•A pacifist, man of peace departs
IT is an irony that although he was a professional soldier, the late General Adeyinka Adebayo, who died on March 8 at the age of 89, will be best remembered as a pacifist and man of peace. The Federal Military Government apparently saw this quality in him when after the Nigerian civil war, General Adebayo was appointed as Chairman of the Committee on the Reconciliation and Integration of the Igbos (former Biafrans) into the Nigerian Polity.
Reportedly advising against resort to force in resolving the crisis that ultimately led to war, Adebayo had said with remarkable prescience, “I need not tell you what horror, what devastation and what extreme human suffering will attend the use of force. When it is all over and the smoke and dust have lifted and the dead are buried, we shall find, as other people have found that it has all been futile, entirely futile, in solving the problems we set out to solve”.
As military governor of the defunct Western State of Nigeria between 1966 and 1971, General Adebayo deserves credit for helping to stabilise a region whose political volatility was a critical causative factor in the chain of events that precipitated the descent to anarchy in the country. This no doubt involved deftly and pragmatically managing political groups and individuals that had been bitterly antagonistic to each other during the first republic as well as protecting the interest of the Yoruba people in Nigeria in the delicate immediate post- civil war period. His leadership skills as governor was perhaps most taxed during the bloody uprising by farmers in the state over taxation, popularly known as the ‘Agbekoya revolt’, a crisis that his administration eventually resolved harmoniously.
On the developmental front, a major highlight of his tenure as military governor was the promotion of agricultural extension services and it was under him that the Institute of Agricultural Research and Training, Moor Plantation in Ibadan was established. Adebayo’s administration also had the responsibility of restructuring the O’odua Group of companies, which it had inherited from the defunct Western Region as the Western Nigerian Development Corporation (WNDC).
General Adebayo joined the then West African Frontier Force in 1948 after obtaining his education at All Saints School, Iyin-Ekiti, Eko Boys High School in Lagos and Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti. He received his military training at Eaton Hall, England, as well as Chamberley Hall, Surrey, and the Imperial Defence College, London, in 1960 and 1965, respectively. The first Nigerian to be appointed General Staff Officer Grade 1 in 1962, Adebayo was a Staff Officer in the United Nations peacekeeping force during the Congo crisis and served as the Commander of the Nigerian contingent in the country in 1963. He was the first indigenous Chief of Staff of the Nigerian Army, a position he held between February 1964 and November, 1965.
Although the dominant political orientation of the Yoruba has been toward political progressivism, with strong support for social welfare policies and federalism, General Adebayo was one of the founders and the Vice Chairman of the conservative National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the Second Republic. In subsequent dispensations, however, he obviously decided to downplay an overtly partisan role, preferring to be more of a Nigerian statesman. He however continued to take an abiding interest in the affairs and progress of the Yoruba people, a preoccupation demonstrated by his chairmanship of the influential socio-cultural group – the Yoruba Council of Elders. With his demise, Nigeria has lost a man widely regarded as a Yoruba son of refined breeding in the best ‘omoluabi’ tradition and a gentleman/officer in the truest sense.
Source: The Nation