We now have looting leaders in Nigeria —Adebayo Faleti

Alagba Adebayo Faleti is an accomplished and popular author, playwright, actor, radio personality and a former director of Mass Mobilization for Self Reliance, Social Justice and Economic Recovery (MAMSER), now known as the National Orientation Agency (NOA). In this interview by Saturday Tribune’s Deputy Editor, DAPO FALADE, the 86-year-old broadcast veteran who has been slowed down physically by ill-health but still sharp-witted speaks on sundry issues affecting the country, his accomplishments and regrets as a broadcaster.

Yours is a life rich in history, but are your works documented for the benefit of the youth and the unborn generation?

I don’t think such a thing has been done. I am not aware of any. Nothing was done for me. Instead of doing that, I am being owed arrears of pension, even at this my old age. The last time I received the payment of my pension from the Oyo State Government was in October, 2014. I don’t know why, but the present administration in the state, under Governor Abiola Ajimobi, has not paid our pension since then, a period of over two years now. We even suggested that they should be paying this accumulated pension arrears gradually, since they cannot pay all at once, but they have refused to do that.

You have written many books that are both informative and educative, dwelling on the rich Yoruba cultural past. What informed the philosophy and perspective of your writings?

Yes, I have written several books, including ‘Won Ro Pe Were Ni’, ‘Bashorun Gaa’ and ‘Ogun Awitele’, among several others. Then, I was a young and vibrant man and what informed my writings was what we are experiencing in our human existence. I was at the Oyo State Information Service, later I joined MAMSER, now known as the National Orientation Agency (NOA). I have written several other books which are yet to be published, but they are all spiral-binded.

You are living a spartan life worthy of emulation. What informed your type of life?

Actually, I am very fortunate that I had a parent that inspired me for everything. Most of the stories that I turned into book forms were stories my own father told me. Whenever I write a poetry, I will take it to him and after reading it to him he will say, ‘ah, you have embellished my own story to make it more interesting’ and I will say yes. So, my father was one of my sources of inspiration and he gave me the freedom to write my books, based on his own experiences. The best and longest Yoruba poem that I have written so far is, ‘Adebimpe Ojedokun’, it was my father that told me the story and when I finished writing it, I took it back to him. He so much encouraged me; though he was not educated, he loved educational things.

I am also happy that I became famous and popular through these books. ‘Won Ro Pe Were Ni’ was a story my father told me and I turned it into a book form. ‘Bashorun Gaa’, ‘Ogun Awitele’, ‘Eda Ko Laropin’ and some other books that I wrote recently, such as ‘Oba Lolo’, ‘Atiba’ and the yet-to-be published ones, including ‘Akande Oloogun’, were also all informed by happenings around us. I tried all I could within my God-given power and strength to help shape the world, through book writing.

How was your growing up years; what were the factors that helped to shape your habit and worldview?

Inspirations lead to something in life. When I was in school, I used to write my poems in English Language for the school magazine. I told one of my cousins then that I wanted to be like the famous Williams Shakespeare. But he told me that I can never be like Shakespeare. I asked why and he said, ‘Shakespeare wrote what he wrote in his mother tongue and so, if you truly wanted to be somebody of note, you should be doing all your writings in Yoruba; do not write them in English Language’. With that piece of advice from my cousin, I stopped writing in English Language and started writing in Yoruba. I even went into a competition with my book, ‘Eda Ko Laropin’ and won the first prize.  And, like I said earlier, my father was a great source of inspiration to me; he really encouraged me and told me varieties of stories and I did not disappoint him. Whenever I finished writing a book, I will take it to him and he will commend me for my efforts at making most of the stories he told more attractive and interesting to and for my would-be readers. So, in a nutshell, I can say it was my father’s inspiration that pushed me to the level I attained today.

Looking at Nigeria of  yesterday where you grew up and Nigeria of today, what are the things you saw and which you can relate to those coming behind you?

It is only God who can redeem this country because many of those who were sincerely committed to its growth, development and sustainability are all dead now. What we have now are rapacious and gluttonous looters who are only interested in how to embezzle the public treasury and the funds meant for the generality of the people. They are those who believe that money is what it takes to play politics, to the detriment of human and national development.

If we don’t have people who want to use their power and make personal sacrifices to salvage the situation, Nigeria can never be greater or better than what we are seeing now. Those at the helms of affairs now don’t have any spirit of redemption and neither are they committed to salvaging the country. In the days of yore, most of our leaders then will resolve on how to make things work in the country and they will set a target for themselves to achieve the set goals. But we don’t have such leaders again; what we have now are mere survivalists.

