By Lasisi Olagunju
I was an undergraduate in Ife on Friday, 23 January 1987, when the statue of Oduduwa was commissioned at the Oduduwa Hall. Several of us, students, were at the venue not because a statue was to be inaugurated but because Chief Obafemi Awolowo would be there with his wife, Chief (Mrs) HID Awolowo. And they came in a blaze of glory; husband and wife locked in heavenly calmness. I should still have their photo of that occasion. The university orator, Dr Niyi Oladeji, who compered the event, described the couple as people who had been preeminent long before many in the gathering were born. He asked his audience to look at the statue and look at Awolowo. What he pointed at was an artistic representation of reincarnation. I looked at husband and wife; they exchanged glances and smiled. Less than four months after that event, Awo was gone, forever. By Friday this week (19th September, 2025), it will be ten long years since HID, the matriarch, transited to eternity. This piece celebrates her and her essence.
Chief (Mrs) HID Awolowo was Yeye Oba of Ile Ife; she moved up and became Yeye Oodua (mother of all children of Oduduwa). Yeye Oba, in some kingdoms, is called Iya Oba (the king’s official mother); but, Yeye Oodua is a custom-made title which HID pioneered and, since her exit ten years ago, no one has tried stepping into that shoe. The title talks to “the archetypal mother who guided the collective lived experience of the Yoruba nation,” to use Professor Jacob Oluponna’s description of Chief (Mrs) Awolowo. At a point in the 1980s, all obas and chiefs in Remoland sat and pronounced her as their Iyalode. I saw in David Hinderer’s Seventeen Years in the Yoruba Country that Iyalode is the “Mother of the town.” In Samuel Johnson’s The History of the Yorubas, she is the “Queen of the ladies,” the “most distinguished lady in the town.”
Semonides of Amorgos was a Greek poet who lived during the 7th century BC. One of his poems is translated in literature as Types of Women. From Mary R. Lefkowitz’s Wives and Husbands (April 1983), I got what I wanted from that poem, a celebration of the best in womanhood: “Another is from a bee; the man who gets her is fortunate, for on her alone blame does not settle. She causes his property to grow and increase, and she grows old with a husband whom she loves and who loves her, the mother of a handsome and reputable family. She stands out among all women, and a godlike beauty plays about her… Women like her are the best and most sensible…”
A sole soul who defied all odds in her parents’ home, HID was an Idowu without Taiwo and Kehinde. The twins left as soon as they came; same with all others from her mum – before and after her. Survivors are confirmed record breakers. What does it mean to be a record breaker? HID told an interviewer: “You see, I am the only surviving child of my mother, and my mother on her part was the only surviving child of her mother. Incidentally again, my grandmother was the only surviving child of her mother; so that all along in my lineage, it’s been only one child down the line up to me.” She survived and proved wrong those who held that one child was “simply not a family.” She used her life to show the world that one lone one can, ultimately, be abundance.
Some 98 years ago (1927), two American psychologists, Florence Goodenough and Alice Leahy, did a study of children who were their parent’s only child. They found them to be “more self-confident, more fond of physical demonstrations of affection, and more gregarious in their social interests.” In the book My Early Life, Chief Awolowo said his wife “has courage of a rare kind.” And, to emphasise how sterner the stuff HID was made of, Awo compared the steely courage he was generally known to have with his wife’s and submitted that he was “no match for her at all in her exercise of infinite patience and forbearance under all manner of circumstances.” She was the quintessential Yoruba strong woman, every inch a leader.
Professor J. K. Oluponna of Harvard Divinity School, in the Foreword to In the Radiance of the Sage: The Life and Times of H.I.D. Awolowo authored by Professor Wale Adebanwi, gives a personal, graphic description of the hard stuff that was HID Awolowo. Oluponna wrote: “I first saw Chief (Mrs.) H.I.D. Awolowo in 1965 when I was fourteen years old. She was presiding over a political rally in Ile-Oluji, a town in Ondo State where I grew up. Her image is transfixed in my memory even now. A young woman of great conviction, she was holding a broom aloft, as one would wield a political symbol or a weapon. Chief Obafemi Awolowo, her husband, was noticeably absent from the rally, having been taken political prisoner. But she stood valiantly in his stead before the people, keeping the momentum of the party ablaze. Indeed, it was clear from the command in her voice that she handily took up the mantle of greatness so suddenly thrust upon her. Equal to the task of leadership, she assumed the pivotal role in those difficult years that later played so prominently in her husband’s political career.”
