On Becoming An Elder
Toyin Falola pays tribute to Ayo Olukotun, an academic and a social critic, at age 65
Ayo, Like the compact pastiche of the rainbow Your name heralds joys and glad tidings And so your majestic presence of industry It is the child’s to clean the home: Your youthful ebullience is spent Dusting off cobwebs on this wall Turning our nightmares into sweet dreams It is the elder’s to put the town orderly: Now in your lock of grey, Your words are a heritage to infant tongues And your moves mend our broken fence Son of Dada Aina, Like the stealthy scamper of the moon Every breath of yours is a trace of success A signage of more fulfilments to come
Among the Yoruba, to be described as an àgbà (an elder) is not either a mere function of advanced age or being close to senility, which is simply a biological clock function as well as consequence. Instead, it is rather a dignified social status that one accrues over the years through one’s dint of both acumen and hard work. As one advances in sterling age (with true or natural grey hair), and one’s perceptive abilities, acumen and acuity sharpen, one becomes positioned to play the role of the àgbà in the social and communal sphere. To be an àgbà among the Yoruba people in Africa and the world, is to have acquired the intellectual insight as well as the rhetorical resources, genial personality, moral capital, shrewdness, and astute judgment to intervene in social and political discourses; to have the personal integrity, maturity, and courage to speak the truth to power; to synchronise and synthesise issues, all of which cumulatively empower the àgbà to offer critiques that advance received knowledge; to manage conflicts and arbitrate them with prudence; to guide younger generations through the maze of life with the sagacity that time and experience confer on one; and to know the times and demands of the society in which one lives.
In brief, to be an àgbà, according to the Yoruba cultural worldview, is to be an institution to oneself, coupled with becoming both a living legend and a respected one at that. Àgbà is an intellectual position as much as it is a socio-cultural tall order that is not very easy to attain. However, the position of an àgbà can, as well, be a precarious one; that is indeed why the Yoruba pray that one will not go from being an àgbàlagbà to an àgbàyà, with the latter denoting or becoming a worthless elder, a veritable oxymoron. Above all, a status of an àgbà is never earned like academic credentials once and for all—instead, one keeps earning àgbà status through one’s contributions to the society in general.
My classmate and friend since our Ife days in the 1970s, Ayodele Samuel Olukotun, by his sterling qualities and acts over the years, embodies the expectations of Yoruba people in their conceptualisation of who an àgbà should be. On this occasion of his 65th birthday, a retirement age in Western norm, I note that my friend—the dedicated husband of Mosunmola—is an àgbà who is becoming an àgbàlagbà, while fastly laying the foundation to the status of an agbalagbi, in itself the preface to an arúgbó, that very long jump from adolescence to obsolescence. As he is growing in years (with a distinguished shiny hair), he is also increasing in wisdom, insight, and equally, crucially, expanding his social roles as a public father, and a true elder.
As all of you must know, Olukotun (aka “Possible Baiye”) is an academic and a public intellectual. In 2016, in recognition of his multiple roles in our expansive national society, he was made the pioneer occupant of the Oba Sir Sikiru Adetona Professorial Chair in Governance at the Olabisi Onabanjo University at Ago-Iwoye. Attaining the distinguished position was certainly not a mean achievement; after all, as all of us know, to be honored with a professorial-cum-named chair is the apex of an academic career, while the objectives of the position are congruent with his àgbà status in contemporary national life. This is a position that Oba Adetona, a very progressive and visionary King, thoughtfully created for gifted academics, who would clear new spaces to enable the birthing of a better global scholarly ethos. The spaces are to serve as a philosophical estate, whereby habitual thinkers and transformative agents like Olukotun can generate ideas that will breed new kinds of national subjects. These subjects will promote and develop new ethics of collective national transformation, public orientation, and civil behaviour.
Àgbà Olukotun’s second professorial lecture on “Civil Society and Governance in Nigeria’s Evolving Democracy, 1999 to 2018” was delivered on May 10, 2018. As I took the time to peruse a copy, I promptly remembered his speeches in the 1970s, which were in relation to the statement by Winston Churchill: “Any man, under 30, who is not a liberal has no heart, and any man over 30, who is not a conservative has no brains.” In that profound lecture, Olutokun’s sentences and their structures have not developed the inflammation of age and fatigue; and the paragraphs are not hardened to stand in the way of mature reflections.
As a professor, with a named chairship, Olukotun has an office that grants him a unique position to perform the role of an àgbà, with an intellectual flourish: to conceive, execute, and build upon studies that are capable of yielding meaningful discernments regarding the seemingly intractable challenges as well as issues of governance that Nigeria faces at both local and global levels. With his educational background up to the Ph.D. level in the distinct but interlocked fields of History/ Sociology/International Relations at Obafemi Awolowo University, Olukotun has marshalled the energies of different disciplines to create intellectual paradigms which point us to critical and reasonable interventions.
The foregoing mediations on the part of Olukotun deepen our comprehensions on the intertwined ways in which our socio-cultural and socio-political forms of education can be stimulated to produce better results in our political and social development. Since he entered this recent position, he has worked assiduously to generate the scholarship and other research activities that facilitate the “town and gown” interactions. He has been bringing together scholars, institutions, and abstract thoughts to collaborate on producing varied critical analyses that will impact our governance systems.
Olukotun, Baba Temitope, is also a columnist, and an award-winning one too. In all the 20 years or so that he has been writing for various media (and in the past eight years, exclusively for PUNCH newspapers), he has shown himself to be a savvy and seasoned analyst who understands the imbrication of politics, governance, democracy, and institutions. The same Yoruba people, who saw fit to create the concept of àgbà, also note that an elder cannot be in the marketplace to see a child’s neck bent on its mother’s back. Instead, they believe that elders are supposed to play the role of interventionists in public social situations.