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When society honoured a village boy

AS the crowd thinned out of the venue at about midnight, it was silently agreed by all that that was a night well spent. The symbolism of what was witnessed was the need for our society to give honour to whom it is due – while they are alive.

Anyone battling to understand the real meaning of societal honour needed to be at the swimming pool side of the Aenon Hotel, Osogbo, Osun State on Sunday, November 19, 2017 to be able to see the two words in action. It was the day friends, colleagues, contemporaries, bosses, teachers and the like gathered to honour Lasisi Olagunju, editor of the Saturday Tribune, who had just bagged a doctoral degree in Political Communication from the University of Ibadan. Even if one’s heart were as impenetrable as a tortoise’s carapace and no lesson can sink through, you would make up your mind to invest in the life of the other person so that someday, you too could be so honoured by society as Olagunju was.

The event did not commence until about 7pm. The open space was just good for the gathering of men and women who had come to pay their respect to the man of the moment. Olagunju himself, a near-ascetic man when it comes to the things that excite men and women of his generation, was gaily dressed. Since the rains had shyly retreated this season, handing over the baton to an impending harmattan which coyly embraced the skin, those gathered were in the least apprehensive of the irritancy of a downpour. The breeze which intruded on the people’s skins from every angle conspired to give them the needed comfort that evening.

Present and sitting magisterially like a father about to give out his daughter to a husband was the former governor of Osun State, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, whom the honoree served for seven and a half years as his spokesman. Olagunju himself sat with his hands folded across his chest, apparently astounded at the presence of those he never expected at the occasion; his wife, Mrs. Olagunju, who became a centre of attraction at some point when testimonies of how the editor rose to where he was today, also sat beside her husband, occasionally laughing out loud at the turn of the testimonies. The Olagunjus’ only daughter – Aishat – was also beside her parents, with Oyinlola, who provided a fatherly shield round them all.

One by one, a crowd gathered at the venue. Olagunju’s Primary School classmates, his Modern School mates and teachers, his Secondary school friends and of course, his university classmates, trickled into the venue one after the other. It was a day of backslapping and pumping of hands. And as they came in, the celebrant took them to his former boss and introduced them. Two of his Modern School teachers were also in attendance. As someone put it, the fact that this man had maintained close relationship with friends of over 40 years and identified enough with them that they came to honour him with their presence, was symptomatic of his ability to maintain the chord of his roots.

A group of friends led by a former Secretary to the State Government, Alhaji Kazeem Adio, President, Guild of Editors, Mrs Funke Egbemode, the Chief Executive Officer of Rave FM and a broadcaster of renown, Femi Adefila, had conceived the idea since January this year when Olagunju defended his PhD thesis entitled Social Media and Political Mobilization in the 2014 Governorship Elections in Ekiti and Osun States, Nigeria. They apparently wanted it shrouded from Olagunju’s knowledge but could not any longer when the idea of doing a documentary on his little beginning hopped in. However, in bringing him into the know of what they wanted to do, they concealed from him the recorded testimonies of his friends and acquaintances whom they spoke with in the course of the documentary.

The testimonies were the icing on the cake of the occasion. The organized ensured that every word spoken about the celebrant was profiled to be didactic and teach one lesson: that, according to the holy writ, no man should despise his little beginning. Olagunju, according to his biography read by Adefila, was born and bred up country. It was the story of a man who rose from crass bed made of meadow grass to where he is at the moment. The village setting was hostile to academic attainment as the fad was to enter the forest and farm hectares of cocoa plantation, marry at your prime and begin a family of farmers. But Olagunju, whom his father identified with a precocious tendency alien to young men and women in the village, was helped and encouraged by his father to be the best he could be in life. No wonder, Olagunju, with a quavering voice, said he dedicated the doctoral attainment to the two – Pa and Mama Olagunju who paddled him from the high sea of lifelessness to the sea shore where periwinkles, snails and others were washed ashore and provided a measure of life. When he mentioned that these two Providence’s agents had gone the way of mortals and could, sadly, not witness their ‘doctor’ son being honoured, the crowd gathered murmured regret.

As testimonies after testimonies celebrated the lanky man, the reel of the video began to spin. It began with a journey with the audience on the agrarian village where Olagunju was born. The shots showed a very rural countryside and pointed at the sanctity of the proverb that from the dark pot comes a white corn meal. Goats and fowls scampered for their daily meals while the cracking mud walls of the houses, as well as their brown corrugated iron sheets made Eripa look like the canvass of Ibadan painted by John Pepper Clark in his celebrated and evergreen poem, Ibadan.

In subsequence, the camera focused Olagunju’s primary school. Many children of this generation who apparently came to the venue with their parents must have been awestruck on how possible it was for anyone to have lived and survived in such environment. And that is to even consider that the school had been given ‘modern’ touch in decades after Olagunju left the school. Then the light beamed on his Modern school (which later served also as his Secondary school), as well as the Ibadan Polytechnic, Iree campus, where he barely spent a year before porting to the University of Ife to read English Studies.

One thread that ran through the testimonies of the friends of Olagunju at that event is a lesson to upcoming youth. His friends and colleagues spoke of a man who knew what he wanted from life and contributed his own quota immensely in ensuring that he attained it. For instance, his primary school mates, his Modern School classmates and even teachers said that at some point, fazed by his uncommon brilliance, they attributed his coming tops of the class to a metaphysical assistance of his study. They thus easily dismissed his academic strides as not natural- oogun l’o nlo (he is using juju), they said. However, at some point when it became clear to all of them that the young Lasisi was not involved in their usual peer pressure-induced pranks and truancies and was always by the side of his book to acquire knowledge, many of them who had peddled the rumour attempted to move closer to him, peradventure they could benefit from his uncommon knowledge.

