Sunday Awoniyi and Okun Nation: Setting records straight
It is rather unfortunate that a lot of us do not cherish the efforts of some of our forebears. We do not know the pains they went through in achieving the bits they were able to achieve. And worst still due to the arrogant sense of entitlement that has taken over majority of our youths, they easily resort to abuse, curses and blackmail.
I am particularly weighed down when a young man said Chief Sunday Bolorunduro Awoniyi was ‘onijekuje ole’. In response to these recent deluge of abuses and lies on a facebook group ‘Okun Our Heritage’ against Chief Awoniyi, I will like to correct the age long lie peddled around by the political enemies of Chief SB Awoniyi, that he was the one that sold Okun people to the north and called us Hausa/ Fulani.
Firstly, Chief Sunday Bolorunduro Awoniyi was born in 1932 while the entire Okun land where he was born was carved into Northern Nigeria in 1914; that was eighteen (18) good years before his birth. Now, to all that believed Awoniyi sold us to the North, the question here is that, how could a man that was not yet born contribute to such activity?
When in 1954 Mr. S.A Ajayi from Ogidi, Mr. Fagbemi Adeleye from Ekinrin Adde, Mr. Jethro Adebola from Kabba, Mr. Bello Ijumu from Aiyetoro Gbedde and Mr. R.T Alege from Mopa were contesting in the first election in Okun land to occupy seat in the Northern House at Kaduna, Awoniyi was just 22 years old and had just graduated from Barewa Collge Zaria.
That same year (1954) he proceeded to the Nigeria College of Arts, Science and Technology now Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, from there to University College Ibadan where he graduated in 1959.
The irony is that no Okun man had blamed all these forebears from Okun nation for participating in Northern politics those early days when Awoniyi was only a youth enjoying school in northern Nigeria.
Secondly, in the News Magazine of January 2004, Awoniyi said the following while responding to Richard Elesho about him calling us Hausa/Fulani: ‘Now to my being a Yoruba man. My name is Sunday Bolorunduro Awoniyi. You cannot be more Christian than Sunday. My father and his friends founded the Baptist Church in my home town of Mopa… I am a Nigerian. I am a Northerner. I am a Yoruba from Mopa in Okun land of Kogi state’. Also, responding to Mr Kola Ologbondiyan in an interview with Late Chief SB Awoniyi published in a Lagos based Newspaper, Thisday, of December 20 2003 while the journalist was pressing on his ancestry in relation to him accepting the leadership role of Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF); Awoniyi said, ‘I am a Northern Yoruba Christian’.
About verifiable impacts in Okun land, Awoniyi was the first Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance when Kwara State was created in 1968, while Gilbert Obatoyinbo was the Chief Commercial Officer then started the lobby for the construction of Ilorin to Kabba road which was agreed upon and shared to indigenous contractors before he left for further studies abroad in 1970. As you know, Ilorin was a Provincial headquarters just like Kabba but while Ilorin became State capital, Kabba was left behind. So, when the workforce of Kwara including a huge chunk from Kabba province came down to Ilorin, Awoniyi made it a priority to connect Ilorin to Kabba by a trunk A road.
However in the mid Seventies when he was no longer with Kwara State Government the pace of the road contract slowed culminating in the termination of the resurfacing work from Ilorin at Omuaran. By this time, Awoniyi was approaching retirement, he once again drew attention to the deplorable nature of the road connecting Oyi Local Government to the State capital Ilorin in conjunction with Obatoyinbo who served as Secretary to the military government of Col. Ibrahim Taiwo in 1975.
This time, the efforts yielded result again which brought about the contract that was re-awarded to a foreign company Dumez for the stretch that covers Okun land from Eruku . Beside the road, Awoniyi was the one that literally seized the electrification plan that was to pass through Okene from Benin to Lokoja. Mr. Columbus was the name of the white man that did the feasibility studies. Silas Daniyan was very instrumental to this agitation and the contractors had to factor in their request because Daniyan’s class mate and friend were in charge of the Ministry of power.
They used a cartographic pen marker to draw the sketch of the first communities to be electrified which were not in the original plan; that was how Mopa and Kabba were noted and connected to the original plan.
The commissioning of the light in this part of the world was done in Mopa, 1977. To buttress some of my points here, many Nigerians know Simon Kolawole as a diligent writer that verifies his facts deeply before going to press. He was a former Editor of Thisday Newspaper and currently the MD/ CEO of the Cable. In his article entitled … What Did He Want to Tell Me? Published in his Simon Kolawole Live on 12/02/2007 wrote as below: I loved Awoniyi for one thing – he never ran away from his identity. Northern Yoruba are usually accused by South-west Yoruba of eating from both sides of the divide – claiming to be Northerners or Southerners depending on the circumstance. You could never accuse Awoniyi of that. Charged with being a lackey of the Hausa/Fulani/Muslim North, he once replied with humour, saying: “My name is Sunday Awoniyi. You cannot be more Christian than Sunday. You cannot be more Yoruba than Awoniyi. In fact, Awoniyi and Awolowo mean essentially the same thing.”
It was Awoniyi’s influence as Board of Trustee Chairman for PDP that paved way for the appointment of Ministers from Okun under Obasanjo; you can cross check these from Chief Akanmode and Gen. Jemibewon. Since his death what have we gotten?
Awoniyi left Lagos, Kaduna and other cities, to establish a multi-million naira plastic factory in Okun land that fed many families and trained many students for many years as the only functioning factory in the entire Okun land before it folded after his death.
Awoniyi single handedly built a market in Okun land; built a primary school that has more than fifteen class rooms, built a multi-million naira Civic center hall and a Pastor’s residence. These are few of the things this man did. Are they not of impact? Then some of you because of freedom are saying all these against him? Show me who has done better. Let us learn to cherish people that did their bit and pray to God to empower us to do more, instead of staying online abusing a man that died at 75, fulfilled.