‘To suggest that we all took an oath of secrecy is arrant nonsense. We never took any oath. We never planned a coup’

There were two different cases. So, she appeared first. I was popular as a politician before becoming a lawyer. When we got home, I told Bola Ige, ‘See what Tinuke did today!’

By early 1962, things were looking up. I had my own apartment at Oke-Ado (the house was owned by Mr. E. B. Osibo, my former teacher), a beautiful place where I called home, where I was preparing for my wife — away in England rounding off her studies in nursing, with two children (Adeola, barely two years old, and Obafemi, named after the leader, then just a few months in the world).

I didn’t bargain for this level of treachery and hatred, this horrendous animosity and destructive campaign against good governance and accountability.

My law practice in Ibadan was short-lived. I didn’t spend quite a year there.

Rumblings had been going on between Chief Awolowo and Chief Akintola. (Akintola was Premier, and Awo, Leader of Opposition).

 Mrs. Awolowo was a trader, factory agent and distributor for several firms in Ibadan, including Coca-Cola, long before her husband became Premier. During the crisis between Awolowo and Akintola however, many people suggested erroneously that the cause of disagreement between both of them was because Mrs Awolowo did not want to relinquish distributorship to Mrs Akintola. They had thought this was part of the perks of office. The estranged relationship between both of them deepened.

Meanwhile, after the federal election, there was agitation for the Action Group (AG) to work with the Northern People’s Congress (NPC). This argument pitched the party into two camps.

Awo said there was no invitation from the party and posed, ‘Do you want us to beg to apply?’ He now sent Ayo Rosiji (who was one of those agitating that the AG should work with the NPC) to go and discuss terms with them.

While this was going on, Akintola was organising an insurrection against Awolowo (because there were complaints that Akintola was not implementing party policies; administering Western Region with many unpopular decisions).

It must be noted, however, that, ab initio, Akintola was not Awolowo’s choice to succeed him as Premier of Western Region. His choice was either Rotimi Williams or Gabriel Akin-Deko.

His view was that Akintola couldn’t run a government. That he could be a deputy but not capable of being a leader in a government. But the party leaders at a caucus meeting didn’t agree with Awolowo.

When he was defeated, Awo had to yield and agree that Akintola should become Premier. This was after the 1959 federal elections.

The people  (Doherty,  Maja and  Gbadamosi,  among others) who had worked with Awo in the cabinet had ruled that Akintola should be the choice of Premier.

Chief Awolowo was overwhelmed. He had to obey the decision of the party.

Akintola was a darling of the party leaders. He was very friendly and cordial. The only problem was his over-ambition. He was a good deputy. I knew this because I served under him. He was carried away by ambition.

When his father died, I organised the funeral reception. At that time I was Organising Secretary for the party in Remo Division, and he got permission from Chief Awolowo that I should come and supervise his reception. So, they were pals. He was also chairman at my wedding reception in London.

But the point of departure from Chief Awolowo was his ambition and disloyalty. He wanted the AG to go into alliance with the NPC. But Chief Awolowo said, ‘How can we? What have we got in common? We haven’t got the same ideology and our manifestoes are different.’

There was no meeting point. All the rancour that existed between their wives (Awolowo’s and Akintola’s) had nothing to do with it as claimed by people. It was all bunkum. Their quarrel was purely ideological.

So, when it got to a point that people were saying the NPC wanted to work with us, but the leader would not allow it, Chief Awolowo now said, ‘Do you want us to write an application to them to admit us?’ He now mandated Ayo Rosiji and one other person to go and talk to the NPC. They came back and reported to the party. And Chief Awolowo said, ‘Dare to be a Daniel.’

So, by the time the AG crisis started, and people were resigning from the party in droves, it was such a shock for Chief Awolowo. People from the periphery like Benue and other places, who were disloyal to the party, he now expelled from the party. Since then, there was no shock for Chief Awolowo.

It was because the NPC was in government and the NCNC had formed an alliance with them that Akintola and others wanted us to also join the government so that we would benefit from it.

It is important to say that those who criticise Awolowo for not willing to work with the government at the centre should realise that he had even offered to serve under Azikiwe. I was one of those who believed Akintola should be Premier until he canvassed for us to join the Northern People’s Congress.

He believed AG should work with NPC instead of NCNC. The NPC was however conservative, while the AG was very progressive. All NPC activities were anti-people. They ran a fiefdom, with the Emir deciding everything, and ruling through the Dongaris.

After Akintola became Premier, he took certain unpopular decisions which made the party unpopular. Meanwhile, there were internal wranglings. For instance, when Awo said he wanted to tour Western Region to know how acceptable the policies of Action Group were, Akintola offered to follow him. Awo refused.

