Adegoke Adelabu: Remembering the great Penkelemes politician who died tragically at 43

Eaglesforesight special feature on the originator of ‘Penkelemes’.

The word ‘Penkelemes’ will always resonate with members of the political class in Southwest Nigeria and other parts of the country. Everyone with good knowledge of Nigeria’s political history will confirm they know the word. They might even chuckle or laugh, in confirmation of the back story of how the word came to be.

The originator of ‘Penkelemes’, a Yorubanisation of the phrase, “peculiar mess” was Adegoke Adelabu, a popular Yoruba politician who, although politically and economically savvy, was poorly understood and died unaccomplished.

Despite his progressive and ideological politics and nationalism credentials which stood him out as an opposition leader in the politics of Southwest Nigeria and at the national level in the 1950s, historians have not been very kind to Adelabu. Records examined by Neusroom show a pattern of selective recognition – crediting and honouring the legacies and memories of politicians who aligned with the Obafemi Awolowo’s ruling Action Group while ignoring opposition leaders like Adelabu.

He was an intellectually gifted politician, unwavering nationalist and progressive. Adegoke Adelabu was born to Sanusi Ashinyanbi and Awujola Adelabu, an Ibadan Muslim family in 1915. According to an American Emeritus Professor of Political Science, Richard L. Sklar, Adelabiu’s father was a relatively prosperous weaver and trader, and Adelabu was educated through the secondary school level in CMS Schools in Ibadan as well as the Government College, Ibadan where he displayed his exceptional brilliance. He won a scholarship from the United Africa Company (UAC) to study commerce at Yaba Higher College in 1936 but abandoned the scholarship six months later to work as an African produce manager for UAC.

When he left school, he worked for the next 10 years, first for the UAC, later as an inspector in the Government Cooperative Department. In 1946 he delved into private business, and engaged in produce buying, motor transport, and merchandising, in addition to journalism and later politics.

Despite the abrupt termination of his education, Adelabu read widely and had a good command of the English language that distinguished him among the politicians of the time and endeared him to the heart of many supporters who grew fond of his oratory skills, and with it, he swept them off their feet.

Adegoke Adelabu gifted politician 

“In national politics he was a radical but in local politics he was too astute and ambitious not to appear as a conservative and a traditionalist. Throughout Nigeria he was admired for his militant nationalism,” American Emeritus Professor of Political Science, Richard L. Sklar wrote in his 1963 ‘Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent African Nation.’

Dr Reuben Abati described Adelabu as a man “who spoke English in a manner that fascinated and confounded his audience.” He, along with the youth wing of the Ibadan Progressive Union and the Egbe Omo Ibile formed the Ibadan People’s Party to challenge and terminate the dominance of the old guards of the Ibadan Progressive Union.

In the 1951 election, Adelabu’s IPP won all six seats in the Western Regional Assembly and he aligned with the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) which was home to Dr Nnamdi Azikwe, Nigeria’s first President. This was his formal launch into politics and he began promoting his political ideologies, increasing his support base among the people of Ibadan who loved him because he was the idiosyncratic personification of their traditional values.

Adelabu deferred to public opinion and rarely crossed the narrow views of the petty chiefs, “later, when he became the political boss of Ibadan, he seemed to respect principle less than he loved power. In the pursuit of power he cavalierly abandoned the most elementary rules of good administration and frequently resorted to political jobbery,” Sklar writes in Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent African Nation.

He would later become a member of the Western House of Assembly, where, in his usual manner of confounding his audience with his oratory prowess, Adelabu used the phrase ‘peculiar mess’ to describe the opposition in his speech. A section of the audience who did not understand what he meant translated the phrase as “penkelemesi”. The word has become part of the Yoruba lexicon.

Adelabu (left) shares a ride with Obafemi Awolowo (middle), his political rival and Late Premier of Western Region. Photo: Jaliba-Africa.com Designer: Oludare Ogunbowale

As a populist, Adelabu identified more with the commoners – farmers, traders, artisans, and he inspired thousands of them with his politics and oratory prowess. In the federal election of November 1954, only four candidates were required, Adelabu and three of his nominees won and he was appointed Federal Minister of Social Services, an office he held concurrently with the chairmanship of the Ibadan District Council.

In June 1955 Adelabu was removed as Ibadan District Council Chairman for accepting a remunerative post at its disposal in violation of the law. The following month he was re-elected and restored to the position. He was that popular. In August he was convicted for contempt of the Ibadan Native Court and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, but the conviction was reversed on appeal to the Regional High Court.

In his description of Adelabu’s politics Owei Lakemfa wrote: “Adelabu stirred the masses (the Mekunu) with his pro-poor rhetoric and a populism which saw them pour to his home and take rides with him in his cars. The only other politician like him, was his ideological friend and fellow NCNC stalwart, Mallam Aminu Kano who moved the Talakawa in Kano.”

