By Lasisi Olagunju

“You may forward this to him to reflect on…if he’s redeemable!” A Tinubu minister from the South-West sent this message to a respected, elderly journalist now in his mid-70s. It was meant for me and the Oga did as instructed; he forwarded the message to me. I read what the big man wanted me to read. It was someone’s reaction to my column on the Alaafin-Ooni problem and what I had described as Yoruba’s “curse of enlightenment.”

The minister said he got it from a Yoruba WhatsApp group, author unknown but he believed so much in what the writer wrote that he thought he should get Olagunju to read it “if he is redeemable.”

And what is in that message of redemption? I read it slowly and carefully because it came from a big man, a minister who had been where I am today: “Undoubtedly a researched article…but this writer is the archetypal Yoruba! He’s the most guilty of all the Yoruba negative attributes he so comprehensively enumerated. A content analysis of his writings shows a consistent, persistent and relentless attack on fellow Yoruba Tinubu under the same ‘curse of enlightenment’! If truly he’s disconcerted about the Yoruba ‘curse’, then he should engage himself in deep introspection – as all the Yoruba abhorrent attitudes he lampoons, he manifests with glee in his vituperations against Tinubu!”

The above is the core content of what the minister said I should read for my redemption. The man described Tinubu as “the first real Yoruba man to attain Nigeria’s presidency.” I read that part and understood the man’s problem.

The minister was not the writer, but he was the Postmaster-General who dispatched the ‘letter’ for delivery to me. I have the minister’s telephone number but I replied him through the same Oga and pleaded that it should be forwarded to him. While I do not owe the complainant any explanation for what I do, I thought the minister had obviously not been reading what he should be reading; or he had been reading the wrong thing. Because no one is completely bad, and no one is comprehensively good, I had written columns that were positive about some positive steps taken by the Tinubu government. I sent the link of one of such columns to the minister through Oga: “I wrote this last year in defence of Tinubu. Did they beg me or pay me before I wrote it? They probably want a slave (a phlegm eater. There was one like that in Old Oyo, serving His Imperial Majesty. His title was Ajitó oba má p’òfóló. That position no longer exists).”

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The minister got the message and replied: “Very predictable! I expected that reaction. It’s still along the same line of ‘curse of enlightenment’. Point is – there’s a preponderance of Tinubu bashing that far outstrips any isolated pro -write up.” The minister then drifted into some Hubert Ogunde ‘Yoruba Ronu’ song.

Saul going to Damascus was on a mission to persecute Christians before a heavenly light turned him to Paul. I was happy that, like Ananias, I laid my hand on the minister and got him ‘redeemed’ from seeing the columnist as an inveterate enemy who sees absolutely no good in the king and his gilded palace. His reaction shows an admission that, at least there is now an “isolated pro-writeup” from a Yoruba man who is an ‘enemy’ of his brother, the president. If the minister had been a Muslim, I would have exclaimed Allahu Akbar (God is Great) at his redemption.

What I canvassed in my article on peace among Yoruba oba was unity of the race. What the minister and his writer demanded was conspiracy of silence by an entire race. Unity means togetherness, it means oneness of purpose; it does not mean sheepish following. I consulted a text here and it told me that true unity does not require uniformity of thought; it means standing together on some issues and respecting differences in others, even allowing for reasonable discourse. I agree with that reasoning. A people sworn to a conspiracy of silence are a people heading towards perdition. Their motive is to protect selfish interests and avoid difficult truths. Their spring water, in the words of the Ghanaian writer, Ayi Kwei Armah, is flowing towards the desert. Its end is extinction.

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The minister and the anonymous critic of the columnist want all Yoruba to sleep and put all their heads on the same pillow. They thought every Yoruba comment and commentary about Tinubu and his government must be positive. They say it has to be because the president is Yoruba. When you hear or read stuff like this, you question their claim to Awolowo’s ideology of public service. Since they claim to be progressives of the Awolowo school, the best an ‘enemy’ like me can do is to invite their attention to Awoism and its literature. There is this quote from Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s autobiography: “The Yoruba are a fastidious, critical and discerning people. They will not do anything in politics merely to oblige a fellow Yoruba. If the Yorubaman is satisfied that your policy is good and will serve his self-interest, he will support you no matter from which ethnic group you hail.” Before I am accused of manufacturing this quote, I quickly say that it is on page 261 of the 1997 edition of the book, ‘Awo’.

Column writing is a self-inflicted draining enterprise. And, in taking up that beat, the columnist has behind his mind journalism’s famous interrogative sextet: who, what, where, when, how, and why. He may satisfy all or may not. That is where what he writes is different from what the everyday beat reporter does. This columnist has no enemy. The decision as to what to fix his eyes on, and how to plot his way through the labyrinth of interrogation of the issues is entirely his. Picking his words on the keyboard with one finger as I do, the columnist’s journalism sees ghastly scenes with humane and critical eyes. It is futile (and too late) to seek to goad him into the tribal cave of the heathen. What he does weekly are monologues of suppressed anger at the subversion of the noble in his heritage as a (Yoruba) Nigerian.

