By Festus Adedayo
Yesterday, Seyi Makinde, governor of Oyo State, rallied Nigeria’s opposition political parties to Ibadan. According to him in his welcome address, the summit was to rescue Nigeria from the stranglehold of Nigeria’s apparent descent into autocracy, “a pattern where the space for real political competition is disappearing.” Ibadan summit’s message is an echo of a famous proverbial phrase and song of late Yoruba broadcaster and actor, Papa Adebayo Faleti, in the classic film, Saworoide. Faleti warned the maximalists of Jogbo country, especially its ruler, Lapite, a corrupt and ambitious king who skips traditional rituals to rule selfishly and perhaps forever, that there will be consequences for inordinate ambition. "Òrò yìí yó mà l'éyìn, àjàntièlè,” Faleti sang.
To underscore Ibadan’s historical centrality in recalibrating a drifting Nigeria and warning its rulers of calamity ahead, Makinde made reference to a similar summit held on Ibadan soil in 1950 and the calamity of Operation Weti e. A Yoruba word for "drench it" during the violent political crisis in Western Nigeria between 1962 and 1965 which led to the "Wild Wild West" anarchy tag. It was hallmarked by riots, arson and drenching of political opponents with petrol as a result of attempt to rig elections. That crisis became the precursor of the 1966 coup.
From January 9 to 28 of 1950, a review of the Nigerian Constitution took place in Ibadan to address shortcomings of the 1946 Richards Constitution. Ibadan welcomed fifty members of the Legislative Council where the push for greater autonomy and regional representation that laid the groundwork for the 1951 Macpherson Constitution was made.
Same summit held in Ibadan on October 19, 1954. On this day, some of the most influential nationalist figures of mid-20th-century Nigeria gathered in Ibadan. The mercurial Adegoke Adelabu was there. So also were figures like T.O.S. Benson, Dr. M. I. Okpara, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr. Okechukwu Ikejiani and another NCNC top-shot, Mr. Arimah. That gathering was a reflection of the importance and dominance of Ibadan as a major political force and battleground.
From the 1950 summit, to that of 1954, Ibadan has always been a hot-seat of roiling politics and attempt to reshape a broken Nigerian space. Ibadan never looked back. Its party politics is a hotbed of intense rivalry, shifting coalitions, alignment and realignment of interests. One of its markers was the infamous First Republic phrase, “If you see my hand, you cannot see the inner of me; Demo (NNDP) is the party I support” “B’òo r’ówó mi, oò rí’nú mi, Demo n’mo wà”. The Mabolaje-NCNC alliance conversation, held in Ibadan, prepared grounds for Nigeria’s October and December regional and federal elections. NCNC and the Mabolaje, a dominant Ibadan-based political movement, led by Adelabu, was mordantly opposed to Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Action Group.
Music had a place of pride in this electrifying politics. In pre-colonial Africa, not only were musicians custodians of history, they were defenders of political figures. Their songs addressed political, social, and economic issues of society. At the Mabolaje-NCNC alliance of 1954 venue, though I have no empirical fact to back it up, I am almost sure Odolaye Aremu, Ilorin Dadakuwada music exponent, would be on the bandstand. As Hubert Ogunde was AG’s official musician, so also was Odolaye for the NCNC. You will recollect Ogunde’s Yorùbá Ronú song, a politically motivated rendition which was a total condemnation of SLA Akintola’s government. Odolaye also shot back with his adulatory dirge for SLA and Adelabu when both died.
Wrapped up in a unique traditional Yorùbá musical genre originating from Ilorin, Kwara State, which combines Oríkì (praise chanting), Òwe (proverbs), and Àròfò, (poetry) Odolaye delivered lacerating punches to counter the Action Group. He lived in Ibadan. One of such was his mockery of Awolowo’s free education policy which he claimed was not well thought out. He sang, “e jé ká ra léèdì (pencil) k’a si ra’we, iwe ti won ò rà télè télè láti kékeré o, ìgbà wo l’àá kà’wé t’ó di baba?”. On Adelabu’s car crash in 1958 while returning to Ibadan from Lagos, which led to riots and many deaths because he was believed to have been murdered, Odolaye made a cryptic quip insinuating he was murdered: “Death came for Adelabu suddenly... must we set trap for ourselves?” - “Ó kù dèdè k’ó w’Olúyòlé l’olójó dé o/Njé ó ye ká de tàkúté de’ra wa?”
In a few days time, I will be doing a public review of the book, Black Esther: The Tales of Ìyá Olóbì, My Grandmother. Written by Kayode Samuel, veteran journalist and former Chief of Staff to ex-Governor Gbenga Daniel of Ogun State, Samuel’s grandmother was a profoundly witty woman. Her grandson, the author, must have inherited her spellbinding wits. Ìyá Olóbì (Woman trader in Kolanut) was most times very prickly, especially on issues that had to do with Omo Yíbò (the Igbo). She was a willing accomplice of the then spiraling mutual mistrust between Yoruba and Igbo which gained notoriety shortly before independence. Often times, Ìyá Olóbì manufactured other wordly-like stories that ended up as ethnic profiling of the Igbo. Undoubtedly, however, she was a parlour heroine, a victim of her own animus, a woman whose daily life was an admixture of women wiles, humour and mastery of the power of the Yoruba language.
