Reverberations from Obafemi Awolowo’s Transcendence toward Self-Actualization during Nigeria’s Second Republic

This paper gives an account of one of the hypotheses tested in a developmental investigation on Awolowo’s political rhetoric during his political career. It precisely examines Awolowo’s treatment of the issues of the economy, politics, socio-cultural milieu, international relations and education during Nigeria’s Second Republic, when Awolowo doubled as the Leader of Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) and its Presidential candidate. It was the major purpose of this study to subject Awolowo’s political speeches, during this time, to statistical analysis, in order to gauge any significant difference in prominence arising from the interactive relationship between the dependent variable of issue salience and the independent variable of issue choice. A logical scale of 25 constructs were developed via the content analysis method, described by Duriau, et al (2007), as the research method for making reproduceable and valid, inferences that are drawn through the interpretation and coding of the texts. The 25 constructs were used as parameters, for weighing the issues treated by Awolowo (independent variables) and the relative salience attached to each of them (dependent variable). The ONE-WAY Factorial Analysis, performed on the data, exposed a significant difference in Awolowo’s treatment of the five issues at probability is less than 0.05 (P< 0.05), with varying degrees of salience, located by the posteriori Newman Keuls’ Method of Multiple Comparisons. Relevant empirical studies are also employed to discuss Awolowo’s treatment of the issues. Findings from the research were reproduced in 4 Tables to expose Awolowo’s rhetorical behaviour during this period.