Lt. Col. Comfort Oluremi Akindiji: A tribute

By: Abioye Ayorinde

IT was dawn, the beginning of another day. I was busy with house chores when I heard a knock at the door. The cleaning of the sitting room wasn’t complete, and we usually didn’t have early morning visitors. Opening the door, I beheld two strangers in mufti desiring to see my aunt. My aunt was already up in her room, and she came to the sitting room as soon as I informed her of the visitors’ presence. Still standing, the strangers declined to take the seats offered them. As soon as my aunt sauntered into the living room, she immediately set her eyes on one of the guests and declared, “Mo so fún ẹ, l’ èkó yìí, màá mú ẹ balẹ̀’, meaning: ‘Remember I warned you that in this city of Lagos, there’s no escape route for you from my hands’.” The story went thus: a commercial bus driver in the highbrow city of Lagos had hit my aunt’s vehicle. She was a military officer in mufti at the time, and he refused to engage her in any settlement arrangement before zooming off. ‘Se bi o nlo agidi pe Major General lo ni motor e ni, owo ti ba e bayi’, meaning, ‘Remember, I was trying to engage you that day, but you refused to listen, claiming that a Major General owned your vehicle’. The man who brought him was a police officer who was also engrossed with the scene.

    ‘Bioye, take them to the Chief Security Office (CSO)’, my aunt ordered. We were living at the military hospital quarters, Ikoyi, Lagos. On getting to the CSO, I informed him that the police had brought the man who hit mummy’s car. He was so excited and thundered at the man, ‘So, iwo ni. Ko sibi ti a o wa e de L’eko yi’. (So you’re the one! We’ve been looking for you everywhere in Lagos!). He then beckoned to the police officer, saying, ‘E ku amojuba’— congratulations on apprehending the culprit. The man was detained and, in a matter of days, my aunt’s vehicle wore a new look. The confidence and authority with which my aunt spoke endeared me to the military profession, but the associated risks, tension, and hazards terrified me. On another occasion, I accompanied Aunty Odun, as she was fondly called, to the headquarters of one of the oil companies on Lagos Island. The place was jam-packed with hundreds of people, many of whom had come to seek employment. A few minutes after entering, police officers came inside to inform my aunt that her car tyres were being deflated by an Air Force officer. I was apprehensive that a scene would be created. So we stepped out to see things for ourselves, and behold, the Air Force officer was indeed busy deflating the last tyre. My aunt, in her senior army officer uniform, called him sternly by his lower rank. ‘What happened?’ she asked.

    Seeing her, a cold shiver went over the Air Force man and he declared in a shaky voice as he sprang up with a smart salute, ‘Madam, I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was you. I didn’t see any sticker on the car.’ ‘So, what are you going to do now?’ Aunty Odun asked. ‘I’ll fix it, ma’, he replied. She turned to me: ‘Bioye, follow him and see that it’s done.’ Meanwhile, as soon as we were out of my aunt’s sight and got to a corner, the airman started bullying and trying to intimidate me. ‘Why are you following me? Is it because your mummy is an officer?’ I replied, ‘If you’re bold enough, why didn’t you say this out there?’ I was proud of Aunty Odun and her show of firm authority before hundreds of people who were witnesses to the scenario.

In yet another development, Aunty Odun was scheduled for a 9 o’clock appointment at the Defense Headquarters in Lagos. We reached the venue, where she quickly alighted and asked me to park the car while she dashed off to keep her appointment. A few minutes after parking, a female military police officer emerged and asked me to take the car away. “The car belongs to a military officer,” I tried to explain. ‘I don’t care’, she retorted. “Just take the car away from this place.” When she saw that I was adamant, she tried to deflate one of the tyres, and I struggled with her, insisting that the vehicle belonged to a military officer. My reluctance was because I didn’t know where else to park, and I was not familiar with the roads in Lagos. It would have been suicidal to drive into an unknown destination at a time when there were no mobile phones. The officer went livid. She ordered me to frog jump. Fortunately, I hadn’t gone two minutes into the strenuous punishment when a senior military officer passed by. I was well dressed in a tie.

 When he saw me, he asked what the young man had done. ‘Leave him and let him go’, he ordered. The military police officer then allowed me to park the car a few meters away instead of driving it away completely. A few minutes later, my aunt came back, and I narrated the scenario to her. She went straight to the chief security officer and demanded to see the officer who punished me. Her grouse was that the officer had been informed that a military officer owned the vehicle and yet went ahead to mete out such punishment on an innocent civilian. On getting back to the car, she said to me, ‘Bioye, won ni o lo struggle pelu soja. Ma danwo mo o. Won le paayan o, ko de si ohun ti o ma sele.’ (I learnt that you struggled with the soldier. Don’t ever do such again, they can kill and nothing will happen.) Her advice has since stuck with me. Anytime I see a soldier at a checkpoint, I promptly say, ‘Shon sir!’ The fact that a military officer can kill is an admonition for civilians and also for fellow officers in the khaki and jackboot profession.

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We returned home to the military hospital residential quarters in Benin City one evening. The military guard assigned to my aunty’s residence was at his duty post, but dead drunk. In this state, he welcomed the entire family with insults, even threatening to shoot us. Aunty Odun cautioned us against responding to his tirade. ‘Eyin omo, e wa careful o, e sa je ka rora wole, ti a ba sun ti Olorun ba ji wa lola, guard room lo ma ba ara re.’ ‘Be careful my dears, let’s just enter the house quietly. Let’s go to sleep and if God in his benevolence wakes us tomorrow, the man will find himself in the guardroom.’ (CONTINUES ONLINE).

•Ayorinde writes in from Ibadan.

 Lo and behold, that was exactly what happened to the soldier the following day. The day of my own nuisance came when I forgot to turn off the water tap in the visitors’ toilet attached to Aunty Odun’s living room overnight. The early morning pumping of water from the mains usually commenced at around 5 am. On getting to the living room that morning, alas, the whole place was flooded. The water was already flowing down the staircase of the apartment downstairs in the more than six-storey building. We were on the fourth floor. I felt like the ground should just open and swallow me up. Fear gripped me. How would my aunt react to this embarrassing situation? I quickly turned off the tap and started mopping. Soon enough, she emerged from her room to behold the ugly scene. Surprisingly, she just muttered ‘Ah!’ and turned back to her room. She returned about thirty minutes later to reiterate the importance of always shutting the tap whenever there’s no water supply.

I was able to see in Aunty Odun an inbuilt strength and the ability to handle situations that sometimes appear beyond control. She was bold, courageous, and she never suffered fools gladly. She had a good heart, was accommodating, and reacted to situations as the occasion demanded. She was a pride to the entire families of Ayorinde, Okunola, Aribisala, and Akindiji. I recall with nostalgia that during holidays, everyone would start chorusing: ‘Aunty Odun would soon come and pick you to spend the holidays with her.’ Born on January 23, 1943 in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria, Rtd Lt. Col Comfort Oluremi Akindiji (nee Okunola) passed on in July 2026 at North Middlesex Hospital, Edmonton, London, United Kingdom. Her memories will continue to linger. We shall forever remember her.