W ant to gauge your community value? Fix your birthday on a Monday morning; and see how many people would turn up.
Well, anyone of high community value would dare no such hubris. Yet, that was what Mother Nature dared for Ayobami Oladele Atanda Afolabi (Ayo Afolabi, for short).
He turned 70 on Monday, February 5. His friends decided to celebrate him that same day. The result was simply a marvel. The main hall, of the University of Ibadan International Conference Centre, teemed with well-wishers.
Indeed, it must be a big deal: two sitting governors (Oyo and Ondo); a deputy governor (Ogun); the secretary to a state government, with the governor’s chief of staff, plus key cabinet members (Osun); federal cabinet members (from Ekiti, Lagos and other parts of the Western Region); the South West chairmen of the All Progressives Congress (APC); professionals and academics, active and retired — gathered to celebrate a non-office holder, on a Monday morning!
Yet, the man that triggered all this love was an Abiku — that terrible born-to-die child in Yoruba traditional belief. Indeed when he was born in 1948, he was the fifth in a relay of nine boys; but the first not to die shortly after.
Even then, he endured ”gbekude”, (Yoruba for: “hold death at bay”), a charmed necklace, for his first five years. It was his parents’ final double insurance cover, that the Abiku might finally stay.
He did — and so did four boys after him. The Yoruba race has been the richer — and luckier — for it.
Still, what sort of Abiku might he have been — the unfazed rebel, in Wole Soyinka’s poem of that same title? Or the one, in John Pepper Clark’s version, who could pity his plaintive parents?
Perhaps, a bit of the two! Still, his 70 years have manifested something of a perpetual rebel — dating back to his earliest years.
A time was, he reportedly mocked a neighbour with facial scarifications. But that triggered, from his mom, his own tribal mark tale.
A day before he was to be scarified, the toddler fell ill. On the eve of the second attempt, he fell ill again. One the third try, the scarifier was determined to have his way, let the heavens fall. But lo, on the eve of that now-or-never attempt, the traditional surgeon himself died! That scared off everyone.
But beyond the Abiku-rebel-in-the-cradle, Mr. Afolabi would rebel, all through his life, against social trends that tend to retard his immediate and extended Yoruba environment, even if by that, drawing grave personal danger.
That fetched him his intrepid reputation, echoing back to his Owu nativity, of fearless warrior-ancestors, from his native Ode-Omu.
But unlike his more famous Owu cousin from Abeokuta, Olusegun Obasanjo, who seems rather cool towards Yoruba interest, Ayo Afolabi presses his Owu valour to Yoruba service, at the slightest opportunity, in the best Awoist and Afenifere progressive tradition.
Yet, save a youthful blunder into politics when he was 17, in secondary school, he never played politics when Awo was still alive, in the 2nd Republic (1979-1983).
It would seem, then, a gripping irony: one of the best Awoists ever never raised the flag, when the avatar himself was alive! Yet, not a few zealots who did, have long betrayed the cause!
Indeed, as the saying goes, it’s not how long but how far!
At 17, out of youthful exuberance, the young Ayo served as accidental polling agent at Tonkere, in today’s Osun, to the local candidate of the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA) — a 1st Republic electoral alliance between the rump of Awolowo’s Action Group (AG) and Michael Opara’s National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC), in the 1965 West regional elections.
But that turned awry — indeed, near-fatal — when the losing candidate, of the dreaded “Demo” — shortened and corrupted form for Nigerian National
Democratic Party (NNPC) — seized his Dane gun and started shooting from his house, all through the polling precincts, sending everyone scuttling for dear lives!
His post-secondary school years he would spend building a career as a sales, marketing and advertising professional, so much so that during the 2nd Republic he was apolitical. But all that would change, with the 12 June 1993 presidential election annulment by the military.
Indeed, his fiercest political battles would be the post-June 12 challenge to the Sani Abacha dictatorship, pitching rogue military elements from the North, that nevertheless had cells all over Nigeria, against nationalist elements among the Yoruba.
It was the era of incendiary posters and organized protests, standard civil resistance menus, which nevertheless put the nervy military on edge.
It was also the era of political prisoners of war (POWs), the harried military’s term for detained agitators, pushing for justice for MKO Abiola.
These elements, with the late Bola Ige firmly on the saddle, in Mr. Afolabi’s sector of the “war front”, felt the annulment of MKO’s mandate was a thunderous slap on the Yoruba face.
That, they insisted, must be resisted, even if the foot soldiers died trying. That was the epic war that vanquished military rule but didn’t quite deliver democracy.
Nor did it deliver justice for the slain MKO, even if his fellow Egba-man, Gen. Obasanjo, ended up as prime beneficiary.
That was how Mr. Afolabi earned his pips in the many fierce battles for just Yoruba causes, with Nigeria’s pseudo-federal fronts providing the battle ground.
This same trajectory has powered his partisan politicking and political activism, all through the advent of the 4th Republic, from 1999 till now. Even when the battle appeared so hopeless and forlorn, the intrepid warrior was always ready to give it his all.
Still, the February 5 show was much a personal celebration of Mr. Afolabi as it was an ode to community value.
In that hall, the celebrator was a link with the past, just as he was a beam into the future.
The master of ceremonies was Muyiwa Ige, son of the late Cicero of Esa Oke, that charismatic politician and 2nd Republic governor of Oyo State. Mr. Afolabi was one of Ige’s trusted ideological foot soldiers.
Afolabi’s tutelage under Ige, on setting up progressive cells and organizations, to push fairer deals for everyone, has yielded tremendous harvests: the NADECO years’ “Idile”, New Generation and Heritage groups; and post-1999 Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), whose brainchild is the Yoruba Academy, which later birthed the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN), which commission is the present foremost regional policy think-thank for Western Nigeria.
His birthday also inspired sweet community service, hallmarked by how his protégés, led by Kunle Famoriyo; and other younger friends, like Niyi Akintola, SAN, masterminded a most befitting birthday bash.
But even as Mr. Afolabi becomes one of the youngest old men in town, he would be especially pleased that a posse of youths are poised to inherit his spirit of service.
Right there, Awa Bamiji, and his Grand Council of Yoruba Youths, honoured the celebrator with a special award at 70.
An ode to community value never sounded sweeter — and more reassuring.
