“Akintola taku” marked the beginning of the end for Nigeria’s 1st Republic (1 October 1960 – 15 January 1966), though the heady players back then little realized it.
Adebanjo “taku” comes with far less catastrophe, though — except for Afenifere, the Yoruba socio-political Titan that, post-1999 to 2003, has progressively shrunk; and now totters in near-total irrelevance.
But Afenifere’s irrelevance may yet hold serious shock for Yoruba politics. The old lions may be grey and frail. Still, what they lack in hare-brained vigour, they more than compensate for in rich institutional memory and ideological rigour.
So, will rank disloyalty that buried Akintola, as he balked at the Action Group (AG) in 1962, long before his actual death in 1966, exalt Adebanjo, as he now holds out against the Afenifere hierarchy, that earlier named him Acting Leader?
Now at his “departure lounge”, what will Baba Adebanjo tell the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo, when he lands at the other side, on Afenifere’s rise and fall — and Adebanjo’s role in all of it?
Afenifere is a jewel legacy of the Awolowo era. Which was why that franchise came in handy for Yoruba progressives to battle Nigeria’s tinpot dictators — the last being Sani Abacha — to a glorious standstill, which procured this current democracy.
Indeed, these parallel “taku” tales — one by Akintola in 1962, the other by Adebanjo in 2025 — feeds into the rigorous morality of the Awolowo progressive school: unbridled loyalty to hierarchy and the common cause; and total submission to group discipline.
Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA) failed to abide by that high ethos. So, he got banished as reviled sinner-in-chief, in the rigid saint-versus-sinner cosmos of the Yoruba progressives, despite his stellar contributions to that cause pre-1962.
Ironically, back then, the youthful Chief Adebanjo and other Awolowo arch-loyalists gained fresh “life” from SLA’s “death”, aside Awoist bragging rights, over the generations that came after them: with Awo, they bawl, fealty is life; perfidy is death!
So, where will an SLA-like move leave Baba Adebanjo in the lore of Afenifere, even with the Ijebu chief’s earlier contributions to the body? The Yoruba institutional memory, with its elephantine capacity, never forgets!
Still, Baba Adebanjo, with the current Afenifere theatrics, seems to have learnt little from SLA’s tragic thud, even if the old man was himself a player in that grim drama.
That drama — need anyone be reminded? — birthed the South West “progressives” (the beloved Awoists) versus “Demo” (the hated SLA and fallen angels)!
Yet before, both rolled and joyed as solid, indissoluble columns of Awo’s rock-solid progressive phalanx, against conservative and reactionary elements. So, why did SLA become the arch-reactionary of Yoruba politics?
Again, to risk an umpteenth repetition: he failed the test of untrammelled loyalty to the Leader; and total fealty to the collective cause!
So, how has Chief Adebanjo fared, in this two-point test, in the brewing Afenifere debacle? Maybe it’s best to reserve judgment until we revisit the story.
On 16 March 2021, Afenifere Leader, Baba Reuben Fasoranti, 98 (but then 94), named Baba Adebanjo, 96 (but then 92), then his deputy, as Acting Leader. He also named, as Adebanjo’s new deputy, Oba Oladipo Olaitan, the Alaago of Kajola Ago, near Ilesa. Till then, Oba Olaitan was Afenifere’s financial secretary.
Baba Fasoranti’s reason was old age slowing him down. So, he needed a spritely lieutenant to delegate powers, while he withdrew into the background. If there was any other reason, it wasn’t well publicized in the media.
Though Baba Adebanjo was only two years younger than the Leader, his ebullience, an exuberance not even old age could repel or repress, his lifetime devotion to the Awo cause, and that penchant to joust, cut and thrust in the media, when the issue is Yoruba and Afenifere affairs, marked the Ijebu chief as cut out for the job.
So, enter Chief Adebanjo, Acting Leader of Afenifere! But no sooner was he appointed than his old failings took over — that penchant to equate his take as the thinking of the collective.
In those halcyon days of the southern media, when the hated “Fulani herdsmen” committed all the crimes in the land, after forcefully retiring their criminal cousins from other tribes, whatever Chief Adebanjo thought of it all must equate the “Yoruba” or the “Afenifere” cause!
That pretty much held true, during his tenure as Acting Afenifere Leader (2021-2024), which dovetailed into the last months of President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure.
Frankly, whatever views Chief Adebanjo holds, whoever he backs in the political sweepstakes, is his alienable right no one can question. The constant crunch, though, is his attitude that his solo run (or at best, what his coterie of close peers feel) must equate an “Afenifere” or even a “Yoruba” stand.
That is not and cannot be true.
Things got to a head when, in July 2022, he committed “Afenifere” — and the chief’s fictive “Yoruba” — to supporting Peter Obi. That was a gambit pushed too far, and Afenifere felt compelled to clip his wings. That came with a 24 January 2024 announcement.
Even then, Baba Fasoranti would appear too much a champion of the collective — and wise master of Yoruba political history — to publicly humiliate his former deputy.
For context, the so-called “Ijebu Mafia”, a collective of hawks within Afenifere, had pressured the late Chief Abraham Aderibigbe Adesanya (AAA) to expel — and thus humiliate — his deputy, the late Chief Bola Ige, when accused of nurturing the Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE), as rival to Afenifere. Ige himself had accused some Afenifere colleagues of peer envy — and treachery. AAA wisely declined that rashness.
So, what Baba Fasoranti did was some soft landing: creating a new Afenifere Elders Caucus. Though both Acting Leader and Deputy Leader had been abolished, both would find new hallowed space, as “right hand” advisers to the Leader, in that new caucus. Soft landing, yes. But the intention was very clear.
Still, Chief Adebanjo and confederates have dug in. Their latest act of dissent was announcing Dele Farotimi as national organizing secretary of own Afenifere faction, when they knew Kole Omololu — of the Afenifere that made Adebanjo Acting Leader — already held that position.
So, what will Baba Adebanjo, already at his “departure lounge” tell Baba Awolowo: that as SLA broke up the AG by his 1962 intransigence, he too, a professed Awoist all his life, just broke up Afenifere, by refusing to quit as acting Afenifere leader, after Afenifere had abolished that position — and due to Adebanjo’s own excesses?
Indeed, if Baba Adebanjo cherishes his place in history, he will do well to retrace his steps.
Intransigence in 1962 brought SLA avoidable disgrace, despite his tons of good to the AG cause. It won’t bring Adebanjo honour in 2025 if, on his account, Afenifere is smashed and destroyed.
“Adebanjo taku” is no wreath to crown an otherwise glorious Awoist career. A word is enough for the wise!
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