I just watched on YouTube a very educative and stimulating interview by one the best political minds of Nigeria. I am talking of a gentleman named Odia Ofeimun, a close associate and personal secretary of Obafemi Awolowo for more than 20 years. It was an interview that that covered a lot of grounds including the man’s view on how Obafemi Awolowo compares with other African leaders like the great Nelson Mandela, the great Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah and the great Ogbuefi Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Owelle of Onitsha to mention a few. My antennas went up as a historian and as I listened to that man do justice to African political history as an authority. I couldn’t help but shout “Egun Mogaji” and “Ranka Dede” because that man went beyond the call of duty to do what he has to do as an Awoist and an intellectual giant of consequence.
I just watched on YouTube a very educative and stimulating interview by one the best political minds of Nigeria. I am talking of a gentleman named Odia Ofeimun, a close associate and personal secretary of Obafemi Awolowo for more than 20 years. It was an interview that that covered a lot of grounds including the man’s view on how Obafemi Awolowo compares with other African leaders like the great Nelson Mandela, the great Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah and the great Ogbuefi Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Owelle of Onitsha to mention a few. My antennas went up as a historian and as I listened to that man do justice to African political history as an authority. I couldn’t help but shout “Egun Mogaji” and “Ranka Dede” because that man went beyond the call of duty to do what he has to do as an Awoist and an intellectual giant of consequence.
The interview covered Odia Afeimun’s views on what he called “the triumphalism” of South Africa and where the country is headed, if she continues along the path she is currently going. It was a virtuoso performance in my judgment. The interview covered Ofeimun’s views on Chinua Achebe’s last book titled “There was a country” which I have the honor and privilege to once comment upon in one of my articles titled “In Defense of Awolowo.” I saw a compelling reason to defend Awolowo against Achebe’s sweeping indictment that the genocide against the Igbos in the Biafran War should be placed squarely at the door step of Awolowo, and his Yoruba kith and kin and not the Hausa Fulani who committed a pogrom that led to the Igbos fleeing from all parts of the North to return to their own safe Haven and backyard in the defunct Eastern Region of Nigeria.
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I remained glue to my seat for the one hour interview. I was taking my breakfast when I decided to surf the Internet. In a matter of minutes, I got so carried away by that interview that I completely forgot my meal. The interview was so captivating and the answers coming out of the mouth of Mr. Ofeimun were so compelling that I couldn’t delay writing this rejoinder right away.
I cannot think of any university better equipped to teach and educate people around the world than a computer. America has captured the world with this amazing technology. You hit the button and before you say Jackie Robinson, you are on to a great reservoir of knowledge like the one I have just watched on YouTube this morning. Ofeimun has become to me one of the intellectual power houses in Economics and Political analysis. The guy I saw today in that exchange was as great if not greater than any Professor Emeritus I have ever met in my career. I am not at all surprised the man has become the alter ego or the carbon copy of Obafemi Awolowo in the way he marshaled his points and the way he reasoned.
He could not work that close to Obafemi Awolowo and not pick up some of fine attributes of Awolowo as a great mind in Nigeria. I served under Awolowo for less than a year when Awolowo was Deputy Chairman to General Yakubu Gowon at the Federal Executive Council and Federal Commissioner for Finance. Awolowo was named as Chairman to the Special Task Force on Student Financing in Nigeria and I was,by the special grace of God , appointed the Secretary to the Task Force as I have mentioned so many times in many of my articles. I will for the rest of my life continue to thank God for that opportunity because to know Awolowo was to love him. There would never be another leader like him for a long time. The Ikemba, the Oxford-trained Historian, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu told the truth about Awo when he described him as “the best President Nigeria never had” I couldn’t improve on that no matter how much I tried.
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Spending a life time with Obafemi Awolowo has made Odia Ofeimun a priceless jewel of inestimable value in my book. The gentleman has lived up to that reputation in the very persuasive ways he answered all the questions put to him in a very lucid language and with facts and figures. There were a few things the man had said that I would love to elaborate upon because they are the truth and nothing but the truth.