Black Esther is full of Ìyá Olóbì’s linguistic nuggets. Let me single out two of those which exhibit her Yoruba mastery. They flashed through my mind two Saturdays ago immediately I saw the musical tantrums of Saheed Osupa, Yoruba Fuji music icon, whose real name is Akorede Babatunde Okunola.
On that Saturday, Ibadan attempted to erupt again. Not because of the catalyst for the eruption, a gubernatorial intention declaration, tucked away in an innocuous part of the city. It was Osupa’s descent into needless talkaholism.
As I said earlier, Ibadan has an unmatchable historical pedigree as epicenter of electrifying politics. Its politics has evasiveness and flamboyance. It is equally garnished with volatile swear words and name-calling. This gives it a remarkably competitive edge, more than many other cities in Nigeria. You may wonder why two gubernatorial aspirants in the same APC, Sharafa Alli and Bayo Adelabu, have declared and counter-declared to govern the state; why a neutralizing force in the person of Teslim Folarin is waiting patiently like a vulture to harvest their mutual destruction. Having captured 32 states, I am told, Ibadan is so important to Bola Tinubu that, he might personally relocate to Oluyole to monitor its 2027 gubernatorial election.
Back to the Ibadan Saheed Osupa tantrums. The two poignant words from Ìyá Olóbì I referenced above taste differently. While one related closely to the Osupa issue, the other, more of a symbiotic philosophical cause and effect, is tangentially related to it. Ìyá Olóbì’s first hypnotic word came when family members, seeking resolution to how her nephew, who had just graduated from learning a printing trade, was discovered to have put a teenage girl in the family way. How could the boy have become that aberrant, the family wondered, concluding that the Ìyá Olóbì nephew was seized by the spirit of wrongdoing. Unable to countenance the unscience behind that reasoning, Ìyá Olóbì’s retort was, in her Yoruba Egba dialect: “Eni yìí kìí báá máa mu sìgá, ìsòro ni kí wón fi igbó seé” translated to mean, it is almost an impossibility to have someone who does not smoke cigarette get afflicted by a marijuana-smoking addiction.
The second Ìyá Olóbì retort actually came before the first. It was her first magisterial pronouncement about this nephew of hers, immediately she heard of his rascally libido. For a boy who was still being fed at home to find the energy to impregnate a girl, Ìyá Olóbì reasoned mockingly, it was a sign of an over-filled belly. In the same Egba dialect, she said, matter-of-factly, “Eni kò bá yó okó rè kíí le”. It means, an erect manhood is a fallout of a full belly.
If you saw the way Osupa hyper-ventilated at the said Ibadan political rally, you would conclude that it was a cause and effect. His bellyful catalyzed the uncontrollably erect manhood of arrogance he advertized. Or that, one of the spirits of his people had taken hold of him: a harmful magical spell (Àránsí); spirit of wrongdoing (Àṣìṣe); a charm or curse (Àsàsí) or Èèdì (a malicious spell that hexes one to bring bad luck). You could also suspect substance influence.
Many African indigenous musicians are routinely labeled “praise songsters” due to their thematic concentration on adulation. Right from his first ad-lib, Osupa had no one in doubt that he had come for a musical warfare. Then, he began to exhibit one of those afflictions above, which got him into trouble with denizens on the social media. As if Ibadan are serfs of monarchies, he sang that “Wherever OIubadan is headed is where the people will,” maintaining that only Ibadan bastards would vote against the man who paid for his presence at the rally. Then, to excite his partisan audience, he threw barbs at the governor of the state. Immediately, Netizens brought out clips of effusive praises he earlier showered on the governor for gifting him an SUV. His attempt to clarify further worsened people’s perception of him as an inherently reversible personality. It reinforced the narrative of ingratitude. So, because of his transactional disagreement with his erstwhile benefactor, a public arena became ground for ventilation of personal grouse?
Thereafter, Osupa was thoroughly tongue-lashed by Netizens, so much that, a while after, he had to take a space on the information highway to explain his misspeak. Some of the respondents said he was afflicted by the spirit of àsìse. But, as Ìyá Olóbì would say if she was on this divide, no one should make excuse for him. Osupa should carry the cross of his irresponsible dabbling into a turf where he knows little about.
While many who watched the Osupa show were thoroughly disappointed in him, most of those who knew the historical pedigree of traditional African praise singers were not caught unawares. From ancient times, praise singers or griot were usually like flies hovering on kings’ palmwine calabash mugs in palaces. They also always perched on homes of influential people in society to be dashed used clothes and shoes. Indeed, they were called Alù’lù gb’omi èko - those who drummed to be paid with bric-a-brac. While bards served as court historians, helping to codify ethnic groups’ genealogy for posterity, a pall of general perception as beggars, “alágbe” hangs over them till today. It doesn’t matter that, over the century, many of them have transformed due to acquisition of education, wealth and have become pretentious gentlemen. They still are like the uniquely smelly vegetable called ebòlò, which my people say it is impossible to pluck from the dumpsite and have it smell uncontaminated, without the filthy odour of the dumpsite oozing out of it. Osupa’s recent degree certificate apparently serves little effort to cleanse him of a historical malaise.
