We open with the immortal words of Winston Churchill respecting the unassailable trajectory of Afenifere: “The truth is incontrovertible; panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.” (Substitute Afenifere for “it.”)
When at its founding in 1951, the Action Group as a new political party sought relevance among the populace of the Western Region respecting an impending general election in the Region, the creative interpretation of the policy and programmes of the party found an apt rendition in the Yoruba epigrammatic phraseology, Afenifere.
Chief Augustus Meredith Adisa Akinloye, a chieftain of the Action Group, rendered in mellifluous verbiage the poise and historical mission of the new party in crisp, memorable and insightful Yoruba idiomatic expression. He pronounced “Afenifere” as the Yoruba interpretation of Action Group given its social welfare tendency.
Afenifere is the quintessence of brotherly love or the recognition of the community’s cognate social commonality. The one who seeks goodness for his fellow man or the one who desires the good things of life for himself and for others is Afenifere. It is the philosophy of social welfarism encapsulated in an all-encompassing phrasal verb.
At Action Group campaign rallies, the people were informed that their gathering was in furtherance of the ethos of Afenifere. The name Afenifere was thereby co-terminously substituted for Action Group especially among the masses of the people. Afenifere thus became the word-picture name for Action Group in the Western Region of Nigeria.
Action Group as Afenifere outstandingly won the parliamentary election into the Western Region House of Assembly and was invited to form the government. Chief Obafemi Awolowo who had been Leader of Government Business became the Premier of Western Nigeria. The Region moved into a season of spectacular economic boom aided by a peculiarly deft handling of her fortunes. Production of cocoa and rubber, for instance, tripled since after the recession of the 1930s and would multiply fourfold again by the mid 1950s.
The manufacturing sector was expanding even more rapidly. Dozens of new plants were under construction especially in machine shops, chemicals, brick yards, planing and plywood mills. Assuredly, a new and emerging elite class of lawyers, doctors and merchants participated in the development and by the turn of a new decade, many citizens had acquired considerable wealth.
Nevertheless, the foresighted government deemed the Region as only a fiefdom of some moneyed interests. Even during the halcyon years, the Region’s wealth was ill-distributed, the government noted. A radical education programme that would be free and compulsory was conceived as the elixir for democratising access to wealth and for freeing the ordinary people from the shackles of poverty and lack.
Leading politicians, developers, contractors and business owners commonly thwarted or pooh-poohed the government’s social welfare initiatives particularly the free education programme. Fearful of their loss of influence, a number of professional men and merchants mounted strident campaigns of calumny against the government’s anti-feudal onslaught.
The government soldiered on convinced it was pursuing a revolution; and so a new socio-economic environment dawned even as palpable indices of a liberal or welfarist economy were unleashed and as they became the cornerstone of a government’s fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy.
Even as difficulties generally arise in attempts to ascertain the authorship of socio-political programmes particularly in the absence of obvious evidence, a definite traditional manner may be of assistance and may make detection possible somewhat. Examples of distraction are abundant in freely mouthed catch-call phrases or in the activities of the torrid pamphleteers or propagandists who befuddle the environment.
However, in the history of the promotion of authentic socio-political programmes in Nigeria, Afenifere holds the ace or the patent for a number of welfarist socio-economic policies exemplified, for instance, in the propagation of the values of free education, free health, rural integration, gainful employment, etc.
Perhaps, no socio-political plank in Nigeria has impinged on our consciousness or has excited our admiration for the values of dedication to cherished ideals and goals more than Afenifere – the pan-Nigeria socio-political platform. In a society where shifting compromises and mutually-conflicting philosophies are lumped together just to score some cheap debating or political point, Afenifere has stood out as a genuine recreation of a sincere search for the solution to the myriad of problems besetting Nigeria.
For 70 years on, Afenifere has adhered firmly to her foundational strategy in precise observation, discipline and clarity of vision. She has thereby positioned herself as the ruling socio-political ethic in Nigeria. Other groups espousing similar or identical values like her are dimly outlined against the towering stature of Afenifere.
Stripped bare even of all the trappings of political brinkmanship, she stands out like a statue in an attitude that is brimming with hope and, as the occasion calls for it, foretelling of harm, danger or peril as things are done perversely. One is left wondering if Afenifere’s founding fathers are of the same stock with us given today’s general repudiation of the values of forthrightness, sincerity, doggedness, valour and integrity.
Afenifere draws deeply from the sublime chacter traits of her founders – accountability, work and ethics, merit, faith, human sympathy, etc. A product of the necessary responses to the contentious provisions of the Richards Constitution, Afenifere was the effective, efficient vehicle. Chief Awolowo’s effort in this regard is notable. He had envisioned a virile political platform for confronting the challenges of agriculture, health, education, the economy, employment, social insecurity, etc.
Awo encapsulated the envisaged achievement of all these goals in what he insightfully referred to as progressive democracy and responsible leadership. The Afenifere ideology has become household particularly in South-west Nigeria such that every political party, no matter its colouration, has laid claim to and promised the pursuit of the Afenifere programmes, if voted into power.
This situation has however occasioned, for most times, the unfortunate emergence of all manner of political merchandising masquerading as belonging to the Awo creed or school of thought. They have in many cases taken over the stage manifesting revisionism, charlatanism, nihilism, turncoat-ism, etc. Thankfully, the people are not deceived for long. They soon identify the con men for who they are. Having lived through a glorious period in history, the people are apt to recognise signs, symptoms and symbols that are inconsistent with what they know or had experienced.
Afenifere as an unyielding advocate of a truly federal constitution for Nigeria, has been a very active and constructive participant in all the patriotic efforts, gestures, conferences, etc which have taken place since 1953 and which efforts along with those of others with identical clarity of mind and single-minded purpose have culminated not only in the attainment of independence but in the production of the 1960/63 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. That self-same Constitution has been self-gratifyingly violated and replaced with a fraudulent copy thereof by the military.
Afenifere has valiantly been in the patriotic vanguard for a return to the provisions of a truly federal constitution. Afenifere’s campaign for restructuring must be organically linked to her ceaseless battles for the emergence of a constitution in the mould of the 1960/63 constitution with all the incidents of classical federalism.
It is the case that the mystique of Afenifere is ironically her Archiles heels. Loved by many as the vanguard of the people’s cherished hopes and aspirations, Afenifere’s mores are popularly jealously guarded and sustained. Notable vicious assaults have however been directed at her by her detractors just to contaminate her foundational ethos or even to extinguish her undying flame.
To the eternal glory of her truthful and sincere thrust, all the attempts against her soul have been futile and the perpetrators consigned to the dunghill of political irrelevance.
We conclude with the challenge thrown at every Nigerian patriot by Chief Obafemi Awolowo at a political rally held in Minna, the Niger State capital where he said:
“Only five out of every one thousand Nigerians enjoy the good things of life. The remaining 995 are wallowing in abject poverty in spite of Nigeria’s oil boom. Everything goes wrong in Nigeria. The whole country is sick; all our towns and villages are completely neglected and the vast majority of our people are living in shelters.
It is now the duty of every right thinking Nigerian to work towards putting the situation right.”
Awo is still speaking to our beleaguered situation.
This essay is in honour of Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Leader of Afenifere, who undeniably epitomises the Afenifere persona of forthrightness, fairness, justice, equity and egalitarianism. His life and times are a challenge to all of us left behind to valiantly continue the struggle for a better society.