A diamond head: The jewel and the lion
Hh.I.D received perhaps the most august women visitors on December 20, 1965, in her Ibadan home. No doubt, the matter that had brought these women must be critical. When they arrived, she suspected that they must have visited her because of the crisis in the region and the country at large. These women were old enough and sufficiently high in the social pecking order to have sent for her. She received them warmly.
The visitors were led Lady Oyinkansola Abayomi, who was two years shy of becoming a septuagenarian, having been born three years before the end of the 19th century. Lady Oyinkan was not distinguished only by her age. She was the daughter of Sir Kitoye Ajasa, the conservative lawyer and legislator, founder of the Nigerian Pioneer, and first Nigerian to be knighted. Lady Oyinkan was also the wife of Kofo Abayomi, one of the earliest Nigerian ophthalmologists (he graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1925), former president of the NYM, and founding member of the Egbe Ome Oduduwa.
Others who came with lady Oyinkan were Dr. (Mrs.) Elizabeth Abimbola Awoliyi (nee Akerele), MBE, the first female physician in West Africa and member of the UK Royal College of Physicians, who graduated from the University of Dublin in 1936 with first class honours … complete with a distinction in anatomy and medal in medicine; Mrs. Ayo Manuwa, also a distinguished Lagosian, who with Lady Oyinkan led the campaign and helped to raise the initial money that led to the founding of the Queen’s College, Lagos in October 1927, a year before H.I.D moved to Lagos to complete her elementary education; and, Mrs. Ronke Doherty, also an MBE, from the distinguished Doherty family. Doherty, who later became a commissioner under the military in Oyo State, was the closest to H.I.D among the visitors. Her children were friends with H.I.D’s children.
The eminence of these women was ostensibly part of the psychological pressure that those who persuaded them to talk to H.I.D wanted to exert. The women said, as mothers, they were bothered about the violence and bloodshed in Yorubaland. Everyone was potentially in danger. They wanted the crisis to end. The way to end it, they proposed was to bring H.I.D’s husband and his estranged former deputy, Akintola, together to form a new party. They wanted her to travel to Calabar to persuade her husband to call a halt to the violence in the region and give peace a chance. If she was able to persuade her husband to agree to these peace initiatives, then the government, H.I.D was informed, was ready to pardon him.
H.I.D thanked them for their visit and concern. Her husband had already spent three years in jail for a crime he did not commit. He had been humiliated before and since imprisonment. She and the members of his family have been harassed consistently since the crisis started. There could be no genuine chance for reconciliation, she added, if her husband was not released first. He cannot be expected to negotiate while in bondage. She concluded that no one who genuinely wanted peace could keep one of the parties in jail while the other was in freedom.
H.I.D’s visitors were not pleased. But they promised to travel to Calabar to also talk to Awolowo. Perhaps, they had assumed that if H.I.D agreed with them, she would either travel alone to Calabar to convince her husband or they could travel with her to reinforce the message.
Unknown to H.I.D at this point, a similar team,under the auspices of Yoruba Elders’ Committee was meeting her husband in Calabar Prisons with a similar message. The Cabinet Office in Lagos had encouraged the initiative. The team that met Awolowo included Rt. Reverend S.O. Odutola, the Bishop of Oyo (Anglican) Diocese, Reverend Canon B.A. Falode, Vicar of Kudeti Anglican Church, Ibadan, Alhaji A.W. Elias, Chief E.A. Adeyemo, a leading traditional Chief (later traditional ruler) in Ibadan and Dr. Abiola Akerele. Elias and Akerele were Awolowo’s friends. Awolowo spoke along the same line as his wife, even though in a more elaborate way. Elias did not share the conditions the group presented to his friend. But he had come with them because he was persuaded to follow them.
Obafemi Awolowo too was unaware of the visit to Hannah until later. As it turned out neither of the initiatives could wear down the resolve of the couple. They had both shown again that they were united in their pursuit of justice, equity and democratic rule….
Indeed, before the First Republic collapsed, there were a few such attempts to free Awolowo, under the conditions set by his tormentors, H.I.D was involved one way or the other in the efforts. Through it all, while she was fervent in her commitment to the possibility of his release, she avoided anything that would have compromised her husband’s honour and principles or jeopardized the transcendental cause that provoked his afflictions in the first instance. The famous couple, however, never succeeded in ensuring release for the jailed man, because they both insisted that the terms of release must be honourable, even if based on comprise.
Before the visit of Lady Oyinkan and others, other attempts were made to coax H.I.D into a compromising appeasement on behalf of her husband. It was a measure of her perceptiveness and restrain that she did not allow would-be do-gooders to push her into taking desperate measures to ensure freedom for her husband.
H.I.D played host to two party members who were committed to Awolowo’s release. Chief Babatunde Akin-Olugbade, ranking AG member, who succeeded Awolowo as Leader of Opposition in the federal house after the latter was jailed, and Chief Remi Adebonojo, another party faithful – who was the only one among Awo’s associates present when he was taken to the airport in Calabar for the flight to Lagos after pardon – travelled to Ibadan at different times to meet the wife of their jailed leader. They both had similar messages. They were both encouraged by the offer for a release of Chief Awolowo which they had received from the Prime Minister’ Secretary, Bode Wey, Wey informed the two men separately that Tafawa Balewa told him that he was ready to order the immediate release of the jailed opposition leader if his wife would come to him to make a personal appeal for his release. However, he would want her to come in disguise. Not considering the implications of the offer and his particularly bizarre request for disguise for such a prominent woman, Akin-Olugbade and Adebonojo eargerly rushed to Ibadan to appeal to H,I,D to accept the “generous gesture”.
H.I.D considered the offer and told the messengers that she would think about it and get back to them. When they were gone, she concluded that it was imprudent for a woman in her status to visit the Prime Minister in disguise. What would people say when they hear of such a weird manner of visit? At any rate, she had no reason to beg the people who had contrived to jail her husband. There could be a reconciliatory way to settle the crisis, she thought, but that could not involve having to beg her husband’s jailer. However, she felt it was important to let her husband know about the latest offer for his release. So, she sent Awolowo’s private secretary, Biodun Falade, to Calabar to tell him to know his position. Falade too agreed with H.I.D that it was not prudent for her to visit Balewa incognito. When he visited Calabar to consult with Awolowo, he endorsed the position of his wife.
However, Akin-Olugbade and Adebonojo were so convinced about the “wisdom” of the offer that they travelled to Calabar to complain that H.I.D was yet to respond to the offer. Awolowo told them that he agreed with his wife. Writes the former premier of the Western Region in his memoir:
“…I thought that the Prime Minister had insulted my wife and me by this kind of gesture…. But I added that there might be some sinister motive behind it all. My inveterate enemies had organized the twenty-first search of my house at Ibadan on the false information that my wife had kept arms and ammunition in our compound. The same people might seize the opportunity of my wife’s visit to plant some arms and ammunition in the unfamiliar car, and then raise an alarm that she had come to the Prime Minister’s house with intent to do him harm. Then, people would be perfectly entitled to ask the pertinent question: “Why the disguise in dress and car”? In any case, how was my wife to make the plea: by kneeling down or by prostrating herself at the footstool of Balewa?…. I would, on no account, welcome terms for release which had any taint of dishonor or humiliation. I had no doubt in mind that in God’s own good time…. I would go out of the jail house without blemish to me and my wife’s honour and integrity”.
A less resolute woman so desirous of her husband’s freedom could have yielded to the pressures. If H.I.D did, she could have soiled her husband’s reputation and perhaps destroyed the basis of his eventual honourable discharge and pardon.
TO BE CONTINUED
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