When the Federal Government, under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, announced a list of posthumous pardons last week, Nigerians received the news with mixed feelings. Among those “forgiven” was the late Herbert Samuel Heelas Macaulay, the man history books call the father of Nigerian nationalism.
But the inclusion of Macaulay — a man who fought British colonial oppression tooth and nail — among a list of convicted criminals and disgraced politicians was enough to stir both confusion and outrage. And leading that outcry was none other than the family of the nationalist himself, who described the gesture as “demeaning and historically inappropriate.”
“Herbert Macaulay deserves to be honoured, not pardoned,” said one family representative in Lagos. “You only pardon a criminal. Our grandfather was never a criminal — he was punished for defending his people.”
A Misunderstood Hero
Many Nigerians today, especially the younger generation, mistakenly assume that Herbert Macaulay was a colonial official or one of the imperial administrators who lorded over Lagos in the early 1900s. After all, his English-sounding name doesn’t quite resemble the fiery image of an anti-colonial rebel.
But that’s where history loves its irony.
Herbert Macaulay was the thorn in the British Crown’s side — an eloquent, educated, and unyielding Lagosian who used his intellect to expose the deceit, arrogance, and exploitation of the colonial government.
Born in 1864, Macaulay was the grandson of Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the first African Anglican bishop. He studied civil engineering in England under a colonial scholarship, but upon returning home, he quickly turned from loyal civil servant to relentless critic of British misrule.
When the British introduced discriminatory policies, Macaulay fought back through newspapers, petitions, and public mobilization. He exposed government corruption in land deals, defended the rights of Lagos chiefs, and resisted the colonial tax policies that burdened Nigerians while enriching the imperial administration.
In short, he was Nigeria’s first political agitator — and the founding father of protest politics in the country.
His “Crime”: Defying the Empire
The only crime Herbert Macaulay ever committed was courage.
In 1913, the British authorities charged him with “misappropriation of trust funds” while managing an estate belonging to a Lagos royal family. The trial, historians say, was nothing but a political setup.
According to Professor Obaro Ikime in his seminal work Groundwork of Nigerian History, the British feared Macaulay’s growing influence among Lagosians and sought to silence him through imprisonment. He was sentenced to two years in jail — not for stealing from his people, but for daring to question the Crown’s moral authority.
It was the same playbook the Empire used against every emerging nationalist across its colonies: brand them as criminals, jail them, and hope their spirits would break.
But Macaulay’s spirit didn’t.
When he came out of prison, he founded the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) in 1923 — the first political party in Nigeria — and began publishing the Lagos Daily News, which became a fiery mouthpiece for self-rule and justice.
The Irony of a “Pardon”
Fast forward to 2025. President Tinubu’s administration, in what it described as a “gesture of national healing,” granted posthumous pardons to several historical figures, including Macaulay, Major-General Mamman Jiya Vatsa, and members of the Ogoni Nine executed under Sani Abacha.
The government claimed it was correcting “historical wrongs.”
But the Macaulay family saw something else entirely.
“We appreciate the intention behind the pardon,” one descendant told The Guardian. “But it is insulting to lump our grandfather with drug barons, murderers, and ex-convicts. Herbert Macaulay fought for Nigeria’s freedom. He needed no forgiveness from the same system he fought to free us from.”
To them, this wasn’t a restoration of dignity — it was a distortion of it.
Between Pardon and Honor
Indeed, there is a world of difference between being pardoned and being honored.
A pardon suggests guilt. An honor celebrates virtue.
The family argues that Macaulay should have been given a national honor, not a symbolic pardon. They are calling for tangible steps — restoration of his demolished residence in Lagos, a national monument in his memory, and inclusion of his works in Nigerian civic education.
In their words:
“Herbert Macaulay deserves to be remembered the same way India remembers Gandhi, or South Africa remembers Mandela.”
And they are not wrong.
For just as Mandela was once called a “terrorist” and Gandhi a “seditionist,” Macaulay was branded a “criminal” — all by regimes that history has since condemned.
The Patriot We Forgot
It’s easy to forget how radical Herbert Macaulay was for his time. He mocked the British with their own tools: language, law, and logic. He used colonial English to dismantle colonial arrogance.
He was a man of paradoxes — European-educated but fiercely African, formally trained yet instinctively rebellious.
In 1931, he famously declared:
“The dimensions of British hypocrisy are the dimensions of the Empire itself.”
That single sentence, more than a century old, still echoes in Nigeria’s politics today.
Lessons for Today
Perhaps what this controversy reveals is our collective amnesia.
A society that pardons its heroes but celebrates its looters has lost its moral compass.
By granting Herbert Macaulay a “pardon,” the state unknowingly placed him on the same moral plane as those who betrayed the very ideals he lived and died for.
What Macaulay deserves is not mercy — but memory.
Not forgiveness — but reverence.
Not inclusion in a pardon list — but inclusion in our national conscience.
Final Word
Herbert Macaulay was not a criminal. He was a patriot punished for his patriotism, a nationalist mocked for his nationalism. He was, to borrow from history, the man who first taught Nigeria how to say “No.”
President Tinubu’s gesture may have been well-intentioned, but as the Macaulay family and historians have pointed out, you cannot pardon a man who was never guilty.
What Nigeria owes Herbert Macaulay is not a pardon, but an apology — and, perhaps, a monument that reminds future generations that sometimes the truest patriots are those once branded as criminals by tyrants.
Mohammed Bello Doka is a journalist and columnist for Abuja Network News.