BY FESTUS ADEDAYO, Ph.D
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William Shakespeare, in Othello, warned of the destructive power of envy and manipulation when he wrote: “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” Across history, enemies have often thrived by sowing discord among friends, destroying noble causes and wrecking enduring relationships. The tragic crisis between Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola remains one of the most painful examples in Yoruba political history.
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A very deep political analyst told me on Friday that he believed both Awo and Akintola were victims of their individual and regional enemies. “If their team had governed the West long enough, the region would have become a first world society,” the analyst told me, and I agreed with him. Read history for the firsts they scored while leaving the other regions panting and taking catch-up measures.
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Thirty-nine and sixty years respectively after their passing, the two friends-turned-foes have not ceased being objects of discourse. With Chief Awolowo as leader and Akintola as his deputy, their team cooked the huge pot of soup the Yoruba still eat their pounded yam with today. They earn an epitaph in the heart of Irish poet, Oscar Wilde, who said, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
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Yesterday marked the 39th anniversary of the transition of Chief Awolowo, yet the world still rose to salute him and the stellar leadership he gave his people. Politicians still invoke his name to win votes and get positions. Chief Akintola took his own exit in the military putsch of January 15, 1966.
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I thought of those two great men as we marked Awo’s transition yesterday. I reflected on their lives together and their lives apart, while laughing at children of ignorance who attempt to denigrate Awolowo’s legacies simply because they cannot measure up to a fraction of the standard he set as a leader. They think they can exhume the skeleton of the Awolowo-Akintola rift and turn it into a ritual of power: those who oppose today’s small gods are branded betrayers, while those who worship them are canonized as patriots. They misbehave and demand applause. Again, William Shakespeare has words for them in Julius Caesar: “The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.”
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The trickster god in Yoruba cosmology is called Esu. Dauda Epo Akara, Ibadan Awurebe music lord, sang of how the Trickster tricked two friends almost to their deaths using a cap that has both black and white colours. This messenger of discord rarely fights a man directly; he sows quarrels between friends. That is why the Yoruba say that where two friends become enemies, the hand of Esu is never far away. Esu existed and wielded power in the Yoruba past; he remains super-powerful today.
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Why did Awo and Akintola, two friends and associates, unexampled leaders and committed nationalists, suddenly become sworn enemies, splintering like the bull’s-eye seeds, (àjàtúká àgbáàrín), their fight eventually fatally halting the supersonic speed of Western Region’s development? Was their destructive fight really an ideological battle or an instigated destruction? That is a posthumous food for thought in the memory of the two avatars of the Yoruba nation that is worthy of discussion today.
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Awolowo and Akintola had almost similar trajectories of personal development. While Awo was born in 1909, SLA was born a year later, in 1910. They were both journalists and lawyers who worked in the Daily Times and Daily Service respectively. Indeed, SLA, supported by a major shareholder in the Daily Service and Awo’s bosom friend, Chief Akinola Maja, replaced Ernest Sese Okoli as editor of Daily Service in 1943.
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Following the 1959 federal elections, a governmental transplant occurred. Awolowo left the West as Premier to contest the federal election and Akintola returned home from being AG’s Parliamentary Leader/Leader of Opposition in the Federal House of Representatives. He became Minister for Health and later Minister for Communications and Aviation before becoming Premier of the Western Region. Since our elders say it is only the outset of a war that is cognizable and not its end, that swap became the beginning of a fratricidal crisis in the West which eventually incubated the collapse of that republic.
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Why then did these two friends and associates fight such an acrimonious war? Why did Awolowo pick Akintola as his successor? On Page 167 of his book, The Travails of Democracy and the Rule of Law (1987), Awolowo confirmed his reluctance in picking Akintola as Premier. Political scientist, Prof Bill Dudley, in his An Introduction to Nigerian Government and Politics (1982), however, put the schism down to ideological disagreement. While Awolowo was a democratic socialist, Akintola was a conservative.
