WHEN my good friend, Bayo Fabiyi said the statue of Chief Obafemi Awolowo recently unveiled by the governor of Lagos State, Mr. Akinwumi Ambode, looks more like the chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Chief John Oyegun; I had to get to the site at the beginning of Lateef Jakande Road in Ikeja Area of Lagos.


After walking round the sculpture thrice, I found myself agreeing with Bayo. But I have to commend the governor for thinking of the idea of immortalising the great sage who played a pivotal role in the life of Lagos which some revisionists have tried to underplay in recent years.The icing on his cake in this regard is the decision to take Lagos into the Odua group to seal proper integration with the rest of the West. The newly unveiled Obafemi Awolowo Statue by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode at Lateef Jakande Road, Ikeja, on Tuesday, September 26, 2017. Perhaps, the greatest soothing balm the decision has provided is the healing it has provided for the wound we suffered for the pulling down of Awo statue in front of Agodi Government House in Ibadan fourteen years ago after the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, took over governance in the state. The deputy to the governor under whose watch the sacrilege was committed later became governor and chose to pour insult on our injury by replacing Awo statue with the “unknown soldier” in 2008 which drew a lot of flaks.
‘Awo’s Demolished Statue’
Tuesday, 15 January 2008

Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala’s replacement of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, SAN, and first Premier of Western Region’s statue with that of an unknown soldier is an attempt to re-write history and diminish the significance of one of the nation’s foremost nationalists. The statue during the era of Rashidi Ladoja as governor of Oyo State was pulled down by political thugs ostensibly on the orders of a notorious political figure in the State.

We had hoped that a more befitting statue of Awolowo will be made to replace the destroyed one. Governor Alao-Akala proved us wrong when he scandalously unveiled the statue of an unknown soldier at Agodi at the same point. This decision is misplaced as it shows myopic understanding of history. The replacement shows Akala’s administration as erroneously seen Awolowo from the stand point of just another politician.

The late sage is more than that. He had vision, mission and political panache that rubbed off positively on, especially Western Region, and the nation in general. His era remains a reference point and for a long while this would remain so.

Awolowo changed the face of governance in the old Western Region as its pioneer Premier. He made the region a model to regions in other parts of the country. The first television station in Africa was established by him in the Western region. Cocoa House, Western House, Liberty Stadium, agricultural plantations, housing and industrial estates were all built during Awolowo’s time.

The zenith of his achievements was the introduction of free education which permanently changed the fate of generations of people. The programme afforded both children of the rich and poor access to education. Many of names in politics , economy, law or academics today benefited from Awolowo’s free education policy.

Awolowo during his life time was the barometer through which several governments measure the acceptability of their policies. General Ibrahim Babangida, former military President, once described him as the “main issue in Nigeria’s politics”. At death, Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu described him as the “best president Nigeria never had.” Such a high achieving man deserves respect even in death. The likes of him are role models worthy of emulation irrespective of their belief or political leaning.

Alao-Akala’s action The action of Alao-Akala is at variance with moves to immortalise national heroes. What he did portrays him as vindictive more so that he is from Ogbomoso the same town where Chief Ladoke Akintola, Awolowo’s arch political rival came from. Is he trying to re-invent the bitter acrimony that existed between the duo? Governor Alao-Akala can remove the statue of this Unknown Soldier in Agodi and return that of Awolowo.

He would have admitted that he is human, and capable of making mistakes. Ultimately, issues like this abound because of the arbitrariness that rules this society. The erection of statues should have laws backing them, such that another ignored issue – their maintenance – would have adequate provisions.” The looming large in our consciousness 30 years after his transition in what my good friend and brother, Prof. Wale Adebanwi has aptly called “the post-humus political life of a dead leader” and the fact that those who pulled down Awo statue have not attained anything in their lives for anybody to draw them on a scrap book comforts us a great deal.

