THE 50th remembrance thanksgiving service for the late Premier of the defunct Western Region, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, will hold today January 15, 2015.

According to the Chairman Planning Committee for the memorial remembrance, Mr. Yemi Adedokun, the interdenomination Service hold today at Ladoke Akintola’s Lounge, Oke-Ado, Ogbomoso by 10 am.

Dignitaries expected at the event is President Muhammadu Buhari, Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, National leader of the APC, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Chief Richard Akinjide, Dr Omololu Olunloyo and captains of industries traditional rulers, political top shots and high fliers in the society including business and political associates of the late sage and family are expected to grace the occasion.

<b>Biography of Chief S.L Akintola</b>
Samuel Ládòkè Akíntọ́lá or “S.L.A.”was born in Ògbómòsó on July 6, 1910. He was a politician and who was renowned for his great oratory skills. He held the title of the highly revered Aare Ona Kakanfo XIII of Yorubaland.

Chief Akintola was a teacher in the 1930s and early 1940s. He left teaching to study public administration and law in England and returned to Nigeria in 1950 as a qualified lawyer.

Upon his return, he teamed up with other educated Nigerians from the Western Region to form the Action Group (AG) under the leadership of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. As the deputy leader of the AG party, he did not serve in the regional government headed by its premier Chief Awolowo, but served as the parliamentary leader of his party in the House of Representatives of Nigeria. At the federal level he served as Minister for Health and later Minister for Communications and Aviation.

In late 1959 in preparation for Nigeria’s independence, the Action Group party took a decision which affected the career of Akintola, the party and Nigeria when the party asked him to swap political positions with Awolowo by becoming the premier of the Western Region while Awolowo who also was the national leader of the AG, would became the party leader in the Federal House of Representatives as well as the Opposition leader in the House.

The division of roles in the Western Nigeria government led to a conflict between SLA and Awolowo; the AG party broke into two factions leading to several crises in the Western Region House of Assembly that led the central/federal government, headed by the Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to declare State of Emergency rule in the Western region and an Administrator was appointed.

After a lengthy court battle, SLA was restored to power as Premier in 1963 and won in general election of 1965 not as member of the Action Group party but as the leader of a newly formed party called Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) which was in an alliance with the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) the party that then controlled the federal government.

Along with many other leading politicians, Akintola was assassinated in Ibadan the capital of Western Region on January 15, 1966 during the first military coup. The coup also terminated Nigeria’s First Republic.

SLA was married to Chief Faderera Abeke Akintola. They had five children, two of whom were finance ministers in Nigeria’s Third Republic (Chief Yomi Akintola and Dr Bimbo Akintola). Chief Yomi Akintola served as Nigeria’s Ambassador to Hungary and SLA’s daughter-in-law, Mrs. Dupe Akintola as Nigeria’s High Commissioner in Jamaica. His fourth child, Chief Victor Ladipo Akintola, dedicated much of his life to ensuring the continued accurate accounting of SLA’s contributions to Nigeria’s position on the world stage.

Chief S L Akintola’s youngest son, the late Tokunbo Akintola, was the first black schoolboy at Eton College, enrolling two terms prior to the arrival of Dilibe Onyeama (author of Nigger at Eton).

Many institutions, including Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomosho were established in his home town and other Nigerian cities to remember him. Above all he practiced law.

http://yarnvibes.com/50th-rememberance-service-for-chief-s-l-akintola-hold-today/

Lalasticlala Help us celebrate SLA

Rest in Peace my great uncle

Aare Akintola

On the night of January 15, 1966, a company of soldiers marched on the residence of the Premier, Western Region. Akintola omo Loogun, Ajalaagbe omo kulodo, yagboyaaju omo kara, took up arms against Nigeria’s first coupists and fought them till daylight, before he was mortally wounded. Eyewitness accounts have it that hours later, with his body riddled with bullets, he was still breathing and remained so until he gave up the ghost at sunset.

