It was a mother’s worst nightmare.
The matriarch of what is popularly called the “Awolowo dynasty” cried loud as she was comforted by the Bishop of Remo Diocese, Rt. Rev. Dr. M.O. Fape, and other clerics who came with him to break the news of the passing of her only son, Wole, to her. The clerics were accompanied by the former Governor of Ogun State, Gbenga Daniel and his wife, Olufunke. For many weeks, family members had made it impossible for HID to speak with her son who was hospitalized in London. Each time she asked after him and insisted that she wanted to speak to him on the phone, one excuse or the other was offered. But she was assured that he was responding well to treatment.
She had her doubts but hoped for the best. Therefore, when one morning the Bishop and other clerks came to her, she knew tragedy had struck – again.
She screamed as soon as she saw them. She asked the visitors not to bother breaking the tragic news to her. She reeled out the names of her forebears, particularly her mother and grandmother, who lived very long and didn’t have to bury any child in old age.
“Oh, Wole, my dear son! Why now! Is it a sin to live long? My parents lived long. Why should longevity become a curse in my own case?”
As she sobbed some of those who had come to console her broke into tears too.
The Governor of the state, Ibikunle Amosun, also joined others in Ikenne to console with HID.
“Mama was devastated”, her grandson, Segun told reporters in Ikenne.”She has been trying to speak with him since he had been in the London Hospital. We have been hiding….(his deteriorating condition) from her”.
HID had lost her daughter, Ayo, only about two years earlier. The pain of that loss was still fresh. Haunting still, despite the passing of time, was the death of Segun fifty year earlier.
Oluwole Awolowo nick-named “Unbreakable” by his father for his venturesome youthfulness, died at Wellington Hospital, St Johnswood, London, on Wednesday, March 27, 2013 at 70.
When I got a call from Segun Olatunji, the Consultant to the Nigerian Tribune and the paper’s former Editor-in-Chief, I was afraid that Mama might not be able to survive the tragedy, coming two years after the loss of her daughter. I called the octogenarian Sir Olaniwun Ajayi, a close friend of the family, to break the news to him. He was shocked. But when I repeated the fear about Mama, he assured me that though Mama would be devastated, she was strong enough to survive the tragedy.
When President Goodluck Jonathan visited HID in Ikenne on Saturday, March 30, he said “words failed” him. Incidentally, the deceased Tribune publisher’s youngest sister, Tokunbo, reminded the president while thanking him for his condolence visit that he had promised when her brother’s health worsened that he would ensure that HID never grieved again for the rest of her life.
Similarly, some of the lines in Wole Soyinka’s poem, “Death in the Dawn” – which he published alongside the poem he wrote for Wole Awolowo’s deceased brother, Segun – could have been a prayer for HID.
“And the mother prayed”, Soyinka wrote in the 1960s, “Child/May you never walk/when the road waits, famished”.
“Unfortunately”, the medical doctor said, “our prayers were not answered. But God knows best”.
“This is a terrible time for us in this family”, added Tokunbo Awolowo Dosumu. Our brother passed away exactly two weeks to the second anniversary of my sister’s demise. For Mama, you can only imagine what is happening in her heart. But we are people of faith and we learnt that at the feet of our mother and our father. And believe we will never understand everything on this side of the divide”.
Indeed, there was something many people could “never understand”, to use Wole’s sister’s phrase, about the accident that was the remote cause of her brother’s death. The car crashes that claimed the lives of Tokunbo’s two brothers, Segun and Wole, three decades apart were eerily similar. Even though the first died the same day that he had an accident while the other died seven years after his accident, the cars in which both were travelling were similarly crushed between fourteen and fifteen miles from Ibadan. Undeniably, it is difficult to imagine that anyone who was in the crushed car that” Unbreakable” drove could have survived. Yet, he did for another almost seven years.
Some people close to the man who was appointed the publisher of the Tribune newspapers in 1984 told me that he believed that the only difference was that his brother was travelling from Ibadan through Ijebu to Lagos while he was travelling from Ikenne to Ibadan. Another difference is that the older Awolowo was driving on the old Ibadan-Ijebu-Lagos road, while the younger man was driving on the new Lagos-Ibadan expressway.
