National inclusiveness on which I have travelled for over 70 years of my life as one of the few surviving initial prophets, I prefer to ascend on a chariot of fire, fueled by justice and equity”, concluded his defense
But to Comrade Ademola Olaoye, “this is pure semantics, it’s signified nothing”.
Comrade Olaoye dismissed Pa Adebanjo’s claims, saying since Pa Awo’s demise, the old man has not deemed it fit to support a Yoruba man for the Presidency, save Olu Falae.

He went further that “even at that, be used his support for Olu Falae to disrupt late Bola Ige’s aspiration”.
To Comrade Olaoye and several others, Pa Ayo Adebanjo’s derailing from the Pa Obafemi Awolowo’s school of thought has long been coming.
A young progressive Kunle Olawale in Oshogbo,.Osun State asked www.focusmagazinesoline.com rhetorically if it was true Pa Ayo Adebanjo abandoned his leader and mentor and his other colleagues during the treasonable felony trial of 1962-66.

The truth of the matter was that the young Ayo Adebanjo eloped to Ghana to escaped the big hammer which the then vicious Federal Government targeted at late Pa Obafemi Awolowo and his lieutenants. Awo and the remaining twenty-six others braved the odds, faced the music and came out victoriously.
Pa Ayo Adebanjo is on another journey akin to the 1962 elopement and 1998.De’Rovans betrayal of his old fellow soldier.in the progressive fold for a new comer, Pa Olu Falae.
Is History is.on the verge of repeating itself?

www.focusmagazinesoline.com (C2022)