''SAMUEL LADOKE AKINTOLA''
HIS VISION & HIS AMAZING SENSE OF HUMOR AND HIS ROLE IN THE PDP'S ROLLOVER VICTORY IN THE SOUTH WEST
hat a diehard Awoist like me would be giving testimonies on our late Premier, who was viewed as the Judas of the Yoruba cause, at one period in our history, is in of itself, a miracle. Those who say the only thing constant in life is change are damn right - your enemy of today could turn out to be your greatest friend tomorrow, because nature and time the great healer, have a way of turning things around, and changing our perception. Life itself is all about the choices we make at every given point, based on information available to us. So the statement "Never again" is one that every human being should think twice before making.

I just think it is about time to begin to refurbish the image of the second Premier of the old Western Region. As far as I am concerned, and you don't have to agree with me, the only sin Ladoke Akintola had committed in his political life is having to openly disagree with his Party leader, Obafemi Awolowo on whether or not it was time for the Yorubas to make peace and to join forces with the North. there could be some other explanations or rationalizations, the central issue is the point I have just mentioned. Akintola had had cause to disagree with Awo on how soon and on what terms such a constructive engagement with the North must take. If you know of any more cogent reason why the two leaders had to fall apart, please educate me, as I am very eager to know, and to learn from anyone who is better informed on this subject.

Ladoke Akintola had become a Deputy to Awo following the death of Bode Thomas, the young ideologue lawyer from Oyo who had to be put to sleep, in very mysterious circumstance, following a feud with the late Alafin Adeyemi, the father of the present Alafin of Oyo, Iku Baba Yeye Lamidi Adeyemi the 3rd.

Left to Obafemi Awolowo alone, he most probably, would have preferred Chief Akin Deko of Idanre or Alhaji Soroye Adegbenro to succeed him instead of Akintola. That scenario had only added more fuel to the growing subterfuge between Awolowo and Akintola in their life time. The other point that was frequently mentioned in the rumor mill at the time, was the allegation that the late Faderera, Akintola's wife had resented the fact that Awolowo the Action Group Leader, as Leader of Opposition at the Federal level, was not giving her husband enough latitude and freedom to perform his duties as Premier, without micromanaging him every step of the way. The two "mata griki-" Dideolu and Faderera had gotten so terribly involved in the feud and rivalry between their two husbands that they hated each other's guts like poison. It was rumored that all attempts made by well meaning front-line Yoruba leaders, at the time, to quickly reconcile the two leaders before their disagreement had gotten out of control, were thwarted by their wives.

The mistake that the two leaders had made was not to realize that any information processed through the rumor mill, and passed along through the grapevine, is not always reliable. It is often based on fiction and innuendoes, and it is often slanted to serve the interest of a second, third, or fourth party. It could even be malicious. For those reasons the rumor mill which should have been viewed by the two leaders with considerable caution, were allowed to fester, thus increasing the level of distrust between the two leaders, at a time it should have been nipped in the bud. Accepting rumors as the truth had eventually caused the two leaders to drift further and further apart, until it got to a point of no return, irredeemably damaging the two leaders' relationship beyond repair, and forcing the rest of us to side with one or the other as time goes by. "Confidence triangle" soon set in making reconciliation totally unattainable. Confidence triangle is the way a confidential comment can be transmitted to a third party in a way that makes

I'd rather not get into the gory details on how Awolowo and Akintola had become so embittered that Awolowo had tried to use the Party machinery to remove Akintola as Premier while putting in Alhaji Adegbenro. There was also the decision of Akintola to fight back by joining forces with the NPC led Federal Government in order to neutralize Awolowo's plan to impeach and have him disgraced out of office. When the whole situation had deteriorated into uncontrollable violence, the then Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa had decided to declare a state of emergency in the West, by nominating his personal physician, Dr Majekodunmi to go administer the West for a little while. One crisis led to another, culminating in the 1964 Elections which were so badly rigged, not to talk of the mayhem that had followed it. There was also the treasonable felony charge against Obafemi Awolowo and "Operation Wet e" in the old Western Region. The totality of the events had finally culminated in the January 15th, 1966 coup of the Majors led by Chukwuma Nzeogwu, but snatched from the Majors by General Ironsi and his group who, for some time, did not know what to do with the power they had just commandeered.

