Vunderkind
Social Member
Sardauna of Sokoto and Obafemi Awolowo used to be good friends. They visited each other a lot and Sardauna was very keen to implement Awolowo’s policies only if he told him before hand. Once NPC won the December 1951 Northern regional elections, it was AG which had won the Western region’s elections two months earlier that it congratulated and extended alliance to at the Central House slated to open in February 1952. The North was never interested in partnering with Zik, NCNC, or the Igbos.
While Zik and the Eastern region were embroiled over the Prof Eyo Ita and the six sit-tight ministers, Awolowo and Sardauna continued to strengthen their alliance. The first branch of AG outside the Western region was formed in Kano on 4th October 1952. Awolowo assured the jittery Northern rulers that the move was not a threat and he went on to deliver several lectures on government by federation in which he did not criticise Northern leadership at all. Arriving in Kaduna, together with Alhaji Gbadamosi and Alfred Rewane, he went to see his new friend, the Sardauna.
When Wazirin Bornu, Mallam Ibrahim Imam who was both General Secretary of NPC and the member from Bornu province introduced a Decency Bill which would make wearing clothes compulsory in the North, the colonial civil secretary who was also the president (speaker) of the Northern House shut it down. On hearing this, Awolowo at the next sitting of the Central House in Lagos raise it as a motion of national importance. The Daily Times of 23rd March 1953 reported Awolowo saying on the floor of the House: “The British ought to be ashamed of themselves because people still go naked after sixty years of their rule.” Since then he made sure he asked for trainloads of clothes in the South to distribute anytime he was going up North.
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Source: #NigerianEye
