LAST Friday I dwelt on the departure of Chief Ayo Adebanjo, a stout man in all spheres, and the politically influential leader of Afenifere – who to all intents and purposes was recognised as our country’s de facto opposition leader. I never meant to focus again today, at least, on the highly respected loyalist of Chief Obafemi Awolowo.
Since he has migrated to the haven in heaven where his immortal political leader is, and since all the rituals pertaining to his migrating there have been completed and concluded, as far as I know, I was ready to engage other concerns – although his autobiography Say it as it is was still insisting that my desire should devour it again and carve a writing on it.
Was I agreeable to the idea of doing the writing in the context of a study of the life-cycle of the loyalist-rebel-as-autobiographer? I thought that my illustration of him last week in the context of what he was and stood for politically as a firm Awo disciple and loyalist and Afenifere’s straightforward and steadfast leader was enlightening enough.
I was in this frame of mind when I got calls and texts on the stoutly stout personage who migrated at the very ripe age of ninety-six years from here to where he is now relishing the glorious bliss there.
Sehaji Jacob Oshodi, an Awoist and universal mystic, who I conversed with two Fridays ago, telephoned me after reading what I said last Friday about Chief Ayo Adebanjo. The 90-years-old Benin Nigerian universal mystic who knows his onions, and who told me a number of things about the immortally immortal Obafemi Awolowo and several of his disciples (and opponents) dissected Ayo Adebanjo whom he knew as far back as 1951.
My essay was agreeable to him and he ended his discourse from his seemingly eidetic memory with this conclusion: “Sam Ayo Adebanjo was a furiously active Awo loyalist. He was one of the best immaculately-minded ones. Samuel had no blemish. He attached himself to the goodness and courage of Awo all of us in our formative years looked up to.
I shall give you more information and details of fact when next we meet any time to enrich what you may want to write in future about him and our supreme one. Your column was beautiful, a master-class, as always, our erudite one.”
Another reader, a familiar one, to regular readers of this column, sent the following brief but accurately accurate critical opinion: “The hero does not easily come back as fast as we think, after the death and burial on earth. The Ayo Adebanjo type is rare. It may take a generation to resurface, again, on earth. Worse still, his second coming may not be a person from the Yoruba Kingdom.”
The owner of these words is the scholar-poet Professor Owojecho Omoha, a well baked researcher and theorist on matters and questions of after-life’s trajectories. Despite its brevity the gleaner may not be wrong, will not be wrong, to call this a kind of classic manifesto of the relationship between the hero who has migrated and his living admirers of psychoanalytical sensibilities.
The best representative of the readers, of other readers, not listed here appears to me to be Professor Olu Obafemi who belongs to the current giant age of Nigerian Literature and Letters. Olu Obafemi never loses his consciousness for the true, for the truth and for the moral.
His message to us and the world on Pa Ayo Adebanjo speaks volumes: “The undying spirit of a colossus. Kudos to you for this characteristically and uniquely salutary tribute for PA Adebanjo, to a revolutionary, PA Ayo Adebanjo… The demise of PA Adebanjo is a major deprivation to the progressive cohort of the national radical elite in Nigeria. As you eloquently aver, PA Adebanjo was perhaps the last of the Titans of the Awolowo political school of progressivism and radical politics. Firm, courageous, valiantly valiant and un-bendable in their devotion to the cause of justice, justness and social transformation.
“A man not swayed by the sentiment attached to sub-nationalism or ethnic nationalism, PA Adebanjo refused to go down with the split faction of Afenifere which he co-founded to uncritically endorse Yoruba candidature but progressive candidates of the Nigerian struggle irrespective of the ethno, geo-ethnic frame of the flag-bearer.
“This must have been played in the seeming crack in Afenifere wall when the proposal was made in the Association to line behind the Yoruba candidate of the APC. I believe this has put a death-knell on the unfounded attribution of Igbo hatred to the sage, Obafemi Awolowo of immortal memories. The last time I met Adebanjo was at the funeral of Governor Mimiko’s late mother. He was ever robustly alive, vibrant and versatile. May his soul march on among his political saints in Eternity.”
Professor Olu Obafemi’s argument is incontestable. His aesthetic consciousness splendidly recreates our lovingly and revealingly purple-inked-and-painted hero.
Dr. Folarin Dimowo, a university lawyer (and law) lecturer, who equally applauded my essay on PA Ayo Adebanjo for its “simple but, beautiful” colour will equally applaud Professor Obafemi (and the other readers, listed or un-listed) as he prayed for all admirers to “have courage like Pa Ayo Adebanjo to say the truth at all times.” Oh courageously courageous Pa Adebanjo, Dr. Folarin Dimowo joins all your admirers to wish you “joyful activities in the beyond towards the Kingdom of Perpetual Light!”
Afejuku can be reached via 0805 5213059.
