By Lasisi Olagunju
Where is Peter Obi? Someone asked that question last Friday. Why, he wondered, had he been somewhat quiet lately? He even missed a town hall meeting with stakeholders in Jos, Plateau State, that same Friday. “That is true,” I told myself, mentally reviewing the popular politician’s recent public engagements. There had not been much to see. I called a very vocal Obidient near me in Ibadan. “Where is your candidate? If I were an Emilokan, I would just say he has become tepid, like boiling water poured into a flask of cold water.”
My friend hesitated, then conceded that Obi might have scaled down his engagements. But, he insisted, that did not mean his candidate was tired. “Or that he is quitting the race,” I helped him finish. “He cannot even try quitting. He dare not.” I agreed. Obi has travelled too far to turn back casually. His core Igbo supporters would roast him. Yet some of those supporters have helped to cool the enthusiasm his candidacy generated in 2023, especially outside the South-East. In the South-West, their comments and social media posts give undecided Yoruba voters reasons to freeze and recoil.
They appear determined to make enemies where their candidate needs voters. Popular Chief Dan Ulasi was recently on Arise TV, reviving the familiar allegation that elected Yoruba legislators crossed from the NCNC to deny Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe leadership of the Western Region in 1951. That is a lie. The false story keeps resurfacing in certain pro-Obi conversations. Those repeating this sob story are not bothered about history and what their version of yesterday does to their candidate’s prospects today, and tomorrow. The five Ibadan legislators at the centre of that 1951 allegation were Chiefs A.M.A. Akinloye, D.T. Akinbiyi, S.O. Lanlehin, Moyosore Aboderin and S.A. Akinyemi.
They were elected on the platform of the Ibadan Peoples Party, popularly known as Mabolaje; they subsequently aligned with the Action Group. The sixth successful IPP candidate, Adegoke Adelabu, aligned with the NCNC. How were they elected? “On Monday, 24 September, 1951, the eighty-five members of the Final College from the city (Ibadan) met the thirty from the rural areas to elect the six members of the new Western House of Assembly from Ibadan Division. There were twenty-one candidates, but it was the six I.P.P. men who won: M. Aboderin polled 82 votes; A. M. A. Akinloye, 81 votes; S. O. Lanlehin, 67 votes; A. Adelabu and D. T. Akinbiyi, 61 votes each; and S. A. Akinyemi, 59 votes.”
I got this from ‘The Price of Liberty: Personality and Politics in Colonial Nigeria’ by K. W. J. Post and G. D. Jenkins, published in 1973 by Cambridge University Press. Check page 105. The history of that era is well documented, even in colonial archives. Yet some ethnic champions of the NDC candidate prefer their inherited concoction to the record. Long ago when I first encountered this controversy, I decided to search for the truth. I began with Azikiwe himself. His autobiography, My Odyssey, was an obvious place to look. On pages 304 and 305, he listed 20 legislators who “disappointed” his party.
He then proceeded to describe them as “members or supporters or sympathisers” of the NCNC. Those words triggered my curiosity. The three categories are not synonyms, especially in politics. A supporter is not necessarily a party member; a sympathiser is decidedly not a party candidate. Which were these men? The national leader of the NCNC was not sure. Yet because of them, the great Zik put pen to paper and declared that his “NCNC was under the impression that it had won the election.” Read that again: “under the impression.” The distinction becomes more revealing on page 305.
There, Azikiwe identified five legislators from what is now Delta State who, he wrote “associated with the NCNC after the election.” He named them as G. B. Ometan, P. K. Tabiowo, O. Oweh, J. Otobo and Yamu Numa. Elected on the platform of the Urhobo Progress Union (UPU), these legislators subsequently supported Zik’s party on the floor of the House. Yet another member of the House, J. G. Ako, also sponsored by the UPU, was counted by Zik among the legislators “who disappointed the NCNC” because he aligned with the Action Group. Zik also had nice words for IPP’s Adegoke Adelabu who went for his NCNC.
