It was one particularly bright morning in December 1996,during the totalitarian kakistocracy of the Abacha mis-govern-mess. Venue was the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs, in the high-brow Kofo Abayomi Street, Victoria Island,Lagos.
Political glitterattis of exceptionaly considerable gravitas were all gathered. They included Senator Abraham Adesanya, Alhaji Azeez Arisekola-Alao, Chief Olu Falae, Alhaji Ganiyu Dawodu, Ambassador Dapo Fafowora, Chief Matthew Mbu, Chief Bola Ige, whose book, “People, Politics And History of Nigeria”, was to be launched that day,and of course,her delectably beautiful wife, Justice Atinuke Ige.
A good number of the guests were still lolling around the premises in hearty tete-a-tete, as organizers were busy putting one or two things together.
Along the line,was an ominous unfolding as gathered from authoritative grapevine sources that Senator Biyi Durojaiye had just been arrested by Abacha’s security apparatchiks.
Within a fleeting few minutes, morales had dramatically nose-dived,and guests crest-fallen,as the saddening piece of the unfortunate missive went round. Delirifacient anxiety mounted, as all within the premises,expressed intense fears for the safety and security of live of the esteemed senator.This of course shouldn’t have come as a surprise considering the unmitigated savagery universally reckoned as a staple ideograph of that cannibalistic regime of the butchery.
And just as the mass of attendees at that occasion were about managing somehow to shrug it off with the stoic resignation that Heaven will take control,and tried to settle down for the event proper to commence in earnest, a group of men,six or there-about in number, suddenly appeared from nowhere, introducing themselves,as State Security functionaries – declaring the gathering illegal,and should therefore not hold.And just before you could heave the spontaneous next breadth in curious surprise,they had already availed;of course with their usual unabashedly robotic hackneyed warrant of “order from above”.
It was as if a hypnotic spell was cast in the air,as something of an ominous eerie silence immediately pervaded the space leaving the teeming mass of guests awrily stilled and speechless.
That spell of scary silence,though fleeting and haunting in its sheer momentary span, appeared something of an eternity.And immediately in the next breadth,as if rousing in dramatic awareness,from a slumber,came a splattering flurry of persuasions by guests who like festering bees in the beehive, swarmed the overzealous security robots with every forms of persuasions.
Senator Abraham Adesanya and virtually all that mattered in that esteemed gathering,all brought every persuasions to bear,on the overzealous security dogs,but no dice.Bola Ige’s wife, Justice Atinuke Ige,dark,fairly tallish, and beautiful – I could still behold her in picturesquely vivid details as she persisted with spirited fervor in persuading the “State Security Zombies” to at least hang around and watch the proceedings if they could not take them in good faith in their assurance that the event was not slated as a guise for subterranean Machiavellian intention.I remember in particular,her precisely verbatim expression that day; a lingual inter-mix of Yoruba and English: “After all, discretion is the better part of valor; Haba taa baa ran ni nise eru,a fi tomo je.”
That moment news reporters gathered including I, had looked forward to Azeez Arisekola Alao to bring his clout as a well known friend of the Abacha regime – quite in keeping with his typical ever-ready cast of “AGIP” – an acronym for any government in power – to bear in persuading the Security myrmidons of Abacha terror- machine to a matured restraint.
As a friend of the Abacha regime,which also implied personal friendship with Abacha, the very symbol of state tyranny himself,they were bound to respect the Ibadan-born aristocrat;so we had thought,but unfortunately,no dice.
Not even for once could one see him inching in any purposeful approach towards the security “Man Fridays” of “god Abacha”, let alone exerting any effort at persuasion, beyond the behind- the-scene serio-comic non-committal rantings in undiluted Ibadan dialect quite in tune with his rustic behavioural elocution.
The most surprising aspect of it all,was the celebrant himself, Chief Bola Ige.Perhaps I might be mistaken, but I stand to be corrected.It was indeed the first time I would ever behold him crassly out of his elements.This was a man renown for his combative tigritude,but could you believe the manner he threw all these valorific resistance and militant tigritude,to the wind for a submissive cheap, acquiescence, without even the slightest tinge of his combative wit.
