‘When my mother passed on in 1963,the funeral was infiltrated by soldiersand policemen’

CONTINUED FROM YESTERDAY

‘You have to go home. You are not going to disembark here. When you go home, CID will be after you. Don’t be afraid,’ he encouraged her. Everyone was apprehensive.

My wife and children had a lot of luggage because they were coming back home to resettle after many years in England. At Apapa Port, my wife was shocked by the ill-treatment from the security officers. They were simply hostile as if acting out a script. Meanwhile, many people had come to welcome my family back home.

There was a 24-hour surveillance at one point. Someone noticed the change of guards.  They were recording all the numbers of cars, and monitoring all the travellers disembarking from the ship. They searched everywhere. My family members were the last people to leave the ship and the port.

The cheque I had given my wife had to be torn, and destroyed. She chewed and swallowed it, for fear that they would use it as an evidence that she had seen me in Ghana.

Predictably, they asked her if she had any contact with me in Ghana, and she said no.

What broke my wife’s heart most was when a security guard just took a stick and stuck it inside the specially wrapped and packaged birthday cake that she had brought back with her from England. That was the first time she broke down since the horrendous episode which made me a fugitive. She was so upset that she confronted the security agent, ‘Why did you have to destroy this cake?’

‘We were looking for guns,’ was his rather callous reply. They foolishly assumed she was given some arms and ammunition,  or secret messages capable of bringing the Balewa government to its knees. She was nearly stripped at Apapa Port. They were looking for arms in her underwear!

Her abode at Palmgrove became a target of constant raids and searches throughout this period. When Enahoro was arrested, a lorry load of policemen also came to my wife’s house. They said they heard Chief Ayo Adebanjo was coming home.

She was apprehensive. The soldiers knocked and entered, and surrounded everywhere.  The next day, my family became heroes. The Action Group had supporters (from the neighbours visiting).

Even my father was not spared the agonising and inhuman treatment. His house in Ijebu-Ode was also targeted. It was searched painstakingly for ‘subversive materials.’ My father was detained for nine months at Alagbon Close (now called Force Criminal Investigation Department) in Ikoyi, Lagos.

He was arrested in Ijebu-Ode, and hit fiercely on the head with a baton. ‘Tell us where your son is,’ he was constantly harangued. My father never failed to retort, ‘Does your father know where you are now in Nigeria?’

Even my sister,  Mercy  Aduke  Onajinrin  (mother of Otunba Sunday Onajinrin, a retired Customs officer) was also not spared this harassment as her house in Ososa, near Ijebu-Ode, was vigorously searched on several occasions.

One Mr. John Lynn (a white man) was the investigating officer. My father was taken from Ijebu-Ode and moved to Lagos. While in detention, he told my colleagues who were brought there the methods of the investigators: ‘They’d harass you, but don’t tell them what you don’t know.’

Chief Awolowo admired my father’s courage, and when he wrote one of his books, he autographed a copy for my father.

All through these harassments, nothing incriminating was ever found. The government was scared, jittery and very suspicious. High-ranking officials of the government of the day were united in destroying and hounding the families of those arraigned and convicted for ‘treason.’

Even when my mother passed on in 1963, the funeral was infiltrated by soldiers and policemen. They were searching for me, hoping that I would attend my mother’s burial. The woman, who gave everything to ensure that her only child, her son, got good education, couldn’t revel in my care and attention in her twilight. She never even enjoyed the fruits of her labour, never benefited from my new status as a lawyer and gentleman with appreciable means.

The treason trial was reported everyday, by Horatio Agedah, on a news segment on radio called, “Today at the Treason Trial”. My mother listened to it religiously.

She was alone in her final hours, without me by her death bed. She was buried without me performing the traditional dust-to-dust rites. My mother was buried in Ijebu-Ode, and coming for her funeral was inconceivable.

But thank God for a good wife, and a loyal friend in the person of Alhaji Moshood Ola. Owodunni who rallied my friends and colleagues to the funeral. He also placed his Chevrolet car at my wife’s disposal during the funeral. He was a pillar of support.

Somehow, I knew my wife was really taking care of the children, being a nurse. I wasn’t bothered about their safety because I knew we had enormous support.

Even during the trial, everyone (apart from those who sympathised with the Tafawa Balewa government)  knew as a matter of fact that it was all a farce. No treason had been committed. There were a lot of misconceptions at the time. The government was aggressive and very intolerant of opposition. There was no doubt that we had our own tough boys who protected us during elections.

