The Complicated Legacy of Chief Obafemi Awolowo

When, in September 1963, Chief Obafemi Awolowo stood up to address Justice George Sodeinde Sowemimo of the Federal High Court in Lagos, he made three gloomy predictions about what his criminal conviction might portend for the Nigerian polity. First, he said Nigeria would lose his ‘invaluable services’, at least for the period of his incarceration. Second, that his incarceration would heighten political tension and impact negatively on the country’s economy. His final prediction was tinged with his characteristic optimism: that though ‘the present twilight of democracy, personal freedom and the rule of law’ was a harbinger of ‘utter darkness’, it was—as all nights are—also a prelude to a ‘glorious dawn’. Delivered in the lucid, soaring prose typical of him, this was both Awolowo’s denial of the charge of treasonable felony levelled at him by the federal government and the testament of a man fully convinced that he still had a role to play in determining Nigeria’s destiny. In the end, Awolowo was found guilty and handed a ten-year sentence.