In the process, they called a meeting at Oke-Ado to consider whether or not to work with the Northern People’s Congress where some strong party member like Adeyemi Lawson spoke.

We agreed that it was impossible to work with people who had not invited us.

Then, the rumour came that Chief Awolowo was organising a coup. I couldn’t fathom why anyone would come up with such spurious and spiteful allegation capable of terminating lives and making dreams blow up in smoke – allegation of the gravest magnitude, of stockpiling arms and ammunition and training dissidents to overthrow a democratic government.

There was nothing like a coup. To suggest that we all took an oath of secrecy is arrant nonsense. We never took any oath. We never planned a coup. There was utmost loyalty to the leadership of Action Group.

Of course, the Action Group was regarded as a cult by our opponents because of the unanimity with which we (as members) spoke on national issues. But that was all. The point was that the internal democracy within the party made people think it was a cult.

Whenever I thought about the scenarios that played out, I likened the drama to a farcical play meant to entertain — a Hubert Ogunde masterpiece, a fictional portrayal. But this farce was real.

The February 24, 1966 coup which took place in Ghana and  ousted  from  power  the  Convention  People’s  Party (CPP) led by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, who was fondly called

‘Osagyefo’ (the saviour) was a turning point in the history of that country. It also abruptly terminated our exile in Ghana.

A few days after, Gen. Roy Ankrah, who came into office as a result of the coup, sent his soldiers to collect me and my colleague, Samuel Goomsu Ikoku, from our different locations and deposited us at the Usherford Prison in Accra.

By the time of this ‘unholy visitation,’ our other colleague, James Aluko, with whom I was sharing an apartment, was not around.

Recall that the three of us had ‘fled from the law’ to Ghana in 1962 at the beginning of the treasonable felony trials in Nigeria. We were there for about four years before our repatriation to Nigeria in 1966 and landing in Lagos from where we were taken by train to Kaduna and driven straight to Kaduna Prisons.

Our journey into exile became prophetic when those who stayed around were tried by Justice G.S. Sowemimo and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment with only two, Chief S.O. Shonibare and Chief Alfred Rewane, being discharged and acquitted.

Those of us not in the country for trial at the time, including Chief Anthony Enahoro, had been strategically directed by Chief Awolowo to leave the country to be able to tell the outside world about our struggle for a democratic Nigeria.

Our leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was sentenced to 10 years in jail. Chief Anthony Enahoro, with whom we sojourned in Ghana before he left for Britain, was arrested in London and extradited to Lagos for trial. He was tried by Justice S.O. Lambo and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment.

Ten years with hard labour was what the first Premier of Western Region and Leader of Opposition at the House of Representatives got for his efforts to make Nigeria a better place!

The coup in Ghana was possible because Dr. Nkrumah was away in Hanoi (Democratic Republic of North Vietnam) at the invitation of President Ho Chi Minh. His government was unpopular with the Western world because of his Pan- African policy. The slogan of his government was ‘The freedom of Ghana is meaningless without the complete liberation of Africa.’

Those sympathetic to Nkrumah’s cause, namely his ministers and government functionaries in Ghana, were arrested and clamped into jail. Of course, as beneficiaries of his Pan-Africanism, we also fell into this category, and suffered the same fate.

At the open prison, we were treated like common criminals and herded with perpetrators of petty and major crimes. For a month, the luxury we had enjoyed for the past four years was terminated.

In no time, the government of Nigeria, led by Major-General Johnson Thomas Umunakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi, requested that we be repatriated. He had been made the Head of State after the termination of the First Republic. There had been a bloody coup on January 15, 1966, and quite a number of politicians and senior military officers were murdered. Among them were Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (Prime Minister), Sir Ahmadu Bello (Northern Region Premier), Chief Ladoke Akintola (Western Region Premier), and Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh (Minister of Finance).

But those who led the mutiny, Majors Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, Tim Onwuatuegwu, Emmanuel Ifeajuna, and Captain Nwobosi, did not succeed in taking over government.

Ikoku and I were airlifted to Lagos from Accra Airport. The day we were repatriated, the soldiers were cruel to S.G. Ikoku. They beat him up for no reason. He was severely beaten, and he sustained some bruises.

Kaduna Prison was where we spent many months as detainees. The prison was uncomfortable and stifling — and we were not allowed visitors. Ikoku and I were in adjacent cells, and we could converse through the bars, or whenever we were allowed in the ‘yard’ (until we were locked up again in our cells by 6p.m).

