Atiku In Pain Over Tinubu’s Failure To Honour Man Who Designed Nigerian Flag

A former vice president of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, has expressed disappointment over the refusal of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to bestow the state burial he promised the late Michael Akinkunmi, who designed the Nigerian Flag.

Atiku expressed this via his official X handle while reacting to a report from the BBC which explained why the late Akinkunmi has waited a year to be buried.

In the report, the family of Akinkunmi had opened up to the BBC that they have given up waiting for a promised state funeral, a year after he died.

Instead Taiwo Michael Akinkunmi, who died a year ago aged 87, is going to be buried this week in Oyo state, where he lived.

While reacting to the development via his Official X handle, Atiku said, “I am immensely disheartened that the Federal Government under Tinubu’s administration has failed to bestow upon the late Michael Akinkunmi, the creator of our national flag, the state burial he was so rightfully promised. 

“No other patriot embodies the spirit of honour and sacrifice as profoundly as the revered ‘Mr. Flag Man.’

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GWG.ng notes that Akinkunmi, known by many as “Mr Flag Man” and whose house was painted in the distinctive green and white colours of the national flag, was a humble man.

But his son hopes that during his send-off, which Oyo state has agreed to fund, he will be remembered for the design that became a symbol of a united Nigeria.

“We have to give him the befitting burial he deserves,” his son Akinwumi Akinkunmi told the BBC Focus on Africa podcast.

Taiwo Akinkunmi always said he was an unlikely flag designer. He entered a competition for a new design ahead of Nigeria’s independence from the UK in October 1960.

At the time he was studying electrical engineering in London and had spotted a newspaper advert about the competition.

According to flag expert Whitney Smith, 3,000 designs were submitted – “many of great complexity”.

But Akinkunmi’s was a simple affair, with equal green-white-green vertical stripes – and it replaced the colonial flag that had included the British union jack and a six-pointed green star under a red disk.

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