It is unfortunate that the credit Gov. Ambode should have taken from this project has been substantially distracted from by the error of judgement of awarding this project to a sculptor who lacked rudimentary knowledge of the cultural milieu that forged Chief Obafemi Awolowo. There are so many unpardonable errors that Mr. Hamza Attah committed which he has continued to defend because he does not see the Awo project more than a contract.

The first is his decision to sit a very active and mover of men and women like a lame duck without his victory sign.His take that he wanted to position Awo as a thinker by sitting down makes little sense .. Is he saying people think only on their bums? Again he violated Yoruba ethos of respect by just inscribing Awolowo on the statue. We don’t address Chief Awolowo in such rude fashion except we are using his political name “Awo” The most terrible of all was dressing Awo in Agbada and unable to get a loafer or shoe without lace to match. By putting an Oxford Shoe on a native wear for Chief Awolowo,a man of sartorial elegance and great dress sense was presented like Jacob or Pappy Lolo. And in a very arrogant manner,the gentleman told a national daily that the sculpture would not be redone as if he commissioned himself. What insolence! And perhaps the most annoying in defense of this shoddy job in memory of a man known for his diligence and perfection came from Mrs. Adebimpe Akinsola, Special Adviser to the Governor on Tourism, Arts and Culture who stated that many sculptures had been made to illustrate the other essence of the late sage, particularly the ones that portray him as a ‘dogged fighter’ standing with his popular victory sign, but the new bust, depicting him in an entirely new mode, simply alludes to his multi-dimensional standing. Awo, a colossus “The reality is that Chief Awolowo was a colossus who cannot be stereotyped. Stereotyping such a highly intriguing personality only exposes the lack of depth of the totality of what the late sage represents,” she said.

She added that the work is an artistic impression and not a photograph.Why then say you are unveiling Awo Statue and invite his family if you have only employed an artist to create impression subject to perceptions ?Did Madam Adviser check her dictionary for the meaning of a statue?? A statue is a carved or cast figure of a person or animal, especially one that is life-size or larger. The buck now stops at the desk of Governor Ambode who should decommission the nauseating piece that he has been made to commission and which is generating controversy.

He should commission a master artist who knows what Chief Awolowo means with all the nuances.He won’t be a weakling for it. He will earn our loaded accolades! And he would be doing it for the man Prof. Adebayo Williams penned these words for in 2004: “At the end of his life, Awolowo, through constant self-improvement, appeared to have conquered the grosser instincts of humankind. He was a man of superior spiritual refinement. Emerging from a serious spiritual crisis in the thirties in which he had briefly advocated the superiority of juju, he went on to reinvent himself as a man of muscular Christianity. And he never looked back.

Despite his profound belief, he wore his faith lightly, neither flaunting it, nor indulging in a vain and hypocritical religious one-upmanship. Yet, he radiated such a profound mystical aura that to meet him is to sense that you are in the presence of the truly extraordinary. Awo, still relevant today This is the man we thought we bade a final goodbye 17 years ago. If it is so, it must be the longest goodbye in history.

For at every tragic turn, at every miscue, be it at the level of structural deformities of this unfortunate nation, its suffocating and stifling unitarism, its economic malaise, its educational collapse, its spiritual bankruptcy, its corrupt and thieving political class, and its gradual descent into the anomie of ungovernability, we are confronted by the figure of the man with the horn-rimmed glasses. And until we come to terms with many of his ideas, either by transcending them through superior political engineering or working through them through a more rigorous intellectual engagement, the piercing eyes behind the lens will continue to haunt us, reminding us of our inadequacies as intellectuals, as philosophers, as politicians and as a nation. For a man who started with nothing to continue to hold the largest conglomeration of black souls on earth this spellbound and awestruck decades after his physical departure is no mean achievement and certainly not a minor legacy”.

source-https://naijastoryz..com.ng/2017/10/if-it-is-not-awoit-cant-be-awo-by-yinka.html