Eso Ikoyi won kii gbofa leyin, iwaju ni won fii gbota. Agba Ikoyi to gbojo iku toree gbalu. Ikoyi Eso, arogun yo- Ikoyi warriors/generals dont receive arrows in the back, they face on coming bullets heads on. Elders of Ikoyi that heard of his day of death and went to get drummers rejoicing, Ikoyi generals that delight in wars

www.nairaland.com/attachments/2596522_14962samuelakintolaprofile_jpegbc5434a3b462e5a3d52dbb93c03aff49

Someone should do a documentary on this great man. Is there a way to merge all the different threads about his 50th year anniversary into one thread? Answers, anyone? Mods...??

icon8:
… A daughter remembers an accomplished and beloved father
Maria Abimbola Akintola

Growing up I came to behold my daddy Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola as a colossus. In my infant eyes he was full of life, very effervescent and I had, in my child like innocence, thought that he will be around forever. My father was my personal hero and my world, to an extent, revolved around him. I grew up knowing him as a wonderful father, teacher, counselor and friend who helped everyone around him to be a better person.

Akintola the man that I know was sagacious, personable, erudite, urbane, suave, industrious, energetic and intelligent. He was a great organizer, talented mobilizer, an outstanding orator and a man of the people in the truest sense of the word. These attributes made him a very successful politician.

As a politician he had friends and foes in legion but his main pre-occupation was a united Nigeria in which every tribe especially his beloved Yoruba race will partake in the common patrimony as equals.
Fifty years after his passage, I still reminiscence of a father with a heart of gold, one who could hardly hurt a fly and who refused to pay his opponent in their own coin even when political exigencies demanded just that. Often times, I marvel at the concerted demonization of his memory for political pottage. At such times I am reminded of the old story as recounted by the Nigerian nationalist and prolific author Mokwugo Okoye of the great Athenian general and statesman, Aristides, hero of the Marathon War, noted for his valour, incorruptibility and magnanimity and nicknamed The Just.

When out of his rival, the venal Themistocles’ machination, he was banished from his country by the ostracism that was the bane of Ancient Greece, Aristides met an illiterate citizen who, not knowing his identity, wanted him to inscribe “Aristides” on the shell which he wanted to vote for the general’s banishment. The latter asked him “Whether Aristides had ever injured him?” The dutiful burgher replied in the negative, adding “nor do I even know him, but it vexes me to hear him everywhere called the Just.” The great man, we are assured by Plutarch in his Lives of Greek Heroes, said nothing but inscribed his own name on the “ballot paper” as he was directed and later suffered his banishment, praying as he left Athens “that the people of Athens might never see the day which should force them to remember Aristides.”

But his prayer was signally unanswered and three years later Xerxes of Persia, terror of the Greek world, was at the gates of Athens with his grand armada, which obliged the frightened citizens of the city of culture to revoke their decrees of vengeance: all the exiles were recalled, and subsequently Aristides, now reconciled with Themistocles, distinguished himself at the Battles of Salamis and Platea. Unlike Aristides my father did not have a second chance as he was brutally murdered by a band of misguided and mutinous soldiers on January 15, 1966. Like Aristides’ illiterate voter, many of the writers, politicians, carpetbaggers and renegades who calumniate the memory of my father could not claim to have been offended by my father or even to have known him closely; yet when it became expedient and their Themistocles sounded the battle cry and accused him of all sorts of crimes, they sheepishly cast their votes with scurrilous castigation and venomous damnation of his memory and his place in history.

Thank goodness history is hardly partial and there still abound in Nigeria men of goodwill and good conscience. I am re-assured by the resurgence of unbiased record, review and analysis of my father’s place in history even as I remain amused by the apparent consternation of some dye in wool partisans who still cling to distorted facts. Lord Acton, a celebrated British historian while quoting an Italian counterpart noted that “the gods have placed upon the earth two judges of human actions; conscience and history”. While people are left to live with their conscience, the verdict of history remains forthright and palpable. The facts of history are clear. My father was a prominent lawyer in his time. He was an accomplished teacher, frontline journalist, first Nigeria Minister of Labour, Minister of Health, Minister of Communications, first leader of opposition in the Federal House of Representatives, 13th Are Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, brilliant parliamentarian, astute administrator, nationalist, Patriot, Statesman and Visionary.

