The journey to 2023 seems to have started earnest. The players are on the field comparing notes, making amends and outsmarting one another to remain floating.
Within major political parties, the game is more pronounced while the smaller parties are reaching out to the major ones to offer unsolicited support in expectation for what can be offered at the end.
I was recently informed by a credible source that one of such small parties reaching out to prospective presidential aspirants is the Social Democratic Party which may ‘offer’ support to the campaign train of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress in the absence of any credible contestant from its stuff. If that happens to be true, then SDP is heading to extinction due to absence of strong structure and technical knowledge of running a political party with national outlook. From its take-off, it collapsed and remains under threat of extinction for lack of any political relevance and presence in the political space. What remains of the party is the name and logo while its managers manage its platform for ‘stomach infrastructure’ to survive.
From the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, no determined politician has yet emerged to warm the polity. It is rumored that Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, Nyeson Wike and Sen. Bala Muhammed may still be interested in battling it out with any other interested aspirant for the presidency come 2023. Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso and Atiku Abubakar are syet to indicate interest publicly. But trust Nigerian politicians, there may be some sycophants that are combing nooks and corners of the political market to beat drums of support for the yet to declare intent of contest. From Bauchi state, we are told that Ahmadu Adamu Mu’azu, one of those rated as highly intelligent, connected and vibrant politicians of this dispensation may join the league of presidential aspirants. But no platform yet as his pasted posters show. I guess, he is yet to make up his mind on that depending on the result of his arithmetic. We wait to see!
Since 1960s, Yoruba politics have been dominated by a political orientation known as ‘Awoism’. The phrase refers to the political philosophy of the late Yoruba leader Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo, who espoused policies he referred to as ‘democrat socialism’. Its primary tenets were welfarism, free social services, and job creation. Awolowo loomed large over Yoruba politics for decades. He was an intensely intellectual man with great energy. In 1945 he co-founded and became the secretary of Egbe Omo Oduduwa (Society for the Descendents of Oduduwa). In Yoruba allegory, Oduduwa is the progenitor of Yoruba royal dynasties, and is revered as the father of the Yoruba race.
In 1951, history has it that Egbe Omo Oduduwa evolved into a political party called the Action Group, which was led by Awolowo. The Action Group developed the most clearly articulated and differentiated political ideology of any post independence party in southern Nigeria. Awolowo had a ground-breaking term of office as the first premier of Yoruba dominated Western Region of Nigeria between 1955 and 1959. During that time, he introduced free, compulsory education and free healthcare in the region, and established the first television station in Africa and also established the most beautiful university in Nigeria at Ile-Ife.
Awolowo exercised a hypnotic political hold on the Yoruba race. Corruption allegations and a treason conviction for trying to overthrow the federal government of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa in 1963 failed to taint his reputation among his people. Such tribulations instead enhanced his aura by giving him the appearance of a persecuted martyr. It was not only Yorubas that admired him even in the conservative north he had admirers. For the purpose of this discourse, the late Sen. Ibrahim Dimis from Duguri in the old Bauchi province was one of his great admirers and associates. Some were sufficiently enamoured of him to commit murder for his sake. In January 1966, a group of Igbo army majors staged a violent coup, assassinated adorned political leaders and military officers mostly of northern extraction, and planned to bring Awolowo out of prison to install him as the prime minister.
Leaders from other ethnic groups had the good sense to recognize the love and respect Awolowo enjoyed from his people, among such people was the first and perhaps the last military president ever in Nigeria, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida who described the legend as ‘the main issue in Nigerian politics in the last 50 years: The main political question has been whether you are with Chief Awolowo or against him”.
However, one large prize eluded Awolowo throughout his illustrious life, tried as he might he never made it to Nigeria’s president. That failure to capture a position he left, he merited and was qualified devastated him and his followers. When Awolowo died in 1987, prominent Nigerians trooped to eulogise him. The late Biafran warlord, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, described him in death as ‘the best president Nigeria never had’.
The crux of the matter is that Awolowo’s political ideology did not die with him. Many of those who benefited from his pioneering social welfare programmes continued to revere him. They refer to themselves either as Omo Awolowo or Awoists.
Awolowo’s ideas remain so deeply ingrained in the political consciousness of the Yoruba that being an Awoist is regarded by many as the only legitimate apprenticeship prior to becoming a true and respected Yoruba politician at the national stage. Many Yoruba politicians mimicked Awolowo by wearing his famous red fez cap, round rimmed eye glasses, and even most of the time flashing the ‘V’ sign of victory – all Awolowo’s trademarks. Those who opposed Awolowo in Yoruba land or are not Awoists are often regarded as traitors to the Yoruba race. After the historic annulment of June 12 of the 1993 presidential election and the political crisis associated, Awoists resuscitated the Yoruba cultural organization Afenifere (literally, “Society of those who love good for all’) as a platform for Yoruba political solidarity. Afenifere was part political movement, part cultural organization and part personality cult. It started its meeting with incantations evoking Awolowo and his ideals. Its leadership and succession are gerontocratic. It was led by the late veteran Awoist, Micheal Adekunle Ajasin, onetime governor of old Ondo state, 1979 – 1983, who was a staunch member of Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) of the second republic.