Segun’s daughter confirms her uncle’s position on the location of the two accidents. “(Uncle Wole) was surprised. He asked some people to go and measure the place (that is, scene of the accident) and they found out that where he had the accident is actually adjacent to where his brother met his death. The picture (of my father’s accidented car) is almost a reflection of that of (Uncle Wole)”.
But the similarity or differences meant little or nothing to the bereaved mother. When her son survived the car crash which occurred on September 30, 2006, she was overjoyed. She expressed gratitude that she didn’t have to bury yet another child in her lifetime.
Wole Awolowo was first rushed to St George Hospital, Oke-Bola, Ibadan, before he was transferred to the University College Hospital (UCH). Unfortunately, the damage to his body was severe. The next six years were spent between hospitals in Nigeria, India and the United Kingdom. He had a strong-will that took him through the grueling six years and six months after the crash. The last two years were particularly grueling for him.
As sympathizers, including dignitaries from all parts of Nigeria, besieged Ikenne with others sending condolence messages, the family prepared to bid farewell to the effervescent evangelist. Early in the morning of Wednesday, April 17, led by his only younger sibling, Dr. Tokunbo Awolowo Dosumu, we drove to the Presidential Wing of the Lagos Airport where we received the body of Awolowo’s heir. The MD/EIC of Tribune, Edward Dickson, the paper’s former MD/EIC, Segun Olatunji, and the editors of the three titles on the company stable, Debo Abdulai (Nigerian Tribune), Sina Oladeinde (Sunday Tribune) and Lasisi Olagunju (Saturday Tribune) and others came along. We were later joined by Wole Awolowo’s good friend, Chief Ebenezer Babatope, with whom he had shared “escapades” as young men. Such escapades and his capacity to run risks earned him the sobriquet, Unbreakable. As his deceased older brother’s friend, Bisi Lawrence, explains it, “(Wole’s) disposition was encapsulated in his nickname – Unbreakable. It was the name of a ball, the size of a tennis ball, which young boys enjoyed kicking around. Old tennis balls earlier served that purpose, but they soon burst with so much kicking around. But “unbreakable” was solid through and through, filled with layers of tightly wound rubber straps which made it virtually impossible to burst, while at the same time giving it a chunky appearance and a healthy bounce to boot. That was Wole in his youth, daring vehicles on his bicycle across Oke-Bola roads in Ibadan – impossible to repress, Impossible to resent, Impossible to ignore…”
As we waited in the lounge of the presidential wing of the airport, President Olusegun Obasanjo came in. We all greeted him. He was travelling out of Nigeria and was there for his early morning flight on a private jet. He greeted Awolowo Dosumu and asked after the bereaved mother.
When the corpse was eventually flown in, a long convey drove from the airport to the State House of Assembly where a special session in the deceased honour was held. It was a rare honour reserved for only serving or former Governors of the state and Speakers of the State Assembly. Wole Awolowo had only been a member of Assembly representing Apapa constituency in the second republic. But, as the members attested, it was an honour he deserved because of the unsurpassed contributions of his father to Nigeria.
The next morning, we drove to Ibadan for a farewell service at the premises of the Nigerian Tribune in Imalefalafia, where many old and current staff of Tribune converged to reminisce on old times in the newspaper. Later that evening, the body was taken to Ikenne to preparation for the burial service the next morning.
On Friday, April, 19, HID’s only surviving son was given a burial fit for the prince of the Awolowo dynasty. Tears flowed freely among his ten children who bid him final farewell as the silver-coloured casket bearing their father’s remains was lowered into the grave. Yejide,Omolola, Babajide, Olayinka, Oluwabukola, Obafemi, Olufunlayo, Olukunle, Oluwagbenga and Oluwaseyi took turns to say goodbye to ”Unbreakable”.
“Mama was completely devastated”, HID’s eldest daughter, Mrs. Tola Oyediran, discloses. “She doesn’t like to talk about the loss of her children. Each time we mention them, she says ‘well, God knows best”. I have a feeling that inside her, she is still going through a lot of grief. But she was brought up never to show stress… never to show anxiety. I think it is part of (the upbringing of) royalty, if I may put it that way. So, she will rather just put up a courageous front as a princess and Christian…. She once said in her journey, she has lost three out of five…. I believe that when she sees Christ, when she gets home that might be part of the questions she has to ask Good…”.
TO BE CONTINUED
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