It is above my pay grade to second-guess anything the learned man has said but my comments could only help to reinforce some of his answers as someone who has had a close encounter with Awolowo in my career as an administrator in the Federal Public Service of Nigeria all be it for a short time. I am in fact intrigued by some of those answers and I would like to share some of my views with any of you reading this including millions of Sahara fans who think the whole world of the Sahara MD and CEO, the one and only Omoyele Sowore of Nigeria and his crew of first class journalists working with him to make Nigeria a better country for all of us. I take off my hat for that young man for doing what the mainstream media in Nigeria could not do because they have been badly compromised. I never knew a fire brand like Reuben Abati could have turned 360 degrees to start doing what many of us could not have believed possible before he was invited to join the Jonathan kitchen cabinet. Omoyele Sowore belongs to a different kettle of fish from Reuben Abati by airing such an interview on his famous website. Martin Akindana of Chat Afrik fame is pretty much doing the same thing in Washington, DC and Maryland area. God bless them all.
At one of the events marking the birthday of Martin Luther King, I was invited to a ceremony at the New York State Office of People With Developmental Disability (OPWDD) in Brooklyn, New York where I have just retired from 6 months ago. One of the events was a movie on Nelson Mandela, his youthful meeting and escapade with the great Winnie “Madikizela “Mandela and their long struggle to liberate South Africa.
I couldn’t help but shed tears as I saw how the couple met, and their marriage in Soweto, South Africa. I have read many books on Nelson Mandela including “a profile of him from A to Z by one of his comrades in arms. I never felt the way I felt yesterday after watching that movie. It was a life-changing experience for me. To now see Odia Ofeimun talk of that couple in his interview was very emotional and timely for me.
Up till yesterday I used to wonder what went so awfully wrong that Mandela had to divorce his wife of close to 30 years. I am talking of the majestic- looking, beautiful and personable Winnie Mandela. My chance meeting with another “Winnie” in my life in New York has driven me to the conclusion that there is always something special and unique about the “Winnies" of this world. They are always beautiful, very talented, self-conscious, but a little bit crazy, though too not in the negative sense I might add. Madikizela Mandela was definitely a breed apart if you are able to see what I see. I confess that Nelson Mandela and I have a few things in common. I can tell from that movie, that we are both unrepentant womanizers in our youth. We are both princes born with the silver spoon in our mouth so to speak, with a deep interest in African traditional values. We, sure, both have eyes for beautiful women because I have dated many a women who look like and have strong features and personalities like Madikizela. I love them to death like Mandela who was married three times and had close to the same number of children I have had as an Akure prince.
What I could not understand about Mandela, however, is why and how in the world he could afford to let go on Winnie just like that. That woman was just too beautiful. If I were Mandala, I could easily have overlooked whatever atrocities or sexual indiscretions Winnie might have committed while I was in jail for 27 years. I think that Mandela made a huge mistake to divorce Winnie. I would never have done that. Never! The divorce to me would have been a desecration of the kind of Mandela myth and legacy, because the closest Mandela could ever get to perfection as a world leader or what the Yorubas call “Igbakeji Orisa” or second-in-command to a supreme deity in Yoruba mythology would have been his decision to forgive Winnie. He should never have divorced Winnie is my point. My next observation is precisely the point that Odia Ofeimun has made that if he had to choose between Mandela and Awolowo, his obvious choice would be Awolowo. I cannot agree more.
We all agree that Awolowo like Mandela was jailed on trumped-up charges for treason and was lucky to be released after a few years in prison, but the Awolowo I knew was someone as determined, patriotic, principled and ideologically-driven as a Nelson Mandela. They were both lawyers and fearless like a lion. As a matter of fact, Awolowo was fondly called the “Lion of Ikenne.” He was ready and willing to die for his conviction. My point is that Awolowo would never have minded spending 27 years in jail or even dying for what he believed in. Where he was different from Mandela as narrated by Odia is because Awolowo would never have accepted the same negotiated settlement that Mandela eventually settled for.
