He was an outstanding statesman who used his position and influences to unify the North and South, when tribal bigotry was at its peak in the late 1960s and 1970s. Until his demise in 2007, he saw Nigeria as his only constituency. SUNNY IDACHABA, in this report, writes that Pa Awoniyi’s leadership legacy in the annals of Nigeria’s history remains unblemished.
If there is any nationalist whose private and public lifestyles exemplify national cohesion in Nigeria, that person is the late Chief Sunday Awoniyi. He was a statesman with an immensely influential democratic and political character who built bridges beyond ethnic and religious boundaries across the length and breadth of Nigeria. He was a senator who was popularly called ‘Sardauna keremi’. He was a founding member of the G36 that gave the military a relentless nightmare and eventually translated into the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a political party that mid-wifed the return to democratic dispensation in 1999.
At some points in the life of this elder statesman, he once replied to critics who questioned his romance with the Northern aristocratic Muslims despite being a Christian that, “My name is Sunday Bolorunduro Awoniyi. I am a Yoruba man. 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; a Northerner, but I’m a Yoruba man from Mopa in Okun land of Kogi state.”
No wonder, until his death, he was the Chairman of Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), an influential pan-Northern Nigeria political and socio-cultural group often allegedly detested by many Southern Nigerian tribal bigots. When questioned about his acceptance of the position because of his name and language, he said, “I was brought up in my own part of the world to act well. We must play our part wherever we may find ourselves.”
That was his core belief. He was someone who had lived his life in pursuit of the right leaders for Nigeria. For instance, in the year 2000, while delivering a lecture at the Arewa House in Kaduna, this elder statesman focused on the essence of credible leadership for Nigerian nationhood. This was during the 5th annual lecture on Ahmadu Bello’s style of leadership.
While quoting directly from one of the popular speeches of Usman Dan Fodio, he said, “One of the swiftest ways of destroying a kingdom is to give preference to a particular tribe over another or show favouritism to one group of people over another or draw near those who should be kept away and keep away those who should be drawn near.
“The death of a thousand good men of high rank is less serious for the survival of the state than one man of low rank being elevated above the station he is fitted for.” Such was the life that the late Awoniyi lived and died for basically in search of the right space for a future Nigeria.
In the days of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Awoniyi, in view of his disgust for wrong government policies, openly opposed the former president over the unpopular botched Third Term agenda. Within the same period, some men attacked him in his Abuja home on March 12, 2006, but he escaped. This was also after he got suspended from the PDP because of what the party top hierarchy termed his anti-party activities.
Without minding whose ox was gored, he followed with an open letter to Obasanjo, decrying the thick rumour about the alleged self-succession bid of Obasanjo in the form of Third Term agenda. In the letter he said, “I beg of you, for your own good and for our country’s good, make a simple announcement to say that you are not interested in a Third Term and that you plan to go back to Otta in 2007.” He never got a reply from the presidency to the letter except accusations that he was no longer a party man.
Newton Jibuno, one man who was close to Awoniyi while he was alive, referred to him as someone who had the quality of a lasting legacy and one of those who carried their nations on their shoulders and departed without what he described as a Swiss Bank balance that cannot be traced or remembered by anybody, saying his kind is very hard to come by in the present dispensation.
He said, “In Africa and particularly Nigeria, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find men or women of character, integrity, uprightness and transparency to occupy leadership positions that would take us out of underdevelopment and darkness. To the Presidency and some state governments in service, it pays to remember that four or eight years do not last forever. Sunday Awoniyi was one of the most upright Nigerians, very resolute, not minding who may be offended by his uprightness.”
The late elder statesman was a personal secretary to Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, and later became a Super Permanent Secretary in the Federal Civil Service. According to Jibuno, despite such high-profile contacts and service Awoniyi had, he did not crave any further for any limelight as he was contented to be rewarded with the position of the chairman of the board of Impresit-Bakolori Dam Commission, a private-public partnership (PPP) between the federal government and Impresit SRI of Italy in which the FGN had only 40 per cent holding and Impresit held the remaining 60 per cent.
Jibuno said further, “As time went by, the board realised that they needed someone with construction industry experience to lend support to the Nigerian board members. They, therefore, sought the advice of the then Minister of Water Resources, Alhaji El-Yakubu, who recommended that I be selected to take a seat on the board. That was how I met Chief Sunday Awoniyi.
“I recall our first board meeting in Milan, which lasted four days. On the last day, the group’s financial director of Impresit gave me an envelope with money which I didn’t even check as I wanted to return to my hotel room in time to prepare for my return trip. Few hours later, I still hadn’t looked at it when Sunday came into my room and asked if I had been given some sitting allowances. I affirmed this and he wanted to know how much I was given. I then reached for my envelope, opened it and counted the money in it. It amounted to $5,000.
“Immediately, Sunday picked up my room telephone and called someone. I overheard him asking whoever it was on the line why I was given only $5,000 when he (Sunday) got $10,000. He added that since I did all the work, I deserve to be paid equally.
Later that day, the group financial director, Mr. Camerini, brought me an envelope with another $5,000. Sunday and I became such close friends from that moment till he died. He lived for others and was at every point blunt on any matter that attracts his curiosity.”
His son, Yomi, who was a former deputy governor of Kogi state during the administration of Captain Idris Wada, said of his father, “Growing up with my father was quite interesting. Often, he wasn’t around much as he travelled a lot. Anytime he was out of the house, we felt some relief.
“This was because once he returned, we better be reading or doing some meaningful house chores. We were also expected to tell him the news we heard on the BBC World Service as he would ask us to reproduce everything we listened to in the news. We were expected to take notes when listening to the news.
“He was a wonderful man and selfless. He denied himself luxury so that we, his children, could have a good life. He lived a very Spartan life. There was nothing ostentatious about him as he didn’t believe in that as well. He used to tell us to deny ourselves self-gratification. Most of us, his children and those he mentored, have imbibed that lifestyle and that is helping us today.
“I remember that as a kid, on Sundays, we used to go and see one big man. It was later I realised that the big man was the Sardauna. It was quite interesting seeing my father in the presence of the Sardauna then. We had very fond memories of growing up in Kaduna. That was the beginning of his active involvement in politics.”
His first appointment was before independence as a District Officer for the Colonial Administration. He was one of few Northern Nigerians to hold the post because it was mostly exclusive to the British people then. It was after independence that he took up appointment in the Northern Regional Government where he worked with the Sardauna.
In the aborted Third Republic, he was a member of the National Republican Convention (NRC) on whose platform he got elected into the Senate to represent Kogi West before the 1993 Abacha coup sacked that republic.
Pa Awoniyi died in 2007. He remains an unforgettable hero in the history of Nigeria.