• Between OlumO and asO – Reminiscences fROm Ogun at 40•
singing praises of the colossus who brought them education! How many thousands of billboards, I would ask myself, would Awolowo have deserved by comparison for his seminal educational policy, and its execution? In my bush forays, I had become accustomed to encountering these displays fighting for survival beside dilapidated buildings that were supposed to be schools, and nondescript shacks that denoted abandoned projects. Billboards where our biblical eponym fought and vanquished illusory monsters while trapped “in the lion’s den”!
All vainglories sooner or later pass away, leaving nothing but the transience of power and the corruptibility of birds of passage with human heads. And, to bring us down to earth, down to objective assessment of how we have augmented the bequest of sound foundations, what greater mortification could possibly befall the people of Ogun, than to see this pioneer beneficiary of Awolowo’s vision fall to an abysmal low in the annual scholastic contest called WAEC! When and how did the rot commence? These are hard, soul-searching questions that do not brook evasion.
Enough of reminiscences, sweet and sour. Let us make room for a final narrative of immodesty. After all, others have not been niggardly of late in praise of their own corners of the nation, even to the extent of dubbing us (among others) envious of their own achievements. I read one lately whose catalogue of Firsts in virtually every human undertaking checked me in stride. True or false, I have not bothered to check, but it all sounded authentic. Fortunately, one remains blissfully self-sufficient and content in the uniqueness of one’s own collective attainments. It goes beyond chauvinism or sentiment therefore that I designate our own historic landmark, Olumo, as the critical touchstone for assessing Ogun’s fidelity to her own history. Its significations - as instructive contrast to other representative rocks, rivers, waterfalls - indeed any landmarks - may be read, admittedly, more as an act of faith or a case of selective history. My response is simple: let us take it as a provocation to the potentials of a people, an attempt to recall all, to whom Olumo is home, to their finest values, bring them to a recognition of the need to re-configure and re-furbish what is not merely symbol but also history. Olumo – let us recollect - was a site of resistance, and it was impregnable in its time!
The culture of ise ab’ojumu - just conduct - leads to Justice, which remains one of the ineradicable intangibles of human heritage. No culture that the world has ever produced can surpass a culture that is founded on justice – and this includes the culture of resistance to injustice, one that may manifest itself through modes of overt activism and militancy to those of passive resistance. Now, why do I so righteously attribute to Ogun state an exemplary status within that culture of justice and fair play?
The obvious answer lies in that immediate and vivid history that should be taught all children, right from infancy. Even more grievous than the act of deprivation of Olumo by Aso Rock of the harvest of a universally acclaimed contest, was the assault on her dignity and entitlement to equity and undiscriminating regard! A disdainful attempt was made to shove down the people’s throats a whimsical substitute for a nationally evolved leader, violating the expressed will of millions. With near total unanimity, this surrogate was rejected. This is not an attempt to open old wounds, but what is history good for, if not to act as our pointer and teacher? Once made, history cannot be effaced.
Rejection of that proxy was widespread within the nation, among Yoruba and non-Yoruba, but was naturally lodged at its deepest among his own people in Ogun state: they reacted with contempt for that substitute, inducing almost total social ostracism. All known human communities will always harbour the negative exceptions, the collaborators and time-servers – I believe that Christian history records one among twelve. Well, the proportion was far, far lower among the people of Olumo where, in fact, the spearheads of resistance to that offered insult were most resolutely entrenched. That is the culture to which I refer, the culture that looks Power in the face and rejects its culture of dictation and imposition, guided by the faith of ise or iwa ab’ojumu. It is also known as the democratic culture. Unabashedly, I hold this history enshrined as the finest hour of the people of Ogun state! If nothing else, this moral triumph remains well worth celebrating.
But now, is this perhaps a new opportunity to redress that past? Aso Rock came down physically to Olumo this past week, decked in its cultural outfit, adorned by the idiosyncratic ‘steeple’ cap of the host, and decked in national colours. This was the occasion when the wheel seemed to have come full circle, and closure appeared to be within grasp. Here is the explication.
The historic results of Olumo’s bid for power – as already emphasized – may have been annulled by Aso Rock – they were never discredited, never challenged. It is the annulment that stands discredited, even treasonable! The 2015 election that brought the present Aso incumbent to power was also not disputed, the votes were overwhelmingly and freely given, defeat conceded by the opponent – the first ever such national unanimity since that watershed election of June 12th 1993. In that respect, both Visitor and the martyred president are two of a kind - authentic products of the democratic venture, leaving all intervening occupants – that is, for over two decades – mere impostors. Power holders they were, indisputably, but examined through a truthful democratic prism – a succession of fidi hee, without exception.
Viewed from an accommodating mind, the vicious cycle of denial appears to be moving – symbolically - towards terminus. If it is claimed that this visit was a birthday gift from Aso to Olumo however, then it is still a paltry handout, incomplete, since Olumo has stood at the vanguard of democracy and paid a heavy price. She won gold, but was offered pewter.
Still missing is a final rectification that remains overdue to the festering wound of injustice, scabbed over – yes – but raw and pulsating for all that! The beneficiaries of that dogged pursuit are many, including the current incumbent of Aso Rock, himself an exemplar of the rare breed of persistence in the ambiguous face of justice, one whose name, in gargantuan letters now dominates the final approach to Abeokuta, home to Olumo. The lettering hits you in the face! I could not help conceding – yes, a tribute so typical of the ise ab’ojumu of his hosts, children of Olumo, to name this ultra-modern housing project after the Aso Rock visitor. Musing across faces of Ogun State worthies at the rites of commemoration, among them those who had the opportunity but failed to overcome guilt, envy, personal inadequacy, and deep character warp to make their peace with history, it struck me as an opportunity for a historic but welcome irony, were Aso Rock itself, the originator of the infamous democratic disjunct, to confront the terms of a moral debt incurred by that Aso promontory, and bring to closure an unruly chapter in a nation’s history. Now, how may this be effected?
First – and here we come to my final act of anniversary reminiscences – a wedge of history that is both instructive and – puzzling! After the brutal curtailment of a military occupancy of Aso Rock – ‘Dodan Camp’ more accurately at the time – his successor, our same surviving spawn but suspect growth of Olumo at that first coming - ordered that the portrait of the murdered ruler be hung in all government and public offices for a full calendar year afterwards. It was, in effect, a diarchy of the living and the dead under whose shade he negotiated survival. That macabre display of fearful deference was eased out only when the departed was further immortalized on the nation’s postage stamp. Was it however Olumo’s ise ab’ojumu - just conduct - that had yet to thin out in the veins of that incumbent through time and power? Or was it wise inner promptings that his anointment was a mere forerunner of future power contrivances that would be known as f’idi hee, the appeasement of, indeed pandering to, forces of which he was then mortally in awe? It should not matter to us. The demands of Olumo today are actually far more modest, less bizarre, eminently doable and of positive augury:
Honour this democratic flag-bearer and martyr with a postage stamp or currency bill, and inscribe that name – Moshood Abiola - in the scroll of Nigeria’s past presidents, that the restless ghosts of Aso and Olumo may retreat, and settle back, hand in hand, in their primordial caves!
Abundant Anniversary Returns of this Fortieth to the people of Ogun and other celebrant states across the nation!