Travails and trial of Ayo Opadokun

On Thursday, April 5, 2018, a gang of armed robbers had stormed the sleepy town of Offa in Kwara State and inflicted one of the most horrendous savageries ever on the town. Six policemen, several residents and innocent passersby were killed in the raid by robbers said to be about 30 in number. They eventually blew five bank’s entrances with dynamite and escaped with millions of naira. Kayode, first son of Ayo Opadokun, a prominent activist of the National Democratic Coalition, (NADECO) who had reportedly just been released from a prison term was alleged to be one of the kingpins of that robbery. Thereafter, a video reportedly retrieved from the robbers went viral on the social media, bathing themselves with champagne and celebrating the river of blood they provoked in Offa.

The elder Opadokun is a household name in Nigeria and Nigerians are very grateful to him for his fearless strides in the face of dilating eyes of military despots. Indeed, the history of the democracy that Nigerians currently enjoy (endure?) cannot be properly written if Opadokun’s name was omitted from that hall of democratic struggle fame. How then do Nigerians disentangle themselves from the equivocal web of a man who rescued them from their blood being spilled by military despots and whose son, decades after, was alleged to have shed their blood in such a maniacal robbery engagement?

Some installments ago, this writer sought to point the attention of society and parents in particular to a consuming trend of child consumption of drugs under the guise of youthful exuberance. With the title, Our water bottle children are here again, the writer raised fundamental questions about the commitment of parents to forging a safe society. The piece raised pertinent issues of worsening cases of drug abuse. The recent case of Opadokun has brought on the front burner the need for parents to be interested in the affairs of their children.

The most plausible explanation as to why a man who gave the world freedom and hope would sire a perverse child who tyrannically sheds innocent people’s blood is that, as the biblical verse says, while he was fighting our battles, Opadokun slept and Lucifer sowed the tares that have become an enduring shame and pain to the avant-garde fighter. There are several examples in the world of great parents who sire perverts and converses of the noble lives they lived, thus polluting their pedigrees of pride.

Empirical examples abound to show that, unless providence blesses them with gritty wives, offspring of activists, politicians and busy business executives seldom make good. God who made two pairs of eyes as guard for the impressionable children we bear must have reckoned that children need very strong safeguards. Unfortunately, when parents wander away in pursuit of wealth, collective societal growth, businesses and success in politics, they leave the flanks of their tomorrow open in their children who are left unprotected from the consuming predators of youth.

In such absences, AWOL (absent without leave) parents seek psychological shield in getting money to deputise for them and close the gaps of their unfulfilled parental roles. They thus ensure that such children never lack and in many cases, overdo the pampering. The miss in this is that money can never perform the roles that nature has carved out perfectly for parents.

The recent x-ray of the drug trade in Nigeria by the BBC which apparently spurred government into action is revealing of the fact that Nigerian parents are shirking their parental roles on their wards. The report had concluded that illegal codeine trade is fast destroying the sanctity and sanity of Nigerian children. Codeine is otherwise a cough suppressant. Coupled with a visionless binge of successive governments which have no plan, programme or meaningful projection of the future of their teeming youth population, drugs are opening their arms wide to accommodate the fleeting hope which Nigerian youth seek. Although its statistics may be suspect, a Senate committee recently said that as much as three million kids consume codeine daily in Nigeria. Narcotics prevalence in Nigeria that was hitherto strictly cocaine, heroin and cannabis has mutated into hard drugs like rohypnol, tramadol, diazepam, lexotan. Rohypnol is a strong sedative which is also known as a date rape drug. Mephenthamine, alcohol, topiramate, methane from soak-away, glue, petrol and such like narcotics are the drugs commonly consumed by our children, mostly on campuses. We may not know unless we raise the ante of our vigilance.

Also of worry is the implosion in the number of mad young men who parade our streets. Between a short distance of Ibadan’s J Allen Street and the General Post Office, this writer recently counted seven very mad youths wandering away in their forlorn world, their stark nakedness pointing fingers at a combination of lax parentage and a government that bothers seldom about the tomorrow of Nigerian youth.

It’s such lax parentage that weaned Kayode Opadokun into the weirdly violent underworld. Kayodes are incubated in our various homes today because we are too busy pursuing un-enduring frills of economic, social and political survivals, at the detriment of our tomorrow, our children. From what I gathered, the elder Opadokun left his Kwara State home, children and wife and relocated to Lagos to help combat the goblin called military autocracy. The society would seem to have profited from this decision as the artillery from the guns of the Opadokuns succeeded in frightening off military insurgents but, years after, the stupidity of that decision is revealed in the odious shame that signposts the home of one of the most resilient democratic struggle fighters ever.

Opadokun erroneously thought that if he succeeded in building Nigeria, he had built his family. No. Once we build the family, a nation of our dream is built. Let’s focus less attention on Muhammadu Buhari and the gang who are destroying our dream of a Nigeria and reinvent the values of the family which military rule destroyed.

The colour of gratitude

Last Monday, the last day of April 2018, my vow never to be part of the motley crowd called Nigerian politicians, was reinforced. My association with them over the years revealed to me that this buffeting crowd of charlatans, many of whom go by the title honourables, distinguished and excellencies, are either not men and women of honour, are distinguished only in deceit and infamy or excel only in the art of personal enrichment and shoving money liberated from national economy into personal purses.

It had been a while since I visited the Oke-Ogun area of Oyo state so it was excitement writ large on my face at the prospect of driving from Ibadan to those ancient towns that make up the North of the state. The sudden change in weather as you journey out of the state capital was the first issue of fascination and then the vegetation, which resembles the vast expanse of lands you see in the Northern belt. But something of eerie fascination was to compete for one’s fascination: the horrible road. It was as if the Oke Ogun people were battling a war in which enemy bombs had turned their roads into nightmares of craters. Thus, a pleasurable journey that should last about two hours becomes an unending sojourn where you curse and jeer at God-knows-who for leaving a historical people of Oke-Ogun to the mercy of horrible roads.

What lay ahead however had the potentials of wiping away the cakes of dusts that had accumulated on our brows. Chief Michael Adeniyi Koleosho, one of the elder statesmen of the state and I dare say, Nigeria was going to clock 80 years on that day. A man whose interesting early knack for business had made him a millionaire, long before he chose to join politics in 1976, Koleosho was also Secretary to the State Government under Alhaji Lam Adesina and a dyed in the wool Bola Ige supporter who was mentor and benefactor of many politicians in the state today.

In my little knowledge of political benefits in Oyo state, I had drawn the graph of high net-worth individuals, movers and shakers in government, who were beneficiaries of Koleosho’s discipleship and his deft political benefits. I assumed these ones could not but be at Babalaje’s 80th. Alas, I was wrong. Where were those we tag ‘Excel’, those we affix with ‘Honour’ and the ones we claim are distinguished? Was it that they were afraid to be caked by the dusts of Shaki which they are vicariously guilty of or can’t just think twice of repaying Koleosho’s good with evil?

The appreciative politicians like Femi Lanlehin, Akin Onigbinde, Babatunde Oduyoye and a host of others who thronged Babalaje’s 80th wiped away my listless wander as we all said a happy birthday to Chief Michael Adeniyi Koleosho, the Babalaje of Shaki.

Dancing to Abere

Wary of perceived attempts by the Osun state government to exhibit ingratitude to ex-Governor Isiaka Adeleke, one of those who ensured the emergence of the current governor of the state, Rauf Aregbesola, this writer was one of those who deplored governmental gang-up in stopping his younger brother, Ademola from finishing his term in the senate, at his death.

Since becoming Senator, however, Ademola has championed sybaritic causes, rather than development. For instance, the social media is awash with his tendency to reduce the complex issues of life to dances as he swings his fatty hips in gyrating dance steps at every party. There is scarcely anything of intellect that is traceable to him since becoming senator, nor a bill for the betterment of society.

This same folk has signified his intention of becoming governor of Osun state. Methinks, for the people of Osun, the question to ask aspirants and which will qualify them for the Abere Government House, is the depth of their brains and not the suavity of their legs. Or what do you think?

Is Orji Kalu also among the prophets?

As a model for this troubling time, former Abia State governor, Orji Uzor Kalu, fascinates me. As I write this, Kalu is in Korea to galvanise diaspora support for the candidature of President Muhammadu Buhari. Until recently, Kalu was on diplomatic shuttle all over the country, meeting monarchs, groups and individuals for the sake of Buhari’s re-election. Kalu, an 8-year governor of Abia state on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has taken up the gauntlet against Olusegun Obasanjo, the president he served as one of the 36 states governors, for daring to claim that Buhari doesn’t represent the hope of a Nigerian future. That same Obasanjo, for eight years, was almost a god to Kalu as governor. Recall that Kalu’s mother, Eunice, was a close liaison of Obasanjo’s.

Let me joggle your memory a bit about this awkwardly enigmatic character. Kalu, as a student of the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID) studying Political Science, under the Vice-Chancellorship of Professor Jubril Aminu, knew the key and code that unlock the wallets of the rich and runners of Nigerian state. He had always been a Smart Alec and plays it big. As a student, he sold used clothes and was, in the typical lingo of the youth, a hustler. He was rusticated from the university and in continuation of his business moves, once donated what he professed to be One Million Naira to the Borno State Education Endowment Fund in the 80s. The authorities of the state, to their dismay, found cleanly cut cardboards instead of wads of naira. For eight years, Kalu ran Abia State like a family estate, with his mum as Deputy Governor and his siblings taking their own shares of the estate. Apparently, as a rue of his dropping out of Unimaid, Kalu enrolled for a doctoral degree at his own state-owned university as governor and got a PhD affixed to his lapel. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is conducting a scrutiny of his unorthodox stewardship in Abia now.

Kalu, an apparently smart businessman who sees life as not different from buying and selling, recently changed his customer. It is still in the fulfillment of his philosophy of life as business. And he is doing fairly well in his new line of business. If you peruse Lai Mohammed’s newly minted list of those who sucked the nectar of Nigerian patrimony dry in the previous 16 years, Kalu the diplomat’s name is clearly off its radar. Kalu is strutting the length and breadth of Nigeria like a new Nigerian son just made good, with the apparent connivance and abetment of a Mr. Clean presidency which is thirsty for a second term. Now, I thought they said Muhammadu Buhari was a man of honour? If he indeed is, what does old wisdom say about evil association… doesn’t it corrupt absolutely?

Death of ‘Tere na’

For us in the Akure kingdom of Ondo State and Yoruba Juju Highlife music lovers in general, our loss in the passing last Thursday of Evangelist Dele Ojo can never be quantified. Ojo passed on in his Ilara-Mokin hometown at the age of 79 years.

While growing up, the twin tracks by Ojo entitled Tere na and another rendered by Wale Glorious, my Akure, Okelisa kinsman, also a Juju musician, who passed on in 1971, with the title, Awa l’Akure Oloyemekun, respectively provoked Akure nationalism in us. While Glorious’ became an instant Akure national anthem, especially after his untimely passage, Ojo’s Tere na, apart from teaching love and respect for the elderly, was couched in very deep Akure dialect which many of us in the “Diaspora” had recourse to, to reinvent our nationalism. Tere na is the story of a stiff-necked wife who would not respect her husband and whom he showed his prowess by turning into various wild animals on their way to the farm. May the souls of Dele Ojo and Wale Glorious rest in peace.