Of the entire lots there gathered on that day,it was Ayo Adebanjo, and no other than Ayo Adebanjo,who stole the show.He proved not only a departure,but a remarkably distant departure in his valorific outpouring,militancy and implacable resistance, to the totalitarian fascism of the Abacha security apparatchiks at that particularly epic moment.
An unrepentantly incurable rebel,this restively impulsive gadfly would have none of the mess, as he ranted in openly unhidden anger, that the security errand boys must be resisted at all cost, rather than be allowed the leeway to carry the day.In those era when the fear of Abacha and his security terriers was the beginning of wisdom,Pa Adebanjo’s doughty heart will not budge, he told it straight to the face of the Abacha dogs, rather than speak in hushed tones.
I recall vividly on that day,the manner he paced up and down goading Bola Ige,the celebrant, his beautiful wife,Pa Abraham Adesanya, among others,on the need to dare and defy the security guys and go ahead with the book launch
Unfortunately,his justified ” spiritedly rebellious instigation” failed to elicit a listening empathy,living him stripped as a lone man in the wilderness of that epic campaign for civil disobedience.
That particular day in December 1996, twenty-nine years odd years ago, not only marked the very first time I would ever behold him in flesh and blood so to say,but equally my first personal encounter with the man, and ever since – that particularly daring non-conformism had remained indelibly stuck in my memory, just as it had brought me in immediate close and sustained contact with the man throughout my years in active journalism.
Such was my intimately close contact not only with the respected elderly political icon,but also with Chief Ganiyu Dawodu and Abraham Adesanya,whom I also met for the first time on that eventful day,of the botched book launch, which also availed opportunely enough for me to walk up and personally introduce myself to them.
I remember in those days,rarely will a week pass by that I will not take recourse to them for one interview or the other simply because of our closeness and their implicit trust in me, which of course informed their readily availing disposition.
Coupled with the fore-going was the fact of the propinquity of their offices to one another – Pa Adebanjo and Ganiyu Dawodu whose offices were both located within Western House near the General Hospital, and Pa Adesanya’s Chambers located just behind them at near-by Simpson Street which takes at most, five minutes to traverse.
It was on account of the closeness that Ganiyu Dawodu will often invite me to a political meeting, often presided by him,which in those days,used to take place at the Aguda residence in Surulere, of Pa Ayo Adebanjo.
As one who was considerably close to the political triumvirate – Pa Adesanya, Adebanjo and Ganiyu Dawodu in those days, I followed their exploits, during the NADECO struggles against the totalitarian fascism of the Abacha Kakistocracy.
Those indeed were teneberific moment of darkness spontaneously evoking the imagery of Kwame Nkrumah’s book – Dark Days In Ghana.Days in which precious human lives had tragically lapsed to nugatory worthlessness of three for nine-pence on the auctioneer’s stable in the face of the
dastardly assassinations dogging the geo-political landscape;days that saw even the world renown literary prodigy,the Wole Soyinkas and co,doing the marathon for an exilic turn abroad.
Looking back at that time, one recalls that it was the Ayo Adebanjos, the Abraham Adesanyas, and the Ganiyu Dawodus,who refusing to balk,at that harrowing moment of tumult,had to brave it through at the home front – relentlessly stalked and haunted under the Abacha regime of the butchery, which harassed and cocooned the three political musketeers in indefinite immurement in the Abacha gulag of infernal hell, inspired under the diabolical shenanigan of trumped up charges,notching a monstrously affrightening climax in a gory assassination attempt in which the then NADECO leader, Abraham Adesanya cheated the sardonic specter of death by the whiskers.
With Abacha’s physical expiration for the other-worldly realm,Pa Adebanjo along with other prominent figures,mid-wifed the Alliance For Democracy under which the likes of Bola Tinubu,Segun Osoba,Niyi Adebayo and co, jostled for governorship and won.
