PIPPED AT THE POST

Did you know that the press war of 1941 between the Pilot and the Daily Servicenewspapers stemmed from the fallout of the resignation of the Nigerian Youth Movement President Dr. Kofoworola Adekunle Abayomi (1896-1979) from the Legislative Council of the colony to pursue further studies abroad?

Samuel Akinsanya, aka General Saki (1898-1984), a Nigerian trade unionist, nationalist and one of the founders of the NYM based in Lagos during the colonial era, got pipped at the post when he sought to be the NYM candidate for the vacant seat. General Saki competed against the distinguished journalist and first editor of the Daily Times of Nigeria, Ernest Ikoli (1893-1960). By the way, Ikoli served as Editor under DTN co-founder and chairman, Sir Adeyemo Alakija KBE (1884-1952), a distinguished lawyer, legislator, business entrepreneur and maternal uncle of Sir Adetokunbo Ademola KBE, GCON (1906-1993).

Akinsanya, an Ijebu, was Vice-President of the party while Ikoli, an Ijaw, had recently been elected president to replace Abayomi. In the primary election of the NYM, Akinsanya polled 108 votes, Ikoli received 60 and a third aspirant, the Nigerian medical genius - the famous Dr. Akinola Maja (a known mentor of Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, and co-founder of the defunct National Bank in 1933) scored 37. However, Akinsanya would win the battle, but lose the war when the central committee of the movement which had hitherto found itself in a cleft stick, with the support of people like Hezekiah Oladipo Davies (1905-1989), Obafemi Awolowo (1909-1987), Samuel Ladoke Akintola (1910-1966) and a few others, and which had the right to review the results finally presented Ernest Ikoli, generally perceived as the knight in shinning armour capable of having the ball at the his feet in the coming election, as the movement's candidate.

Though, this proved a rude awakening for Akinsanya who first kept up appearances by immediately congratulating Mr. Ikoli, he would later renege. Supported by Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904-1996), an important political personality who joined the NYM bandwagon in 1936, bringing with him a large followership, Akinsanya, like a bull at a gate, chose to play the ethnic card by claiming that he had been rejected only because the dominant Lagos Yorubas would not accept the nomination of an Ijebu Yoruba. Akinsanya promptly resigned from the NYM and ran as an independent candidate, but lost to Ikoli. As a result, a press war ensued between the Pilot (supporting Akinsanya) and the Daily Service (backing Ikoli to spite Akinsanya, who happened to be one of the seven subscribers to the Service Press Limited, which only three years earlier had acquired the assets and liabilities of the Daily Service newspaper).

As aforementioned, the loss of Akinsanya in the election led to his exit from the movement. Azikiwe also left the NYM, both men decided to peddle their own canoes and took away most of their supporters. In their attempts to describe this resulting feud as the birth of politics of bitterness; a major focal point of electoral disputes and the ominous role they played in destabilizing Nigeria, many analysts have continued to attribute it as a contributing catalyst to the enmity that exist between some ethnic groups in the country.

Later that year, providence would more than compensate for this loss, as General Saki rose from the ashes of his defeat to Ikoli. To prove that truly charity begins at home, the good people of Ìṣarà-Rẹ́mọ decided to kill the fatted calf for Akinsanya (their prodigal son) by enthroning him as their chiefly ruler - the Ọdẹmọof Ìṣarà, an ancient town in the present-day Rẹ́mọ North Local Government Area in Ògùn State, and the headquarters of the local government area (LGA). This more than compensated for everything.

Described, due to its defensive topography, as " Ìṣarà afọtamọdì, kógun má wọ̀lú," which roughly translates into "Ìṣaràof the impregnable city walls," and with an area of 199 km² and a population of 59,911 at the 2006 census, Ìṣarà -Rẹ́mọ is the 6th largest town in Ogun state following Abeokuta, Ijebu Ode, ijebu Igbo, Sagamu and Ago Iwoye, and is almost exactly halfway between Lagos and Ibadan, very large metropolitan cities that have strongly influenced the history of Nigeria.”

Akinsanya, a founding member of the Action Group party in 1951, would eleven years later become a member of the Western House of Chiefs from 1952 until 1961. He was appointed a minister without portfolio in the government of the Western Region from 1952 to 1955. Walking a fine line between being fearlessly funny and being courageously critical, and at the same time feeling very angry at the injustice of forcing the allegiance and support of Yoruba chiefs for the Nigerian National Democratic Party Government in Western Nigeria during the First Republic, Oba Akinsanya lambasted S. L. Akintola, Premier of the Western Region and his deputy, Remi Fani-Kayode (1921-1995), describing the duo as "misguided small boys" whose act of treachery against the Action Group stunk to the high heavens. The Akintola government had sworn to punish Yoruba chiefs who failed to toe the official NNDP line in the West; another classic example of how African leaders will go to any length to force their own people against their wish to support the governing party. Oba Akinsanya maintained that there was a world of difference between one's thoughts and one's actions (Bọ́ọ rọ́wọ́ọ̀mi, ọọ̀ rínúù mi; Dẹmọ n'mọwà). He reminded everyone about the futility of railroading and decreeing such things as allegiance and loyalty, and offered that they were better earned, not forced.


Peasant farmers, however, attacked Oba Akinsanya in November of 1968 for allegedly supporting the aggressive tax collection policy of the military regime of General Robert Adeyinka Adebayo (b. 1928), who was Governor of Western Region during the revolt of Agbekoya Parapo (United Farmers Reject Suffering) between 1968 and 1969 over taxation. The colonial government of Nigeria had established local commodity depots during the 1950s in several parts of Nigeria used as exchange storage for goods which the government had interest in buying off the peasants. Ranked the world's second largest producer of cocoa then, the regional government of Western Nigeria was not only determined to raise its tax revenues by regulating the sale of the crop by farmers using state-regulated agricultural cooperatives, otherwise called marketing boards, but also subjected majority of the products planned for sale to a rigorous “process of grading, examination, and sometimes bargaining” ahead of purchase. This was what gave birth to Agbekoya Parapo, a trade union of sort to fight for the farmers when government examination yardsticks proved arbitrary leading to a chunk of harvested cocoa being rendered as unfit for sale, thereby making their losses huge, their complaints about neglected road infrastructure notwithstanding.

