This lecture is dedicated to Baba Reuben Famuyide Fasoranti, who, since entering University College, Ibadan, as one of the first 104 undergraduates of the institution, has lived up to the promise of his Yoruba name: One Chosen to solve problems. In education, administration, community improvement, and political development of Western Region and Nigeria itself, Chief Fasoranti has made stellar contributions to Nigeria’s development consistently and patriotically since graduating at UCI over the last 75 years. Baba, ojo yin a dale, sir. Ee ni b’ojo olojo lo.

Today’s gathering is to honour an elderly statesman who also had the rare privilege of being among the first advocates of social democracy as a vehicle for national development in Nigeria.

Baba Fasoranti was one of the young politicians of the time who together with the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo led the Action Group Government of Western Nigeria between 1952 and 1960.

As the saying goes, context matters. The context of the Action Group governance was very clear – the end of colonial rule and the beginning of self-government and the life-long project of national development. In addition, the period was guided by a constitution that was substantially federal and was not subject to easy violation or manipulation of the constitution’s provisions without sanctions from the colonial government. The period was unlike what happened in 1966 when the independence constitution that graduated into the Republican constitution of 1963, when the constitution was suspended by the first generation of military rulers in the country to enable the era of governing by fiat or decree. More on this point later.

For the party (also known as Afenifere by Yoruba voters in the region) and as repeatedly stated in Awolowo’s writings, ‘development’ meant social, economic and cultural emancipation of a people emerging from colonial rule, and to end of the disadvantages colonization had left on them.

The purpose of the government from the 1950s was to pursue development objectives, without which it would not be possible for every citizen to enjoy what Awolowo calls “the good things of life.”

The dutifulness and preparation attached to Afenifere’s new role was demonstrated when, a year after taking office, the new government of Western Region proposed a revenue and expenditure budget of £12,995,080 and £12,447,300, respectively.

The budget inherited from the colonial administration and on which they had governed a population of about 15 million people, was £5,390,806 and £4,480, 316 revenue and expenditure, respectively.

Thus, in three years – specifically between 1952 and 1955, the government was able to award:

• over 650 higher education scholarships, 400 0f which were directly by the government and the remaining 400 made by the Western Region Production Development Board.
• Gave 600 secondary school scholarships.
• Radically increased number of secondary modern schools from less than 12 in January 1952 to 300 in 1955 and added 300 classrooms in 1955 alone.
• Increased secondary schools from 46 to 74.
• Fully established a Free Universal Primary Education across the region.
• Launched a scheme for adult education designed to wipe out illiteracy in three years with effect from 1955.
• Built 11 regional hospitals and rural health centres.
• Provided free medical treatmentaccess to majority of children in the region.

Belief in the transformation of society by way of education and knowledge was deeply embedded in the approach of the Egbe Afenifere to governance. For example, in the five fiscal years before their arrival in government – that is 1 April 1947 to 31 March 1952, the total expenditure on education and health for the whole region under colonial rule was £2,370,33 and £887, 860 respectively. Contrast this with the £5,154,920 and £1,907,830 which the party committed for the year 1954-55 alone.

Note that the geography of the region comprised seven of today’s 36 states including Edo and Delta; most of today’s Lagos State including Epe, Ikorodu, Ikeja, Apapa, and Badagry; and a substantial part of the current Bayelsa State, apart from the current Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Ondo, and Ekiti.

The pattern of spending reveals more than just merely creating access to education, but also the creation of a new education bureaucracy including teacher training system, inspectorate, book publishing etc., the purpose of which was to underpin the transition to a self-confident modern society.

Time will not permit me to dwell on this at this presentation, but suffice it to say that few, if any, of the literature on the development of education in Nigeria has given sufficient attention to the Western Region experiment as, arguably, the first well-planned, secular, state commitment to education and several other social benefits, including free access to physicians. It has been documented that in 1949-50, that is, two years before the free primary education system began, only 16% of children in Nigeria were in primary school. As in many parts of Africa at the time, only one to two percent of children were enrolled in Secondary education in 1950.