Their inability to sustain their political clout and relevance by medium of the A.D. ostensibly their brainchild, perceivably availed as a function of their unbendable rigid style, which implied the inability to exercise due flexibility as rationally compelled by the dynamics of changing times and situations,coupled with the gerontocratic high command which would not properly sit in with the younger breeds who in their own rights,were also notable factors to reckon with in the emerging calculus of political power.This indeed was clearly unawoist, as the great Awo himself,a democrat of an exemplarily unique order,was never known for an incorrigible strain to flexibility,just as he was equally reputed for his facile ease at trans-generational interaction and of course, the magnanimous broad mindedness and the patently democratic credo,shorn of gerontocratic chauvinism,with which he accommodated the younger ones.
The manner in which the likes of Lateef Jakande, among several others, were unavoidably estranged and exited from Afenifere exemplified a reflection of the arbitrary over-bearing toga, inflexibility and arrant lack of forgiveness typifying the leadership of the Yoruba premier socio-cultural body
Against this background, not a few would agree that it would for ever remain an eternally endemic faux pas that this departed political titan and inimitable war-horse in the shifting quicksand of the conundrum that had criss-crossed the political space, right from the 50s, until his glorious departure would least avail with the benefit of a hind-sight salient as indispensable element towards a corrective pathway aimed at propelling the Afenifere,the Yoruba socio-cultural engine of political power,towards an impressively progressive frontiers.
Indeed it is the hallmarks of maturity that a leader perceiving certain recurrent signals which do not portend an auspicious augury,would need take a moment at least, to sit by, to re-examine his goals and mission. Look himself straight to the face and ask crucial questions:What indeed are my goals? Whose cause am I fighting?Am I really on the right track?What are my tactics and strategies?In what way do they enhance and add value to my serving constituency,group, society, nation, as the case may be?
Crucial questions as these, could not but be deemed more apposite especially for a leader of elevated stature and caliber as Ayo Adebanjo,bestowed as he was,with a longer span on earth above his contemporaries,thereby placing him at privileged advantage for due sober reflection.
The fore-going would indeed seem to gel with the canon of common sense, especially when we consider the tumultuous spates of crisis which had unabatedly rattled the Yoruba socio-cultural organ for so long, that it began to appear as if “crisis” had inter-changeably become its normative other name quite unlike it’s compeers in the moulds of the Hausa-Fulani owned Arewa,Ohaneze Ndigbo, which for a better part of their existence, if not from primordial inception, had experienced a considerably relative calm and unity,just as they could also credibly lay claim to being a veritable voice of their people, and by logical implication,as well,command their respect – which of course cannot be said of Afenifere.
A remarkably instructive stuff that commends itself as a good example in this regards opportunely came on the heels of the recent demise of the great Ijaw leader,Pa Edwin Clarke.
Watching the Arise TV on Tuesday 18th just this February,I couldn’t but be struck when a prominent leader of PANDEF,speaking on the life and times of the great Ijaw leader, recalled the intimate closeness between the later and Pa Adebanjo, adding that Pa Adebanjo had a great influence on his friend Pa Edwin Clarke.
However, the very aspect that could not but strike in shocking amazement, was at the critical point at which he made the stunning revelation, that one vital area in which Clark couldn’t agree with Adebanjo was with regards to President Tinubu, who according to Clarke largely inherited the economic impasse currently plaguing the nation – which was quite contrary to Adebanjo who would rather deem all blames apposite at no other quarters than the door- step of Tinubu. On this,doubting Thomases who might have cause to doubt this would indeed do good by tunning back to Arise TV on Tuesday,for due confirmation.
The fore-going is indeed patently sententious,speaks volumes and pregnant with meanings.There is a popular Yoruba proverb:”Agba ti o binu,lomo e npo” – “Elders who are readily sparing and tolerant in love are those that would often beget many children.”
This explains the rapturous impact exuded by the likes of Pa Clarke, not only in life, but in death as well,generating beyond their primordial ethno-tribal constituencies, to the vast national space.
An ideal leader must attune to the pulse of his people,and his struggles be defined by their aspirations.A narcissist does not make a leader.Awo was never by any stretch a narcissist.
*Kola Johnson is a writer and journalist.
.
.
.