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Another political scientist, Prof Eghosa Osaghae, in his book, Crippled Giant: Nigeria Since Independence (1998), attributed the leadership crisis to the anti-Northern stance of Awolowo as Leader of Opposition in Parliament, which incensed Akintola. Chief Bola Ige, one of Awo’s lieutenants, on the other hand, writing in his 1998 book, People, Politics and Politicians of Nigeria (1940 – 1979), said the disagreement was caused by the decision by Akintola to act independently of the Action Group. According to him, immediately he became Premier, Akintola began building his own political base and structure, abhorring the idea of basking under the political sunshine of Awolowo who made him Premier.
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Awolowo seems to have confirmed the above in his book when he recounted moments of Akintola’s anger at being welcomed to functions by shouts of “Awo!”, hitherto the sloganeering of the AG. It was on April 3, 1960, at the installation of Oba Sikiru Adetona as the Awujale in Ijebu Ode.
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Dare Babarinsa’s House of War (2003) quoted an interview Akintola granted the famous Drum magazine of May 1965, wherein he reportedly said: “The basic disagreement was just that I favoured a national government and co-operation with the Northern Peoples Congress while he (Awolowo) opposed both.” Awo ostensibly agreed with Akintola on this reason.
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In one of his books, Awo laid the path of the disagreement as follows: “Ever since he became AG leader of Opposition in the House of Representatives in 1954, some unhealthy associations between SLA and the NPC leaders had been suspected. He spoke Hausa fluently; and had Hausa blood in his veins. Almost ad nauseam, he never tired in private conversation of condemning the Ibo in the most derisive language, extolling the Hausa/Fulani in the most eulogistic terms, and emphasizing the age-old intercourse which existed between the Hausa/Fulani and the Yoruba, as well as the strong similarity observable in their cultures.”
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Akintola, while further explaining where he stood, according to Babarinsa, citing the Drum interview, said his romance with the North was borne out of fear of the economic, educational and commercial aggressiveness of the Igbo, which he saw as being of greater danger to the Yoruba than the political hegemony of the Hausa/Fulani. He said further that most of the topmost positions in the civil service, police and other sectors of the economy were held by the Igbo and that an alliance with the NPC could rescue the Yoruba from political annihilation.
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Bola Ige, agreeing with both Dudley and Osaghae, said that Awo and SLA’s ideological fissures gave rise to the crisis. In late 1961, the AG constituted a group of young men tasked with formulating a cogent ideology to guide the party, and it agreed to adopt democratic socialism.
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Lateef Jakande, an Awo disciple, also had this to say in his book, The Trial of Obafemi Awolowo (1996): “Akintola was a contrast to Chief Awolowo in many ways. Smooth, witty, politically slippery and cunning, he made virtue of ambiguity… The new Premier, while proclaiming his acceptance of the supremacy of the party ‘on policy matters,’ was in fact taking decisions clearly at variance with party policy.” While Awo believed in life abundant for the people, Akintola took some people-denigrating policy decisions like reducing cocoa prices, increasing school fees, abolishing women’s taxation, distributing or withdrawing party patronage without reference to his leader and, according to Jakande, “demanding personal loyalty to himself from his ministers.”
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Awo held a meeting with Premier Akintola on January 12, 1961 and advised him against the reduction of the prices of cocoa. It was then the main export commodity in the Western Region. Awo believed if Akintola reduced the price mid-season, it would amount to a breach of faith with poor farmers who toiled in rain and sunshine to produce for the economy. In Awolowo’s spirited efforts at bringing out the Janus-faced disposition of Akintola to the fore, as well as his untrustworthy tendency, he said in his book that while he thought he had successfully convinced him, Akintola went ahead to address a press conference on January 13, 1961, to announce new lower prices of cocoa for the rest of the season. Even the Minister of Finance in the NCNC/NPC coalition, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, denounced Akintola as “not justified in reducing the price of cocoa paid to the producers…”
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Adekunle Ajasin, another leader of the AG, located the disagreement between Awo and SLA in what he called, in his book, Memoirs and Memories (2003), variations in “ideology and strategy” which manifested in a mutual suspicion between the duo and Akintola conducting himself as “Premier to whom the party and its leadership were irrelevant to the running of his government.”
