In this chat with Edozie Udeze, Professor Ojo Rasaki Bakare of the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State and a member of the State Executive Council in the state, explains why he wrote a play on Fajuyi. The play is not only trending now, Bakare has brought his deep background as a playwright/director to bear on the sentiments that define an epic of this proportion and more.
In the 1960s there were a few Nigerian soldiers and officers who were poignant about nation-building. As the Nigerian nation steadily regained steam towards nationhood, the military was important at that moment in time. While the first coup happened in 1966, the whole nation held its breath with fear. Then soon after came the second coup otherwise known as the counter coup. In the midst of all these, were some officers who held their heads high and were as well committed to nation-hood.
The late Colonel Francis Adekunle Fajuyi, an Ekiti born soldier and an officer of the Nigerian army who rapidly rose to become the first military governor of western Nigeria, appointed to that position by the late Head of State Major General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi Ironsi was a man of integrity. He held unto the principles of unity, dedication and trust within the few months he was the governor. His role as a courageous soldier who loved to protect his friend and boss in moments of crisis further showed how resilient he was as a formidable character. But the play written on him by Professor Ojo Rasaki Bakare goes beyond these areas of military razzmatazz.
Rasaki took the story from the grassroots, from the moment Fajuyi was born through his career and death. He goes into his family; examining his life, his early education and the circumstances that encouraged him to become a soldier. Watching the rehearsals on the stage was a complete delight because it offered one the opportunity to witness firsthand the sequences that propelled young Fajuyi to enroll as a soldier. It showed how he took his time to imbibe reliable, quintessential and impregnable mien that spelt him out far and above others. Family background, coupled with those strict indoctrination of the military of old in the days of the colonial masters. All these combined to mold him into a peculiar character. So it can be said that Fajuyi went into the army to serve with all his heart, strength and commitment.
Professor Rasaki who dissected all these into a stage play also spent ample time on the subject matter. His focus was primarily to see how this young character bred locally, but educated in one of the best secondary schools in Ekiti in the days of yore, rose to be a model. This is why he is directing the play with profuse dexterity and professional gusto in order to demonstrate the complete beauty of this man called Fajuyi.
Rasaki tells the story, how it started; what pushed him into the project and at what point the muse took hold of him. He says “This occurred to me when I returned home to Ekiti State. I am from Ekiti State myself. But I left home as far back as 1982. I returned home in 2011 when I joined the Federal University at Oye Ekiti. Before I left home as a young boy at about 17 years, the house where I was living with my parents was close to Fajuyi Park. So I knew about Fajuyi right from the time I was a child. But we had one almanac or is it calendar now, a one page calendar hanging on the wall. And Adekunle Fajuyi’s picture in uniform was there at the centre of the almanac. “And I heard the story that he was killed in 1966 when I was a two year old boy. So growing up it was in my mind that that man is dead. They killed him. Each time I was left alone in the sitting room, I will be looking at him; I will be scared that this man I am looking at in my father’s home in this almanac is dead. Let him not come here and strangle me. I would then run away from the sitting room. As a small boy I became conscious of Fajuyi. So when I returned home, I also discovered that the current youths, the young ones in Ekiti did not know about him beyond the Fajuyi Park. Beyond the Fajuyi Park that is there in Ekiti and then I met some young people to ask them if they know about the Fajuyi, they always talk about the park named after him.
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“It then occurred to me that these people no longer study history in schools. And i said that one Nigeria will only be better if the young ones know about people like Fajuyi, that indeed good people like him once existed. The way they the young ones look at this nation that it is only full of rogues; that no good man has ever lived inside it is not good. So I researched into the history. Then I wrote this script because I am a playwright director. I filled his story with all the information about him. I was writing the story when Ekiti State hosted the National Festival of Arts in 2019.
“And as the chairman of the committee for the hosting and also a consultant, I was going to pick a script Langbodo as the command performance for that festival. Then my close friend Wale Lanre Ojo who then was the director general of the Council for Arts and Culture, said, prof. do not use anyone else’s script. Use your own script, any of your scripts will do. So when he said so I said okay let me quickly finish this script on Fajuyi and direct it myself. And so this was how I finally did the script and today it has become a complete work.
“This was in 2019. So after the performance I then updated it by completing the job on it. Actually the intention is to teach the Nigerian youths, using this script for them to see that a committed man, a detribalized man, a man who loved his friend to the extent that he was ready to die for him. A man who did not bother that he was Yoruba or that his friend was Igbo, he protected that man and finally died with him. That that man Fajuyi, once lived and he lived in Nigeria. So these young people should not be looking at us, at Nigeria as if love never existed here in Nigeria and across ethnic barriers.
“The play has further helped to show that love had been here before and we will have to reinvent that love. The time for that is now. So Nigeria is not a failed state after all. No it is not and let the youths not always see it in that limelight. Nigeria is what it is today because at a point something happened, something snapped that started to create this state of hate. That is what is happening in Nigeria today and what is happening in Nigeria today is politically motivated. But we must look back and remember those days of Fajuyi and the like and recollect moments of love and togetherness and peace and unity”.
Let us teach the young ones that history of the past and reconnect it with the present. That we have to bring back that love we enjoyed as a people. This is why the play is not just historical, it is an epic. It has all the lessons history has refused to teach in the classrooms. It is time for those who love peace, those who cherish and plant orderliness, respect for one another, regard for what is good to troop into the cinema halls of the Muson Centre, Onikan, Lagos, on November 5 being a Sunday to watch this play suffused with plenty of lessons in love, in tolerance and in unity across boundaries, across tribal barriers and so on.
The play is not just for mere entertainment. It is for people to carry the lessons home and to impact on others what genuine national love behooves. Professor Rasaki is bent on extending these lessons to the younger ones so that they too will not continue to hinge their perceptions about Nigeria based on the bigotry of our leaders across states and locations. Nigeria has to reinvent those years of love, national love that helped Nigeria to gain independence with little or no shedding of blood unlike most nations in Africa. The play lasts two hours, 15 minutes on stage.
