The discipline, strategic intelligence and capacity for long-term planning that made Awolowo such an effective development politician were not qualities that disappeared when war came. They were simply placed at the service of a different objective. The same administrative machinery that could organise free education on a massive scale could also be mobilised to wage economic war. The same capacity for calculating costs and consequences that made his development programmes possible could be applied to the calculation of how to defeat an enemy.
When Pete Edochie, the veteran actor and Nollywood royal, appeared on Isbae U’s “Curiosity Made Me Ask” podcast a few days ago and named Chief Obafemi Awolowo as his favourite Nigerian politician, I suspect a few feathers east of the Niger were ruffled. For many Igbos, Awolowo is not simply a historical figure, his name is inextricably tied to the trauma of an existential war and the policies that helped bring Biafra to its knees. Yet Edochie is hardly the only prominent Igbo with a deep admiration for the late sage. Osita Chidoka, the former minister of Aviation and a former schoolmate of mine, has on several occasions expressed profound admiration for the man’s personal discipline, intellectual rigour, courage, and visionary leadership.
To admire Awolowo from an Igbo perspective is not a simple proposition. It requires confronting a historical paradox that many would rather avoid: How do you acknowledge the extraordinary political mind and developmental achievements of a man whose wartime policies are remembered by many with profound pain and bitterness?
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It demands that we hold two seemingly incompatible truths in our minds at once, that Awolowo was an extraordinary visionary who demonstrated what purposeful government could accomplish, and, at the same time, a central civilian figure in a war whose economic strategy inflicted terrible suffering on his fellow Nigerians. Perhaps that tension, rather than the familiar hero-versus-villain argument, is where I believe a more honest conversation about Awolowo should begin.
Edochie described Awolowo as a politician who knew what he wanted to accomplish, understood what it would cost and, crucially, had a plan for how to pay for it. He pointed to free primary education and Western Nigeria Television as examples of a politician whose ambitions were matched by preparation and execution. There was something refreshingly simple about his assessment: forget the mythology and look at what the man actually did.
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Awo inarguably towered above most of his contemporaries and produced results that even his critics have difficulty dismissing. He was an unusually serious thinker in a political environment where seriousness was often in short supply. He read widely and thought deeply about government, economics, society and human development. His political philosophy drew from a mixture of influences, including Plato, Hegel, Marx, Gandhi and the Fabian socialist tradition. Yet, he was not a Marxist revolutionary. His socialism was democratic and gradualist, rooted in the belief that government could deliberately expand human capacity and create the conditions under which ordinary people could live freer and more productive lives.
This distinction matters because Awolowo’s socialism was never simply about government owning everything. It was about what government could accomplish when it was purposeful, disciplined and willing to invest in people. Education was central to this vision. So were healthcare, agriculture, industrialisation, infrastructure and economic planning. He understood something that many African leaders either never understood or understood too late: a poor society cannot become prosperous merely by changing political leaders. It has to build the capabilities of its people.
That philosophy produced results in the old Western Region that remain remarkable even by contemporary standards. Free primary education dramatically expanded access to schooling. The region invested in teacher training, healthcare, agriculture, roads and broadcasting. Western Nigeria Television became another symbol of the ambition of that era. Whatever one’s political allegiance, it is difficult to look at those achievements and conclude that Awolowo was an ordinary politician.
Indeed, one could argue that some of the ideas associated with Awolowo have found new life in contemporary democratic socialism. Zohran Mamdani’s politics in New York, for example, rests on a related premise: that freedom means little when basic necessities such as housing, transportation and childcare are beyond the reach of ordinary people.
The two men operated in radically different societies and confronted very different problems, but there is a philosophical connection in their belief that government should be an instrument for making economic and social opportunity more broadly accessible. And yet this is where the Awolowo story becomes profoundly uncomfortable for many of my kinsmen. Because there is another Awolowo.
Many Igbos believe this was a deliberate strategy to keep them economically weakened and clear the way for Yoruba economic dominance. The jury, however, is still out on whether that was indeed the intention. When Gowon’s government promulgated the Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree of 1972, a framework that built on the earlier trajectory toward economic indigenisation that had emerged during Awolowo’s tenure, the timing could hardly have been more consequential.
The same man celebrated for deploying government so effectively in the service of human development became, during the Nigerian Civil War, one of the most consequential civilian figures in the Federal Government’s prosecution of the war against Biafra. In 1967, he joined General Yakubu Gowon’s Federal Military Government as Federal Commissioner for Finance and Vice-Chairman of the Federal Executive Council. He was therefore not a distant observer of the war. He occupied one of the most powerful civilian positions in the country and became deeply involved in the economic strategy through which the Federal Government sought to defeat Biafra.
The distinction between military and economic warfare is important. Awolowo was not the commander of the federal army, nor was he responsible for every atrocity committed during the conflict. The war was a collective enterprise of the Federal Government and military establishment, and many of the decisions that devastated civilians in the East cannot honestly be attributed to Awolowo personally. But neither can his role be washed away.
The federal blockade of Biafra severely restricted the movement of food, medicine, money, and other necessities. The resulting starvation became one of the defining humanitarian tragedies of the war. Children with swollen bellies and skeletal bodies became the haunting images through which the outside world came to understand the human cost of the conflict. Awolowo was central to the economic and financial architecture of the war, and when asked whether he recognised the grave consequences of some of his actions, he reportedly quipped that “all is fair in war.” He argued that starvation could be a legitimate instrument of warfare.