What was the Nigeria of your dream in your growing up years?

No matter what one may envision, it remains an utopia. This is more especially if you travel abroad and you see what is going on there and you now compare the situation there with what is going on in your own country. You will wish that your country attains the level of development obtainable in that other country you visited. But those committed politicians of old who were national patriots have all gone. We don’t have ambitious politicians among us again who are genuinely committed to national growth and development. Take for instance the era of politicians like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the late Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the late Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe,  these were the political leaders who carried on their heads our national burdens then. But since their demise, it is now everybody unto himself.

There is nobody since then who had really sat down to plan how Nigeria will look like between a particular period of time; there is nothing like national development plan for the country anymore. There is nobody to give us a guide on where Nigeria would be in the next 10 years. It is only God who can choose another set of committed leaders for us. President Muhammadu Buhari is willing to make a change, but “aayan fe jo, sugbon adiye o je”. As much as he would have tried to work positively for Nigeria, he is surrounded by “awon arije lote” (saboteurs) who would not allow him to succeed. It is only God who can salvage the country.

What is your philosophy about life and human essence?

That is a very big question. But my philosophy of life and which has been guiding my life is that my thought always dwells on happenings around me and how things are going. I always ponder and ask the question, ‘how and why are things going in a particular direction?’ When you formulate an idea about Nigeria, especially about what should be achieved in terms of growth and development within a certain targeted period, it is my utmost priority. My thought have always been that we must be able to have a master plan which we should be able to review within a specific period to know and determine how much we have gone in achieving the plan. If we are able to do this consistently, Nigeria would be better for it.

Morals and values were the order of the day in the days of old, but in contemporary times, the quest for material acquisition has gained ascendancy. To what can you attribute the development and how did we get to this sorry state?

We are now running after material things: We want to get rich within the shortest time possible; we want to build and own houses, fleet of cars and other things. Ambition of that type will not allow people to rest or have peace of mind. This kind of mindset also invariably led to the situation in which we found ourselves; increasing and unchecked killings, armed robberies, unresolved murders and other sorts of vices. We now measure success by material acquisitions; we are no longer interested in or contended with the essence of life, faith, belief and hardwork. Really, I will attribute this sad development to civilisation.

Again, those who called themselves our leaders should also be held responsible for the moral decay. The leadership should be in a position to correct these evils; if a leader should live by example, Nigeria would be better. But when you see such a leader running after feeble and material things, the follower would also seek to follow such a bad example, that what is good for the gander is good for the geese and that they would not want to live and die in penury or perpetual slavery. The saying on the lips of virtually of the people now is that Nigeria is not worth dying for. But, indeed, Nigeria is a country that is worth dying for but what is lacking is the spirit of truthfulness.

Then, I think our religious leaders should also review their roles and start preaching the essence of God, religion, morals and values. They should be more involved in following the tenets of and teaching of God. There is more to the issues at stake…

But some people are saying the religious leaders, especially Christian and Islamic leaders, contributed immensely to the decay. Do you subscribe to this view?

The tenets and ways of our traditional religion, before the advent of Christianity and Islam, were very strong and the adherents followed them strictly. For example, the old Shango faithful, when they have outings, both the male and female worshippers can and would sleep together and they would never be involved in any immoral sexual acts. But such a moral uprightness has gone to the winds nowadays. With civilisation, they had rubbished and trashed the traditional religion and the old-established norms and values.

Besides that, our contemporary religious leaders should be more careful because what we have mostly now are religious fanatics, both in Christianity and Islam. What is happening now between the adherents of the two religions is unhealthy rivalry. We now have Christian and Islamic faithful organising and engaging in various religious rituals, including vigils. This is not to demonstrate their piety but for some other ulterior motives.

It is only God who save us. God can raise some pious religious leaders, but it is going to be difficult and it may entail loss of lives in the bid to go back to the old ways of life. This is because many of our people and leaders who are surviving on corrupt and bad ways of life would rise in strong opposition to any attempt to change the existing order. This may eventually lead to war, but if God wants to change the old ways, He can raise another set of leaders who will not be shaken or waver in the course and they would eventually succeed.

Looking back, do you have cause for regrets in your life?

