Ibadan regeneration (ongoing)

Over the past few days remarks made by Mallam Ribadu the former Chairman of EFCC during his lecture at the late Bola Ige birthday event has earned caustic response from the Oyo state government through Chief Gbade Ishola. Without rehearsing both angles I think it is a welcome thing that regeneration of Ibadan has become a topical issue. It is however an issue that requires a different discourse than that of a partisan political nature. I will avoid choosing sides because what is at stake is far more significant than who is right or wrong nor is it about the coming election.

The city of Ibadan represents a totally unique space in the history and potentially future of the nation. It has been the largest indigenous city of its kind in Africa but also the intellectual cradle of the Nigerian state. If we valued anything in our current transactional mindset it would be this city that evolve through a unique, meritocracy into a warrior republic using a constitution experiment that remains largely intact today. She carries three powerful dimension for our future, a habit of cultural innovation that includes the first television station; a platform for intellectual curiosity and academic expression that spawned the first university; a network of informal commerce that is translated into scores of open air markets including the largest market for indigenous textile in Oje. To say that Ibadan has regressed is not to focus blame on any one party in what should be a partnership to preserve her legacy and generate a vision to renew her.

Ibadan is perhaps the only city in Africa that is bucking the trend in urbanisation especially in the number of young people she has lost. The downward trend for the city started with the much vaunted Structural Adjustment Programme of the Babangida regime in the mid 1980s. This policy that decimated the Nigerian middle classes destroyed the vibrancy of Ibadan which was the most middle class of all cities in Nigeria. The disdain in which the universities, research institutes and that almost uniquely local focus i.e. ‘publishing was treated wiped out the intellectual values, skills and industries. The lack of priority for education also destroyed the place as an education destination from across the country. The middle class values of community , perseverance and long term effort were killed and replaced with neo liberal individualism leading to the triumph of the hustler class. Shame died and became replaced with wanton materialism. Ibadan has never recovered. Subsequent governments, local and national have neither had the desire nor have had the resources to prioritise Ibadan above other things they feel necessary . It does not start with the present government in Oyo sate. There is of course the inevitable structural problem of a potential ‘world centre’ in a largely rural, agricultural state. Maybe the challenge of renewing Ibadan might be a drain to ‘development’ in other parts of the State?

These challenges have not been helped by the false division amongst the citizens of our metropolis. The identification of indigene versus resident is a very poor choice. The founders of our great city came from all over Yoruba land to find fortune through valour and might rather than from birthright and bloodline. Nowhere is merit more forcefully enforced as the standard of excellence than in the ancient home of Oluyole. We as citizens have also failed our city in not creating a large enough umbrella as is our tradition. We failed to make talent, excellence and love for the betterment of our land as the only standard for determining whether one qualifies as Ibadan or otherwise. No great city is a creation of government alone but a result of the collective vision and contribution of her people , businesses, civic organisations and government in partnership. Even if the Oyo state government believes it has done some things the honest truth is that there is a lot more to do. Our city now has a shop front in every house, our roads struggle to absorb traffic because of the number of cars struggling for space. Nowhere is there more research institutes than Ibadan but they are not connected by the highway of this century in fibre optic broadband. The publishing industry in magazine road is a very pale shadow of the ‘capital ‘ of west africa that it was. I know from Mallam Ribadu’s comments that he cares and i know from my limited interaction with Chief Gbade Ishola that he is passionate about Ibadan. We can have a civil dialogue about the best way ahead.

Last year we started this process with Mesiogo initiative (outside of government and politics) to work across stakeholders for a long term regeneration for our city. We have a draft plan from robust dialogue that includes survey of nearly 5,000 citizens and a town hall meeting that involved all works of life. Lets continue this dialogue and effort without succumbing to self serving partisanship. No one has a monopoly of ideas or responsibility as we strive to continuously evolve Ibadan not just to the greatness of her pioneering past but also higher to the possibilities of prosperity for many more generations to come.

