Awolowo's Tragedy: H.I.D Weeps Over Favourite Daughter's Death

*Wole Suffers Spinal Chord Injury

The family of the late sage,  Obafemi Awolowo is presently passing through a very difficult period, which has generated a lot of concern amongst friends and associates of the foremost family.

Penultimate week, the matriarch of the family and the Yeye Odua of Yorubaland, Chief (Mrs.) Hannah Idowu Dideolu Awolowo, who will be 96 this November, woke up to the stark reality that she had lost yet another loved one.

A family source told us that for the third time in her immensely endowed life, she would be burying a loved one, the first, when she lost her brilliant and well-horned U.K-trained international lawyer and first son, Olusegun in the early 60s at the peak of the political tribulations of her husband, and the second in the 80s when the man she'd spent the best part of her years, Papa Obafemi Awolowo, who told the whole world she was his jewel of inestimable value, died.

Now, her second daughter, Ayo Soyode, said to be her closest confidant and favourite child, passed on after a serious illness. Ayo was 66years old when she died.

“When the news was broken to mama, she wept and told her relations present that this was her darkest period, a period she never wished to live to witness.”

It was a very sorry and moving sight as the moving spirit of the family became inconsolable.

What even made the situation more unpalatable is the fact that all the family members were battling, praying and fasting to God to save the life of her only surviving son, Evangelist Oluwole who is presently in India for the second round of the operation to salvage his spinal chord.

We gathered that the Publisher of Nigerian Tribune had a very terrible accident along the Lagos-Ibadan Express road sometime last year, which claimed the life of his driver, while he, Oluwole was unconscious for a long time as a result of his damaged spinal chord.

“We don't know what the outcome of the operation will be, but the death of Aunty Ayo has thrown us into complete disarray. Who will console mama now, she was the apple of her eyes, the last daughter, Tokunbo Dosunmu lives in England while the first, Mrs. Oyediran is a cleric, who is based in Ibadan, Oyo State.

“Aunty Ayo was in-charge of papa's legal business and some other businesses of the family. This is definitely a bad time for mama, so we've to keep watch over her now,” the source told us last week.

May 23, 2011