My uncle, Akinjide Osuntokun,
Emeritus Professor of History, has
the rare privilege of living post
independent political history of
Nigeria in a relatively unique
manner. In large measure, the
uniqueness derives from his
membership of the larger
Osuntokun family- in which
resides the potential to serve as a
case study of the dynamics of
recent Yoruba political history. As
indicated above, you can also see
he is a historian by learning and
occupation.
I did not use the term professional
because I’m not sure if historians
can be called professional
historians, in the same manner
that I have never heard of
professional physicists or
biologists. Politically, he is a
committed supporter of the South-
west wing of the All Progressives
Congress (APC), particularly the
Ekiti State chapter, whose
governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, is a
protégé of sorts to him. Both of
them are extremely fond of each
other. They share the
commonality of attending Christ’s
School, Ado Ekiti, for their
secondary education and one was
student of the other at the
University of Lagos. I could not
even get him, I mean my uncle, to
agree with me that the naira
guzzling government house under
construction in Ado Ekiti is a white
elephant project and a misplaced
priority.
I suppose I’m now the most
politically active member of our
family and I tend towards the
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
I’m a card-carrying member. He
urges me, now and again, to
reconsider my PDP partisan hue
and seek family reunion with him
in association with the APC. That
is not likely to happen anytime
soon. I do not believe in one party
state (zone). My uncle is the last
child of my grandmother and my
father was the first and in between
them is a gap of 20 years plus.
And by dint of this peculiarity, he
became the honorary first son of
my dad.
Intellectually, he began to bloom
between 1963 and 1966 when he
studied for his first university
degree at the University of
Ibadan. These years were also the
most politically difficult years for
the Yoruba in the history of
Nigeria-until 1993. They were
doubly difficult for our family. My
dad, Oduola Osuntokun, was
western regional minister from
1955 to 1966 straddling the
Premiership of Chiefs Obafemi
Awolowo and Ladoke Akintola. The
highly consequential and
extremely bitter fractionalisation
crisis of the Yoruba dominated
party, Action Group (AG), played
out within these three years. My
dad took sides with Akintola and
stoically grappled with the
negative fallouts attendant on this
choice all his life. To give you an
idea of the kind of person my
father was, he was one of the two
ministers in the Akintola
government cleared and
exonerated by the late Justice
Kayode Esho of any financial
impropriety in public office.
Henceforth, it became inevitable
that the political inclination of my
dad marked him out as an ‘enemy’
of Awolowo and his camp
followers. My father’s junior
brother and Akinjide’s senior
brother, the world famous medical
scientist, Olukayode Osuntokun,
was at the precise period of this
political enmity, the personal
doctor to Awolowo. It says a lot
of Chief Awolowo that he could
practically entrust his life to the
brother of an ‘enemy’. The
dialectics progresses further.
At the time his senior brother was
ministering to the health of
Awolowo, and when there was
Yoruba tribal censure of any
positive portrayal of Akintola, the
junior brother defiantly opted to
bring his intellectual prowess to
the unsolicited service of the late
Premier and authored a first class
and sympathetic biography of the
Akintola: ‘the life and times of SL
Akintola’. On account of this
effort, the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba
Lamidi Adeyemi, bestowed on him
the traditional chieftaincy title last
held by Samuel Johnson, the
Arokin of Oyo-the royal historian
of the imperial court of the Oyo-
empire. Chief Awolowo was so
impressed that he invited him to
come and hear his side of the
story and maybe write a sequel on
him.
He was Nigeria’s ambassador to
the Federal Republic of Germany
when the crisis over the
annulment of the 1993
presidential election broke out and
was recalled by General Sani
Abacha in 1995 for his pro
‘NADECO’ views. He returned to
his post as professor of history at
the University of Lagos and
continued from where he left in
Bonn. I joined the Guardian
newspaper as a columnist and
member of the editorial board in
1996 and with the support and
encouragement of the managing
director and editor-in-chief, Mr
Lade Bonuola, I took to a weekly
challenge of the annulment in
particular and the military
dictatorship of Gen. Abacha. For
my notoriety I was awarded
membership of 13 Nigerians who
typified opposition to Abacha by
the newswatch magazine in 1997.
The deliberate or inadvertent
obfuscation of my name-Akintola
and my uncle’s-Akinjide, was the
last straw that broke the camel’s
back and resulted in hauling the
former diplomat into Abacha’s
gulag. My published clarification
to the effect that he was not the
author of the weekly menace to
the military dictatorship went
unacknowledged
The last time I saw him, he gave
me the surprise news that
Akintola’s first son, Yomi Akintola,
was the chief launcher at the
presentation ceremony of the
biography of late Rev. Oyediran-
the legendary principal of Offa
Grammar School and more
significantly, the father of
Professor Kayode Oyediran-
Awolowo’s distinguished son-in-
law. Long before now, Akintola’s
son, Diran, had married the
daughter of Sir Dele Ige-the
younger brother of late Chief Bola
Ige.
