“Why Awolowo Was Far Greater Than Mandela”.The Awolowo mentioned in this topic is Obafemi Awolowo, the certified Nigerian journalist that got himself a bachelor degree in Commerce before being called to bar after obtaining his Bachelor of Law degree from University of London while the Mandela in the selfsame topic is Nelson Mandela, the South African lawyer whose questionable (and actually under-questioned) human rights activism (or misactivism) propelled him to unarguably undeserved international fame. At this juncture, it is pertinent to note that it is not my intention to tell us the gradual life history of these two persons but rather to correct the perniciously-fallacious notion circulating round the whole of Africa and much of the rest of the world that the late Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela was the greatest African to have ever lived, a fake notion that became exceptionally strong since this nonagenarian Mandela died in 2013. This therefore directly means that I am going to be speaking with you in the next few minutes about the achievements of these two persons and leave you the listener to choose who actually was a GREAT MAN and a real HERO and who contrastly was an epitome of a fake and clearly a non-icon. To start with, there are some important similarities betwixt Awolowo and Mandela, some of which are that both were lawyers (as earlier stated),both lost their dads at an early age, both were ex-gaolbirds and both lost their first sons while in gaol (see page 16 of the 2011 book The Fabiyi Codes by Rotimi Fabiyi for more similarities). These similarities, however, are not what define the greatness been discussed here but rather the dissimilarities. From the start of his political career, Awolowo made it clear that the economic and political independence Nigerians craved for must be achieved strictly by peaceful means through constitutional talks and constitutional amendments in concomitance with accelerated indigenized industrialisation but for Mandela, the only way he believed apartheid would end in South Africa was strictly by indiscriminate violence (through guns and bombs) unleashed on white South Africans, acts which mostly claimed the lives of black South Africans as well as the targeted white South Africans. In other words, Awolowo was a genuine democrat who believed in the rule of law and peaceful resolutions of issues while Mandela was a man of bullets and cordite that believed in the doctrine of achievement by violence.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 11:55:51 +0000
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