Join us : www.ibadanmesiogo.com

Mesiogo 09

We went to a place no one has ever gone too about an African city. In due course I will write but for now enjoy the images through this link below:

http://gallery.me.com/omoluwabi#100033

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

Ibadan

There are few times I have agreed with Dele Momodu the celebrated publisher of Ovation Magazine and an old friend from university. His success with Ovation magazine is very astute especially in using the Nigerian obsession for lavish consumption and showing off. He is also a very good serious journalist when he bothers to express that side of himself. I just finished reading his latest column in This Day newspaper on Ibadan and I agree entirely with his analysis and call to action. Ibadan as many have heard said is the Intellectual hub of Nigeria and should be its Research and Development Capital. Its proximity to Lagos and its tradition for churning out the best minds are only secondary to the fact that it has scores of Higher Education Colleges and nearly ten universities within 100km radius. Ibadan should be like Cambridge/ Boston axis in the United States.

I am an Ibadan man, I sweat Oluyole. My family goes back to before the Efunsetan that Dele Momodu talks about. My dream day starts with Alapa seeping palm oil or Ekuru with drops of salt as well , I would follow with a lunch of Amala supported with abula with Oro fruit as dessert. I perpetually search the web to add to my stock pile of Epo-Akara and Barrister CDs . I know my Itu taba from Foko. Ibadan is at the heart of what i represent. Oke Ibadan is the brand for the views I express. I have never fully addressed the role of Alhaji Adedibu, the strong man of Ibadan politics even though apparently my family has a long history with him. Without being bogged down in history recent events are also instructive which include my brother Saheed running against his Son for Senate in Ibadan. His Son was brought back belatedly to Nigeria a day before the primaries and 'pushed up the line' in an arranged exercise of democratic success. As a result I should not be a fan and i am not. However Alhaji Adedibu's so called Amala politics is actually a modern Robin Hood operation without the romance. Whilst the elite, modern politicians in the State do not want to 'dirty' their hands with the great unwashed of Bere, Molete, Agugu et al but would rather sup in Bodija with their Middle class supporters, they seek to use Alhaji as a bridge to the working classes. He demands his price with little scruples which he proceeds to share with many whose needs blind them to the longer term consequences of their actions. Ibadan has become his playground unfortunately without any checks and balances. It reminds me of the stories about the behaviour of Bashorun Ogunmola of old whose only restraint was my Great Great Great Grandfather Balogun Ibikunle. As such there is nothing new about an 'erratic' Ibadan 'Strongman '. Adedibu is not the problem but a symptom of broader old disease present in all of Ibadan. It is manifested by an exceptional acceptance of nuances, a studied ambivalence towards conflict, a romantic indulgence for rascals and a pragmatic amorality. It is a double edged sword that allows deviant geniuses to thrive but also cultivates despotic eccentrics. The latter is essentially true when inspirational leadership is totally absent as a true north for the people. This is the root of present predicament for in the absence of vision the people are perishing.

Many now accept the conventional wisdom, that Ibadan is in terminal decline. His young (yes he is male or how else would you describe the home of warriors) desert in droves for the accepting anonymity of Lagos. They run for dear life from the slow death offered by an older generation trapped in gossip, personal conflict and unproductive traditional rituals. They run from the early evening shut downs and the lazy hand of routine. Who can blame them?

I however hate to disappoint the lazy common sense that is now the song and dance of the nattering punditry in the Country as well as wider Diaspora. It is too early to sing the demise of Ibadan and its rusty roofs. It will be a costly thing not just for the city, the state, the country but for the whole of West Africa. Recently the Economist in a piece of inspired commentary raised the vexing issue of the death of the publishing industry in Nigeria and the attendant difficulties for the New breed publishers like Farafina and Cassava. It missed a critical point, the backbone of the entire Nigerian publishing industry which in turn is the centre for West Africa is on one street in Ibadan. As you drive from Sabo to Jehrico crossing over the railway lines you can see them on the left side in their varying states of decay and disuse former giants that carried the entire African Writers series which are classics in the same manner as any in the world. Shadows of a once great industry the churned out Achebe, Ngugi, Camara Laye, Soyinka amongst many others. This is a metaphor for Ibadan , a harbinger for Nigeria , an omen for West Africa and a tragedy for the continent South of the Sahara. If nothing is done it will be a true loss for the rest of the World. It is time for all and sundry who care for the power of ideas, the role of innovation and the genius of the African mind to participate in restoring Ibadan to its intellectual best. The alternative is the mourn another 'Timbuktu' this time watching it happen in real time.

Dele Momodu's article is linked below.

http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=96648