Oluponna describes her as “a symbol of honour for her generation.” He sees a “gorgeously attired… accomplished Yoruba woman in iro and buba, her signature ceremonial saki, the iborun, draped dramatically over one shoulder.” He could still hear her voice defiantly giving the other side a notice of defeat: “We shall use this broom I am holding to sweep away the dirt and filth that the opposition party has brought to this land.” Oluponna quotes her here as declaring “emphatically to the applause of her sympathetic audience.”
With two biographies and an autobiography, she is one of the most documented persons in Nigeria’s history. There is her autobiography A Memoir of the Jewel published in 2003; before that one, there had been The Jewel: The Biography of Chief (Mrs.) H.I.D. Awolowo written by Chief Tola Adeniyi. In preparation for her 100th birthday, the family commissioned a scholarly account of her life. It came out as In the Radiance of the Sage: The Life and Times of H.I.D. Awolowo authored by Professor Wale Adebanwi. She left as the book was about to go into print. It was launched on 18th November, 2015 as part of her funeral rites. These texts are apart from her husband’s many books in which her story complements completely the author’s.
In November 2003, the Nigerian Tribune published what it headlined Testimonies of the Sage’s Jewel. It is HID’s story of survival in the face of near tragedies. The first was in the 1960s. She learnt her son, Segun, had passed his Cambridge University law exam and was overwhelmed with joy. She hired a flying boat from Lekki to take her across the waters for a quick dash to Ibadan “to send something important to him.” They “were right in the middle of the sea when the engine of the boat ceased.” She panicked but prayed and “by some miracle of God,” she said she and the boat handler “finally made the shore.” The second was with her husband in a helicopter while on a political campaign to Okitipupa. “The helicopter was high in the air when we noticed that all the palm trees underneath the helicopter were on fire.” There was nowhere to land the chopper and time was running out for everyone. “As I wondered if this was going to be the end, by the special grace, the good Lord taught the pilot how to manoeuver the helicopter and somehow we landed at Okitipupa.”
The third near escape was in a canoe during a campaign to Igbonla in present Ondo State. The canoe took in water and was about to sink. She said: “Papa asked the canoe handlers to divert to the nearest point at which we could disembark. With God’s grace, we docked somewhere and got another canoe to continue our journey to Igbonla.” The fourth was more scary. Five grandchildren who paid the family a visit were involved in a ghastly car crash on their way back to Lagos. “They were all in one car and Papa and I rode in another car that followed theirs. Suddenly, their car veered off the road into the bush, crashed into some obstacle and turned on its side. The windscreen and windows of the car were broken. I was dazed and afraid, gripped by panic. How do we explain five grandchildren in one car? How could we have put so many eggs in one basket? I was fearful and jittery but Papa tried to calm me down, assuring me that all would be well in the name of God. And, indeed, all was well. One by one, the children emerged from the crashed car. All five of them unhurt.” Testimonies of God’s mercy.
There is nothing you and I write about or on any subject in the Yoruba space that has not been written before. Writing about the Yoruba strong woman, I checked and saw LaRay Denzer’s Yoruba Women: A Historiographical Study published in 1994. Before this one, there had been several studies and texts. But, for this paragraph and the next, I stick to Denzer and its content. It is there that I found the reinforcement I needed that Yoruba traditions record strong women playing central roles at crucial moments in the life of their society. They would not stop there; they would translate their influence into political power. In doing that, they founded dynasties and shaped kingdoms. The historian, Samuel Johnson, wrote that Oduduwa had two granddaughters whose descendants established the Owu and Ketu kingdoms. In Ondo, there are oral traditions which trace the kingdom’s origins to a woman of steel. In Ile-Ife, the spiritual nucleus of the Yoruba, two women served as Oonis. The first, Luwo, is remembered as a “strict disciplinarian” credited with constructing a network of roads around shrines and public buildings. She was later succeeded by another female Ooni, Bebooye. For details, Denzer asks us to read F.A. Fabunmi’s Ife Shrines, published in 1969.
