VANGUARD
On April 10, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Afenifere leader, lawyer, politician and activist will be 95 years. Not many of his colleagues are still around as he would readily remind you.
Those who are still alive are enjoying their rest, deservedly. But Pa Adebanjo is still in the trenches, fighting for a better Nigeria. In this exclusive interview with IKECHUKWU AMAECHI of TheNiche, the nonagenarian explains why.
You will be 95 years on April 10. No matter what anyone says, you have earned your stripes and deserve rest. Why are you still in the trenches?
I am still in the trenches because the country is not what I fought for. That is why many of you cannot have the passion that I have. I fought the colonialists that we should have self-government, we should have independence because our people could do better than the white people. And when we started the Independence struggle, we had a goal, a mission, and a lot of dreams which the founding father’s thought would lead us to our desired destination.
But unfortunately, after we had started with all the wobbling in the 1950s, we arrived at a settlement where we would live together after the London Constitutional Conference of 1954 down to 1956. That gave us the autonomy by which every region and every ethnic group can develop at its own pace. We settled for a Federal Constitution with autonomy in the federating states. We made a provision that where there is anything common to all of us, we should be sharing it on an equal basis or rotation and as a result, the question of Federal Character was put into our constitution. The question of revenue allocation was settled under a derivation basis, which is now called resource control.
Police was regionalised, local government was regionalised, education, etc. Everything that pertained to the people was in the regions. The constitution was strictly federal. The function of the Federal Government was listed separately and where there should be concurrence, residual power was vested in the regions. Any powers that were not assigned to the federal or regions at the time were given to the regions.
So, we carried on until 1966. But before then, the first move for Independence was to be in 1956 but the North said they were not ready and we waited for them until 1959 and we finally had our independence in 1960. And that was the period that Chief Obafemi Awolowo demonstrated that the black man can govern himself. All developments that he chalked up, all the miracles that he performed were within seven years – 1951/52 and 1959. The military came in 1966 and that was the beginning of our woes.