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While the AG leadership saw him as a traitor, external forces, scions of the North like Maitama Sule, sided with Akintola and saw him as an “independently minded person.” Akintola, on his own, believed that, having been vested with the Premiership, he ought to be left alone and bequeathed with all the full paraphernalia of his office.
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Olarinmoye O. O., in “The Politics of Ethnic Mobilization among the Yoruba of South Western Nigeria” (2008), quoted SLA to have said in Yoruba that, “tí a bá fi àgbò fún eégún, àá jòwó okùn è”, translated to mean, if a ram is bequeathed to a masquerade, it is consequent upon the giver to let go of its leash.
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At an intangible level, some commentators claimed that the 1962 crisis had a lot to do with the spouses of the two leaders. Mackintosh J. P. (1966), in his book, Nigerian Government and Politics, subtly said this when he averred that a minor source of the conflict could be located in the “acute rivalry” between Mrs Awolowo, “a most astute and successful business woman,” and Mrs Faderera Akintola.
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However, in February 1962, at the AG’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting held in Jos, the crisis tipped over. Akintola not only walked out of the meeting, he immediately took a train back to Ibadan to receive the Premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, AG’s arch-enemy. Bello had ostensibly come for the commissioning of a student hostel named after him at the University of Ibadan, but it was believed to be a covert plan to strike a political deal with the Sardauna. This irked AG members who could not countenance Akintola’s insolence, especially his riding in an open car with the Sardauna and, according to Ige, “instead of the usual shouts of ‘Awo’ with which he used to be cheered, it was ‘SLA’.”
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Chief Ayo Rosiji, former AG Secretary, also tendered his letter of resignation from the party at the Jos meeting. The February 5, 1962 report of the event by the Daily Express newspaper, of which Bisi Onabanjo was its editor and editorial director in the 1950s and early 1960s, reported Rosiji’s resignation with a screaming headline, Congress clash: AG Secretary’s crisis!
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Still believing that Akintola was not implacable, Awolowo sent five leaders of the AG to make him change his mind and return for the Jos convention. The Express reported in its edition of February 8, 1962 that the Premier rebuffed them, with the screaming headline, SLA snubs the elders! The leaders were Dr Akinola Maja, Chief T. A. Odutola, Alhaji S. O. Gbadamosi, Chief E. A. Okunowo and M. A. Ogun.
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Akintola then began to weed out known supporters of Awolowo from his government. He began with the removal of Mr J. O. Odeku, newly elected Assistant Federal Secretary of the AG at the Jos convention, from his office as a member of the Marketing Board. Thereafter, on May 6, 1962, he dismissed Mr Alfred Rewane, Chief S. O. Lanlehin and Mr Ayo Akinsanya, Chairman and Executive Directors respectively of the Western Nigeria Development Corporation (NDC). This, Ige said, was regarded as a “political slap on Awolowo.” Akintola also further incensed the Awolowo group by sending Oba C. D. Akran to London, ostensibly to seek an alliance between the Akintola faction of the AG and Remi Fani-Kayode’s NCNC.
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AG’s Yoruba West and Mid-West Executive Committee, on May 19, 1962, however met and moved a motion for Premier Akintola to resign. The next day, the Premier held a press conference and declared that he would not. He then called on the Governor-General and the Speaker of the Assembly to convene an emergency meeting to test his popularity, a plea turned down by both. On May 21, 1962, Sir Adesoji Aderemi, the Governor-General, addressed a letter to Akintola, removing him from office.
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At the height of the crisis, Akintola attempted to mow down opposition. On November 5, 1963, a woman, Mrs Sikuola Odunaro, shouted the name of Awolowo in Ibadan while the Premier was passing by. Akintola ordered that she be bundled into a police van.
