Nigerians have been falling over themselves eulogising two of the country’s elder statesmen who died in the last one week. It is as if there is a national essay competition to determine who will pen the most moving panegyric. Citizens have been regaled with heartfelt tributes that share memories, stories and achievements of Ayo Adebanjo and Edwin Clark.
To be sure, Adebanjo and Clark – two of a kind – were all that have been said about them, and even more. They were greatness, grace and patriotism personified. And their departure at such a critical time has created a gaping void because their big shoes will be difficult to fill.
But despite their incredible achievements, both men went to their graves with huge regrets at what Nigeria had become. As Adebanjo told me on the eve of his 95th birthday: “I am still in the trenches because the country is not what I fought for.” What he and fellow compatriots fought for was a country that will work for all. That remains an illusion. If anything, the prospect of Nigeria becoming a country where equity, fairness and justice prevail is still far-fetched.
Both men were blessed with longevity. In a country where life expectancy hovers in the 50s, it takes the grace of God to become a nonagenarian. Born on April 10, 1928, Adebanjo died on Friday, February 14, 2025, less than two months from his 97th birthday. Pa Clark, who also died at 97 was only eleven months older, having been born on May 25, 1927.
In the course of my journalistic odyssey, I encountered both men but I will talk about Adebanjo here, while I leave the story of Clark, a man who saved my life in 1997, for another day.
Adebanjo who was born barely six years after the Clifford Constitution and the first legislative elections in Nigeria, lived through the finest and ugliest moments of Nigeria’s history – the constitutional conferences, struggle for independence, party politics leading to independence, the civil war, military rule, return to democracy, the struggle for the protection of democracy, and the bigger struggle of ensuring the development of Nigeria. He joined the struggle early in 1943 as a Zikist, but in 1951, he became a member of the youth wing of the Action Group, and a mentee, political disciple of Obafemi Awolowo. That became the defining moment of his life.
As a young journalist at the Independent Communications Network Limited, ICNL – publishers of TheNews/TEMPO magazine, AM News and PM News – in 1996, I could not but appreciate the significance of the Western House building on 8-10 Broad Street, Lagos. TheNews was embedded in the pro-democracy struggle and Western House was the de facto headquarters of the foremost pan-Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, and the National Democratic Coalition, NADECO.
Many of the chieftains of these two groups that were engaged in a mortal battle with the military junta of Sani Abacha, most of them lawyers, had their offices in that complex. It became a natural destination for journalists seeking for news. Ayo Adebanjo’s office was on the third floor. When you start from there and climb up to the offices of Kofoworola Bucknor-Akerele – a lawyer, who also acquired a diploma in journalism in 1962 and worked as a journalist for the BBC and VON Magazine, before becoming a deputy governor in Lagos State, and Ganiyu Olawale Dawodu, popularly known as G.O.D. – your day would have been made.
In those days, I developed a strong liking for Adebanjo because he was an interviewer’s delight, shooting from the hip. I remember doing a story in the TEMPO tabloid titled, ‘June 12: The Saints and Villains’. He was one of the ‘saints’. Once when I went to his office, he gave me a ride back to Ogba.
When I left TheNews magazine for The Diet newspaper in 1997, I never met Adebanjo again until February 9, 2022 when I sat down, once again, with the now 93-year-old man in his Lagos home for a two-hour interview. Of course, at 93, a lot had changed physically: he was slower, one step at a time; hard of hearing, but still had a razor-sharp mind. There was a whiff of frustration and he spoke about death in a way he didn’t even in those days of thunder and trepidation.
Adebanjo insisted that Nigeria was at a crossroads and needed restructuring urgently. He dismissed the 1999 Constitution as a big fraud that is at the root of all the country’s woes. “Talk about any problem you can think of in this country today and you will find out that it has to do with this Constitution,” he intoned gravely.
Unless the Constitution was changed and the country restructured first, the 2023 election would be “an exercise in futility,” he said.
“Tell me that Ayo Adebanjo is talking nonsense, it does not concern me. When it will happen, I may have gone but you will be around and you will remember that I said it… I am pitying your generation because I am done. At 94, what I am expecting now is my funeral dirge. Baba rele! That is the song they sing for an old man they are going to bury.”
But when I sat down again with him one year after on February 13, 2023, a few days before the February 25, 2023 presidential election, Adebanjo had slightly moderated his position.
Apparently, he was taken in by the dubious promises of the INEC chairman, Mahmoud Yakubu. “I am hopeful,” he said. “So far, so good. I am hopeful because of the electoral law. If they keep to it, implement it and execute it, the elections will be free, fair and credible.”
A credible election will bequeath the country with a Peter Obi presidency, he told me. And when that happens: “The first thing that Obi will do when he gets into office is to call all the ethnic groups together and agree on a Constitution. Any other thing to the contrary, there will be chaos. I have said it before and I am repeating it without any element of doubt in my mind. If for any reason, the election is scuttled or manipulated, and Obi doesn’t win, I say emphatically, that is the end of Nigeria. If we don’t enthrone fairness, equity and justice which the Obi presidency will represent, all our problems will continue.”
When I asked him if he was being harassed by the Nigerian state because of his very strong views, he smiled: “They know that I am ready for them. Most governments in this country imprisoned me. I am a jailbird. I was involved in the Awolowo treasonable felony trial. Abacha imprisoned and detained me. You remember they arrested me, they said we killed Abiola’s wife. And when we were holding a reception for Ambassador Walter Carrington in my house, they came there and broke the place… I think they have given up on me. They must be telling themselves, that old man, he will soon go.”
Besides, Adebanjo said if someone like him cannot talk about Nigeria, who else will? “I have every reason to be grateful to God. My leader – Awolowo – was only 78 years when he died. Ajasin who followed him was only 88, Adesanya who followed him was 88. My friend and colleague, Olanihun Ajayi, was 92. I will be 95 years in April 2023. Why should I not thank God? It is only the funeral dirge that I am waiting for now. If I die now and my children say, oh, the devil has done his worst, will you not laugh at them? So, anybody who is trying to attack or kill me is just wasting his time.”
Adebanjo said if Nigerians failed to vote right on February 25, 2023, when the result would come, he would be enjoying himself in the grave. Those immortal words were uttered exactly two years to the day he died.
Since his death, Nigerians have been talking about how best to immortalise him. There are suggestions that national monuments be named after him. That will be great because he deserves every honour. But for a man who never aspired to any public office – elected or appointed – changing the name of ‘River Niger’ to ‘River Ayo Adebanjo’ or even ‘Aso Rock’ to ‘Ayo Adebanjo Villa’ is immaterial. The most enduring way to immortalise him is to enthrone equity, fairness and justice by restructuring Nigeria in a way that the country works for all. That is what he lived, fought and died for. That is what will make him happy wherever he is now.
