The Interpretive Study of Obafemi Awolowo's Prophecies in the Light of Emerging Socio-Politico-Economic Facts about Nigeria

Abstract

This paper reports the interpretive research of Awolowo's prophecies within the socio-historic framework of juxtaposing the extent of the prophecies' fulfilment with contemporary facts about Nigeria. The research is, basically, descriptive, as it makes substantial use of secondary evidence, derived from the literature. The research has, as its purpose, the evaluation of Awolowo's selected prophecies. The rationale for this purpose was to determine, by the preponderance of Awolowo's timely and fulfilled prophecies, whether he could be rightly called a prophet. The article adopts both the thematic and interpretive structures and employs a model, adapted from the literature and extensively modified by this researcher, for its methodology.  Thematically, the study is about the conditional and unconditional prophecies of Obafemi Awolowo, culled from his books and speeches. Several of Awolowo's prophecies, from the period of agitation for self-rule and a period shortly before his death, were drawn from the purposively sampled political speeches and books for interpretive study. The descriptive study also classifies Awolowo's prophecies into the following categories: classifications by communication, revelation, conditionality and fulfilment status. Cut to the bone, this study's findings validated the conjecture that Awolowo was a true prophet who consistently hit the marks in his several prophecies, articulated with religious catholicity. We can boldly say that the major aims of this study – the quest to make people understand the nature of Awolowo's prophecies, see the implications of the already fulfilled ones on Nigeria's progress and development, pay attention to the unfulfilled ones and scrutinize the lessons derivable, generally, from his prophecies – have been largely dealt with in this paper. It is submitted that contemporary Nigerian politicians will benefit, a lot, from studying the prophecies of Awolowo, in the light of emerging socio-politico-economic facts about Nigeria. Please take note that all the Bible references are from: The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible – KJV - 2016 edition.