Nigeria's foremost Federalist Chief Obafemi Awolowo said "A day will come when Nigerian Masses will merge as a force for progress and unity".

 

" A day will come when Nigerian Masses from the North and South, Christians, Muslims and Animists will merge as a force for progress and unity, and kick against rigging, corruption and tyranny."

Early life

Obafemi Awolowo was born on 6 March 1909 in Ikenne, in present-day Ogun State of Nigeria. His father was a farmer and sawyer who died when Obafemi was about seven years old. He attended various schools, and then became a teacher in Abeokuta, after which he qualified as a shorthand typist. Subsequently, he served as a clerk at the famous Wesley college, as well as a correspondent for the Nigerian Times. It was after this that he embarked on various business ventures to help raise funds to travel to the UK for further studies.

Following his education at Wesley College, Ibadan (a teachers' college) in 1927, he enrolled at the University of London as an External Student. He was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Commerce (Hons.) and the Bachelor of Laws by the University of London. He was called to the Bar by the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple on 19 November 1946.

In 1949 Awolowo founded the Nigerian Tribune, the oldest surviving private Nigerian newspaper, which he used to spread nationalist consciousness among his fellow Nigerians.

Key Achievements

Chief Obafemi Jeremiah Oyeniyi Awolowo, GCFR, (Yoruba: Ọbáfẹ́mi Awólọ́wọ̀; 6 March 1909 – 9 May 1987) was a Nigerian nationalist, political writer and statesman. A Yoruba and native of Ikenne in Ogun State of Nigeria, he started his career, like some of his notable contemporaries, as a nationalist in the Nigerian Youth Movement of which he became Western provincial secretary, and was responsible for much of the progressive social legislation that has made Nigeria a modern nation.

He was the first Leader of Government Business and Minister of Local Government and Finance, and first Premier of the Western Region under Nigeria's parliamentary system, from 1952 to 1959.

He was the official Leader of the Opposition in the federal parliament to the Balewa government from 1959 to 1963.

In addition to all these, Awolowo was the first individual in the modern era to be named Leader of the Yorubas (Yoruba: Asiwaju Omo Oodua), a title which has come over time to be conventionally ascribed to his successors as the recognised political leader of the Yoruba peoples of Nigeria.

Awolowo was Nigeria's foremost federalist. In his Path to Nigerian Freedom (1947) – the first systematic federalist manifesto by a Nigerian politician – he advocated federalism as the only basis for equitable national integration and, as head of the Action Group, he led demands for a federal constitution, which was introduced in the 1954 Lyttleton Constitution, following primarily the model proposed by the Western Region delegation led by him.

Awolowo pioneered free primary education in Nigeria in the Western Region and also free health care. Although Awolowo failed to win the 1979 and 1983 presidential elections of the Second Republic, he polled the second highest number of votes and his polices of free education and limited free health were carried out throughout all the states controlled by his party, the Unity Party of Nigeria.

Awolowo is best remembered for his remarkable integrity, ardent nationalism, principled and virile opposition, and dogged federalistic convictions. His party was the first to move the motion for Nigeria's independence in the federal parliament and he obtained internal self-government for the Western Region in 1957.

He is credited with coining the name 'naira' for the Nigerian standard monetary unit and helped to finance the Civil War and preserve the federation without borrowing.

He built the Liberty Stadium in Ibadan, the first of its kind in Africa; established the WNTV, the first television station in Africa;

He erected the first skyscraper in tropical Africa: the Cocoa House (still the tallest in Ibadan) and ran a widely-respected civil service in the Western Region.