COLOURS OF AN EMERGENT DAWN

Their names read like ancient chieftains , OLOLU, ATIPAKO, ALAPASHANPA, AFIDI-ELEGE. They are prominent Ibadan masquerades whose role is critical to the divinities of the right. They are the embodiment of the lessons our ancestors want to impart and they play a key role in entrenching the body of theatre that carries historical memory. So when the ancients say ‘Ki a se bi won tin se, ki ole ba ri bi oti ri’ i.e. it reads, lets do it as it is done so we can get the results that we have always had. It has nothing to do with a slavish repeat of tradition. On the contrary it is a challenge that if you want the same results you should continue to do the same things. So it is with the death of Alhaji Lamidi Ariyibi Adedibu. Lets open this evolving parable.

You see to my engorged brain the only book a Nigerian must read is Africa in Ebullition by Right Honourable Adegoke Adelabu the subtitle is “A handbook of Freedom for a Nigerian Nationalist”. It captures the root cause of the life and times of Late Lamidi Adedibu and holds our feet to the fire for the errant intellectual and spiritual fast food that has become the norm of our society. In Chapter Three titled Self Government ( it was first published in 1952) there is an analysis that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up and sends a chill through my spine in its incredible certitude and logical eloquence. He divides up the Nationalist front into three different camps of which only two have survived, they are:

The one which he believes gets most prominence but he wrongly asserts is the most vulnerable, the Materialistic camp. He describes them as a ‘motley crew of self seeking careerists’. They will be the primary focus in this post.
The camp he regards as most influential being the Intellectual camp. They still stand today as he saw them crying foul on the touchline, rarely risking limb and bone or if so incapable of understanding or accepting the self-serving, self-justifying nature of human beings they continue in their basic assumption. This wrong assumption he says (and I agree with every ounce of my being) “ .. is that the white man who wrote his book will be much impressed by arguments you lift from their pages. .......” I agree that this is the assumption behind our blind and pathetic penchant for borrowing western ways. Like the late and dear Alhaji I accept that the same white man whose, “... passion for domination has blinded and biased his judgement. His vested interest in your continued slavery has choked and suffocated his conscience.” So many things have changed and fundamentally are the same. We wave western standards in the face of a uniquely African hunger for improvements which should be fit for purpose and sustainable in our own environment. Now we have many prisoners of Phds and masters degrees throwing their discipline signs in no better ways than the Bloods and Crips gangs of Los Angeles with little or no transformative intervention.
The Camp he regards as the higher order which i will argue is now wiped in the Nigerian project are the spiritualistic segment. They are the People I call the warriors of light (term borrowed from Paulo Coehlo) . In Hon Adelabu’s words they are seers and prophets , heroes and saints. He reasons “ They abjure leisure, they embrace poverty, they quit castles, they adorn jailyards, they scorn the transient, they are loving. They are sublime, divine and immortal. His praise of this camp is unreserved and romantic but mine is not probably because i know of only one , the late Abami Eda , Eleniyan, Baba 70, Fela Anikulapo Kuti.

If you are bored and tired by this introduction take a break, make a cup of tea and put on some music but come back to this because I suspect you will want a dose of my madness having bothered to read this far.

You see the same late Adegoke Adelabu ‘ Penkelemese’ is often put forward as a role model for Adedibu or even Busari Adelakun before him . In some way associating him with the stereotype of career thuggery and unprincipled politics that the latter two have been bound in the public imagination. In fact their mentor who is treated as a deity and has won the public lottery of iconised leadership as well as standard of the best we can do was the Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo. He is rarely mentioned in the reduction and deduction that these individuals are an entirely Ibadan creation. In a piece of genius postulations the late Penkelemese who if he had lived would have given Awo a much needed run for his money foretold the coming of the type of person that Chief Adedibu had come to represent. On page 18 he puts to the sword what we have now come to call ‘amala politicts’ he says

“These heterogenous crowds confuse material comfort with political freedom.They demand freedom only because they hope it will bring increased prosperity in its train.In freedom for its own sake they are not interested. They are ever ready to sell out, being offered big chunks of booty. Commonplace careerists that they are, they are pleased with their own cunning, cleverness and shrewdness when they have successfully bargained for a higher rung in a doomed hierarchy. They mistake contemptible positions of profit for the height of noble ambition. They are just as wise as beasts and birds who foray daily bread, take care of their young, and die vegetatively in their due season, unsung and unwept.They flower for a while and fade away at the appointed hour because they lack the stamina of moral rectitude.”

In my humble opinion so it was with the late Ashipa of Ibadan Chief Adedibu but who could blame him? His political mentors in the Action Group of Old had iconised and rewarded the crossing of carpets by members of the Ibadan Peoples Party rewarding political treachery and cowardice as well as institutionalised tribalism and errant regionalism of Egbe Omo Oduduwa. Unfortunately the passing of Penkelemese meant there never was any real competition for the worst of the excesses of the Action Group in the South West. It entrenched the cult of personality into the standard of Nigerian politics to the extent that today here is still none of the Political parties that have the three attributes that the late Adelabu ‘Penkelemese’ uses to define a true political party. They are idea, ideal and ideology. It is this that gave rise Alhaji Adelakun and Adedibu’s style of poltics. They who genuinely mastered the politics of those times and were amply rewarded for it and in due course applied with skill of artisans from their period of apprenticeship.