We were critical of the government; we were the main opposition, and the whole world knew. But it was not true, when late Prof. Sanya Onabamiro claimed he heard Chief Obafemi Awolowo talking about a coup.

Before the treasonable felony trial, the Coker Commission of Enquiry (headed by Justice G. B. A. Coker) had indicted Chief Awolowo over the handling of Western Region funds. So, they were obviously looking for all means to tarnish his image.

The treasonable felony trial itself ended on September 11, 1963, when the accused were sentenced to varying jail terms. Awolowo bagged a ten-year jail term which was later reduced to seven. Chief Anthony Enahoro (who had been repatriated from the  United  Kingdom)  got his 15  years reduced to ten. But three of us (Ikoku, Aluko and I) were never tried because we were not available for trial, though we were declared wanted.

During the trial, my colleagues and I had settled well in Accra, benefiting from the hospitality of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah (the ‘Osagyefo’) who treated us as political refugees. I was given a suitable accommodation in a highbrow area of town (with domestic staff to attend to my needs) with ministers (including Kofi Bako, Minister of Defence) and high-ranking government officials as neighbours. With a very good job as a features editor in Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (then Radio Ghana) I earned enough to buy a brand new Peugeot 403 saloon car in Ghana which made moving around easy and comfortable. I had enough money to keep me going.

My boss, Rowland Aghozo, an Ewe man, was favourably disposed to me when he discovered that my wife was from Togo; besides, he appreciated my commitment to the cause I was fighting.

I was a producer, organising interviews and contacting people who would talk on various topics. The job exposed me to the leading lights in Ghana, the intelligentsia and the elite.

I got on well with them. My current affairs programme was very popular.

Ghana at the time was the seat of anti-colonialism. All countries that were not independent had their base in Ghana.

Articles about the emancipation of the African race were popular on my programme. We also looked for patriots whom we could invite to speak on the evils of colonialism.

1. G. Ikoku worked with Spark newspaper, a publication of the Bureau of African Affairs as the Editor. (Kofi Batsha was Editor-in-Chief ). Spark was a revolutionary paper of Nkrumah.

Aluko was doing clerical work in the Bureau.

Nkrumah had this set-up for freedom fighters. People from South Africa, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Malawi (then known as Nyasaland), they were all there.

Life was good here. I arranged that my wig and gown should be brought. I had to be registered at the Ghana Bar before I could practise as a lawyer, and it was taking longer than I thought. At a time I registered in the French School.

In  1963, the annual OAU  (Organisation of  African Unity), now AU (African Union) conference was scheduled to be held in Ghana. The Prime Minister of Nigeria, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, said he would not be able to attend the conference as long as we were there as Nkrumah’s refugees.

To satisfy him therefore, Dr. Nkrumah organised a political tour for us to the Soviet Union and Eastern Germany for the period of the conference. The trip, for us, turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it offered a most enlightening and educative experience.

We were treated as tourists in Moscow and Berlin. Nkrumah had told them we were freedom fighters. They received us well and we visited important historical sites.

But I still felt lonely and afraid. I was alone in a foreign land (though I had a few people I could call friends). The only way I could communicate with my wife was through letters – and we exchanged correspondence regularly.

The deputy mayor in Dahomey (the man who saw to my easy passage from Cotonou to Accra, and accommodated me) organised a courier between me and my wife in Lagos.

He would come to Ghana, collect my letter, and deliver it to Olu Adebanjo, who was editor of Daily Express (Sunday). Both of us were friends.

I had known Olu Adebanjo from Nigeria, long before I went to study in England. He was one of the beneficiaries of the Action Group (AG) government scheme to study journalism abroad. In fact, it was the same MV Aureol that took me to England that also brought him back to Nigeria.

He was one of those in the welcoming team on my arrival at Easton Station from Liverpool and followed us to my friend’s (Mr Ajayi’s) house where he helped in preparing my dinner.

It was through my recommendation that he became editor of Daily Express. He was from Idowa near Ijebu-Ode, and a member of AG. During the Western Region crisis however, he became an Akintola follower, and joined the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP). That was when I stopped using him as courier. That link was broken when he (Olu Adebanjo) was suspected of being a double agent.

