LAGOS – In 1947, thirteen years before independence, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, aged 38, published “Path to Nigerian Freedom.” It was not politics. It was prophecy.
His thesis was clear: Nigeria would stand or fall on 2 pillars — Mass Education and Deliberate Economic Planning. Without them, he warned, we would get “freedom in name only” and a harvest of __“tribalism, corruption, and chaos.”_
78 years later, the prophecy is now our headline.
From Calabar Prison in 1966, Awolowo wrote: “A nation of illiterates cannot have a stable government. Ignorance breeds insecurity, and insecurity will consume us all.”
On the economy: “Without deliberate planning, we shall have poverty where there should be prosperity, unemployment where there should be work.”