Notwithstanding the heroic achievements recorded by the government, and as assiduously maintained by the two succeeding military governments in the region, Awolowo and his team of Afenifere leaders, many of whom we are celebrating today under a military-induced 1999 Constitution, remained unrelenting about the pursuit of this form of development.

The same dutifulness and preparation shown in the Western region between 1952 and 1966 were reprised between 1979 and 1983 when the UPN government made secondary education free in the five states: Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Bendel they then controlled. They even went further with each of the five states to establish what we may now describe collectively as the third-generation public universities in Nigeria, i.e., state universities.

It is tempting to suggest that we are now dealing in the same region with a different world from that in which Awolowo was speaking in 1980, but if we look around us, it is not that difficult to see how the issues he identified then have grown bigger, some will say, deepened in the region governed by Action Group/Unity Party of Nigeria!

Speaking in 1980, on the 25th anniversary of the introduction of universal primary education in the old Western Region, an event that was appropriately held at the Ondo State House of Assembly in Akure, he said:

It is common ground that Nigeria is one of the most underdeveloped countries of the world. Two pertinent questions to which many Nigerian leaders, especially the so-called economic advisers to top government functionaries, appear to have closed their minds or to have refused or failed to apply their minds is: What are the chief causes of our underdevelopment?

Awolowo was specific in his idea and definition of ‘development’. He went on:

It would appear that our expert planners, from period to period, plan for the economic growth of Nigeria, and not for its development. The phenomenon of growth without development is habitually overlooked.

All development economists outside Nigeria agreed that there is substantial difference between growth and development. I say economists outside Nigeria, deliberately. For in Nigeria most of the experienced economists have allowed partisan political prejudices to colour their analyses and judgments, and badly damage their scholastic credibility.

All around us we see evidence of growth. New factories, new shops, new highways, plenty of motor vehicles, greater output of petroleum and of cement, etc. In the result, our per capita real income has risen somewhat. But in spite of all these, Nigeria remains underdeveloped. It also remains one of the poorest countries in the world.”

As I understand it, growth versus development is an unresolved debate among economists – that is, that there is no unified explanation on where one ends and another begins, except that both are important and desirable. However, Afenifere’s belief in social democratic governance, such as the world had seen in the growth and development of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, for instance, have shown that growth and development do not have to be mutually exclusive, as it has been in Nigeria for far too long since the emergence of the second military dictatorship in 1983.

For us in Africa, however, the evidence shows clearly and demonstrably that the current growth is leaving our mass majority impoverished than they were 40/50 years ago. Worse, it may have undermined the previous efforts and achievements that states in old Western Region had made at addressing the development crises faced at the end of colonialism.

Despite the economic growth of the last 30 or so years, our cities and towns are still among the unsightliest and most overpopulated in the world. The commonality of incidences of typhoid infestation speaks to the widespread unavailability of potable drinking water to the majority.

It was 74 and 50 years ago, respectively, that universal free primary education was introduced in Western Nigeria, and the Nigerian federation respectively. The most soul weakening of our development statistics is that Nigeria today has one of the largest populations of out of school children in the world.

Contrary to the mind-habit of associating this problem with the Northern part of the country, there are regular occurrences of withdrawal of children from schools in many parts of Yoruba hinterland today.

If the primary cause in the North for the huge population of out-of-school children is parental indifference or lack of will; in the Southwest today, the main cause is reckless abandonment of the egalitarian principles with which the region began home-rule in 1952. It should sadden the most brazen of us to hear that in 71 years of universal primary school in the Southwest, the region has not achieved more than 85% of region-wide literacy, in the many years that the country’s post-military governance has been under the 1999 Constitution with the highest dose of centralized governance other federations across the globe.

Recently, a governor in one of the southwest states, when approached by a visiting team of community leaders to consider establishing a secondary school for them, was said to have told them that his government had liberalized education. The communities lraders should look for private investors to build schools for them! His excellency was of course unmindful of the fact that private school proprietors are interested in the general goal of profit-making! Has Nigeria overcome its development challenges to the extent to justify denying a public-funded primary or secondary school in any part of Nigeria of the Southwest?