Beyond king and kingship, the Yoruba woman has been a freedom fighter throughout history. Denzer writes that “In the late 1930s when John Blair, the district officer for Abeokuta, compiled the Intelligence Report for Abeokuta, he reported that the women told him that ‘in the old days they were concerned with war’ and kept their menfolk supplied with food, guns, and ammunition. Enlarging on this, they went on to boast that ’A rich woman title-holder would do more than this. She would ensure that all the warriors of her township had the best guns that Lagos could produce and plenty of powder and shots, or even like (Efunroye) Tinubu, the whole army.” Read Professor Oluponna again.
When HID was about to turn 80 in 1995, I was part of a three-man team put together by the Nigerian Tribune to make a special publication on her. In that publication was (is) a part written by me with me translating her middle name ‘Dideolu’ to mean “the arrival of the great.” I think my translation was apt just as the prophecy of her parents in giving her that name. She grew up great and married a man who answered meaningful names including the Christian name Jeremiah. And, you remember this verse in the Bible: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations” (Jeremiah 1 verse 5).
She married Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo and became a prophet herself – complete with all the implications and consequences. The Biblical Jeremiah suffered the betrayal of friends and rejection from kings and religious leaders. They all hated his ministry and his message but he was not daunted. He was not alone in the suffering of rejection. Read Hebrew 11: 32-38. It is there I saw a list and I read accounts of prophets, great men who “were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated – of whom the world was not worthy – wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.” They stood their course. These two Nigerian prophets, husband and wife, knew the meaning and properties of love, and with that knowledge, they conquered hate and rejection.
I read in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that “The course of true love never did run smooth” (Act I, Scene 1). It was so with this couple who experienced all the shades of life and triumphed over all. Indeed, “all is well that ends well.” William Shakespeare again!
Juju musician, Ebenezer Obey, sang that the most beautiful wife is the one who serenades her husband, understands him and accommodates his interest (Aya to mo yayi lo nseke oko re). Mama HID said she initially resisted her husband going into politics. But he persisted and she gave her consent. “Genuinely, I didn’t like him entering politics. But because I loved him and he was insistent, I agreed.” She said in a newspaper interview.
In the same interview, she was asked how she transited from “ordinary family life” into a life of politics and politicking when her husband became the secretary of the Nigerian Youth Movement. There is more than something in her answer for the benefit of wives of politicians and political persons: “It was strange. People who hadn’t been coming to our house suddenly began to flock in; people who were not our friends, you know, just acquaintances. They would come in sometimes in the morning to see my husband who was the secretary of the movement and would talk on and on till evening. I didn’t like that at all! But because I loved my husband, I adjusted to our new life.”
A good wife makes a good home (iyàwó rere, idílé rere). Papa Awo summed up his life with his wife in these words: “With my wife on my side, it has been possible for us to weather all financial storms. Due to her charm, humility, generosity and ever-ready sympathy and helpfulness for others in distress, she is beloved and respected by all our friends and acquaintances… She absorbs without a word of complaint all my occasional acts of irritability. By her unique virtues, she has been of immeasurable assistance to me in the duties attached to my career as a public man. She has taken more interviews: and listened to far more representations from the members of the public than I have times or sometimes patience for. I do not hesitate to confess that I owe my success in life to three factors: the Grace of God, a spartan, self-discipline, and a good wife. Our home is to all of us (us and our children) a true haven: a place of happiness and of imperturbable seclusion from the buffetings of life.”
I was lucky to be on the management team of her newspaper during the last three years of her earthly existence. That position gave me priceless opportunities to read and study one of the most remarkable women of the 20th and early 21st century Nigeria. She was considerate and compassionate; she was a great host who feted her visiting staff after every meeting. She was meticulous and alert throughout. Her mental strength defeated old age and its gnawing war on cognition.
She was firm and businesslike in the face of business. Imagine a 99-year-old presiding over a meeting; she saw the meeting becoming needlessly prolonged, she sat up and applied the break by saying the Christian Grace: “Oore ofe Jesu Kristi Oluwa wa…” Everyone there took a cue, joined the chorus and had the prolonged meeting ended.
Two weeks before the late Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade joined his ancestors in July 2015, he told Adebanwi, her biographer, that H.I.D. “is just unbeatable… she is almost 100 and her brain is still intact. She still does everything. She will remind you of what you have forgotten. I have never witnessed this kind of thing before. Papa Awolowo was very lucky to have married Mama.”
What else is there to say other than to congratulate her on her life of success? It is ten years this week that the music stopped; but the melody of her priceless existence lingers. She lived strong; she died well and strong; she handed over to worthy children in whose hands the banner flies endlessly on without stain.
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