Adedibu was a father, Grandfather and possibly a great grandfather. He extended his largesse to many and Nigerians being who we are complicit in everything we blame him for doing. This true not just in Ibadan but across the nation. I thank God that he has now gone to the Ancestral home to explain his choices. My people reason that ‘ Oba mewa , igba mewa , nile Aiye’ that life is like ten kings, with ten reigns . The Ashipa of Ibadan’s time has come and gone, dwelling on the Abacha for life campaign, the Ladoja impeachment, Election machine kidnapping or the many lives lost to political violence and just sheer lawlessness we will find in him a perfect scapegoat. It does not absolve us of our roles in co-creating the society that we live in within the hills of Ibadan ‘mesiogo’ , ile Oluyole or this great human adventure that is Nigeria. Our complicity does not stop at passive observance but active experimentation with the same pursuit of power, reckless competitiveness and absence of principles in our choices.

I predicted two weeks before the death of the Late Sani Abacha to my friends in the democracy movement of the time that he would soon pass but then we will be confronting the fact that he is not the problem. Our problem was and still is the Abacha in each and everyone of us. I predicted similarly that Alhaji Lamidi Adedibu will vacate the scene to the greater stage but then what role will we play going forward. What happens when we perfect a similar role for someone else because we assign this roles by but omission and commission. ‘Awa ni a nda, awa na ni a npa’ we are the ones that create and also the ones that kills our creation. So like the lesser masquerades that in Ibadan are called Tombolo we are participants in this drama.

It is time to take responsibility and make new choices. It is time to take seriously the challenge of turning this great land into the beacon of possibilities that it can become. It is time for everyone who stands by the sidelines commenting and criticising to take risks for their dreams. It is time to start movements and fight for dreams that we cannot afford to let past. It is once again time for the warriors of light who would defer their gratification for the coming generation. It is time for a majestic dawn for my generation and those to follow. Oke Ibadan a gbe wa O.

I play myself out of this post with first reciting a little of the Oriki of Ibadan , Mesiogo nile Oluyole, omo a je igbin , je ikaraun omo afi ikiaraun fo ori mu. Ibadan maja, maja bi ose ko ara iwaju leru. Singing my new anthem , Ojumo ti mo, Ojumo ti mo mi nile yi O, ojumo ti mo , mo rire O! sing along if you know Asa’s exquisite tearjerker. Ire O!

Adegoke Adelabu RIP ' Ibadan Leadership of Ideas'

I have never liked Reuben Abati's analysis, they drip with the sanctimonious indulgence of the Nigerian elite. His editorials have generally embodied the intellectual laziness of ignoring complexity and settling for a sweeping personality overreach in terms of analysis. I often do not have the patience nor the interest to finish his editorials. It is with great surprise I read his piece on my beloved Penkelemese and the tears of appreciation dotted my ducts. I am no one if I am not Ibadan, the most eclectic and authentic construct in the layers of identities that shape the Nigerian spirit. It is Ibadan that is and was the bellweather for the country. The first city in the pre-colonial times to be truly multicultural and embody the civic pride that is lacking in any urban landscape in Nigeria today. A shining citadel of possibilities to its founding fathers who essentially built it on an idea and ideal big enough to be an umbrella for strangers from diverse lands and identity so they can engage , innovate, survive and prosper. There is no Ibadan man before him and after him that has fully embodied the potential of a true Omoluwabi like the late Adegoke Adelabu. A learned, erudite and inspirational man of ideas and ideals .

How do you judge a man other than what he does when his back is to the wall in moments of great opportunity or incredible adversity. Penkelemese stood against tribalism and discrimination when it would have been convenient and even more self serving to support the Yoruba first approach of Awolowo's AG. Had Adelabu won the Premiership of the Western Region or even had he lived beyond his brief 43 years we would have had an alternative to the now depressing position where an Ibo man only can be a Governor in the east and Yoruba in the west et al. We would have seen a Nigeria where the Nigerian ideal of any citizen holding political office in any state irrespective of ethnic origin have a powerful inspirational voice. Maybe then the Nigerian experiment in nationhood would not be so fractured and polarised with every crack and fault line puled asunder by rent seeking opportunists .

For me as an Ibadan man whose most romantic childhood moments were Sundays mornings with the smell of 'alapa' or 'ekuru' and my father playing some serious apala music usually Yususf Olatunji. I remember the raised voices in the living room likes of Dr Dejo Raimi, Dr Lekan Are, Dr Adetunji, Chief T Akinyele, Chief Aboderin amongst many other Ibadan intellectuals all discussing the topical issues of their day with my mother running interference. The hushed tones that always accompanied any discussion of Penkelemese, the distinct pride and unqualified respect that his incredibly difficult audience gave this man shaped an hero worship in me. The stories never finish without the loss my family suffered during the riot that followed his death. I was not alive to see what happened but my fathers story always includes the many non-Ibadan indigenesthat he had to rescue from a certain death or loss.

50 years after it this same tradition in authentic character, originality of ideas and the dignity in celebrating the human complexity that Adelabu lived that this page seeks to elevate. It is the very same that the verdict of the Oyo State Election tribunal continues to tarnish. In the end as my people would say " Alagemo ti bi omo e tan, Ahi mo jo di owo omo e" or for those who cannot read Yoruba accented or otherwise it is that the Alagemo masquerade has given birth to its child fully , it is now left to the child to live up to her traditional of exquisite dancing. Akande has given his all, Adegoke has risen to the challenge of his times, Adelabu has given Ibadan his life's narrative of a intellectual warrior with fierce uncontested and uncompromising intellect. It is now our turn to rise to the challenge of these times . Sun re O

Link to `Rueben Abati's piece below

http://www.guardiannewsngr.com/editorial_opinion/article02//indexn2_html?pdate=230308&ptitle=Adegoke%20Adelabu:%2050%20Years%20After