It was no accident that Awolowo, while borrowing from one of the leading academics on the subject of growth and development at the time, pointed out in his 1980 address at the Ondo State House of Assembly that “the objectives of economic development were “better nourishment, better health, better education, better living conditions, and an expanded range of opportunities in work and leisure for the poor…” Has any of the six states in the region achieved these objectives?

Baba Fasoranti must be proud that his life work was in the pursuit of such goals.

I have said a little above regarding what I think are the most pressing issues facing Yorubaland today, despite the region’s head start in social democratic governance, a governance model that makes the old Western Region: (now Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Osun Ondo, Edo, Delta, and Ekiti) the least endangered by multi-dimensional poverty among the country’s 36 states. This assessment could not have occurred without Afenifere-AG/UPN’s bold experiment with social democratic principles.

The success of the AG/UPN Government in the Western region had two key contexts which must not be overlooked. The first was constitutional, the second was the enlightened mindset and leadership of the government itself.

In the immediate pre-independence period and through the early years of independence, the contours of Nigeria’s federalism were clear and unambiguous regarding what the federating units were. It was an arrangement that made possible democratic participation by the people in how they were governed.

The various military regimes that we have had but one, i.e., the Yakubu Gowon government erased those contours, beginning of course with the infamous decree No 34 of 1966. The development in Nigeria’s politics since the 1970s, particularly since the civil war, has shown that we owe General Yakubu Gown a debt of gratitude for his adherence to federal principles in the years that he was head of state.

It was Yakubu Gowon’s regime that abolished decree 34 of 1966. Yet, and despite all the fanfare usually attached to the military’s promise of political reform, none of Gowon’s successors kept to the norms of federalism, or its fairness, as well as his regime did. Indeed, in the handling of politics, all those who succeeded Yakubu Gowon as military head of state used the military’s disdainful attitude to decentralisation to shadow constitution making in Nigeria. A behaviour that still haunts our national politics today.

A good example of this is the case with the current Nigerian constitution which imposes 774 local governments on the country. Yet, when one looks carefully at Section 7 and the Fourth Schedule of the same constitution, the imposition looks like a contradiction of the very principle of democratic representation that should underpin the establishment of local governments, whether in a unitary or federal system.

The pre-independence constitutional arrangement was favourable. The idea of the region as a self-governing unit was maintained. The region was made up of provinces.

The regional idea was carried over into the independence constitution. However, the regional crisis in the Western region was used to subvert the norms of federalism when the federal government became a direct participant in what was originally an internal AG party crisis and which the judicial process, both in Nigeria and in the UK Privy Council, were already handling according to the law.

However, the recent establishment of a development commission for each of the six geopolitical zones in the country perhaps offers an opportunity to bring constructive change and meaning to the development debate.

There is always the risk that given the ‘dependency’ mind-set that is now entrenched within Nigeria’s federalism, the commissions will not see themselves as rivals to state governments in terms of statutory provisions. This is an area with which the country can introduce referendum for major decisions of the commission.

It is imperative, therefore, that the work of these commissions has to be collaborative and not competitive with the state and local governments. It is salutary that one of the purposes of the commission is to support ecological management across each of the six political zones. This provides a good opportunity for addressing the horrendous and growing environmental problems across the country and their implications for the built environment.

Finally, Mr Chairman, members of Afenifere Executive Council, and all members of the Egbe till today, allow me to conclude this lecture by congratulating (one million times) Chief Fasoranti for leading Afenifere boldly and honestly since the passing of Chief Abraham Adesanya. Without this organization, there might not be any trace of social democratic efforts in the history of the Nigerian polity, given that since Independence in 1960 the country still has over 100 million people in poverty.

In today’s fast-moving, complex, and over-centralized Nigeria, Afenifere still has important roles to play: The first is continued struggle for restoration of federalism, under which all the federating units today obtained independence in 1960 and became a republic in 1963. The second is for Afenifere to provide a closer monitoring of governance in the Southwest.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attention.