Of Amotekun, kidnapping, et al: Lessons Awojobi taught me

As I was ruminating about my check-list of several of these catastrophic and satanic Nigerian situations, I stumbled on a column written by a deep-thinker, easy-going, compatriot and great essayist/prose writer, Dr Benedictus Gboyega Kunle Ajayi (BGK for short) (Ojulowo Ophthalmological brand) in his “You & Eye” Column of Nigerian Tribune of January 23, 2020. His list helped a lot. Like I had been, he said that he had troubled heart, low spirits and morale such that he could see nothing but gloom all around him. He attributed the cause of his mood change as to negative social media messages and bad news rumbling in his brain. I quote: “A Catholic Priest has been “executed” another killed and burnt by some unknown people, several people kidnapped. Three young dynamic police officers and one civilian were gunned down by some soldiers, ostensibly to pave the way for the escape of a man described as billionaire kidnapper … suspected Fulani herdsmen had kidnapped a good friend’s son and his companion. To crown it all, the Chief Medical Director of a Federal Teaching Hospital was abducted by unknown gunmen in broad day light and his two security men were killed”.

My own reminiscences in same sphere included “Amotẹkun”. Yes, the Amotẹkun of the South-West Nigeria and its being declared an illegality by the Chief Law Officer of the Federation. This same Attorney General had earlier “directed” the government of Oyo State to reinstate the sacked local government chieftains earlier relieved of their positions. Question: Can Malami give what he does not have bearing in mind the record of the government he serves in relation to obeying court orders? An infra dig. A General of the Nigerian Army described as the Commander of Lafia Dole was on television telling the whole world that the Boko Haram had been decimated. The reality on ground is that rather, it is the Nigerian society that was decimated and continuously so decimated by the same Boko Haram.

Top on the list of recent murders by Boko Haram was the Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria in Michica Local Government of Adamawa State, Bishop Lawal Adinnni. Anyone who had the misfortune, yes misfortune, of accessing the video of the way the Bishop was beheaded may be tempted to query the existence of God.

Remember also, the massacre of farmers in Benue and Plateau States, kidnappings along Ibadan/Ile-Ife road and of petrol dealers in Ibarapaland of Oyo State. Enter Ibrahim Gaidam, the Senator representing Yobe East Constituency.  In the milieu of the Boko Haram debacle, Gaidam introduced a bill that seeks to de-radicalise and re-integrate ‘repentant’ Boko Haram terrorists (criminals) into the society through an agency to be established that would provide rehabilitative education and social reintegration (insult upon injury). Nigeria owes Abimbola Adelakun of the Punch, one of the greatest columnists ever produced in the mould of Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, Eselby (Labanji Bolaji), Stanley Macebuh, Dele Giwa, Festus Adedayo and Bola Bolawole  and easily, in my personal estimation, Nigeria’s greatest female columnist, loads of gratitude for her master piece prose on Gaidam on February 17, 2020.

Lest I forget the “Maina pensionmaniac” jest of N2 billion pension fund. He was declared wanted in 2013 by EFCC, fled to United Arab Emirates, hibernated for three years, allegedly met incognito with the nation’s Chief Law officer, in Dubai in 2016, his name suddenly taken off the “watch list” at the nation’s international airports – just like that, you may want to say; all before the course of law was set in motion You now begin to wonder, how one can navigate this confused and continuously convulsing terrain of a nation and not turn a psychiatric patient. And this leads me to a post (SMS) to me by a colleague and former member of the nation’s lower house in our discourse on Nigeria. He had cautioned me on 27/7/2017 thus: “when will you stop pondering about the hopelessness of the country called Nigeria? I had held an unrestrained belief that there is no hope for this country more than 12 years ago and till date, that belief has not been proved otherwise. So keep your peace and enjoy whatever you have left of your life and stop worrying. It can never be better than this. In fact, it is going to be worse than you can imagine. This my belief is so sacrosanct to the extent that I have started to propagate it and nobody, I repeat nobody has been able to fault my line of thought and belief system. …”

His message was preceded by mine to him thus: “something worries me about Nigeria to the point of despondency. Have you seen the photos, online, of Tambuwal, Amaechi, Lamido Sanusi, Okorocha & Co at UK graduation of their children?” Much as his SMS made sense based on his personal experience, I am quick to be guided by the situation in Samaria of old, during a great famine, whereof Prophet Elisha prophesied that come the following day, famine would be a thing of the past. Lo and behold, a palace aide who disbelieved Elisha never benefited from post famine plenty (2 Kings 7:1-20): hence I believe Nigeria will be better, when and how I don’t know.  So far, the thinking of a reasonable man reading this piece is likely to be: where does all this lead us? The answer is in a column I wrote in some Nigerian dailies, five years ago. In the piece, two things happened contemporaneously. One in Singapore, South East Asia, the other in Eruwa, South West, Nigeria. Lee Kuan Yew, a Singaporean Prime Minister, described as “one of the great giants of history” by President Barack Obama died and was buried while Oluyombo Adetilewa Awojobi, a medical icon described as “the caring physician of the world” by the World Medical Association, was also buried in Eruwa on 15/5/2015. Both were change agents as they changed, radically, the faces of their respective environments. And so on June 26, 2014, my soul was troubled following the kidnap of Chibok girls.

I suffered insomnia for the reason of lackadaisical attitude of the Nigerian government towards the fate of the girls and I sent the following SMS to Awojobi. “I am traumatised by the situation of these Chibok girls about whom Nigerian government appears complacent and without any identifiable efforts to rescue them. Any of these girls could have been my own daughter”. His reply, which has so far sustained me in navigating the tumultuous Nigerian ocean and without dropping dead goes thus: “Please say this SERENITY prayer and act in reverse order: God grant me the courage to change the things I can, serenity to accept that I cannot change and wisdom to know the difference”.

Before then, he had always told me that he would not allow the Nigerian situation to kill him,  the way his late elder brother, Prof. Ayodele Awojobi, the stormy petrel of the University of Lagos allowed Nigeria to kill him. If I have survived the inclement Nigeria situation in the past one decade, it is due to the admonition of my friend, my look-alike, my “twin brother”, my Kehinde, (an appellation given to him by my mother) meteoric enigma and phenomenon, Oluyombo Adetilewa Awojobi (March 1, 1951 – April 17, 2015).

At his burial on 15/5/2015, which I had the honour and privilege to superintend, Eruwa played host to people from all over the globe representing diverse interests to pay last respect to his titanic, indelible and unprecedented accomplishments.

This piece is therefore my deliberate effort to relive his memory exactly five years after. Oluyombo Awojobi, may you continue to have blissful rest. The team you left behind at Awojobi Clinic Eruwa, ACE, a.k.a. a private hospital in the public service  led by Tinu, your very dear inamorata is coping very well. Ise re ko ni parun (your legacies shall not go into oblivion)

Adebayo, a retired Editor of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), is Attorney-at-Law

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