His teacher in secondary school who taught him English Literature said he was bemused by the new student (Olagunju had joined the school from his Modern School) who had consistently come tops in the class. Apparently having heard the rumour circulating that he had metaphysically induced his brilliance, he had come closer to the student to find out the source of his elan and was pleasantly shocked at the zeal and dedication he gave his books, qualities absent in many of the other students. Since then, said the teacher, he had resolved to mentor him and decades after, his surprise was that it took him this long to get a doctoral in his field of knowledge.

Speaker after speaker came to the tip of the microphone to eulogize the country boy who made good by attaining the zenith of academic attainment. Virtually all speakers adumbrated his meekness, his unassuming disposition; to some, what struck them was the quantum of native intelligence that providence deposited in his brain. The Eleripa, king of his village, sent a representative who spoke glowingly about how he helped the small countryside while he served Oyinlola as his spokesman. Segun Olatunji, his editor in 1999 at the Tribune, spoke fluidly about a subordinate whom he cast the burden of his editorship upon his shoulders and who exercised the role with amazing efficiency. Edward Dickson, his current Managing Director drew attention to his industry and loyalty to friendship. An old friend, Kola Waziri Olagboyega, a professor in Japan described him as being “fiercely loyal to his friends.” He then pointed at his own First Class certificate obtained from OAU, Ile Ife and declared that without Olagunju’s counsel and support, “that might not have been possible.”

Then, like the big masquerade which is always the last to come out of the coven, Oyinlola came to the front of the microphone. Everybody listened with rapt attention. Instructively, the former governor still has a cultic following in the state he administered with a perfect display of the Omoluabi streak, a major ingredient of individual/communal relationship which is held as the defining point of a good man. Unarguably, Oyinlola possesses a rich understanding of the repertoire of native intelligence, aphorisms, wise sayings and perfect morphology of the Yoruba people which makes him a delight to listen to at any occasion where he needed to exhibit his God-given talent. His father being one of the most revered monarchs in Yorubaland – the Olokuku – critics attribute Oyinlola’s undiluted Omoluabi to his upbringing at the palace and his personal vow to be an ambassador of the culture and mores of his Yoruba people.

I praraphrase him: “When you are in the position I occupy as governor, in picking your aides, you buy the good, the bad and the ugly… I am lucky to have bought the very best in Lasisi Olagunju,” he said and the crowd gave rancorous claps. He told the story of how his media aide rose from being a mere aide to a member of his family and how fiercely loyal he became to him in and even after office. Spiced with proverbs and lore, Oyinlola established to the crowd that loyalty to a boss would take the loyal to a level of recognition, even if it was not fashionable to be loyal at that particular point in time.

What the former governor failed to state was that loyalty is not unilineal but symbiotic. He gave his best to that relationship and bred a super-loyal subordinate in Lasisi. Oyinlola never abandoned Olagunju in and out of office, took his time to ask after him and his family and didn’t believe that money was the only ritual that kept loyalty going. The two of them are today reaping the fruits of that mutual loyalty.

At about 10pm, the whole event had started getting to its denouement. The compere, Dr Smile, a very engaging comedian, had begun to bring the events to a close. Then all of a sudden, a mild roar ensued. Those who knew the workings of government had earlier realized that something was about to happen when some legmen called the advanced party began to filter into the gathering. They had come to ascertain that all was well for the eventual arrival of the Big Masquerade. Then he came in. And the crowd roared. It was Mr Rauf Aregbesola, the governor of Osun State. And all stood up for the insignia of power and authority in the state. Everyone stood up in reverence for his office. What became gladdening about his presence was that he was not formally invited to the occasion, as evidenced by him when he began to give his speech. He just felt he had to honour a man he said was his arch-enemy-turned admirer.

“I have watched you from the fringe,” Aregbesola began while giving his speech. “And I can say you are one of the best strategists ever.” He told the story of how, during the researchers field work, he interviewed him after which he and Olagunju looked at each other eyeball to eyeball and how he saw a passionate loyalist in the service of his boss. He analysed all of Olagunju’s apt strategic attempts to rout him and his group and how he saw his attempts as very extremely profound.

The governor, in underscoring the importance of Olagunju’s doctoral degree, compared the educational system of the British and American people. He also veered into a discussion of how, if every Osun taxable adult pays their tax the state would be buoyant calling on individuals to perform their statutory role. He was applauded.

While giving the vote of thanks, Olagunju did a very deep and intellectual wrap-up of the event. “It could only have been God,” he said while drawing attention of his audience to the story of his life. He thanked the governor for his attendance, especially his making himself available for his research while embarking on the doctoral work; he thanked his boss, Oyinlola for being there for him always. He thanked leaders of the APC and the PDP in the state who, for once, dropped their arms, even if momentarily to celebrate him. And, lowering his voice, on a final note, he spoke on Aregbesola’s demand of tax responsibility on the part of the people. He said that government may need to perform its role first before asking the people to do theirs. The crowd applauded him. And, thus, the event ended, or so it seemed, until Aregbesola insisted on a session of dance to a good dose of jazz and sax music with Olagunju, Oyinlola and A-list politicians at the event.