Samuel Ladoke Akintola and his newly found allies from the North including Tafawa Balewa and Sardauna Bello all had to lose their life in the very first coup in Nigeria. Seen from that perspective, it could be said that Ladoke Akintola and all those in his camp had temporarily lost out to the Awolowo Camp leaving so much bitterness in its wake up for over forty years now. In the process Akintola's name has become a synonym for treachery and betrayal in the nook and corners of Yoruba Land except in Oyo and Ogbomosho his ancestral home. Not even the title of a War hero in Are Onakankanfo that Akintola had taken from the then Alafin in the peak of the crisis with Awolowo was able to save Akintola. There was celebration and rejoicing in most parts of the Western Region on January 15th 1966 when the coup plotters had bombarded the Iyaganku Residence of the late Premier, killing him in cold blood in a blizzard of bullets. As the news went, we were told Akintola the great Are Onakankanfo of Yoruba Land, did not go quietly. He had given the coup plotters a fight of their life, killing as many of his assailants as he could lay his hands upon, before he was overpowered, and mercilessly executed.

Those who had visited the Premier's lodge immediately after the coup would never forget what they saw. Akintola fought them till the last drop of his blood, proving to them the Are Onakankanfo of Yoruba land was not just an empty title. His battered corpse brought to the University college Hospital, Ibadan, for sight seeing by detractors who hated him so much, never gave up the ghost until certain amulets had to be removed from his mutilated body. Before then Akintola was only famous for his oratorical wizardry and uncanny ability to play upon words in Yoruba Language in much the same way, if not better than Winston Churchill used to do with the English Language. Samuel Ladoke Akintola was one of a kind, a leader among leaders, and one of the best politicians our country would ever know. But compared to Awo, he was a terribly misunderstood leader probably because his personality was drastically different from that of Awo, even though his commitment to the Yoruba cause was clearly not in doubt, all things considered.

I honestly believe the time has come for somebody to revisit the life of this great Yoruba Leader for whatever it may be worth, and for the benefit of young Nigerians who may have heard of him and his political struggle in the old Western Region of Nigeria. I have to believe hat History will be kinder to Akintola when all is said and done. My point here is that Akintola is not such a terrible man as we have all been made to believe. He too was a man of principle who also believed like Awolowo that if you would not stand for something, you could stand for anythi

Here comes another play upon words by the same Akintola. Somebody had asked him at another political rally why the stalwarts in the Action Group fighting his Government are not having any traction in their struggle against him. Akintola had burst out laughing again and telling his questioner his enemies would never have traction because they are fighting against God. He reminded the questioner to just reflect, for a moment, on the names of all his detractors to get a clue as to why they were not getting any traction. One of them is "Oredein," another is "Lanlehin" another one is "Sogbehin" They are all backward looking people as their names have confirmed. Another burst of prolonged laughter followed his explanation because the man was simply the best in using humor to neutralize or disarm an opponent.

Hear yet another humor improvised by Akintola to pull a fast one on the Igbos of Nigeria. Akintola had never failed to see something uniquely funny in Ndigbo names. Once upon a time Akintola had blasted the Igbos as being too greedy because the Igbos never like to share the largesse of Government with any of the other predominant tribes of Nigeria. according to Akintola, the Igbos only think of themselves and no one else. The name he had chosen to drive home his point on that occasion was "Ikejiani" which means in Yoruba the second person must take his share. But then Akintola went ahead to add "Iketaani" and "Ikerinani. If one, two, three and four Igbos must take their share before a Yoruba man could take his own share, what is going to be left for the Yorubas and the Hausas to then take home? Akintola had simply used that allegory to prove his point that the Yorubas by refusing to work with the NPC are the ones giving Ndigbo a chance to totally dominate Nigeria.

Ladoke Akintola of the penkelemes (peculiar mess) years.

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Akintola is the true hero.
Awolowo was a betrayer of the Yorubas.
Tinubu has come to continue to good work of Akintola.

datola:
Ladoke Akintola of the penkelemes (peculiar mess) years.

No, it's Adelabu.