By Lasisi Olagunju

An old firm of architects with a rich history of project design and delivery sent a letter to the Sierra Leonean government on September 15, 1960. In that letter, the firm listed some of the projects it was handling in Nigeria. The multi-storey building called Cocoa House in Ibadan was on that list.

But the story of Cocoa House began long before that letter was written. The 26-storey structure did not emerge as an idle elephant on Ibadan’s skyline. It was Obafemi Awolowo’s answer to the need for a total-package commercial edifice. The architects described it as a multipurpose venture “aimed at providing office space as well as leisure facilities through a nightclub, swimming pool and cinema complex.”

That perhaps explains why the skyscraper came with a roof garden and has in its shadows, what the Transnational Architecture Group describes as “a circular building clad in mosaic, topped with a dome,” complete with “a splayed cantilevered entrance leading to a swimming pool with beautiful concrete diving boards and viewing gallery.”

For a government that had worked hard at providing free education for all, putting affordable healthcare and food security as priorities, with “life more abundant” as its central mantra, a space for work and leisure was simply the icing on the cake, the crown on a kingdom of values.

There were many more edifical monuments in brick and policy from that government. But because time kills witnesses to history, counter-historians are, today, on the prowl, poisoning public memory with insidious distortions. To what end, we can only speculate.

Late American sociologist and professor, C. Wright Mills describes “the present as history and the future as responsibility.” Because revisionists continue to undermine the past, poison the present, and threaten the future with deliberate inversions of truth, I put a date to what I started with and insert dates into what comes next.

The Nigerian government established a commission in April 1959 to project the country’s tertiary education requirements for the following 20 years. At the head of that commission was a British botanist and educator, Sir Eric Ashby. The commission did its work and submitted its report. But the report ignored the educational aspirations of the Western Region.

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Professor J. F. Ade Ajayi wrote in 1975 that the majority report of the Ashby Commission recommended that the jointly owned University College, Ibadan, was sufficient to serve the educational needs of the Western Region while other regions could have brand-new universities. The commission, Ajayi said, failed to grasp the urgency with which the West viewed universities as instruments of regional development.

The response of the Western Region under Chief Obafemi Awolowo was swift. The West immediately assembled its own team to work on its own university. The result was the establishment of the University of Ife, today known as Obafemi Awolowo University. Significantly, the solid policy foundation for that university had already been firmly laid before Awolowo left office as Premier of the Western Region on December 12, 1959.

The story of the University of Ife best explains Awolowo’s philosophy of education and development. Education, to Awolowo, was central to human and societal progress. He valued it, mobilised his people around it and funded it robustly throughout his years as Premier. Western Nigeria still preens like a peacock today because, at its foundation, it had a leadership that understood the meaning of knowledge and the place of education in the making of a valuable future. Those who lacked that grace are today a problem to everyone. As philosopher Alfred North Whitehead warned: “In the conditions of modern life, the rule is absolute: the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed.”

A remembrance service holds every May 9 in honour of Awolowo and in celebration of his good deeds. This year’s was held last Saturday with the Bishop of Remo and Archbishop of the Lagos Ecclesiastical Province of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), the Most Reverend Michael Olusina Fape, saying in fewer words, and in a more elegant way what I have struggled to say above: remembrance in all cultures comes either as honour or infamy. “Nobody will want Judas to come again. Only the righteous are remembered fondly for their deeds.”

“There’s something special about Chief Obafemi Awolowo,” the bishop continued. “He was a man of faith who believed in God wholeheartedly, and this reflected in his leadership, which impacted positively on the people. His name has continued to re-echo in all spheres of human endeavour — education, agriculture, health and many others.”

Preaching on the theme, “What Will You Be Remembered For?” the cleric, with a heavy heart, expressed disappointment with politicians who parade themselves as progressives and disciples of Awolowo without reflecting his values in governance. According to him, many who wear the progressive label today are, in reality, retrogressive because they make life harder for the people they govern.

