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Akintola's Three Part Lectures - Politics - Nairaland

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Akintola's Three Part Lectures by DuduNegro: 11:37pm On Oct 23, 2012
....COMING SOON!
Re: Akintola's Three Part Lectures by dayokanu(m): 2:48am On Oct 24, 2012
ok waiting.
Re: Akintola's Three Part Lectures by ektbear: 6:10am On Oct 24, 2012
when will soon arrive
Re: Akintola's Three Part Lectures by birdman(m): 5:34am On Oct 25, 2012
we are wairing...

** strokes tribal mark(s) in anticipation **
Re: Akintola's Three Part Lectures by ektbear: 6:27am On Oct 25, 2012
where are the lectures na
Re: Akintola's Three Part Lectures by NegroNtns(m): 7:35am On Oct 25, 2012
grin una go kill person o. Ok, i will drop the lectures in its original recording.
Re: Akintola's Three Part Lectures by NegroNtns(m): 7:40am On Oct 25, 2012

1 Like

Re: Akintola's Three Part Lectures by birdman(m): 8:15am On Oct 25, 2012
I had seen those before, but I listened again anyways. Agree or disagree with him, but his oratory is evident. I think the only difference between Akintola and Awo, based on this speech was how much politics they were willing to play.
Re: Akintola's Three Part Lectures by kunlekunle: 5:50pm On Oct 25, 2012
i think some of the issues related to the message



“It became common practice for Yorubas to be denied
appointments, to be denied promotion and to be
superceded by officers from other tribes who were less
qualified or experienced. When Yoruba civil servants
cried out, Chief Awolowo's response was that he would
share in their suffering by refusing to collect his
remuneration as the Leader of the Opposition in the
Federal House.

Before Independence, the federal parliament was Chief
S. L. Akintola's turf where he performed the duties of
Leader of Opposition intelligently and effectively
with a joviality that earned him the love, respect and
admiration of a wide spectrum of Nigerians cutting
across regional, tribal and political boundaries.



. The N.C.N.C. had the wrong
but widely accepted notion that Chief Awolowo was the
only power to be reckoned with in the West and with
his departure, they (the N.C.N.C.) could just march in
and take over.

It therefore, came as a great shock to the N.C.N.C.
when every notable Yoruba leader rallied to the
support of Chief S.L. Akintola. Yoruba political
stalwarts like Chief Richard Akinjide, Chief
R.Fani-Kayode, Prince Made Lamuye and a host of others
saw in Chief Akintola the type of leader the Yorubas
needed and decamped from the N.C.N.C. to join him in
the NNDP. Even Chief T.O.S. Benson, a national Vice
President of the N.C.N.C, after a brief hesitation,
also crossed over to accept Chief Akintola's
leadership.

Akintola's legacy was that he reconciled Yoruba
leaders who were considered irreconcilable under Chief
Awolowo's leadership.

When Chief Akintola's N.N.D.P. took the Yorubas to
their rightful place in the federal government, Chief
Ayo Rosiji became Federal Minister of Information,
Chief Richard Akinjide became Federal Minister of
Education, Chief A.M.A. Akinloye was Minister of
Industries, other Ministers I cannot quite remember
their portfolios were Prince Made Lamuye and Victor
Lajide.

The N.N.D.P. Ministers mentioned above represented a
bridge between the federal government and the core
Yoruba elements of Western Nigeria as against the
Lagos Yorubas whom Chief T.O.S. Benson and Chief J.M.
Johnson catered for.

When Chief Richard Akinjide took over the Federal
Ministry of Education, he was presented with a list of
nominees for award of federal government scholarship.
Ninety Eight percent of Southern nominees on that list
were Igbos; the Yorubas, the Midwesterners, the Efiks,
the Ibibios, the Ijaws, the Kalabaris etc shared the
remaining two percent.

Chief Akinjide rejected that list and ordered the
compilation of a more balanced list. A majority of the
Yorubas and other non-Igbo Southerners who benefitted
from federal government scholarship awards that year
had Chief S.L. Akintola, the N.N.D.P. and Chief
Akinjide to thank for their good fortune.

During that period of Akintola's N.N.D.P.
participation in the federal government, the tenure of
Professor Eni Njoku as Vice Chancellor of the
University of Lagos expired, Professor Saburi Biobaku
was appointed to succeed him. The N.C.N.C. raised a
deafening yell of tribalism and financed students to
raise hell and mayhem in the course of which Professor
Biobaku was stabbed in an assassination attempt.