During the burial ceremony of my
mother, earlier in the year, Segun
Awolowo, came to support me for
two days at Okemesi. I’m so
comfortable and welcomed at
Ikenne that mama, on occasions,
sends me to either get water for
her or call somebody at another
part of the house. We are so much
confident in our friendship and
brotherliness that I routinely write
critically of Chief Awolowo without
any worries at how it would sit
with Segun or Dr Tokunbo
Awolowo-Dosunmu. When the
inner caucus of the Yoruba unity
forum was being constituted, I
was the only member of my
generation nominated to the nine-
member group-at the instance of
Dr Awolowo Dosunmu. I take no
political position without
consulting Segun and vice versa.
Femi Fani-kayode and Jide Adeniji
complete the quartet.
The late Ooni of ife, Adesoji
Aderemi, was the grand patron of
the AG and went on to become the
first Nigerian Governor of the
Western region. His protégé,
Awolowo, deposed the Alaafin of
Oyo, Oba Adeyemi Adeniran in
1954. Yet it was the same Ooni
Aderemi who recommended the
deposed Alaafin’s son, the present
Alaafin, as fit and proper for the
Oyo throne, to the Western state
commissioner of local government
and chieftaincy affairs in 1970,
Omololu Olunloyo. The struggle
for the revalidation of the election
of Chief Moshood Abiola as the
President of Nigeria gave an
instructive and unique
interpretation to Yoruba political
history. And it is that when
confronted with a common affront,
heroes emerge regardless of prior
partisan affiliation. The martyrdom
of Abiola himself proves the point.
Before 1993, he was at the other
end of the political spectrum from
Awolowo.
A sizable number of personalities
who stood up to be counted in the
real time combat against the
affront of the annulment between
1993 and 1998 had no association
whatsoever with Afenifere and the
Awolowo political camp. Many
people, individually, took this
decision because they felt their
dignity as Yoruba was being
challenged and assaulted not as
membership or partisan obligation
of any Yoruba pressure or interest
group. The leader of the South-
west APC, Senator Ahmed Bola
Tinubu, falls in this category. He
was a member of the late Shehu
Yar’Adua’s political family, the
Peoples Front (PF), in opposition
to the Awoist camp in the Peoples
Solidarity Party (PSP) -both of
which were subsequently coerced
and herded into the Social
Democratic Party (SDP).
The persistent and tendentious
mobilisation strategy recourse to
the division of Yoruba politicians
into heroes and traitors is
ahistorical, ignorant and tragic.
The logic of this recourse may
even cast the Yoruba in APC as
the traitors for collaborating with
the historical ‘enemies’ of the
Yoruba coupled with their sudden
political flexibility on the strategic
issue of national conference and
restructuring. How is Akintola’s
crime different from the new
political formula of the South-
west APC? Was he not the original
philosopher of Yoruba alliance
with the ‘North’? Equating Yoruba
interest with membership of APC
is self-serving and abusive. As far
as Yoruba identity politics goes,
there should be absolutely
nothing that qualifies Tinubu as
championing Yoruba cause and
does not apply equally to
Governor Olusegun Mimiko of
Ondo State. Any definition of pan
Yoruba vanguard that directly or
indirectly precludes luminaries
like Chiefs Reuben Fasoranti,
Olanihun Ajayi, Ayo Adebanjo, Olu
Falae, is to that extent a
terminological misnomer and
stands logic on its head.
I have mostly heard and
sometimes witnessed the
‘spectacular achievements’ of the
APC governors in the South-west
and if they are so spectacular,
there should be no need for
anxiety driven recourse to
McCarthyism and its latter day
Yoruba variant of elevating an
unresolved ancient political
contention to the status of the
holy grail of Yoruba politics.
Those spectacular achievements
should constitute free and
automatic passage to reelection.
Succession to the front row seat
of Awolowo does not reside in
stigmatising fellow Yoruba who
disagree or disassociate with a
particular political party, it is to be
found in a body of solid
intellectual work and personal
discipline. The ultimate implication
of hankering after Yoruba political
monism is that a futuristic Yoruba
nation is going to be a one party
state; and makes the purveyors of
the criminalisation of dissent a
dangerous throwback to the era of
one party dictatorship.

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/awo-akintola-hangover-time-to-move-on/167382/

We already moved on since January 15, 1966.
God bless the DEAD!