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In 1964, the year that followed, Akintola attempted to establish a rival faction of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa, the cultural-cum-political group that metamorphosed into the AG, founded in London by Awolowo. Akintola named his rival faction, first, Egbe Omo Yoruba and later, Egbe Omo Olofin. His major undisguised aim was to finally put a seal on the political effervescence of an Awolowo who was by then serving a ten-year jail term in the Calabar prisons. Akintola centred his own Egbe around political arch-enemies of Awolowo and new converts who believed that his jailing had stopped Awolowo’s relevance.
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The Egbe had as members former Administrator of the Western Region in the Emergency year, Dr M. A. Majekodunmi, who was a personal physician to Tafawa Balewa; Chief H. O. Davies, some high court judges and traditional rulers. Some leaders of the Awolowo camp had by then also begun changing camp to Akintola’s. At the maiden meeting of the new Egbe, held on January 3, 1964, Akintola’s Egbe issued a press release which castigated Awolowo, calling him unprintable names.
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After Akintola’s NNDP, a coalition of his United People’s Party and Fani-Kayode’s NCNC, was purportedly re-elected in 1965, the West was thrown into complete anarchy. The government went into a heavy economic recession. Workers refused to pay taxes, using highly erratic payment of salaries as justification. Akintola then resorted to cutting the prices of cocoa from £110 per tonne to £60.
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This ignited an unprecedented violence, with lives and property destroyed, in what has been described as Operation Wetie. Farm hands set cocoa farms on fire, while Hausa settlers in the Sagamu area and other parts of the West were burnt alive. But Balewa, being an ally of Akintola, did not want to re-invoke the 1962 powers of Emergency, turning the other eye. On a tour of Benin, when asked by journalists if he did not see the escalating crisis, Balewa said he could not take action merely by judging the intensity of lawlessness in the West on account of newspaper reports of the brigandage.
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A few days after, on December 9, 1965, the Nigerian Tribune wrote a fortuitous and clairvoyant editorial comment calling on the Premier to resign. “Today, we say to Akintola, get out! We say he should get out today for the sake of Nigeria, for the sake of Western Nigeria and for the sake of his family.” A week to the putsch of January 15, which claimed the lives of Akintola, Balewa and many other key functionaries of government, Tribune again wrote another editorial on January 7, 1966, entitled, Those Who Have Eyes, where it called on “those who have eyes” to learn “a big lesson” from the ousting of the David Dacko government of the Central African Republic.
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I wrote all the above to give insight into the crisis which trapped both Awolowo and Akintola. At this time, with the passing of the administrative baton from the former to the latter, Western Region’s economy was reputed to have experienced a “golden age” of rapid, proactive growth, with the West considered one of the most advanced regions in Africa. Western Region pioneered incredible social programmes and modern infrastructure founded on a robust economy through its cocoa exports.
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With the above in mind, emerging thoughts suggest that, unbeknown to Awo and Akintola, there might have been a connivance between certain foreign interests and local forces outside the Western Region who resented the West’s supersonic development and therefore sowed destructive tares of discord between the two leaders. If this indeed happened, the agent provocateurs achieved their aim, as the crisis halted the Western Region’s remarkable developmental pace and marked the decline of development-oriented leadership in the region.
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Unfortunately, no lesson has been learnt.
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As we rue that era of discord, we still have the present to manage. Unfortunately, what we see all around us today are small gods stomping the earth as though they own it, acting as if there will never be a tomorrow. We live a present which has leaders who hate Awo, want the west to idolize them like him, govern like Akintola but get their media hyenas to postulate a-historical defence of their Awoism. May history be kinder to us than our own age has been, just as it has remained kind to Awolowo.
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ADEDAYO is a columnist, journalist, author, lawyer and political scientist. (First published by the Sunday Tribune, May 10, 2026)