What makes one to express regrets is when you encounter what you are not supposed to experience and I once had such an experience. When I was in broadcasting service at Radio O-Y-O, the late Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, was an ally of Nigeria. During the Civil War, he helped Nigeria greatly to quell the Biafran uprising. Some Cuban rebels were campaigning and recorded some documents to expose Castro’s alleged frailties. They escaped from Cuba to the United States of America (USA) where they started sending the recorded tapes to radio stations across the other parts of the world. I received one of such tapes but the law of broadcasting is that when you receive such a tape, especially from foreign lands, you must subject it to thorough screening, make your remarks and give an approval for usage, if you find it suitable.

I received the tape from these Cuban rebels. But when I went through it, I discovered that it must not be broadcast on any Nigerian station because the Cuban government helped the country in the course of the Civil War. So, I decided that the tape would not be aired on the radio station since Castro was our friend and it would not be proper to abuse him. So, I wrote on the tape’s jacket, Not To Be Broadcast (NTTB), locked and kept it in my drawer in the office and forgot about its existence.

However, an incident occurred during one of the Ramadan festivals. I was away to observe the public holiday but one freelance who was on duty just picked the tape, played it and was just reading a book. The recorded tape was nothing but a pure abuse and character assassination of the late Cuban president on a Nigerian radio station. Somebody working in the Nigerian Herald newspaper in Ilorin, Kwara State wrote an editorial on the broadcast asking if it was proper for a Nigerian radio station to air such a tape, abusing Castro. Of course, I was not aware of such a development as I was away to observe the Ramadan public holiday.

Subsequently, after the holiday was over, I saw some security personnel from the then Nigeria Security Organisation (NSO) who told me that I should go to my house with them. I asked them why but they insisted on going home with me. They did a thorough search of my drawers and book shelves, looking for incriminating documents from the Cuban rebels or that I had collected some amount of money from them, but the security agents could not find anything incriminating on me. In spite of this however, the unfortunate broadcast of the tape on Castro led to my detention.

Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was the Head of State then and he was the one who introduced the detention camp. From my experience, I got to know that it is better to be jailed than to be put in detention. While in jail, you can have access to visitors but such would never happen if you are in detention. They will take you away in the night and you will not know where you are being taken to. It was at this point that I started expressing regrets, asking myself, ‘why did I venture into broadcasting?’; Oyo people were into village teaching, but what led me to taking up broadcasting as a profession?

Why did you take to broadcasting and not the traditional teaching profession as being done by your people?

It was God that ordained it because when I was in school, I was contributing to radio programmes. I was commissioned for poetry and stuffs like that. Through such ventures, I became a part-time broadcaster and when I eventually left school, I was fully employed by the Ibadan Broadcasting Service of the Western Nigeria Television/Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service (WNTV/WNBS). That was how I ended up becoming a broadcaster by profession.

But during my period of detention, my thought was, why did I venture into broadcasting instead of being a village teacher in my Oyo community. While in detention, I was subjected to series of rigorous interrogation. Every morning, they will bring before me questionnaires containing 50 questions which I will answer, just to establish my innocence or otherwise. Somebody then said, ‘but you claimed to be a Christian, if truly you are innocent, God will rescue you’. At long last, I was released from detention and I was brought back to my house in Ibadan late December of that year, which I could not remember now. That was experience and only regret while in broadcasting before I took up another appointment with MAMSER in 1984.

You participated in some carefully selected home videos, especially those arranged and produced by Mainframe Productions. What informed your decision to participate in some of these videos?

I participated in some home videos, including ‘Thunderbolt’, ‘Saworo Ide’ and many others. The writers and producers of many of the other plays always invite me to participate but what I always do before I accept to participate is to ask for the script. If I discover that what is in the script has no relevance, I will politely turn down such an offer and cleverly avoid the writers so that they will not see me as a proud or self-opinionated person.

But I must just say the truth that I also went through some hardships in my broadcasting career. This was more especially during my detention which is now referred to as the Cuban Episode. I will sit down and ask myself why did I venture into broadcasting and not be contended with being a village teacher. But in tandem with my life experience, I did not really regret being a broadcaster. One interesting thing is that several years later, I went to Cuba through the government and when I met Fidel Castro, I was taken round some important cities in Cuba. God is indeed great.

What other regrets do you have as a broadcaster?

Beside the Cuban Episode, my other regrets as a broadcaster included when the authorities interfered because government was the sole owner of radio and television stations then; it was not a private affair as we have it now and he who pays the piper dictates the tune. Undue government interference can make one to regret being a broadcaster as they will always want to dictate to you on how to operate. This may impede on your ability and willingness to effectively discharge your duties and responsibilities to the people and the society and in accordance with the dictates of your conscience.