One of the measures associated with his tenure was the decision to replace the Nigerian currency then circulating in Biafra. Awolowo later explained that the Federal Government believed Biafra was using the old Nigerian currency to obtain foreign exchange and purchase arms. Changing the currency therefore had a strategic purpose: to deprive the secessionist government of an important source of financial capacity.
From the perspective of a government fighting to preserve the federation, the logic was understandable. From the perspective of civilians trapped inside Biafra, the consequences were devastating. This is precisely where history becomes morally complicated. A policy can be rational from the standpoint of military strategy and still inflict extraordinary suffering on people who have little or no control over the political decisions that produced the war.
The controversy did not end when the shooting stopped. After the war, the Federal Government’s decision to give people in the former Biafran territory a flat £20 in exchange for their old currency became one of the most enduring sources of bitterness. Awolowo defended the decision and argued that recognising Biafran currency wholesale would have imposed an enormous burden on the Nigerian government.
He maintained, however, that people with verifiable pre-war bank savings should be able to recover them, knowing fully well that many bank records had been destroyed during the war, leaving depositors without the documentation necessary to establish their claims. For a population returning from three years of destruction, displacement and death, the message could hardly have been comforting: rebuild your life, but begin with almost nothing.
Many Igbos believe this was a deliberate strategy to keep them economically weakened and clear the way for Yoruba economic dominance. The jury, however, is still out on whether that was indeed the intention. When Gowon’s government promulgated the Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree of 1972, a framework that built on the earlier trajectory toward economic indigenisation that had emerged during Awolowo’s tenure, the timing could hardly have been more consequential.
The Igbos were still struggling to rebuild their lives and livelihoods after the devastation of the war, while the North lacked the indigenous commercial class capable of immediately taking full advantage of the opportunities the policy created. For the Yoruba, however, it was an economic moonshot; one that gave the Yoruba nation a monumental economic advantage over much of the rest of the country. Its effects continue to reverberate today.
Part of me is still trying hard to reconcile the image of a brilliant man who was far ahead of his time and did so much to position his people, the Yorubas, on a firm footing, with that of a wartime strategist whose policies and calculations contributed to the devastation of millions of my people’s lives. I am tempted to see him as a good case study of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but perhaps he is closer to the Machiavellian political character portrayed in The Prince.
How does one reconcile the politician who believed so passionately in using the power of government to expand human potential with the statesman who helped design policies that contributed to the economic strangulation of an entire population?
Perhaps the temptation is to resolve the contradiction by inventing two Awolowos: the benevolent development visionary on one side and the cold, calculating wartime strategist on the other. But history rarely offers us such convenient compartments. The inconvenient truth is that they were the same man.
The discipline, strategic intelligence and capacity for long-term planning that made Awolowo such an effective development politician were not qualities that disappeared when war came. They were simply placed at the service of a different objective. The same administrative machinery that could organise free education on a massive scale could also be mobilised to wage economic war. The same capacity for calculating costs and consequences that made his development programmes possible could be applied to the calculation of how to defeat an enemy.
That, perhaps, is the real lesson of Awolowo’s complicated legacy. Political genius is morally neutral. Intelligence, discipline, organisation and strategic foresight can build schools, hospitals and industries; they can also make a government more efficient at pursuing an adversary. The question is not merely whether a leader is capable. It is what that capability is ultimately used to accomplish, and whether the people affected by those decisions retain their humanity in the eyes of the state.
This is why Pete Edochie’s admiration for Awolowo should not be dismissed simply because he is Igbo. Nor should his admiration require him to excuse everything Awolowo did. One can recognise the extraordinary achievements of a political thinker while remaining horrified by the consequences of some of his political decisions. The two judgments do not cancel each other out. Indeed, perhaps mature history requires precisely this kind of intellectual discomfort.
Awolowo was neither the saint some of his admirers have constructed nor the uncomplicated villain that some of his fiercest critics remember. He was a formidable political thinker, an exceptional administrator, a committed democrat and a visionary development strategist. He was also a political actor operating within one of the most brutal conflicts in Nigeria’s history, and some of the policies he helped formulate had devastating consequences for millions of people, particularly in the East.
To reduce him to a Yoruba nationalist is to do a great disservice to an enormous part of his intellectual legacy. To portray him only as a development hero is equally incomplete. And to remember him solely through the suffering of Biafra is to overlook what his ideas and administration accomplished in Western Nigeria.
Perhaps that is why Awolowo continues to provoke such strong emotions decades after his death. He forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth about political leadership: a man can be profoundly visionary and profoundly consequential at the same time. He can build institutions that lift people while participating in policies that crush others.
Part of me is still trying hard to reconcile the image of a brilliant man who was far ahead of his time and did so much to position his people, the Yorubas, on a firm footing, with that of a wartime strategist whose policies and calculations contributed to the devastation of millions of my people’s lives. I am tempted to see him as a good case study of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but perhaps he is closer to the Machiavellian political character portrayed in The Prince. The challenge, therefore, is not to choose between two Awolowos. It is to understand that they were the same man.
Osmund Agbo is a medical doctor, author, and the 2026 recipient of the Thabo Mbeki Prize for Scholarship and Public Service.
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