National treasures like the National Stadium in Lagos, Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Ikeja industrial estate, Surulere Housing estate etc. bespeak the deft touches of his administrative acumen and his ingenuity as a parliamentarian. Historians are settled on his preeminent role in the fight for the nation’s independence and his prodigious contribution to post independent Nigeria. No amount of later day red herring will obliterate the facts.
As ebullient as they come, my father was soft at heart.

A good family man, he dotted on the love of his life and only wife; my dearly beloved mother Chief Mrs. Faderera Abeke Akintola (of blessed memory) with whom he bore five children. He loved his children equally and for different reasons largely based on unique attributes specific to each child. The last of his children Olatokunbo till his death in 1973 was “the soul of the family” and had earlier achieved fame as the first African to attend the highly regarded British public school Eton College. A large-hearted man he extended unaccustomed benevolence to his family, friends and associates as well as charity and goodwill to all men.

Most times when I think of my father, I often ruminate on the import of the inspiring admonition of Rudyard Kipling in the inimitable poem IF. “If you can keep head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream – and not make dreams your master; If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat those two imposters just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build ‘em up with worn out tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your hearth and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you.

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on,” If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run--- Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And – which is more - you’ll be a Man my son!”
The poem could have been more than enough consolation only if my father was alive to share it with not just me but with all his loved ones today January 15, 2016. But since he is no longer around to share in the witty cadence of the ennobling verses so meticulously weaved together by Kipling, I shall continue to read alone and reminiscence on the time we shared together; precious time, now distant in memory, yet ever-green.

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/reminiscences-chief-samuel-ladoke-akintola-50-years-after/230335/

Cc: Seun lalasticlala mynd44 dominique

The article was quoted from this thread: https://www.nairaland.com/2866893/reminiscences-chief-samuel-ladoke-akintola#41997390

raumdeuter:
Rest in Peace my great uncle

Aare Akintola

On the night of January 15, 1966, a company of soldiers marched on the residence of the Premier, Western Region. Akintola omo Loogun, Ajalaagbe omo kulodo, yagboyaaju omo kara, took up arms against Nigeria’s first coupists and fought them till daylight, before he was mortally wounded. Eyewitness accounts have it that hours later, with his body riddled with bullets, he was still breathing and remained so until he gave up the ghost at sunset.

Eso Ikoyi won kii gbofa leyin, iwaju ni won fii gbota. Agba Ikoyi to gbojo iku toree gbalu. Ikoyi Eso, arogun yo- Ikoyi warriors/generals dont receive arrows in the back, they face on coming bullets heads on. Elders of Ikoyi that heard of his day of death and went to get drummers rejoicing, Ikoyi generals that delight in wars

www.nairaland.com/attachments/2596522_14962samuelakintolaprofile_jpegbc5434a3b462e5a3d52dbb93c03aff49

Wao. May he continue to rest in perfect peace.

SLA is a great man.

oboy see zebra crossing

[quote author=Tequilah post=42006706]Someone should do a documentary on this great man. Is there a way to merge all the different threads about his 50th year anniversary into one thread?

I concur with you on the documentary

icon8:
I concur with you on the documentary

Thanks. I believe it is important, because there is quite a bit of misconception about this great man - SLA. A large number of young people born in Western Nigeria after 1970, really have very little info on him. Many have been fed with stories from their parents about what SLA did or didn't do and the factors that led to his rift with Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

The old generation within the pro-Awolowo group still like to hold SLA and his ideals in contempt, while the pro-Akintola group see the pro-Awolowo people, as inflexible, unprogressive and bitter. It is sad. Both men were great in their own separate ways, yet SLA's role has been largely misunderstood by the majority of the public.

It would be interesting to trace the history of both men, chart their political ideals and see where the divergence began and address the misconceptions that have defied time and history, which their supporters still cling to tightly.

Nigerian history has not given SLA the respect and recognition he deserves, neither have his associates been properly recognised for their actions which changed the face of Western Nigeria in the sixties.

Today marks the 51st anniversary of the late Sir Ladoke Akintola's death. May his soul continue to rest in peace. And may God continue to comfort those he left behind...