The cell was small and inhabitable. My sitting room was the toilet box, and my bedroom, the small bed at the other end. Though we were not allowed books or writing material, I had a small transistor radio which was my companion. Jokingly, S. G. Ikoku regularly taunted me, ‘What’s the latest news? You are the one who listens to all the stations.’

The imprisonment was, however, more humane than the subsequent one during Abacha’s tenure.

I was allowed to write letters (which were vetted by prison authorities) to my wife who also visited once. The censored missives dripped with courage and unrepentance. I wrote repeatedly that they could only imprison my body, not my spirit. Everyone was worried on my behalf, convinced that I wouldn’t regain my freedom easily.

Unknown to me, all my letters were being censored. Mrs. Toun Nwandei, a colleague of my wife’s who was related to Pedro Martins, an army officer, told my wife to advise me to stop writing revolutionary letters. I was writing revolutionary things to the effect that my captors wouldn’t be there when I left prison. My wife stopped replying and got word to me that the authorities were reading my letters.

My uncle (Chief J. O. Oluwole, the Advert Manager of Daily Times, who was then the Baba Ijo of St. Phillip’s Church, Isanya-Ogbo, before me) arranged for my wife to visit me in Kaduna Prisons. She came in a Daily Times circulation van. I saw my wife again after many years apart. We spent a few hours holding hands and talking about everything, palpably worried about how the other was coping.

Prisoners then were still treated with some humaneness. Osagie was the Director of Prisons, and he gave my wife permission to visit.

When my wife came and saw me, she was pleasantly surprised. She said, ‘you’ve gained weight, while those of us at home are in agony, losing weight.’

‘I’m at peace with myself,’ was my reply.

My wife stayed for a day in Kaduna, and returned with the van.

The prison officers were friendly. They played scrabble with us. It was there I learnt how to play. S.G. Ikoku and I played for hours to while away the time, and keep our minds off our predicament.

We were allowed to wear our own clothes, not prison uniforms. But I was only allowed correspondence with my wife, not Chief Awolowo. Even in Kaduna, the food was good. They asked me whatever I wanted. I used to enjoy Anchor butter. We were well fed.

All through our time in Kaduna Prisons, we were neither tortured nor interrogated. It was while still in Kaduna Prisons that the July 29, 1966 counter-coup took place and Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon became Head of State. The coup was led by young army officers (Murtala Muhammed, Theophilus Danjuma and Martin Adamu).

The new authorities apparently encouraged my wife to write and intimate me with the new development in the country, especially the massive support enjoyed by the AG.

While in  Ghana,  we received reports that the  1964 Federal elections in Nigeria were inconclusive. In 1965, there was the Western Regional election, which was also massively rigged. This led to the wetie tragedy, where many houses were burnt and destroyed, and a lot of people were either maimed or killed. After the rigging, Akintola was vilified and was using an ambulance to move about, hiding from the masses. The confusion was still raging when the January 15, 1966 coup took place. He and his supporters had rigged the election with the concomitant effect of a series of petitions after the election.

Chief Rotimi Williams was defending Akintola’s party (The Nigerian National Democratic Party, NNDP). However but when it came to the petition filed by Chief (Mrs) H.I.D. Awolowo, who was also a victim of the massive rigging, having contested election to the Federal House of Representatives, he failed to appear. The case was still in court when the January 15, 1966 coup was staged.

The counter-coup of July 29, 1966 was largely welcomed by Nigerians. After many weeks, Ikoku and I were transferred to Kirikiri Prisons in Lagos. Here, I was in the company of other important detainees,  including  Prof.  Wole  Soyinka (who mentioned me in his prison memoirs, The Man Died).

I was watching one night when they came for Soyinka, and I shouted, ‘I see you o! Don’t go and kill him and say he was trying to escape…’

I repeated, ‘You have come to take him alive, he can’t disappear. So, don’t ever say he was trying to escape, and you had to kill him.’

Soyinka and I became friends in prison. I called him Sapagiri after the food we ate there. It was some kind of concoction.

Many political activists were detained at that time in various prisons across the country.

Soyinka was the one who went to Broadcasting House in Ibadan, during the crisis in Western Region, to broadcast a pre-recorded message to the effect that the election had been massively rigged, and Akintola should not have declared himself winner of that election.

The new regime of Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon gave a general amnesty on August 3, 1966 to Chief Awolowo and his colleagues in the treasonable felony trial. Gowon later invited Chief Awolowo to his cabinet as Vice-Chairman of the Federal Executive Council and Commissioner for Finance.

Awo, who was sentenced on September 11, 1963, was then in the Calabar Prison, having been transferred there from Broad Street Prison in Lagos.

