H.I.D LIVES ON

The death of the matriarch of the Awolowo family, Hannah Idowu Dideolu Awolowo, has created a vacuum which cannot easily be filled. HID, as she was popularly known, did not only head the family left behind by her husband, the late premier of the old Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, she was also matriarch to the whole Yoruba land. It was a role handed down to her by her husband.

As leader of the then Western Region between 1952 and 1959, Chief Awolowo had established a distinct political tendency that largely settled into a political culture. His populist political philosophy of democratic socialism – later encapsulated as Awoism – was anchored on a welfarist system that emphasised free education, free medical services, rural development, and employment.

Awoism remained the popular political tendency in the areas under the old Western Region until Awolowo’s death in May 1987.
Though, HID did not really participate in active politics, she played a key supportive role in Awolowo’s politics. But at his death, she naturally inherited the role of a matriarch for the region, especially, for the followers of the Awolowo philosophy. She became a unifying factor and a symbolic political pillar for the South-west.

At the inception of the Fourth Republic in 1999, the pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, peopled mainly by key Awolowo followers, in close consultation with Ma Awolowo, formed the Alliance for Democracy. AD controlled the six South-west states from 1999 to 2003, when an ill-fated alliance with then President Olusegun Obasanjo, who became president on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party, resulted in the loss of all the South-west states, except Lagos, to PDP. That loss was later followed by divisions within Afenifere, which culminated in the scattering of its members into various political parties.

But HID remained close to elements within the various political inclinations, as politicians in the zone sought leverage from the Awolowo linkage. Her place was always a mecca for politicians during the different elections since 1999. She tried to mediate between the various political tendencies in Yoruba land, especially between the hard-line Afenifere members, which Chief Ayo Adebanjo appears to represent, and the more moderate voices led by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. Though, it is hard to argue that politicians in the South-west actually deferred to Awolowo’s wife in their political choices since the Fourth Republic, she wielded an important moderating influence in the politics of the zone. She carried an aura that was never lost on politicians in the South-west.

With Ma Awolowo’s death, an important political aura has vanished, a vital moderating voice is silenced, and a key rallying point is pulled down. Her death represents the end of an era in Yoruba politics.

Some observers have said that with the demise of the Awolowo matriarch, there might be a greater propensity towards the emergence of political inclinations in the South-west so different from each other that they can hardly work together.
But a more plausible situation seems to be that there may be a greater leaning towards the mainstream of Nigerian politics by South-west politicians.