Epistle on Awo’s Land
“As you know, morality is concern with the subject of right and wrong. Since you have yourself concede that Chief Awolowo’s land transactions conformed with requirements of property, then it follows by definition that his action must be right.”
Dear Dele,
To you, greetings! And to Moshood and all hands, big or small, which contribute directly or indirectly to the assembling of all those lines that collectively make the Concord – God’s blessing. I have carefully read and totally digested your well-worded comments under the title: Land and Conscience, as published in Sunday Concord. I believe that in consonance with the time-honoured ethics of the profession of journalism, you did faithfully seek to expose what you considered to be public interest regarding Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s purchase of sme plots of land in a less accessible part of southern Lagos. In so doing, you have stimulated widespread discussion and even generated some public anxieties. This should have a salutary effect on our national life, since such unsparing disclosures by the press tend to lay continuing emphasis on the principle that every leader, be he ever so great or potent, was subject to public accountability for his actions, including those which may be classified as private. I am encouraged by your bold admission that the land acquisition raises no issues of “property.” Rather, you felt that the questions in focus were those of “morality and patent hypocrisy.” As you know morality is concerned with the subject of right and wrong. Since you have yourself conceded that Chief Awolowo’s land transaction conformed with the requirements of property, then it follows definition that his action must be right. And what is right cannot at the same time be immoral, questionable or hypocritical.
Your unfavourable judgment in respect of the acquisition seemed to have derived its substance from the established fact of Chief Awolowo’s socialist beliefs and propagations. To buttress you argument, you quoted an official NPN opinion declaring that the land purchase showed up the chief “as a man who deceived the nation with his socialist ideas while his life-style portrayed the worse kind of capitalism.” I have already publicly stated that socialism has never been meant to be synonymous with poverty. And with regard to your conclusions which also was echoed by the NPN, there can be nothing deceitful or hypocritical about a land-owning socialist, ever on a vast scale. Conversely, capitalism per se does not and cannot guarantee for its practitioner and land holdings whatsoever, nor even freedom from want, penury or abject poverty. Besides, it has been proved justifiable in history to employ the tools of capitalism in promoting the growth and sustenance of socialism. A confirmation on this contention is to found in Lenin’s Collected Works, Vol. 33, page 478, which reads: “The working class must set itself the task of turning the sum total of the rich and the technique accumulated capitalism into an instrument of socialism.” This can only mean that in terms of socialism performance, Chief Awolowo could not be said to have deviated from those precepts and principles as laid down by the founders of modern socialism, provided the sum total of his accumulated wealth would be transformed into an instrument for the public good. I shall come to that subject later in this correspondence.
At this juncture, it may be considered pertinent for me to stress that the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) was not a group advocate scientific socialism. Practically the entire party leadership and policy makers are firm in the belief that this brand of socialism is totally alien to black Africa, and therefore inassimilable into our distinctive cultural system. On the other hand, the basic policies of the UPN were geared in the direction of democratic socialism – that is socialism which is operational through representative democracy. Hence, Chief Awolowo’s oft-repeated declaration that “socialism is our goal.” What have not yet gone anywhere near that goal. I believe that the real truth was that Obfemi Awolowo was to Nigerian socialism what John the Baptist was to Jesus Christ. Both men could be described as special announcers of their respective new eras that were yet to come. Just as John the Baptist could not possibly have been a Christian before the emergence of Christ, so too would it not have been logically intelligible to expect Chief Awolowo to be a socialist practitioner before the advent of socialism as a governing force in Nigeria. And here, I should like to point out that much of the strong criticisms leveled by the Concord leading a section of the press against Chief Awolowo on the issue of land transaction were decided inaccurate in places and grossly unfair in others. For one thing, it was not true, contrary to your published comment, that the Lagos State government forcibly removed “the inhabitants of a portion of Maroko acquired by Chief Awolowo to facilitate possession by the chief.” I have personally visited the site in order to see things for myself. I can truthfully assure you that areas being demolished are not anywhere near the land acquired by Awo.
And by the way, has it ever occurred to you that if the chief had spent that one million naira in purchasing new and expensive furniture for his residences in Apapa and Ikenne,or in buying General Obasanjo out of his large estates and farmlands in Ota, nobody would probably have cared to raise an eye-brow? If we were to place the Maroko land acquisition side by side with the fact that the chief mortgaged all his immovable property worth more than one million naira in order to finance the people’s Elere (Ibadan) garri project in which he has no equity shares, you can then see the inscrutable nature of our contemporary moral values. In the one, a section of the public makes some condemnatory noises. In the other, they do not make any comments at all, so long as it was Chief Awolowo’s money that was going down the drain for the elevation of others. Granted. But tell me, must Awo kill himself for our people? Can’t he be allowed to buy something durable for himself too, even God’s free gift of land?
Let me now let you in on a well-guarded secret, simply because it was better to leak it at this time in the interest of national peace of mind. It was a fact that for some years now, Chief Awolowo had been making plans for the conversation of his landed property into a number of public trust and foundations devoted entirely to the service of the people. There was already an estate in Isolo area which when completed will be used as a special archive to house the works, writing and achievements of eminent Africans, past and present. The present land in Maroko area was being set aside for use partly as foundation while the rest was to be reserved for diverse trusts. When these bequests are finally executed, the people of this country would have seen and believed that Chief Awolowo’s wealth, severely as it was, has truly been used as an instrument of selfless service the masses of our people. The present charges against him therefore be classified as a crusade against the innocent consequently allowed to come to an end. May God bless Awo, this round innocent, and you too, Dele.
Yours cordially,
Signed
M.C.K. Ajuluchuku
©Sunday Concord, May 25, 1980
(Pp.69-72)