At that time, there was a profusion of eminent
scholars and educationists of Southern Nigerian
origin. There were two federal government universities
in Ibadan and Lagos. Professor Kenneth Dike was Vice
Chancellor at Ibadan while Eni Njoku held court in
Lagos.

An equitable sharing of the national cake would have
prevented a situation where these two federal
universities were manned by persons of the same tribe,
moreso as Professor Saburi Biobaku was as good if not
better than the incumbents at Lagos and Ibadan
universities.

It was not as if Chief Biobaku's appointment would
have made Eni-Njoku jobless. Professor Biobaku had
been released by the Federal Government to go and head
a university in East Africa and Chief Eni Njoku was
only being redeployed to take up the East African job
so as to give meaning to the principle of federal
character which is still in our constitution as I
write.

It was these acts to give the Yorubas their fair share
of federal patronage that made the Ibos block Chief
Akinjide's nomination into Alhaji Shehu Shagari's
cabinet and he had to be presented a second time
before he got the approval of the Senate:”
Re: Akintola's Three Part Lectures by NegroNtns(m): 10:54pm On Oct 25, 2012
Thank you Kunle, great revelation!
Re: Akintola's Three Part Lectures by tunnytox(m): 10:58pm On Oct 25, 2012
subscribing
Re: Akintola's Three Part Lectures by kunlekunle: 6:34am On Oct 26, 2012
After the 1959 elections, when no party won absolute
majority, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa wanted a
continuation of a national government as was the case
before the election. Chief Awolowo would not hear of
it. He wanted the Action Group and the N.C.N.C. to
team up against the North. He said he was prepared to
serve under Dr. Azikiwe but not under any Northerner.
Those of us who were not rabid Awoists wondered what
transformation had taken place in Dr. Azikiwe's person
since he was chased out of the West by this same
Awolowo, who now wanted him to lead the whole country.


The only explanation that made sense to us was that
Awolowo did not believe in a Nigeria that did not have
him as Prime Minister. It was clear from the mood of
the times that if the East and the West had teamed up
to form the federal government, the North would have
justifiably opted out of the federation. An alliance
between the West and the East against the North would
be nothing short of the South replacing the British as
colonial masters of the North.

It is inconceivable that Chief Awolowo did not see
that implication, so the only conclusion that made
sense was that Chief Awolowo would rather dissolve the
federation than be part of a country in which he is
not the leader. His implication in a coup plot for
which he was found guilty and jailed did nothing to
disprove the contention that all he cared about was
his personal ambition to rule the country or part of
it.

At the time when negotiations were going on to form
the government that would usher in independence, Dr.
Nnamdi Azikiwe described himself and his party the
N.C.N.C. as the beautiful bride being wooed by the
other political parties. There would have been no need
for anybody to woo or be wooed if Chief Awolowo had
not set his mind against a national government.

The N.C.N.C. accepted the suit of the N.P.C. and
received as dowry the right to consume Western
Nigeria's share of the national cake even though it
did not represent the people of Western Nigeria in the
federal parliament. The N.C.N.C. discovered after
Awolowo's political incapacitation that Chief S.L.
Akintola was a tougher nut to crack than Chief Awolowo
and decided to make the West ungovernable for him.

The assassination attempt on Professor Biobaku was in
line with the operation wetie" mayhem going on all
over Western Nigeria in which human beings were being
doused with petrol and set ablaze. Those dastardly
acts were being perpetrated by Yorubas, but the
perpetrators, their organizers and co-ordinators were
being funded by the government of Eastern Nigeria
under Dr. Michael Okpara, according to intelligence
reports available to the Western Nigerian government.

I heard and saw these reports available only to the
innermost caucus of the N.N.D.P. I did not belong to
that inner caucus, but as Press Secretary to Chief Ayo
Rosiji, master planner and Chief strategist first of
the Action Group and later of the N.N.D.P., I had
access to the Sanctus sanctorum of Chief Akintola's
N.N.D.P. and government. Also for the fact that I was
only twenty six years old, a civil servant and
slightly built I was ignored like a fly on the wall
and things were laid bare in my presence just as women
would UnCloth in front of a one year old baby boy.

Also in those days of N.C.N.C. financed mayhem in the
West, Premier's Lodge, Ibadan was like a refugee camp
overflowing with men, women and children who had fled
their homes, towns and villages for dear life.

