Adegoke Adelabu Penkelemesi: The Lion of the West
If there
was a politician who understood the psychology of his people, it was Adegoke
Adelabu. He was a master in the art and science of political psychology. And
like the consummate politician he was, he spoke the language of the people. He
was a compound polyglot. His Yoruba was flawless. His English was impeccable.
Adelabu was not the one to mix Yoruba with English in the same sentence.
Though small in stature, he was intellectually a
giant. With his brilliance, he dazzled and dwarfed his peers. According to Bola
Ige, Adelabu was “a short man, but with boundless energy, he always seemed to
be on the move, he went on foot from village to village. He dressed and
appeared like a rustic villager. He never seemed to smile, not to talk of
laugh. His Yoruba was devastating in pithiness and sarcasm. He knew how to
leave every audience with a phrase that could not be forgotten.”
Coming from Chief Bola Ige, who himself was a
wordsmith, that was an eloquent testimonial. If any evidence of Adelabu’s
mastery of language is required, you need look no further than Penkelemesi and
Ebullition. The final journey of
the grassroots politician did not start in 1958 when he breathed his last. It
actually started three years earlier in 1955 when Adelabu was appointed the
Minister of Natural Resources and Social Services. The appointment was indeed a
giant leap for Adelabu, who started life from a weaver’s shed.
His
Lebanese friends, the Younan family, saw his appointment as a golden
opportunity to market the Penkelemesi brand. It was decided that textile
materials bearing Adelabu’s image and name be produced and sold. It was
expected that the cloth would also serve a subtle campaign strategy for Adelabu
who was aiming to become the premier of the West. When the first shipment arrived,
neither Adelabu nor the Younan family, expected what happened. They had
expected sale to be slow and gradual. To their pleasant surprise, the
Penkelemesi fabric became an overnight bestseller. It became the social
uniform, not only in Ibadan but throughout the Western Region. According to Iya
Agba, textile merchants were using the cloth to sell other brands. You must buy
another brand before penkelemesi fabric could be sold to you. It was no longer family uniform (Aso Ebi) but it
became a global uniform (Aso Ilupeju). It was used for weddings, naming
ceremonies, funerals, housewarming and every form of social function. Tailors
were praying daily for Adelabu. There was no tailor in Ibadan that did not get
one or two yards to sew.
The Younan family did not wait for the stock to
run out before the second shipment was ordered. It also recorded massive sale.
This time around, Idumota traders and Onitsha merchants joined the bandwagon.
The Lion of the West was the toast of the moment. He was not only a successful
politician; he had also demonstrated that he was business savvy.
With the
1956 elections approaching, and with his rising political profile, Adelabu was
sure of victory at the polls. He was a master strategist. As a populist leader,
he gave people what they wanted. In areas of Ibadan where the indigenes were in
the majority, Adelabu ensured that natives were the candidates of his party. Everyone
knows him as the Political Genius, fielded non-natives. It was a strategy that
never failed him. He was confident of becoming the premier. His business partners were
also confident. It was decided that in addition to the penkelemesi cloth
already in the market, a special cloth should be ordered for his inauguration
as the premier. The cloth was indeed special. It showed Adegoke Adelabu as the
Premier holding the keys to the Western House of Assembly! It was going to be a
hot cake.
To finance the project, Albert Younan obtained a
loan from African Continental Bank. ACB was one of the big indigenous banks in
Nigeria then. The bank became distressed in 1991 and was taken over by the
Central Bank of Nigeria. It was later revived and was one of the banks that
formed the present day Spring Bank. The bank even had a football club. I can
see elderly people reading this nodding as they remember ACB FC of Lagos!
Adelabu
had however not taken into consideration the political wizardry of Obafemi
Awolowo. As fate would have it, it was Awolowo who became the Premier. Adelabu
became the Leader of the Opposition. It is the Premier that would hold the key
to the House of Assembly and not the Leader of the Opposition. The management of ACB also wanted to know what will happened about the
cloth they have used their money to manufacture. More importantly, the bankers
wanted to know how the Younans were going to repay the facility. Yet the cloth
could not be sold as Adelabu did not become the premier. Albert Younan found himself in a financial jeopardy.
The bank was writing to him everyday demanding repayment of the loan. The cloth
was in the warehouse, unsold. Adelabu was in the House, but not as the premier.
