SAMUEL LADOKE AKINTOLA (SLA): A TEACHER, LAWYER, POLITICIAN, ARISTOCRAT AND ORATOR

Like many other African nationalists Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola (born July 6 1910 in Ogbomosho, south west Nigeria) was a politician and was renowned for his great oratory skills. Chief Akintola was a teacher in the 1930s and early 1940s. He left teaching to study public administration and law in England and returned to Nigeria in 1949. Upon his return, he teamed up with other educated Nigerians from the Western Region to form the Action Group (AG). He became the AG party legal adviser and by 1954 was deputy leader under Chief Obafemi Awolowo. As the deputy leader of the AG party, he did not serve in the regional Western Region Government headed by the premier Chief Awolowo but was the Action Group Parliamentary Leader in the House of Representatives of Nigeria. At the federal level he served as Minister for Health and later Minister for Communications and Aviation. In addition to serving as one of the founding fathers of modern Nigeria, he also held the highly revered title of Oloye Aare Ona Kakanfo XIII (the supreme military commander/Generalissimo) of Yoruba land. In preparation for Nigeria's independence, scheduled for 1960, the Action Group party took a decision that affected the career of Chief Ladoke Akintola, the party, and Nigeria when the party in late 1959 asked him to swap political positions with Chief Obafemi Awolowo by becoming the Premier of the Western Region while the latter (who also was the national leader of the Action Group) became the party leader in the Federal Parliament. As a result of the 1959 elections to parliament, the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) from the Northern Region of Nigeria became the country's leading political party with 134 seats out of the 312 seats in the Parliament. National Council of Nigeria and Cameroun (NCNC) based in the Eastern Region of Nigeria obtained 89 seats in the same election. In the West, the Action Group (AG) elected 73 members to the parliament in 1959. The NPC and NCNC (Chief Nnamdi Azikwe's party) coalesced to form the first government of the newly independent Nigeria. Many of the standard biographies of Nigerian leaders and journalistic accounts have never minced words that Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola were close allies and promoters of the Action Group (AG). However, the leadership of the Action Group (AG), which formed the official opposition in the federal parliament, split in May 1962 as a result of a rift between the party’s leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his erstwhile deputy and Premier of Western Nigeria, Chief Ladoke Akintola. Various historical accounts abound on the circumstances that led to the rift between the two political leaders. While some historians claimed that the genesis of the political crisis in Western Nigeria began with the sacking of Chief J.F Odunjo as the Chairman, Western Region Marketing Board by Chief Akintola over inter-family squabbles, others attributed the offshoot of the crisis to hard line stance of the AG leaders over differences that could have been amicably resolved within the party. According to a publication of The Human Rights Law Service (HURILAWS) “Managing Election Conflicts in Nigeria”, the AG crisis of 1962 arose primarily from disagreement over matters of ideology between Chief Awolowo, the party’s leader and Chief S.L Akintola, his deputy. Decisions over the direction of strategic alliances by the party, the adoption of democratic socialism as the party's platform and the battle for supremacy in the party led to disagreement between Chiefs Akintola and Awolowo. Chief Akintola disagreed with Chief Awolowo's decision not to join the coalition government. Chief Akintola felt the Yoruba people of the West were losing their pre-eminent position in business, university and administration in Nigeria to the Igbo people of the East simply because the Igbo-controlled NCNC had joined the government and the AG had not. He also opposed the party's decision to adopt democratic socialism as its ideology, preferring a more conservative stance. He called for better relations with the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) and an all party federal coalition that would remove the AG from opposition and give its leaders greater access to power. Moreover, Chief Akintola was accused by Chief Awolowo of trying to supplant him as Leader of the party. In May 1962 the Western House of Assembly was set to remove Chief Akintola after the party had earlier passed a vote of no confidence on the premier in a party meeting, crisis erupted on the floor of the house. The majority expelled Chief Akintola from the party. The then Governor of the Western Region, the Ooni of Ife, Sir Adesoji Aderemi demanded Chief Akintola’s resignation as Premier and named Alhaji Dauda Adegbenro as his successor. Crisis erupted in the Western Nigeria and this earned the region the appellation "Wild Wild West". The AG party broke into two factions leading to several crises in the Western Region House of Assembly that led the central/federal government, headed by the Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to declare State of Emergency rule in the Western region and Chief (Dr.) M.A Majekodunmi, the Federal Minister of Health was appointed as Administrator. This action resulted in some legal battles as Chief Akintola challenged his removal as the Premier of the region. The series of cases became popularly known and cited as Akintola-vs- Aderemi & Adegbenro (1962) 1 All. NLR. 442, Adegbenro –vs- Akintola & Aderemi (1962) 1 All NLR 465 and Adegbenro-vs- Akintola (1963) All NLR 305. In Adegbenro- vs- Akintola in May 1962, for instance, the issue tried by the court was the removal of Chief Akintola as the Premier of Western Nigeria. Eventually Chief Akintola was restored to power (even though he had lost the legal battle with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council then Nigeria's highest tribunal) as Premier in 1963. In the general election of 1965, Chief Akintola won his position as Premier, not as member of the AG party, but as the leader of a newly formed party called Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), which pursued a policy of collaboration with the Northern People's Congress (NPC) as NIGERIAN NATIONAL ALLIANCE (NNA) and National Council of Nigeria and Cameroun (NCNC) government in the federal parliament and government. Chief Akintola was responsible for completing the founding of University of Ife (Chief Awolowo's brainchild and currently Obafemi Awolowo University) in 1962 while still a premier in Western Region. He was also involved in development of Premier Hotel and other monuments. Along with many other leading politicians, mostly members of the Northern People's Congress (NPC). Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA) was assassinated in Ibadan, the capital of Western Region, on the day of Nigeria's first military coup of 15 January 1966 which terminated the First Republic. This was the "Young Majors Coup" or the "coup of the January boys" led primarily by Igbo Majors including Major K.C. Nzeogwu Major Ifeajuna, who were backed by a combination of officers and junior officers. By: Ayo Arannilewa