There was no privacy for anybody including the
Premier Chief Akintola himself to grab some fresh air,
breathing space and a snatch of private conversation,
Chief Akintola and Chief Rosiji would get into the
back seat of my two door Saab car and I would drive
them around the back streets of Ibadan GRA and
sometimes park by deserted roadsides while the two
leaders discussed affairs of state which I found quite
revealing and educative.

One of the issues discussed in my car was a proposal
allegedly made by Chief T.O.S. Benson that the
N.N.D.P. should organize its own operation wetie in
Lagos to hit back at N.C.N.C. interests and personnel
in the federal capital. Chief Ayo Rosiji dismissed
that course of action saying any disorderly act in
Lagos would be counter-productive as it would draw the
ire not only of the targeted N.C.N.C. but also of the
federal government and every other Nigerian, seeing
that Lagos was Nigeria in microcosm.

On that occasion, I was not destined to merely
eavesdrop; I was drawn into the conversation.Chief
Rosiji said that he had made contact with the
President of the Ibo Youth League and he would send
him to me and together our task would be to destroy
that body and use the fragment to carry the fight
right back to Chief Michael Okpara in Enugu and the
length and breadth of Eastern Nigeria. The prognosis
was that if Chief Michael Okpara* s tail was set on
fire he would be so busy trying to put out the flames
that he would not be able to continue formenting
trouble in the West.

I was also given a story to surreptitiously leak to
the Press. It concerned the attempt to remove Chief
Festus Okotie-Eboh as Federal Minister of Finance and
replace him with Chief K.O. Mbadiwe. When the Western
Nigeria share of the Federal cabinet was allocated to
the N.N.D.P., the number of N.C.N.C. Ministers was
reduced from eight to five with Chief Okotie-Eboh as
the only non-Tho N.C.N.C. Minister in the cabinet. The
N.C.N.C. had believed that with its representation in
the federal cabinet reduced, to place the important
Finance Ministry in an Igbo hand was a desideratum; in
other words, Chief Festus Okotie Eboh not being an
Igbo man was a second class N.C.N.Cer.

The N.C.N.C. requested Sir Abubakar to reshuffle the
cabinet so that Chief Okotie-Eboh and Dr Mbadiwe
could swap places. An enraged Chief Okotie-Eboh with
the solid backing of N.N.D.P. ministers strongly
opposed that move. Chief Akintola took it upon himself
to go up North and appeal to Sir Ahmadu Bello to
prevail on Sir Abubakar to reject the N.C.N.C.
request. The refusal of Chief Okotie-Eboh to surrender
the Ministry of Finance to Dr K.O. Mbadiwe was a sin
so grievious in the opinion of the N.C.N.C. that he
was killed alongside Yoruba and Northern leaders in
January 1966.

When I called in some officers from my ministry to
help spread the story of the N.C.N.C. pertkiy on Chief
Okotie-Eboh, one of the officers, Stephen Ojo,
confirmed to me that Chief K.O. Mbadiwe had already
announced to Pressmen that he was soon to replace
Chief Okotie-Eboh as Finance Minister.

The failure of that move caused Chief K.O. Mbadiwe
considerable loss of face and did nothing to alleviate
his feeling of contempt for Dr. Michael Okpara whom he
had described as the rural Bende bumpkin without
the national credentials necessary to lead a great
party like the N.C.N.C. Most devastating for the
N.C.N.C. was that Chief Okotie-Eboh and Dr. K.O.
Mbadiwe, the N.C.N.C. s most prominent ministers in
the federal capital, gravitated towards the Sardauna
as the one person who could make or mar one's fortune
in Nigeria*s political arena.

At the same time, a group of young men came to me in
my office. Their leader introduced himself as Emeka
Chikwendu, President of the Ibo Youth League and those
with him as the members of the League's executive
committee. They said they had come to pledge their
support for Chief Akintola and praised the good work
he was doing to restore balance to the tottering
foundation of Nigeria*s unity. They acknowledged that
the turmoil in Nigeria was caused by the Ibo elders'
attempt to deny the other Southern tribes their place
in the sun. They expressed disappointment at Chief
Awolowo's leadership pattern and drew a contrast
between Zik's diplomatic handling of the rebellion of
Mbadiwe, Nwapa and company to Awolowo's fight to
finish duel with Chief Akintola.



http://www.dawodu.com/agbe1.htm
Re: Akintola's Three Part Lectures by 0monnak0da: 7:58pm On Mar 06, 2023
Very relevant today

1 Like

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