I dwelled on the nature of Osupa’s doublespeak in earlier pieces I did. I concluded that it was a manifestation of tendencies of Yoruba musicians to oscillate from praise to dispraise. Permit me to regurgitate previous references. To explain this binary, I cited Alamu Atinsola Atatalo, one of the pioneers of Dùndún and Sèkèrè traditional music in post-colonial Yoruba Nigeria. Atatalo reinforced the transition of the tongue from one superlative extreme to the other, as defined by the musicians’ esophagus and passion. At a small level, Atatalo mirrored the typical Ibadan, whose tongue cuts through rough edges like hot knife on butter. Born into the Ajáláruru family of Òópó Yéosà in Ibadan, the 1950s and 1960s saw Atatalo dominating the Ibadan musical scene, first as a Sèkèrè and Dùndún drummer, and much later as singer and drummer.
In two of his songs, within a short time span, Atatalo shot a woman friend of his down from the echelon of praise to the abyss of dispraise. In the first song, apparently struck by the sweet piercing arrow of Cupid, he advertised this woman friend of his’ restaurant in such superlatives that you would want to visit it to have a taste of her highly burnished culinary prowess. Tatalo described the restaurant as located in Ayéyé, Ibadan. He wasn’t done. It was the best place where quality àmàlà and ewédú soup could be found in the whole of the city, he sang. The restaurateur garnished her soup with fish and shrimps, he sermonized. Tatalo’s melodious rendering of these lines was done in a typical Yoruba superlative, so gripping that, finding the right word to explain it may be a barren exercise. He sang: “Sokotoyòkòtò l’ó fi ńp’èèlò è, edé l’ó fi ńpa’ta/Ìyàwó Atátalò tí ńbe l’Áyéyé!”
Not long after, however, as he sang in a later album with the title, Àá fì'dí kalè ni, a passing train would seem to have put a wedge to the two lovebirds’ affair. Tatalo then flipped 360 degree. He sang of how this same woman, who had now become his ex, in alliance with her mother, had become a disgrace to motherhood. He was not done. Both mother and daughter engaged in shameless prostitution, he revealed. The restaurant, which Tatalo once praised to high heavens, had now, in his words, become so slovenly in appearance and smelly that it was fly-ridden. Indeed, sang Tatalo, off-putting smell of gonorrhoea (àtòsí) urine oozed out of the restaurant, so much that no one could enter it! The immediate question you would want to ask Tatalo is, how different does gonorrhoea urine smell from other smell?!
For Osupa, also an Ibadan like Tatalo, how a benefactor suddenly swings from a positive superlative to negative superlative is a shifty mind that meanders from praise to dispraise, defined by personal benefit and patronage and not public good.
It may however be unfair to restrict Osupa’s cheap moral reversal to musicians alone. In a fragile world like ours, loyalty, friendship and ability to stay the course are collapsing. In the face of Mammon and filthy lucre. Politicians manifest it. Friends betray friends at daggers drawn. Brothers stab brothers in lethal strikes more painful than Brutus and Julius Caesar’s.
As Ibadan gradually gravitates towards its political decision day, in the words of Babatunde Fashola, loyalties will be tested and will collapse. Shifting alliances will occur, shifted by love of selves and cash. Osupa may need to reverse himself and sing the adulation of Bayo Adelabu, the Minister of Power, who just returned to Ibadan for a consequential political tango with Sharafadeen Alli. Osupa may be needed to reverse the damaging investiture of “the King of Pitch Darkness” which Netizens hung on the minister’s neck with his reversible tongue. He may even sing the panegyrics of the most lethal political tactician among them, Teslim Folarin, who will give both a run for their monies. Or even Makinde’s gubernatorial choice.
Whichever way, Ibadan is answering to its political pedigree as epicenter of electrifying politics. More importantly, it was the place where Nigeria faced the fatal comeuppance of First Republic politicians’ political sacrilege. Could yesterday’s summit be another warning against a similar political sacrilege of a potential Fourth Republic one-party state Nigeria? Could it be Nigeria’s own Iranian Strait of Hormuz threatening to unravel our own Donald Trump?
As Makinde said in Ibadan yesterday, those who fail to learn from the poignant episode that took place on the soil of Ibadan 60 years ago may catalyze a re-enactment of the anger of history in year 2027. The butterfly that runs inside a thick mass of thorns will have its cloth torn in shreds. An impala that defies the Kinihun (Lion), Chief Circumciser of the Forest (Oloola Iju), who incises without a scalpel, will bathe in a puddle of its own blood. History’s cudgel, used to whip the older political wife of the First Republic, is on the rafters for the younger wife, political maximalists and their surrogates.
Will they listen to the Ibadan voice of reason?