Some would have seen that as foolhardiness on the part of Awolowo because as Nnamdi Azikiwe once said “only a fool would see a need to change his mind and not do it”. Sometimes Awolowo was always too rigid and undiplomatic. He told the military in 1979 he was going to probe them if he got elected. Mandela or Azikiwe would not have said that. I would accept that Awolowo was rigid and arguably more rigid than Mandela or Azikiwe. But everything that Odia said about Mandela and Awo was very correct. Many used to think that Awolowo and Kwame Nkrumah were birds of the same feather. They agreed on most things but not on everything like Odia correctly observed. I would be the first to admit that.
Why I would choose Awolowo before Mandela was based on Mandela’s decision to divorce Winnie and to go marry the wife of Samora Machel. I can tell you that Awolowo would never, I repeat Awolowo would never ever have done that because he was more realistic and down to earth than Mandela as a leader. Why do I say that? Here is why.
Once upon a time while Obafemi Awolowo was in prison in Calabar, one of his inner circle of friends, I would not mention his name came to tell Awo that something intimate was going on between her priceless jewel of inestimable value, the impeccably beautiful Hannah Dideolu Idowu and his trusted deputy the late Alhaji Adegbenro of blessed memory. The way Awolowo handled the gossip was quite different from the way Mandela handled a similar gossip about Winnie.
Awolowo dismissed the rumor with the wave of the hand telling the gossiper he had better things to do with his time. He told the gossiper he trusted his wife. He did not stop there. Awolowo argued if Hannah had done that, he would be the last person to hold the mistake against her because Hannah was a human being and not god. He told the man he has put himself in the shoes of his wife and he was sure his wife would understand if he Awolowo was rumored to have done something like that. That was how Awolowo summarily closed the conversation and the gossiper left Awo’s presence feeling diminished and embarrassed.
I would never know for sure why Mandela chose to part ways with Winnie because I am not a mind reader. But I just know it was a blunder Mandela would be regretting in his grave till tomorrow. What a man is saying or what a man is seeing is a factor of where that man is standing or sitting at any given point. I give that to Mandela but I think Awolowo would have not have divorced Winnie, come rain or shine as opined by Mr. Ofeimun.
Winnie Mandela was the greatest pillar behind Mandela during his 27 years in jail and for all of the years of their joint liberation movement. Winnie suffered as much as Mandela both physical, emotional and sexual deprivation as clearly shown or dramatized in the movie. Winnie should have defended herself when her husband asked if it was true she was sleeping with the young commandant of the Youth Movement which was the armed unit the poor woman had to set up and improvised to defend and protect her against the torture and constant harassment by the Apartheid regime. The poor woman who became the symbol of the Liberation after her husband had every reason to become radicalized and dictatorial at that point in the struggle. Mandela ought to have factored that into his decision to divorce Winnie. He evidently did not do that and that was a great pity. Awolowo would have done that knowing all I knew about him. I swallowed hook, line and sinker everything thing Mr. Ofeimun had said in that interview about Awolowo and Mandela and the remaining segments of the wonderful interview.
The other area I agree with Mr. Ofeimun was his hypothesis on Chinua Achebe’s Book. I fully endorse his exoneration of Awolowo and for all the reasons he has so eloquently stated. Awolowo did the right thing by not rushing or leading the Yorubas into jumping into the band wagon of the Igbos decision to break away from Nigeria at a time the Yorubas were not mentally or militarily prepared and ready to do so. I said so in my defense of Awolowo that the Igbos were naive to ever believe that Awolowo would jump ship to side with Biafra just like Azikiwe had jumped ship at the last minute and when it mattered the most to abandon Biafra even though he had single-handedly written the Biafran national anthem.
Odia Ofeimun was right again on defending the Awolowo stand that it made no sense to continue to prolong the war by making sure that food supplies reached the rebels. War is war and not a child’s play. Awolowo understood that and he was not going to allow an open-ended war that could have caused more collateral damages and multiples of the 2 million lives that were lost in the War as painstakingly documented in my article defending Awolowo. You can get copies of that article from the archives of Sahara web site, the Nigeriaworld and Google.
I want to end this article the way I started it by showering encomiums on Sahara News Media Company of New York led by Omoyele Sowore and his able deputy, the one and only Rudolf Okonkwo, The News outlet is doing a lot of good for Nigeria by airing that kind of video and making it available to many readers around the world.
I rest my case.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters
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