Those who joined Zik on the House floor merely “associated” with his party; those who went elsewhere supposedly crossed the carpet. Now, I ask: If Adelabu of Ibadan Peoples Party and those five legislators elected on the platform of the Urhobo Progress Union could choose the NCNC after the election, why must the five Ibadan legislators’ choice of the Action Group be remembered as a betrayal? Why is one alignment legitimate and the other an ancestral offence? More interestingly, Zik himself on page (304) identified Mabolaje as the party that sponsored the IPP legislators.
Yet he accused them of “disappointing” the NCNC. How did men elected on another party’s platform become his party’s property? Should an expectation of support become proof of party membership? Or, maybe, I should ask my politics teacher to guide me to the conclusion that a disappointed expectation is an evidence of defection. Some people are more sinned against than sinning. On Zik’s list of betrayers were some other non-Yoruba legislators. One of them was the legendary Chief Anthony Enahoro. Azikiwe claimed that Enahoro contested the election as a member of his NCNC. But Enahoro was a foundation member of the Action Group.
Enahoro’s political history says that in 1950, he and Arthur Prest founded the Mid-West Party which in February 1951 became part of the Action Group at inception. Zik listed Arthur Prest also as a betrayer. In fact, Prest was number one on the list. Check page 304. The story is that Western House of Assembly had 80 elected seats. In the parliamentary system of that era, control of the regional government depended on majority support within that House. For security and logistics reasons, the elections were staggered between September and December 1951.
At their conclusion, Awolowo’s Action Group had 38 seats; Zik’s NCNC and its supporting parties/ independents, 25; the Ibadan Peoples Party (IPP), six; and the Ondo Improvement League, two. The balance was held by other smaller parties or were independents. The Great Zik saw the figures and was not happy. Like the old warhorse he was, he scrambled to draw buyers into his market. I call it pè’rò sọ́jà. Much as we see today, he began sending out “defection” forms to the smaller parties. With the Ibadan people, he failed spectacularly. From that day of failure, Zik and his party and his newspapers branded the Ibadan men betrayers.
On 18 October, 1951, one of his newspapers, The Defender, published an article titled “History of IPP Men to Be Given Soon: IPU Digs Out 1920 Files.” The following day, it sustained the attack, quoting someone as saying that “the type of politics the IPP is trying to introduce is exactly the type that will ruin Ibadan.” The attacks were that bad. It was like a lecher calling a married woman a whore because she had spurned his advances. In a river, you step into water before your feet greet the sand. It is necessary to state that long before the House first met on 7 January 1952, five of the six IPP legislators had aligned with the Action Group.
The alignment preceded the House’s inauguration. You cannot cross the floor of a House that has not yet opened its doors. We say in my part of the country that before you learn how to fight, you must first learn how to state your case. Ahead of the election, Mr Harold Cooper, the colonial government’s Public Relations Officer, asked the parties to submit lists of their candidates to his office. Only the Action Group and the IPP complied. The others either rebuffed the request or ignored it. And the controversy started soon after the election. When it started, Cooper called a press conference in Lagos where he put a lie to Azikiwe’s claims.
He said: “Of the winning candidates, the names of 38 were on the list sent to me by the Action Group. The six successful candidates at Ibadan were all among those who had been identified to me as representing the Ibadan People’s Party. No claim of any kind had reached us about the party affiliation of the remaining successful candidates.” That was the official statement of the colonial government which supervised the election. Yet, falsehood has not stopped grappling with the truth 75 years after. Inherited grievances built on falsehood will always hurt where and when it matters.
Anyone who tells history owes it a thorough and honest examination of facts and records. Here, I have used evidence supplied by Zik himself. For South-East politicians seeking an Igbo presidency now or in the future, repeating a discredited account as settled history may win applause among the faithful. It will never carry them across the Niger.
