Prominent Nigerians Honour For Enahoro

Prominent Nigerians this afternoon, gathered at the Onikan Stadium, Lagos State, South-West Nigeria to bid late Pa Anthony Enahoro farewell.

The stadium, which was filled to capacity, had governors of Lagos, Osun and Ekiti states, Babatunde Fashola, Rauf Aregbesola and Kayode Fayemi in attendance.

Others who were present included head of the Afenifere Renewal Group, Reuben Fasoranti, convener of Coalition of Democrats for Electoral Reform, CODER, Chief Ayo Opadokun, Chief Olu Falae, Prof. Pat Utomi and all the members of the defunct National Democratic Coalition (NADECO).

Addressing the crowd, former governor of Lagos State, Chief Lateef Jakande said the ideals for which the late Enahoro lived and died were yet to be achieved in the state.

While thanking the Lagos State government for thinking it wise to organise a farewell for the nationalist, he prayed that God should give the country many more ‘Enahoros’ who would put service to the country before self.

Chief Opadokun, who reeled out the challenges Chief Enahoro had to pass through to salvage the nation, said it was painful that his dreams had not come through 50 years after the country’s independence.

“In the early 1940s, at the tender age of 19 as a student at King’s College, a few hundred metres away from here (Onikan), Enahoro, along with other ‘trouble makers’, tried to forcefully extract a promise of independence from the then British authorities, as a condition for the participation of Nigerian natives in the Second World War on behalf of the crowd,” Opadokun said.

—Eromosele Ebhomele