This was not an ordinary matter. Whatever made the husband to wear his wife’s
dress to the market place has gone beyond ‘I hope there’s no problem’.
On March
24, 1958, Younan sent a desperate message to Penkelemesi. It was a plea for
help. The bank was on his neck. He had been given a final deadline by the bank.
Adelabu decided to assist his friend by following him to the head office of the
bank in Lagos to plead for further credit. Adelabu woke up very early the following day. In
addition to the meeting with ACB in Lagos, he also had some issues to discuss
with Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh. He decided to use the same stone to kill two
birds. He had just finished his morning prayers when he was informed that
Albert Younan was outside. He offer his family farewell and promised to be back
before evening.
The journey to Lagos was uneventful. The
management of the Bank was happy to receive a politician with the stature of
Adelabu. He was assured that his request would be considered. Younan was happy.
Adelabu was happy. He went off to see Okotie-Eboh.
It was on the return journey to Ibadan that the
unthinkable happened. It was on a straight stretch of road between Ode-Remo and
Iperu. Albert Younan was the one driving the ash-grey Peugeot saloon car.
Adelabu was seated beside him. Two of Adelabu’s aides were also in the car.
Without warning, the Peugeot collided head on
with a light yellow Austin which was on its way to Lagos. The force of the
collision was such that the Austin somersaulted and came to rest upside down
facing back the way it had come. The Peugeot cracked under the impact. It burst
into flames.
Travellers who witnessed the accident rushed to
the aid of the victims. They successfully extinguished the fire. Of the four
passengers in the Peugeot car, only the driver, Albert Younan, was alive.
Though he was injured, he was still breathing.
The driver of the yellow Austin was unharmed. It
was as if he was not the one who drove the car. His two passengers were however
not as lucky. The two Britons in the car, who were representatives of the Royal
Exchange Assurance Company, sustained slight injuries. All of them, the dead
and the injured, were quickly rushed to Shagamu Hospital. It was at the
hospital that it was discovered that Penkelemesi, the Lion of the West, was one
of the dead.
It was
late in the evening that the news reached Ibadan. It started as a rumour. No
one believed it. It could not have been Adelabu. Penkelemesi was a survivor. He
was a fighter. He would never allow death to take him. Even if he was involved
in an accident, the Lone Star would be unscathed.. If Sango, the god of thunder
strikes at Araba tree and dismantles Iroko tree, he must respect the baobab
tree (Bi Sango ba n pa Araba, bi o n fa Iroko ya, bi ti igi nla ko). Adelabu
was baobab. He was beyond the reach of Sango. It was not until the following
morning when his death became the headline news that reality dawned on his
teeming followers. Tragedy strikes screamed the Defender newspaper. Adelabu Is
Dead announced the Daily Times.
Anthony Enahoro, as the Leader of the Western
House of Assembly, proposed an extraordinary adjournment as a tribute to the
dead Leader of the Opposition. In his moving tribute, he said: “We did not agree with him or his methods, and he too,
did not agree with us or our policies. Nevertheless, he was a tireless and
doughty fighter who stood firmly by the things he cherished, and it may be that
when the history of these times comes to be written, that is one attribute of
Alhaji Adelabu which will be remembered better than any other.”
Chief
Obafemi Awolowo saluted the man who had keenly desired to take his place as
Premier of the West. According to him, “Alhaji Adegoke Adelabu was, in his
lifetime, and ever since he entered into politics, a fighter first and last,
with all the characteristics of a fighter. He was fearless, formidable,
forthright, often caustic, and uncompromising.” It was a day no one who
witnessed it would ever forget. Lanrewaju Adepoju, the redoubtable Yoruba poet,
in a recent album, observed that Ibadan had never mourned anyone the way it
mourned Adelabu. More than 75,000 mourners assembled to pay their final homage
to the People’s Hero. According to an eyewitness account, the crowd was so
dense that that it took three hours for the funeral procession of over fifty vehicles
to move from Molete to Oke Oluokun where he was to be buried.
Kingsley Ozumba Mbadiwe presented a coffin to
the family on behalf of his political party, the NCNC. It must have been a
special coffin. I remember that one verbal abuse that was popular in the West
when I was growing up was to describe someone as having ‘long head like
Adelabu’s coffin’ (Olori gboro bi posi Adelabu!)
Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Leader of NCNC, was not
physically present at the funeral but he was represented by top notches of the
party. He later came to pay his last respects to his very distinguished
lieutenant. At the graveside, Azikiwe announced that NCNC would provide
scholarships for all of Adelabu’s 15 children. He also donated 100 pounds to
the family. Adelabu was not
mourned by only the NCNC and the AG. On behalf of the Northern People Congress,
Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello and Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa sent two
top Ministers: Muhammadu Ribadu and Inuwa Wada to pay condolences and pray at the
grave of a fellow Muslim.
Adegoke Adelabu was dead and buried. But the
Lion of West did not die alone. His supporters took to the streets. They
paraded through the city and stoned public buildings, including Mapo Hall and
the courts at Oke Are. By evening of that day, three people had been killed in
various parts of Ibadan.
It was
speculated that Adelabu was shot by his political opponents. An editor of a
newspaper claimed that he saw Adelabu’s body riddled with bullet holes and that
the car he was travelling in was deliberately crashed to make it look like an
accident. This claim was however without basis. Unknown to many at the time,
Adelabu’s corpse did not arrive Ibadan until late in the morning of March 26
because a post-mortem was being conducted to determine the cause of his death.
The autopsy was witnessed by Chief Joseph M. Johnson, one of Adelabu’s friends.
Johnson was the first and the only non-indigene to serve as the Chairman of
Ibadan Council. Adelabu died on
Tuesday. He was buried on Wednesday. By Friday, all hell broke loose. Reports
of murders and violence began to come in by Friday evening. One account put the
number of death at sixteen. Another account sighted by Onigegewura recorded
eighteen riot deaths. All the victims were said to be members or supporters of
the Action Group. By March 30, more than 300 people had been arrested. Many of
them were taken to Ilesha and Abeokuta prisons since Ibadan prison was already
full. It was also speculated that
Younan had crashed the car deliberately in order to commit suicide as a result
of his financial challenges. This was however denied by Albert Younan who
insisted that there was no special cloth printed for the 1956 election and
therefore no financial loss. He claimed that he went with Adelabu to Lagos for
unrelated business.
The family of Adegoke Adelabu did not appear to
be convinced. The family filed a civil suit against Younan and Sons Limited and
the Royal Exchange Assurance Company. Their claim was for the sum of one
hundred thousand pounds for negligence of the two drivers which led to the
death of their breadwinner. The trial judge was My Lord Justice Samuel
Quashie-Idun, a Ghanaian. His Lordship later served as a Justice of the Supreme
Court of Nigeria. In his judgment,
Justice Quashie-Idun held that no case had been made against the insurance
company. His Lordship however found Younan and Sons liable. The firm was
ordered to pay 6,030 pounds as damages to Adelabu’s children and 350 pounds as
costs. Younan and Sons appealed
the judgment. Their appeal was successful. The Federal Supreme Court reversed
the decision of the trial court on the ground that the plaintiffs who sued as
Administrators of the estate of Adegoke Adelabu had no capacity to bring the
suit. At the time, the Federal Supreme
Court was not the final Court of appeal for Nigeria. The apex court was the
Privy Council in Britain. Adelabu’s family appealed to the Privy Council. The
appeal was pending when the parties agreed to settle out of court. The firm of
Younan and Sons agreed to pay the family of the Lion of the West the sum of
3,000 pounds.
On the political front, a bye-election was
conducted to fill the seat hitherto occupied by Adelabu. Adeoye Adisa, a young
lawyer who had returned to Ibadan two years earlier from his law studies in
Britain emerged the winner of the bye-election.
Adegoke Adelabu died more than 59 years ago. He
died at a tender age. He was 43. He was however able to cram into his short
life what many that lived up to a century could only dream of achieving. At the
time of his death, he was holding three critical posts. He was the Leader of
the Opposition in the Western House of Assembly. He was the Chairman of the
NCNC Western Working Committee. He was also the chairman of the powerful
NCNC-Mabolaje Grand Alliance. Almost six decades after his last breath, his
footprints are still indelible on the political landscape.
In recognition of his achievements as a
nationalist, politician, orator and mass mobilizer, the government of Oyo State
in 2016 listed his Oke-Oluokun residence as one of the tourist sites in Oyo
State.
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