In January 1956, Adelabu was compelled to resign as Chairman of the Ibadan District Council and as a Minister following the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Administration of the Council which indicted him.

During his political career, Adelabu survived 18 ‘political trials’ in five years, and, according to Time Magazine, the only punishment he received for these trials were a few chiding words from presiding judges. This made the people believe he possessed powers that protected him from the law and his political stature grew steadily. At the Ibadan National Convention of NCNC in May 1955 he was elected first Vice-President of the party.

“Probably no politician in Nigeria has ever had organizational power in a local sphere comparable to that of Adelabu in Ibadan in 1954-1958. The nearest approximation to his rule of the Mabolaje was the control exercised by Herbert Macaulay over the Nigeria National Democratic Party of Lagos,” Sklar wrote. In his 1952 book ‘Africa in Ebullition,’ Adelabu explained why he stood in the opposite direction when in the 1940s and 50s many politicians were cross carpeting to the Action Group which was more popular as a Yoruba ethnic party.

Adelabu, a man of the people and many wives was married to 12 women with 15 children before his tragic death at 43. Photo: Onigegewura Designer: Oludare Ogunbowale

“I believe it is the first time in the long history of legislatures that members openly desert their parties for no differences of opinion or principle, but an insult on the maturity of our race,” Adelabu wrote. “Nigeria is dearer to my heart. She is my mother, the author of my beginning…If my child dies and I live long enough I may bear another. If my mother dies, I shall go through life as a wandering orphan.”

He defended radical nationalism as the only effective means to implement the “cosmological imperative” of self-government for Nigeria and condemned tribalism and cultural isolationism as the chief impediments to Nigerian unity. He also declared himself both a “radical socialist” and “a conscientious, convinced and incurable democrat.”

Nurudeen Adelabu says his father was a hugely successful politician of his time who ensured governance was felt at the grassroots. Photo: PremiumTimes. Designer: Bashiru Hammed Adewale

In a 2015 interview , his only surviving son Nurudeen Adelabu said his father was the pillar of the opposition at the time Awolowo was the Premier of Western Region. “He put Awolowo and his Action Group on their toes with constructive criticisms as the opposition leader in the Western Region House of Assembly.

He is still regarded as a hugely successful politician of his time because of his hard work to ensure that governance was felt at the grass roots,” Nurudeen said. “If there is no criticism, the government will shirk its responsibilities. My father provided the necessary ingredients needed to make the Western Region breathe at the time.”

On Thursday, March 20, 1958, Adelabu was returning to Ibadan after a trip to Lagos when his car sideswiped another and crashed into a ditch around the Sagamu axis of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, killing Adelabu and two of his relatives, only the driver, Adelabu’s Syrian friend survived in the car, while occupants of the other vehicle sustained injuries.

His sudden death threw Ibadan town in mourning. While some believed his death was an accident, thousands of his followers suspected foul play and went to town with the belief that his political opponents in Awolowo’s Action Group killed him with diabolical powers to have their way. With this narrative, they went on a rampage destroying lives and property in Ibadan.

Wreckage of the Peugeot 203 car conveying Adelabu and his aides to Ibadan from Lagos. Photo: Onigegewura Designer: Bashiru Hammed Adewale.

A newspaper reported that “grief-maddened crowds” surged through the streets looting shops and destroying property Time Magazine’s report – ‘Nigeria: End of a Charmed Life,’ of Monday, April 14, 1958 also revealed that: “A hundred thousand mourners gathered for his funeral, and the rumour spread among them that their leader’s death had been caused by Ibeju witch doctors using a lethal juju so powerful and selective that it killed Adelabu but preserved the lives of the occupants of the car that had crashed with his.”

The report added: “Thousands of fanatics ranged the streets, beating up political opponents of the Ibadan People’s Party, burning their houses, setting fire to cars parked in the streets. A tribal chieftain and his family were chopped to death because they showed insufficient grief at the passing of Adelabu.” According to Time, in 10 days, 20 casualties had been reported in the violence with many hospitalised, “when the mob ran out of political opponents, it turned its fury on government tax collectors.”

Awolowo, who described as “wicked and utterly false” the rumor that Adelabu’s death had been caused by diabolical power, ordered in federal police reinforcements, who used tear gas and gunfire to break up the raging mobs, killing two and arresting 296 of the rioters.

Before his death at 43, Adelabu lived in a large two-storied building of mud and cement in Oke-Oluokun, Kudeti area of Ibadan with his 12 wives and 15 children who were placed on scholarship by Azikwe after Adelabu’s death.

One of his grandchildren, Adebayo Adelabu, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) contested for Oyo State governor in 2019 as the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (ACP) and campaigned with his father’s ‘Penkelemes’ moniker. He lost the election to the PDP’s candidate Engr. Seyi Makinde.