Land and Conscience
“But for Chief Awolowo and others who lay claim to the spirit of egalitarianism, a decision to buy up land that 360 others should share raises serious questions, not of property, but of morality and patent hypocrisy.”
Land has always been the cause of the struggle between the poor and the rich. In Zimbabwe, the blacks tell anyone who has ears to hear that all the war fought in that country was fair sharing of land. Many New Yorkers who go to the Rockefeller Plaza in the heart New York City marvel and then get angry that one family grabbed to choicest real estate in New York and called it theirs. Even the United Nations headquarters at Turtle Bay in New York is vintage real estate donated to the world body by John D. Rockefeller. And people wag their tongues that how could one family own all of that? In Los Angeles, California, the Chandler family did the old “Wild West in grabbing practically the whole city and its vicinity, and building mammoth wealth from it. Of course, the family is now identified with its publishing empire built around the Los Angeles Times.
But in the case of the Rockefeller and the Chandlers, people may grumble that the families own the land they own all over the place but that’s all they can do: grumble. They are the scions of America capitalism and they have no apology for their wealth. Which is not say that extensive land acquisition by few individuals is excusabl land, like water, is God’s gift that should come naturally to as many human beings as possible. But when a few have more, far too much more, than their share, it follows that a great deal more people with necessarily be without a little plot on which to build their shelter, the little thing which separates man from monkey. It was bad enough to cause revolution in Europe when the landless took arms and demanded their fair share of God’s pasture. Things were so bad there then that slaves, but because Europeans were adept at clouding unpleasant realities in euphemisms, the landless were called serfs. That was why Zimbabweans fought long and hard to be free of white domination in their own country. It wasn’t a war of liberation, for that doesn’t really mean anything. It was a war for equitable sharing of the country’s abundant arable land. And it is realization of the kind of headache that misuse of land could cause that persuaded the former military government to promulgate the Land Use Decree. Since its promulgation, many people have said that although the aims of the decree were Laudable, the law itself was faulty. None less than the former head of state himself, General Olusegun Obasanjo, faced the complications brought about by his acquisition of a large parcel of land for farming in his home state. The incident has probably caused the general his worst headache in many years.
And that was why Chief Obafemi Awolowo was in the news in what to him may have been the most embarrassing event in his twilight years. For the first time in memory, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was speechless when asked to comment on his acquisition of 360 plots of land costing one million naira. According to the National Concord which broke the story, the land is situated at Maroko and Igbosere areas of Lagos. The deed of conveyance on the land was dated 1978 and the land was registered much later. The paper carried the story on the day that the chief was leaving for an extended vacation abroad. Chief Awolowo’s aides had told Lewis Obi of the Sunday Concord that the chief would be addressing the press at the airport on his way out of the country. And, indeed, Chief Awolowo addressed himself to other issues, but when he asked to comment on the N1 million land purchase, the chief characterized the report as “obnoxious” and then refused to entertain further questions on the matter. But he told the press that the matter was private.
Chief M.C.K. Ajuluchuku, the chief’s able spokesman, defended the chief’s right to buy anything he wanted with his money. One couldn’t quarrel with that if Chief Awolowo hadn’t laid claim to a socialist conscience. The Rockefellers and the Chandlers and even an Abiola may not have any apology for buying up the whole world should they so decide. They are avowed capitalists. But for Chief Awolowo and others who lay claim to the spirit of egalitarianism, decision to buy up land that 360 others should share raises serious question, not of property, but of morality and patent hypocrisy. Already, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) has characterized the revelation of the land purchase as exposing Chief Awolowo as a man who deceived the nation with his so-called socialist ideals while his life-style portrayed the worst kind of capitalism. Chief Awolowo cannot be free to preach one thing and practice another. What was most troubling about the revelation was the connected action of the Lagos State government in forcibly removing the inhabitants of portion of Maroko acquired by Vhief Awolowo to facilitate possession by the chief.
All these questions are pertinent not only because they give lie to Chief Awolowo’s claim to socialism, they also show him up as “socialist” without human face. In defending the chief, M.C.K Ajuluchuku was saying that socialism does not mean that a man must be poor. Of course, yes. But it was not the same thing as depriving others of shelter in a greedy bid to acquire extensive land holding Chief Awolowo was free to spend his money any way he wanted. While doing that, he must renounce his claim to a socialist conscience and do things like a capitalist that he was. Failing that, the chief must not tell Nigerians that he believed in egalitarianism; for that will their place a burden on him to make all the money that he could make and then spend the bulk of it benefiting the poor. By sponsoring a cold blooded dispossession of the landless, the chief has assaulted the very heart of socialism. A man guilty off such basics that constitute class struggle was not free to call himself a socialist.
©Sunday Concord, May 13, 1980
(Pp.66-68)