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‘Progressive,’ like ‘democracy,’ has become a debased and abused word in Nigeria — loudly proclaimed, but rarely reflected in governance or in the condition of the people. I recommend ‘The So-Called Progressive Movement: Its Real Nature, Causes and Significance’ by Charles M. Hollingsworth to anyone watching today’s powers loudly parade themselves as progressives. Hollingsworth argued that the progressive movement was not always truly progressive in the historical sense, but often quite the opposite. Nor was it genuinely democratic or constitutional in spirit; rather, it was essentially a class movement aimed at the arbitrary control of other classes.

The heart of progressivism is selfless service; otherwise, the badge becomes a mask for masquerades plundering the sacred grove. No one becomes good suddenly. Goodness is rooted either in nature, in nurturing, or in both – upbringing and legacy.

As we remember Awolowo almost four decades after his transition, we should look at the tree from which came the beneficial fruit.

Writing under the pen name, John West, in the Daily Service of March 8, 1959, Alhaji Lateef Jakande gave remarkable insight into the making of the man called Awolowo:
“To understand Obafemi Awolowo, one must know his father. For he is a chip of the old block if anybody ever was. Those who knew him say David Shopolu Awolowo was one of the first Christian converts in Ikenne. He was converted in 1896. His industry was proverbial: he was honest, truthful, hated hypocrisy and never minced his words. A successful farmer and sawyer, Awolowo was also a capable organiser and was the president of about five thrift societies.

“David was not a politician. But his own father was; the latter having acquired a taste for public life from his grandfather. David’s father was head of the Iwarefa, the Executive Council of the Oshugbos who were the rulers of the town in those days. And in this office, he left a record of strict impartiality and firmness in the administration of justice. His own grandfather was also an astute politician. He was the Oluwo of Ikenne, next in rank to the Alakenne and head of the Oshugbos — and wielded great power and influence in the public life of his day.

“And so we have all the ingredients that go to make up the Awolowo we know. It is given to few to combine so well all the sterling qualities of his noble ancestors.”

That heritage produced a leader who understood both the psychology of colonial domination and the tragedy of post-colonial failure. In ‘Path to Nigerian Freedom’, published in 1947, Awolowo wrote with painful foresight: “Given a choice from among white officials, chiefs, and educated Nigerians, as the principal rulers of the country, the illiterate man, today, would exercise his preference for the three in the order in which they are named. He is convinced, and has good reason to be, that he can always get better treatment from the white man than he could hope to get from the chiefs and the educated elements.”

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How hauntingly relevant does that sound today? Across the country, 66 years after independence, swelling numbers of disappointed Nigerians now openly romanticise colonial order — not because colonialism was good, but because post-colonial leadership has failed to justify independence in the eyes of ordinary citizens. Some even sadly ask Donald Trump to come and rescue them from Nigeria the way Moses rescued the Israelites from Egypt.

George Grant (1918–1988) did a reading of Socrates and concluded that the price of goodness is the heavy burden borne by those who choose to stand for truth and morality in societies ruled by injustice. To be good in a bad world, Grant argued, often demands sacrifice, suffering and, sometimes, personal ruin. Awolowo did well and, because he did well in a perverse world, he had to endure severe emotional torture and physical restriction. He was falsely accused; witnesses were called against him before a commission of inquiry, yet he was denied the opportunity to cross-examine them. He suffered, but survived it all.

Where did he get the strength?

John West’s 1959 piece provides a window into that defining trait of Awolowo. According to him, Chief Awolowo had been taught by his father “the Shakespearean injunction, to beware of entering into a fight but once in, never to disengage himself from it until he has beaten his opponent or he himself has been worsted in the encounter.” John West added that anyone who had Awolowo as an opponent knew “to his cost that that lesson was not taught in vain.”

In one moment of deep emotional reflection, William Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar that, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” Yet, in the case of Awolowo, the reverse is very true. Thirty-nine years after his transition, the good he did continues to define standards of leadership, governance and public morality in Nigeria.

Perhaps that is the ultimate meaning of legacy. It is someone’s deep thought that long after power fades, after wealth disappears and after noise quietens, what survives is character, vision and sacrifice. Awolowo understood this truth early. That is why, decades after his passing, Nigeria still invokes his name whenever leadership fails, whenever governance loses direction and whenever the people search for standards against which to measure those who govern them today.