Throughout Nigeria’s post-independence history the Yoruba had traditionally played second fiddle to whoever led Nigeria as a president except in the second republic. After the military takeover in 1966, Yoruba military officers acted as deputies to the Igbo and northern military heads of state for the next decade (Brig. Babafemi Ogundipe, Vice-Admiral Joseph Wey, Lt.Col. Olusegun Obasanjo). From 1979 until 1993, they were frozen out of leadership altogether. The Yoruba developed a tradition of being political ‘silver medalists’.
The death of Awolowo, politically orphaned the Yoruba race. He had served a dual role as the Yoruba leader and also as their political representative at the national stage. After his death, Yoruba was dominated by two trends.
Firstly, there was the search for an iconic as his replacement. A Moses-like leader to, inherit Awolowo’s dual role as ethnic leader and Yoruba representative on the federal stage.
Secondly, a burning sense of injustice arose. The Yoruba developed a long persecution narrative that included events such as Awolowo’s treason conviction, his failure to become president, and the military coup of 1983 which precluded the then ruling party, National Party of Nigeria, NPN from fielding a southern presidential candidate in the 1987 scheduled elections.
Yoruba interpreted all these events as acts deliberately introduced to punish them, or block their presidential aspiration which they deserved.
After the 1985 military coup that brought Ibrahim Babangida to power, he promised to return the country to true democracy which gave the Awoists a relief and chance to once again challenge for political leadership and posthumously fulfill the unfinished legacy of Obafemi Awolowo. Three diehard Awoists, Olu Falae, Lateef Jakande and Bola Ige, rated themselves as credible successors to Awolowo and potential presidential candidates. However, the Awoists ambitions were dashed by the unpredictable machinations of Babangida’s transition without end to democratic rule.
Perhaps Babangida had erroneously nursed the tall ambition of staying in power for the rest of his life which birthed our pressure group to chase him out of power or Nigeria disintegrates, National Democratic Coalition, NADECO.
In December 1992, Babangida and his Armed Forces Ruling Council, AFRC banned 23 presidential aspirants (including those Awoists) from further participation in the transition programme. His decision virtually eliminated all Yoruba presidential aspirants that met the Awoists criteria and allowed new contenders to emerge. One of them was his close friend, Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola a,k.a MKO.
MKO was not an Awoist. Having kept out of politics since the late 1980s after the military coup that terminated the second republic, he paid more attention to consolidating his chains of business.
As fate would have it, along the line, he was ‘dragged’ into politics again and enabled by the banning of so many credible presidential aspirants to emerge from the fringes to become a presidential candidate on the platform of one of the only two registered parties, Social Democratic Party, SDP in 1993. Abiola was then the best and only hope for the Yoruba.
However, the Awoists distrusted and hated him. They regarded him as a traitor and stooge of the north. He had refused to join Awolowo’s political party, UPN even though he was an Egba Yoruba from Abeokuta. Not only did he shun Awolowo’s UPN, but as a teenager in the 60s, he had joined firstly the rival National Council of Nigeria and the Camerouns which was led by an Igbo, then in the second republic, he joined NPN which governed Nigeria between 1979 and 1983, and which many Yorubas viewed as the party of northern establishment. The Abiola- owned Concord Press newspapers severally criticized Awolowo and the UPN. To many Yorubas, criticism of Awolowo by a fellow Yoruba was the highest form of sacrilege. One Yoruba leader once told me during one of NADECO’s nocturnal meetings at Club 2000AD, Shonibare Estate, Ikeja, Lagos at the heat of the political crisis after the annulment of June 12, that ‘Abiola was one of the most hated individuals of the pro-democracy movement. He was seen as an imperialist who had been involved in plotting coups’. Many Awoists never forgave Abiola for colluding with northerners to deny Awolowo the presidency. How could the Awoists support a man who had devoted much of his career to blocking the aspirations of their revered leader? That was his opinion but I quickly reminded him that we were in NADECO to actualize the presidency of Abiola through pressure.
And it is the same Abiola that you Yorubas hate? Why then the foolery to we, northerners in your midst who brought ourselves through invitation for the sake of the democracy against the interest of the majority of our people? Despite that, we still remained in the struggle while operating Radio Kudirat International to the end with the support of several diplomats particularly, the late former American Ambassador to Nigeria, Walter Carrington.
Abiola and Awolowo were not alike. Awolowo was trim, dapper and austere. In contrast, Abiola was a big bear of a man who towered over everyone, being well over six feet tall, with huge hands, a deep guttural voice and a flamboyance that made him appear larger than life. Awolowo was a socialist: Abiola was an ultra-capitalist billionaire who sat atop a vast corporate empire. Awolowo resigned from a military government lest he made himself a hypocrite by giving legitimacy to a dictatorship. Abiola, on the other hand, actively supported military rulers and made his cool fortune through his connections and deals with them.
As 2023 approaches, who will carry the support of the Yorubas to the centre stage? Is Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu an Awoist for the trust of the descendents of Oduduwa or is just a Bourdillon residing expert in Yoruba politics who channels his wealth to establishing a political empire in the land of Oduduwa? Does Tinubu have the expertise and shock absorbers to stand the challenges he may face in the conservative north and resist pressure from the south-east and still penetrate the stone gate mounted in the south-south by the Wikes of this world? Time shall tell!
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues.