Snooper this morning mourns the death late last week of our older friend, elderly sparring partner and progressive provocateur par excellence, Chief Wumi Adegbonmire, a.k.a Omo Ekun, the Asiwaju of Akureland and immaculate disciple of Obafemi Awolowo. He did not suffer political fools lightly, and neither was he interested in the Geneva Convention of political warfare. He took no hostages or political prisoners. In his younger days, when all else failed, he reached for the fistic sledgehammer in rousing encounters which reminded one of Chinua Achebe’s famous Amalinze the cat.
The cat this time was of the tiger sub-species in all its feline ferocity. Truly enough, this cat did not proclaim its tigritude. It pounced. An unwavering apostle of the Awolowo school of politics and a fanatical foot soldier of the Action Group modernization project, the late chief had no time for political shenanigans or sanctimonious equivocation. He talked straight and shot straight and with him you knew where you stood. This illustrious descendant of illustrious Oyemekun warriors loved the joyous din of political commotion and volcanic affrays. He was a happy warrior.
With the passing of Chief Wumi Adegbonmire, the progressive camp has lost three illustrious avatars in quick succession towards the end of last year. They are: Adegbonmire, Lam Adesina and Professor Stephen Oladipo Arifalo who came to late and deserving prominence with an outstanding and meticulous history of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa. While Adegbonmire and Lam Adesina came to prominence through their political journalism, Arifalo, also from Akure, remained the quiet scholar supplying intellectual ammunition to the cause. The big, burly, amiable and eternally unflappable Arifalo was in many respects a perfect foil to Omo Ekun, his childhood friend and political soul mate.
My generation owes a lot to both Lam Adesina and Omo Ekun for helping to define and refine the progressive cause, and for arriving at the political barricades against the feudal establishment very early in the day. Like their illustrious colonial era forbears who gave Lord Lugard and the Whitehall the roasting of their life, the duo were among those who turned journalism into a weapon of political combat against the Nigerian post-colonial state. Their popular columns in the old Nigerian Tribune speak volumes for their courage, tenacity of purpose and unflinching loyalty to a cause.
No two individual temperaments could be more dissimilar. While Lam was calm and imperturbable, often masking his inner strengths with an inscrutable visage, Adegbonmire was as defiant and daring as they came. Like a supremely confident prizefighter, he often arrived in the ring ahead of the referee, that is if he could abide any. Like the famed Mississippi Mauler, he was not afraid of being hurt as long as he was able to deliver his own explosive packages. It was a classic instance of a dialectical synthesis of opposites. But in the subsequent political sweepstakes, it was the inscrutable Lam who leveraged his gnome-like reticence into a devastating weapon of mob mastery.
It can be said that out of nobility or sheer indifference, Omo Ekun was more interested in policy formulation and the enunciation of general principles than in the politics of self-advancement so rampart these days. The typical Omo Ekun column was not a stuff for the faint-hearted or the lily-livered. It was brimming with venom and vitriol. But the masses loved this John Wayne journalism. Some unforgettable samplers are “Softly, Softly Gani” which virtually put an end to the iconic lawyer’s early romance with the UPN and “Rimi is a Snake” which tore into the late Kano maverick.
The most unforgettable memory of Omo Ekun etched forever in snooper’s consciousness was at the eighty six posthumous memorial service for Chief Obafemi Awolowo held at Ikenne 1995. A bemused Chief Abraham Adesanya had accosted him with a beguiling smile. “Omo Ekun, o ma ye ki ire na ti di ekun bayi?” the late Afenifere leader quipped. (The cub of the tiger isn’t it time for you have become a tiger yourself?) Everybody within earshot laughed.
The jovial atmosphere masked more serious matters. Anybody familiar with the deep and often ambiguous nuances of the Yoruba language and Chief Adesanya’s great mastery of these would know that this statement is both an expression of admiration and a subtle admonition in equal parts. A master of political hostilities himself, the great Afenifere leader would have noticed that a fretting and prancing Omo Ekun was stalking a big game in the political jungle. In this case, it was the arrival of a leading Yoruba traditional ruler at the occasion that had drawn the implacable ire of Omo Ekun. The great tiger got his leader’s gnomic message and all became quiet on the western front.
But if Chief Adesanya was right in one respect, he was merely quibbling in another. There is as yet no genetic accident apart from early death that could prevent a tiger cub from transforming into a full-blown tiger. These things are set with iron certitude. At that point in time, Omo Ekun had become a full blown tiger who was not afraid of any beast in the political jungle. Yet as a tiger grows into full manhood, it is not its prowess that is in question but its wisdom and judgement.
The transformation had been steady and relentless and they must form part of the Yoruba contemporary political folklore. In 1965 when the then government of Western Region of Nigeria banned and proscribed The Nigerian Tribune, a bearded and bearish Omo ekun, then an undergraduate of the University of Ibadan, could be seen on the streets of Ibadan openly hawking the banned newspaper with his right hand firmly gripping a glistening machete. It was a daring thing to do, but such was the heroic stuff of which Adegbonmire was made.
But despite all the heroic exertions and the termination of that inglorious reign of terror, the more things have changed in Nigeria, the more they have remained the same. Every battle has to be painfully fought all over again and at prohibitive human cost. Every ground has to be reclaimed and every advance in national consciousness is swiftly pushed back by agents of retrogression and the uneven keel of national development.
In early February, 1997, at Ife, snooper met an aging, sixty two year old Omo Ekun in perhaps the deepest trough of despair and despondency . It was a bleak moment. The entire country was reeling from Abacha’s despotic tyranny. And the man was obviously scheming to succeed himself. An underground man in his own fatherland, snooper had slipped from exile into the country to bid his dying mother a final goodbye.
Snooper had met the great Awoist in drastically diminished circumstances, in a rusty dilapidated book store with its meagre and miserable stock of dog-eared titles. In the intervening thirty two years since his celebrated appearance as a celebrity newspaper vendor, Omo Ekun had graduated, had risen to become an iconic and successful university bookstore manager and a revered member of Awolowo’s inner circle. He had also taken active part in the 1983 uprising against electoral perfidy in his native Ondo state and had been rewarded with a firebombed country house. But this was as close to hell as it could get.
In the badly ventilated bookshop, the old warrior’eyes lit up with warmth and enthusiasm after he had overcome the initial shock of my dramatic appearance. His defiant body language told me to forget any thought of commiserating with him over the equally dramatic reversal of fortune.
“I told my children that I would take the bullet in the chest and not at the back, like a coward,” he thundered, the appetite and aptitude for political hostilities apparently undiminished.
“Chief, kini yi ma rough ooo”, snooper sang, recalling our usual refrain in happier times.
“Don’t worry. This too will pass. The fool will soon be history. How did you manage to evade the dragnet?” he inquired.
“That is a story for another day,” snooper intoned.
“You are a brave boy. Let’s go and eat pounded yam at Ipetumodu,” the great man ordered but snooper politely and firmly declined. A few minutes after, it was time to leave, after snooper had explained his mission in the country, and after the conversation had drifted to a young “progressive” senator who had suddenly decamped to the other side.
“You see,” Omo Ekun began with a mixture of contempt and bemusement. “I am always suspicious of these young politicians who go about in three piece designer agbada. How can anybody be wearing agbada? What if it comes to immediate battle? Wont they be wrapped up with the nonsense?”
As usual, the happy warrior was harking back to the sartorial ethos of the Action Group where the tight fitting buba and sokoto assumed the status of a universal uniform and Omo Ekun himself was a great exemplar of the civilian fatigues. With its superior organization and military-like discipline, the Action Group was a classic instance of vertical intellectual integration and horizontal mass-mobilization. The battle cry was permanent vigilance and no one did the “E stand by” war dance better than the late Ganiyu Olawale Dawodu. Watching the sprightly old Gregorian cantering back and forth was pure delight.
Sadly towards the end, the old cohesion had disappeared and omo Ekun was no longer on the same page with most of his old comrade in arms. The falcon could no longer hear the falconer. The old Afenifere umbrella could no longer hide the deep divisions and schisms within Awolowo’s political household. All that was solid has melted into thin air.
Their human failings notwithstanding, all these great men speak to the power of sterling leadership and the power of apostolic followership. But more importantly, they speak to the dynamic capacity of visionary ideas to move people and mountain. In the modern society, a person who has not intellectually transformed himself cannot be expected to transform others. This is the tragedy of post-colonial leadership in Africa in general and Nigeria in particular.
As the crowd of these noble and illustrious men and women begin to rapidly thin out, this column salutes the few remaining titans. But as we yearn for another country, let us be clear in our mind that what Nigeria needs is a new intellectual master class such as was thrown up by the anti-colonial struggle who will furnish the nation with a new master plan. Let us end by quoting Louis Althusser. Only the production of new heroes keeps old heroes alive. May the noble souls of the departed rest in peace.
