Chief Samuel Ayodele Adebanjo, avowed disciple of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and leader of ‘Afenifere’, the Yoruba socio-cultural group, recently marked his 95th birthday and we can only wish him well for many reasons.
Trained as a lawyer but better known for his role in political affairs of his country, Adebanjo remains an important public figure because of his persistence in espousing his views – sometimes personal, sometimes on behalf of the organisation he leads – on government, governance, social justice and indeed any matter that he believes can improve his country. And, irrespective of others’ opinions, he can be unapologetically firm in his stand.
To describe Adebanjo as rigid, or firm, or stubborn, or principled, depends upon the one describing this lawyer and politician who insists in ‘telling it as it is.’ Telling it as it is is in fact the title of his 2018 autobiography in which Adebanjo maintains that even though life has taught him to be loyal to leader and committed to a cause, loyalty is never blind and his commitment is based on conviction.
Adebanjo took a position that, even if not popular with some of his fellow Yoruba, is indeed a powerful statement of his personal pan –Nigerian world-view on the one hand, and the fundamentally and essentially largely representative of the liberal world-view of the Yoruba people. To courageously argue for and demonstrate, as he did, a principled stand against ethnocentric politics redeemed his tribe and elevated it above narrow-minded attitude in the prevalent in the polity.
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