Meanwhile, for some time after his release, there was no news about our own release (that is, Ikoku and I), and my wife became agitated. But she was repeatedly assured by Chief Awolowo that the release would happen soon. To confirm this, we read it in the papers how he had been pressing for our release.

My wife visited Chief Awolowo regularly at the Ministry of Finance.

Unknown to her, however, Chief Awolowo himself was apparently frustrated with Gowon not fulfilling his promise about the release. This became evident when, on one of her visits to him, Awo gave vent to his feelings by telling my wife that he was not talking to Gowon about it anymore. This was not well received by my wife who naturally felt that Chief Awolowo should not give up but continue to press for the release of her husband.

But on December 23, 1967, while the detainees in Kirikiri were making preparation to celebrate Christmas in prison, some prison officials came and asked us (Ikoku and I) to pack our luggage. We then enquired, ‘Which location are you taking us to again?’ They told us there was an order to release us. This was sudden and unexpected, and we had to bid our colleagues a hurried goodbye.

We were later conveyed out of the prison in one of their vehicles and Ikoku was dropped off at his house on Adeniyi Jones Avenue, Ikeja, next door to Chief Erogbogbo’s (father of Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa) house.

I was later taken to my wife’s rented apartment in Shyllon Street, Palmgrove area, which was owned by a popular Ijebu-born hotelier known as Nowoola. He was the proprietor of Palace Hotel on Broad Street, Lagos. It was a storey building. My wife occupied the ground floor. The rent was being paid by leaders of the party through Chief Shonibare. But when Chief Shonibare left for London, the rent accumulated.

My wife faced the greatest tribulations and ordeal. Apart from raising two young children, she worked as a nurse at Island Maternity to support herself and the children. She also had me to worry about. An absent husband in exile at a time, or in detention and prison.

Once, my wife came home to a rude shock. She and our children had been locked out of her apartment by the landlord. Her rent had been due for many months, and the landlord, who insisted derisively that he didn’t build his house with the proceeds of politics, didn’t want stories anymore. Mr. Nowoola was fed up.

He sent my wife and children onto the corridor. It was a very difficult period. She ran to her brother-in-law Mr. Caesario Dalmeida (father of Doris Ogunsanya, a legal practitioner), who bailed her out before  Chief  Shonibare later refunded the rent, and she was allowed back into her apartment.

At this time, something remarkable happened which showed how forgiving Chief Awolowo was. Dr. Moses Majekodunmi, who administered the Western Region during the period of emergency and was cruel to Awolowo, was opening St. Nicholas Hospital, Onikan (Lagos) in March 1968.

He invited Chief Awolowo, who graced the occasion to the consternation of his sympathisers and followers.

My wife was furious. She didn’t understand why Chief Awolowo should honour such an invitation, considering the fact that Majekodunmi had been responsible for ordering the detention of Chief Awolowo and his fellow members. I celebrated the yuletide at home, in Palmgrove (Lagos), with my wife and children (Adeola, then seven, and Obafemi, five).

While I was in exile in Ghana, my elder brother, Lawrence Adebisi Adebanjo, had been staying with my wife, and he was keeping late nights and always knocking on the doors loudly at odd hours. On such occasions, a co-tenant, Mr. Kukoyi, a staff of the Central Bank of Nigeria at that time, came to her rescue. Thereafter, as a result of pressure from the family, my brother had to leave.

After my release in December 1967, my wife and I visited Chief Awolowo in Ikenne. He was very happy to see us. He related the story of how my wife was deeply worried and repeatedly asked him to influence our release from prison.

Awolowo was himself unhappy that his lieutenants were still detained when he had been released and working as Vice- Chairman of Gowon’s government. He wanted us out of detention immediately! But he had to wait until government approved our release.

I was really, deeply concerned about my family all through the ordeal. I left a young wife in London in November 1961 and was waiting for her and the children when the treason trial began in 1962.

It was in Ghana, at Tema Port, that I again saw Christy, Adeola and Obafemi, on their way back to Nigeria. The reunion was tearful. We were together for a few hours at the port and then at my apartment at the housing estate in Accra, until they were again taken to the port for the journey to Lagos. I was seeing my son, Obafemi, for the first time.

Pius Okigbo who later became a renowned economist, was on the ship with Mrs. Christie Adebanjo. The people were nice to my family. The ship first berthed in Sierra Leone and Ghana (Takoradi Port).

Chief Enahoro also came to welcome my family in Accra, explaining to my wife the troubles in Nigeria which forced us into exile.

‘You have to go home. You are not going to disembark here.

TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW

READ ALSO: I was told that I had good breeding with an enviable lineage to the bargain —Ayo Adebanjo