Throughout the period of my exile in Ghana, from 1962 to 1966, my wife was only able to visit once. She came with Deola and Obafemi. While I was in Ghana, Pa Adesanya also visited us. (He was a junior lawyer during the trial, with Mr. Dingle Foot, a highly regarded British lawyer, as the lead counsel for Chief Awolowo).

Nigerians in Ghana who were sympathetic to the cause of Action Group made life comfortable for us. I remember Chief E. A. Abimbola, Aderanti Ademuyiwa, J.O. Ogunwunmi and Ebun Sonowo.

They ensured that we were not lonely; they visited us and made living in Accra less stressful and burdensome, until we left Ghana in 1966 after the coup that toppled our host, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

The battle had been long-drawn, ferocious, and exhausting; a full-scale combat with victims, casualties and prisoners of war. The soldiers of fortune, executors of the operation, were cold-blooded, heartless and unkind – wicked!

The Action Group, our leaders (all the 31 accused persons, and their immediate family members) and sympathisers, were subjected to various forms of harassment and harm, such as physical assault and the destruction of their properties.

Curiously, our enemies, busy rejoicing over their temporary victory, didn’t get wind of the whispers of their own dirges, until the elegies became louder, more than a din, performed by an orchestra – and the perpetrators of the perfidy became the losers, footnotes of history.

These last five years (1962-1967) were more than harrowing for many. My fate and steps took their own wings, and flew to ports I never planned. I didn’t bargain for what befell me – being declared wanted, framed as a dissident plotting to maim and kill, and bring the government of the day down, fleeing and living in exile, and later detained and imprisoned.

 

Chapter 7

A New Beginning

Then I returned a free man, I bounced back to life and tried to catch up. I cleaned my wigs, laundered my gown and dusted my law books. I had to settle down fast, as a professional and family man, with a young wife and two children, a young girl and a toddler.

We didn’t stay long at Palmgrove, the house where my wife (Christie), daughter (Adeola) and son (Obafemi), lived while I was away. Immediately I regained my freedom, I started to look for a flat.

Early in January 1968 as I set out on this task on my way to Lagos, Senator Lere Adesina (now deceased), who had been a friend in London and was then a senior staff at Shell Petroleum Company on the Marina, saw me at the bus stop (Palmgrove) and gave me a lift.

During our conversation, I told him I was looking for a flat. He told me there was a house in his care (it belonged to one of his staff who had gone to the East as a result of the civil war, which broke out in May 1967).

 That was how I got the house at No. 10, Shofidiya Close, Surulere, about two weeks after I came out of prison. The transaction was easy.

In a few months, we relocated and settled in the house. My wife still worked at Island Maternity. A better and more befitting accommodation it was; a pad where one could begin anew, and re-model a future after the interruption by the treason trial and its consequences.

Almost next door, with only a building separating us (owned by Gab Fagbure, a renowned journalist and former press attaché in the Nigerian High Commission in London), was Moshood Abiola. He was always very respectful and pleasant to me as was his wife, Simbiat.

Abiola and Simbiat often had loud altercations, and I usually found myself having to intervene as peacemaker. When Abiola later got the ITT job, I was one of the first persons he informed about it. I rejoiced with him and advised him that such a high office compelled more understanding with his wife.

There were other neighbours – Architect Olumuyiwa (who was my senior at CMS Grammar School and who later moved on to Ikoyi; his wife, Gladys Olabisi was also my wife’s colleague at Island Maternity); Mr. Yemi Buko (a senior official at the Nigerian Ports Authority, who later became a priest); and Alao Aka-Bashorun (the lawyer who later became President of Nigerian Bar Association, during which time the body was more dynamic).

When I first moved to the close, Aka-Bashorun and Buko frequently gave me rides in their cars to Lagos (before I could afford to own one).

When the landlord returned in 1972 after the civil war, he was happy about the condition in which he met the house. He however expressed the desire to repossess the house, but I asked for a few months before he could take possession to enable me complete my own house which was then under construction. He willingly granted this request.

In early 1968, the memories of the gales and blizzards of the previous months gave rise to a surge of optimism, of giving life my best shot. My childhood friend, one of the people I had known the longest, provided the platform to practise. I started my practice in the law firm of Alhaji M. O. Owodunni (M. Ola. Owodunni & Co.), who accommodated me in his office; and 48, Docemo Street, Lagos, was our base.