Marching on Mapo Hall, the seat of the regional government, the peasants hollered: “ọ̀kẹ́ mẹ́fàla ó san! ọ̀kẹ́ mẹ́fàla ó san”- meaning that no farmer would pay government beyond $1. 10. Then all hell broke loose. Although many concluded that the revolt that arose as a result may have enjoyed some concatenation of political catalysis, such as the imprisonment of former Premier of Western Region and Nigeria's Leader of Opposition Chief Obafemi Awolowo for treasonable felony, the coup of 15th January and counter-coup of 29th July 1966, and then ongoing Nigeria-Biafra War, which had combined to burgeon and escalate the volatility of Nigeria's political space, never in the history of the region has political riots organized by the peasants known to be this successful and effective. Not even their “more militant tactics during an epidemic of swollen-shoot disease on cocoa plantations during the 1950s,” when they formed themselves into the Mayegun League (translated as Life Abundance League). This 1968-1969 collective action of the peasants simply became a reference point wherever and whenever the success of popular uprisings against the policies of authoritarian regimes were either being reexamined or reordered. After government tactics of “force for force, fire for fire” to curb further violence failed, it took the Head of State General Yakubu Gowon to effect the release of Chief Awolowo who personally negotiated a ceasefire with the Agbekoya leaders, assuring them of government readiness to implement their demands. Although Oba Akinsanya survived the putsch, some chiefly rulers and Local Government administrators were not so lucky. The flat tax rate was reduced at once. Price of cocoa soared and road rehabilitation commenced in earnest.

Born on 1st August, 1898 in Ìṣarà, the late Oba Akinsanya attended the Anglican School in Ìṣarà, then worked as a shorthand typist and writer from 1916 to 1931. Around 1923, a number of prominent young members such as Adetokunbo Ademola, Olatunji Caxton-Martins, H.A. Subair, R.A. Coker, and Akinsanya got together to found the Lagos Study Circle, which mainly sponsored important public issues, essay-writing, lectures, debates and book reviews. The group later metamorphosed into a forum for discussing political issues when members agreed that it still had an important role to play in a democratic political system.

Akinsanya emerged the organizing Secretary of the Nigerian Produce Traders Union (N.P.T.U.) and President of the Nigerian Motor Transport Union between 1932 and 1940. As mentioned earlier, he was one of the founders of the Lagos Youth Movement in 1934, but as varied members entered the organization, it developed in 1936 into the Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM); a political action group with a nationalistic flavor and outlook. Other founding members were Dr. James Churchill Vaughan (1893-1937), Ernest Ikoli, and H.O. Davies. Akinsanya was appointed the movement's first General Secretary and later he became Vice President. The controversy which arose from the standard of education or better still, the lackluster colonial higher education policy to be offered by the newly founded Yaba College proved to be the initial stimulus for establishing the Nigerian Youth Movement, but the NYM was to grow into Nigeria's first genuinely nationalist organization, the capable opposition to the NNDP of Herbert Macaulay (1864-1946).

In 1937, Cadbury Brothers led some expatriate firms to form a buying agreement, a cartel to control the price paid to producers of cocoa thereby cutting out the middlemen. Akinsanya led the N.P.T.U., which represented these middlemen, and in the process launched an effective public attack on the agreement. Several protest meetings were as a result organized by the union which threatened to hold up transport of the crop, or in the extreme destroy the crop completely. In attempting to defuse the crisis to its own advantage, the colonial government supported opponents of Akinsanya and N.P.T.U, an action which blew over eventually, as cocoa prices soared the following year.

Ìṣarà-Rẹ́mọ, where Akinsanya reigned as Ọdẹmọ-Ìṣarà for four decades and three years (1941-1984), was said to be founded by a man called Prince, an Ife hunter, who wandered into the hinterlands and found the site suitable due to its defensive topography. Having decided to settle there, Prince took the title Ọdẹ-ọmọ, which has since been contracted into Ọdẹmọand is still in use as the royal office of the Oba. Since then, the Obas of Isara have received their official emblems and crowns from Ile -Ife. A town of predominantly farmers and hunters, Ìṣarà-Rẹ́mọ's men (pacifists of the first order) have not been known to take part in any major wars except as peacemakers, prompting what it is called - "Ìṣarà, city of joy."

In an ancient traditional rotation which affords each of its present-day seven royal households (namely Igan, Rokodo-Erinsiba, Ogunsere, Gbuko, Afonlade, Poke and Ayoledoye) to take a turn with having its leader serve as Oba of the city, the people of Ìṣaràdespite being Christians and Moslems in nearly equal proportions, have remained connected to their traditional origins, as they still practice annually the Égúngún, Orò, Agẹmọand other traditional celebrations.

Notably, the most prominent among Ìṣaràsons is writer, playwright and poet, Prof. Wole Soyinka (b. 1934), who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Tuesday 16th October, 1986. Precisely three days later Friday 19th October, Dele Giwa, Newswatch Editor-Chief, was cut down in mid-passage which put-paid to all planned events to celebrate Soyinka's award, causing the Nobel Laureate to remark, albeit with a somewhat feeling of deep sadness, that “this assassination has put ashes in our mouths.”

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Articles by Ajiroba Yemi Kotun