Yetunde Oladeinde was recently in Ikere-Ekiti, the ancestral home of the world renowned singer Sade Adu. In this report she chronicles her meeting with members of her family.
It’s a Thursday evening and you are in Ikere-Ekiti in Ekiti State. Then someone points at a structure in the neighbourhood saying it belongs to Sade Adu’s grandfather. There is no mistaking that name. Sade Adu, the Nigerian singer, musician and model who has put the name of the country on world map long before many of today’s music stars were born.
A well-heeled family
Other structures owned by members of the Adu family are only shown to you and you know it is indeed a well heeled family. And they are indeed proud of this ‘daughter of the soil’ and wished she visits home more often!
You get curious and want to know more about the family. You take a look around the buildings and you get different versions of her family’s history, especially the fact that they have recorded a number of firsts. This takes you deeper and deeper into the family tree of the singer, song writer and music producer whose fame and achievement made the nation proud especially in the eighties.
A neighbour pays tribute to Sade’s father, Prof Adebisi Adu, the Nigerian lecturer who married an English district nurse, Anne Hayes, in 1955. A spot is pointed out to you, “He (Sade’s father) was buried somewhere here initially but when they were having road expansion his body had to be exhumed and it was taken to a new site.”
James Adebola Adu, brother to Sade’s father lives in the neighbourhood and you finally locate his house somewhere close by. He receives you warmly and happily he goes down memory lane to talk about his late brother, family history and life as an engineer. “Sade’s father and I are from the same mother and father. The Adu family is situated in Afao in Ikere-Ekiti. Our father was Josiah Alawemo Adu, a popular chief.”
Ask him about what he admired about his brother and he laughs, looks up in the sky as if he trying to find answers to your question and he continues: “My brother was a lecturer at the University of Lagos. He later became a professor.”
Memories are made of these
What are the things they share in common? “He came with his life and I came with mine. Share? I came to do my own thing in this life and he also came with his own agenda. We had nothing similar. We only share the same blood. I respect him and anytime I need his service I go to him and anytime he needs my assistance I also go to him.”
Next you want to know what he does for a living and he answers this way: “I am an engineer, I am retired and also tired.” You take a look around and you find some of the things he does around. “That is what I do when there is nothing to do. I worked as an engineer in Dunlop and retired in 1993. I did some electrical sales in Lagos before moving here. I sell some parts and do some minor repairs, which is what I do now.”
Why did he decide to go into engineering? “First I joined the Police Force and was there for about three years. At a point I wasn’t interested in what was going on and so I left the Police. Then I went to Yaba College of Technology where I bagged my OND. From that point, I went straight to Dunlop and I worked all my life there, and never changed job. I love engineering very much. After my education at Yabatech, I would say that Dunlop was almost like a higher institution to me. You know, they had all the equipment and I had the opportunity to work with all the machines. At the latter end of my career I became the chief electrical engineer, which made me work everywhere. We worked mostly in the night. I was the most senior man on duty, morning afternoon and night. This made me know so much about engineering.”
So, did this experience change his life? “Yes. I earned a very good salary, lived very well. I married and had children, eight of them.” You also want to know if any of his children followed his professional footstep. “The only one who read engineering is dead. All the others include accountants, teachers and other professions.”
What about music, is anyone singing like Sade? He replies: “When you talk about music there are lots of musicians in my family. On my mother’s side that is their business, we have a lot of them, they are just local musicians. That is the talent that we have. The real local music, my mother was also very good in it.”
Dunlop wound down its business in Nigeria recently, as an insider what really happened? “Well, I had left before they decided to move to Ghana. They moved to Ghana but I don’t know what happened. Everything collapsed and I don’t know the situation now.”
Sade, the family’s icon
Are you in touch with Sade Adu? “No! When I was in Lagos she used to phone me, she wrote me once. I used to talk to the mother, I used to talk to her brother, Banji.But since I moved down to Ikere I lost my phone and I don’t have any contact. For the past four years now, I would like to have the contact if I have the means. Sade is a nice girl. During the time I was in contact with them (with her brother), they used to send me a lot of money.” When last did she come to Nigeria? “She was born here and when her father died about 18 to 20 years ago she was here.”
Sade’s grandfather Pa Josiah Adu was the Baba Egbe of African Church Cathedral, Afao, Ekiti. “In fact, he was one of the strong members of the church who fought cultism in the society and so they compensated him with that title. By the time the church was to be built there, there were lots of occult people who ganged up against it vehemently.”
A brave grand father
History had it that when the foundation of the church was to be laid, the cult people went to the piece of land overnight and planted maize which grew that same day in order to scare people away! “By the time the masons and those who were to dig the ground for the foundation laying got there, they were scared, but Pa Josiah went there, took a cutlass and weeded everything and he stood by them to start the construction. That was how the church was erected.”
Adu continues: “During his time he was a cocoa merchant, he gave people money to train their children in exchange for cocoa. He was a lover of education and that was why nearly all his children went to school. Majority of them went to Christ School, which was a missionary school and in terms of quality of education it was one of the best then. He was a religious man to the core and a polygamist. Sade grand’s mother happened to be the second wife and their mother too was a renowned businesswoman. She stayed most of the time in Ikorodu, Lagos State, and at a time she was referred to as ‘Iya Ikorodu’.”
She stayed there and carved a niche for herself selling traditional medicine and herbs. “That was what she was known for until shortly before her death, she had to retire and came home. Sade’s father was the first born of the mother and second born of the father,” Adu said.
The Adu family is quite large and they have a lot of achievers in Nigeria and in the Diaspora. “Some of the Adus have featured in the Olympics; these includes Bunmi Adu, who represented the country in chess. He is one of the grandchildren. There is another member of the family who retired as General Manager at Afprint Textiles. Sade’s father, by records, happened to be the first Statistics graduate in the country and one of the first graduates in Ekiti. He was a lecturer at the University of Lagos. Of his children I know Sade and Banji very well, their mum is Anne Adu and she is based in the United Kingdom. Then they used to come home but there are speculations that they had other siblings from another woman.”
On the major road you would find the family house and the building next to it used to be the cocoa store. Adu stated further: “At the moment, one of the Adu family members who is a pastor is using the facility as a church; it’s called King of Kings Christian Assembly. He is also a returnee from England after he had spent most of his time there and studied Mathematics. He is Pastor Rufus Adu. In the government of Governor Kayode Fayemi administration, there is Richard Adu, a retired engineer with Ilesha Breweries. We also have Biodun Adu, a medical doctor who was formerly with the UCH, Ibadan who is now in London practising Medicine.”
In conclusion, he has a word of advice for President Goodluck Jonathan. “As far as Jonathan is concerned, I love him. He is trying his very best. I love his administration but I think he is weak about the Boko Haram thing. I believe that there are big guns behind them and that is why he is afraid. My advice is that he should not be afraid of them.”