Alhaji Owodunni was my senior at the bar and I learnt so much from him. He gave me many cases to handle, especially when he couldn’t attend the trials himself. He had a lot of briefs, and allowed me to handle some – and the clients paid me directly. We later moved to 34, Hawley Street, also in the heart of Lagos.

Early in 1979, I moved my own chambers to Western House on Broad Street, Lagos (first on the 13th floor, and later on the 3rd). I was the principal partner of Ayo Adebanjo & Co., but I had some junior lawyers, particularly during elections in 1979 (including one Mr. Omotayo, whom I later learnt came from a neighbouring village, Odoagamegi).

By the grace of God, I had a good practice as a lawyer. I built my very first house in Surulere on Nuru Oniwo Street, Aguda, and it was declared open by Chief Awolowo in 1973. I also rebuilt my mother’s house at Mushin, on Tade Lane, in 1978.

All the property I have today was acquired and maintained from the income I made as a lawyer, as I have never enjoyed any political appointment.

I worked hard as a barrister and solicitor and concentrated largely on land matters. I can say that a lot of my possessions were from land matters which was very lucrative. I didn’t turn other cases down, though, I did criminal cases too. I was very frequent and regular at the high courts and sometimes at the magistrate courts.

One case stands out in my memory: Adiatu Ladunni vs Oludotun Adekunle Kukoyi. It was a landmark case, with me representing Surveyor Kukoyi against ‘Timi the Law’ (Chief F.R.A. Williams) – and I defeated the legend in court. The case has become a reference for injunctions. Justice G.B.A. Coker read the judgement at the Supreme Court, with two other justices (Atanda Fatai-Williams and G.S. Sowemimo) sitting on the matter at the Supreme Court on Friday, March 3, 1972. The land in question was at Ikeja, on about two plots.

In all, although not a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), by the grace of God I was blessed in legal practice. Law was fascinating enough, but I had incomes through other sources. This came about when I became involved with a company known as  Impo-Expo  Nigeria  Limited through some of my friends:  Messrs.  M.O.  Owodunni,  S.O.  Olaniyan and Oladimeji  Gbolade.  The company specialised in the importation of cement and other merchandise and in time we joined the big league of cement importers like Yinka Folawiyo, Ayo Fasanya and other companies.

One of our foreign suppliers was a Belgian company known as Cobec, whose chief executive was Mr. Schweppes, who occasionally visited Nigeria because of the volume of business we did with him. As a matter of fact, I was not originally a member of the company. The promoters were looking for overdrafts, and they had approached me to help them get one at National Bank after unsuccessful attempts through other banks, including Co-operative Bank.

Late Chief Olu Aboderin was then the Chief Accountant of National Bank. (Aboderin was a first-class nationalist and an active member of the London branch of AG when I was Secretary of the branch). So, I went to him and told him my friends wanted an overdraft.

He asked if I was a director, and I said no. He then said that without me being a director and a co-signatory, he wouldn’t grant any overdraft. Although my friends had properties to use as collateral, Aboderin said he would depend more on my integrity for the repayment of the loan. I reported these conditions back to my friends and they willingly accepted, hence, I became a director of the company.

It was a lot of money required from the National Bank to open a letter of credit for the cement business we were involved in. We were importing shiploads of cement.

When the business was booming, my friend Owodunni encouraged me to go and start the development of my landed property in Aguda, Surulere, which I had earlier purchased through another friend and colleague, Z.O.K. Adetula, who was the Chairman of the London Branch of the Action Group while I was the Secretary.

Adetula was the solicitor to the Nuru-Oniwo Estate, owners of a large parcel of land in Aguda. I took his advice and, with my share of the proceeds, I was able to start my Surulere house, buying cement at cost price.

The house was completed with the earnings from my law practice and the financial support of my wife who raised a housing loan from service and committed it entirely to the project. The loan was defrayed some years later with her retirement benefits. Because we were making a lot of money from the business, we invested some of our profit by buying shares in several companies.

The third floor of Hawley Street was big enough to accommodate the chambers of Owodunni & Co., Ayo Adebanjo & Co. and the office of the Managing Director of Impo-Expo, Mr. S.O. Olaniyan. The building was owned by Mrs. Duro Emmanuel. Because of my political connection with her, I approached her and she readily let it to us.

TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW

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