The columnist asks questions even when he knows answers won’t come. Over six weeks ago, Works minister, Dave Umahi, announced the Ibadan–Ife–Ilesha road as one of the South West roads that had got 30 per cent funding “for work to start in earnest.” Has anyone seen a one per cent work done on that road since then? Where did the money go? The Yoruba columnist must not ask those questions because the president is Yoruba. Yet, those terribly bad federal roads are in Yorubaland. How did people in this government feel when they heard President John Mahama of Ghana announce the deportation of Nigerians from the US through Ghana? Mahama said at a press conference last week that “a group of 14 deportees including Nigerians and one Gambian have already arrived in Ghana, and the government facilitated their return to their home countries.” Deported from the US to Ghana; deported again from Ghana to Nigeria.

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That is the dilemma of being a Nigerian today. Rejection abroad; hostility and suffering at home (Ilé ò gbàá, ònà ò gbàá). Japa is about fleeing a hostile country in search of safety, opportunities, and dignity. Arrival abroad reveals a reality that mocks expectation. Mass deportations from the US; far-right, anti immigrant rallies in the UK. Yet, the people in charge of our affairs think it is bastardy for a Yoruba to tell a Yoruba president and his government that they should work harder; that they should see ‘performance’ beyond serving themselves and their families; that the people of Nigeria deserve a cosy, comfortable country which works and functions as home to all.

In fairness to the president, one of his first charges to journalists was that they should hold his feet to the fire of vigilance. Nothing, so far, has suggested that he has changed his mind. But his (overzealous) men want the journalist to join the On-Your-Mandate-We-Stand choir or keep quiet. Collective silence is collective death. When did we collectively decide to be deaf and dumb? Where and when speech is duty, keeping quiet when you have a voice is a betrayal. And being silent in the face of wrong is akin to telling a lie. And our ancestors say a lie may glow and bloom but what it ultimately yields is bad, poisonous fruits (Bí irọ́ bá tan iná, kò lè so èso rere).

This writer promises to continue to be fair; he pledges to strive to write well, better and sweet without bile. But then, he should be allowed to tell the minister to minister well and the president to preside well. That is the road to our collective salvation. He will not abandon that road.

By Lasisi Olagunju

I was an undergraduate in Ife on Friday, 23 January, 1987 when the statue of Oduduwa was commissioned at the Oduduwa Hall. Several of us, students, were at the venue not because a statue was to be inaugurated but because Chief Obafemi Awolowo would be there with his wife, Chief (Mrs) HID Awolowo. And they came in a blaze of glory; husband and wife locked in heavenly calmness. I should still have their photo of that occasion. The university orator, Dr Niyi Oladeji, who compered the event, described the couple as people who had been preeminent long before many in the gathering were born. He asked his audience to look at the statue and look at Awolowo. What he pointed at was an artistic representation of reincarnation. I looked at husband and wife; they exchanged glances and smiled. Less than four months after that event, Awo was gone, forever. By Friday this week (19th September, 2025), it will be ten long years since HID, the matriarch, transited to eternity. This piece celebrates her and her essence.

Chief (Mrs) HID Awolowo was Yeye Oba of Ile Ife; she moved up and became Yeye Oodua (mother of all children of Oduduwa). Yeye Oba, in some kingdoms, is called Iya Oba (the king’s official mother); but, Yeye Oodua is a custom-made title which HID pioneered and, since her exit ten years ago, no one has tried stepping into that shoe. The title talks to “the archetypal mother who guided the collective lived experience of the Yoruba nation,” to use Professor Jacob Oluponna’s description of Chief (Mrs) Awolowo. At a point in the 1980s, all obas and chiefs in Remoland sat and pronounced her as their Iyalode. I saw in David Hinderer’s ‘Seventeen Years in the Yoruba Country’ that Iyalode is the “Mother of the town.” In Samuel Johnson’s ‘The History of the Yorubas’, she is the “Queen of the ladies,” the “most distinguished lady in the town.”

Semonides of Amorgos was a Greek poet who lived during the 7th century BC. One of his poems is translated in literature as ‘Types of Women.’ From Mary R. Lefkowitz’s ‘Wives and Husbands’ (April 1983), I got what I wanted from that poem, a celebration of the best in womanhood: “Another is from a bee; the man who gets her is fortunate, for on her alone blame does not settle. She causes his property to grow and increase, and she grows old with a husband whom she loves and who loves her, the mother of a handsome and reputable family. She stands out among all women, and a godlike beauty plays about her…Women like her are the best and most sensible…”

A sole soul who defied all odds in her parents’ home, HID was an Idowu without Taiwo and Kehinde. The twins left as soon as they came; same with all others from her mum – before and after her. Survivors are confirmed record breakers. What does it mean to be a record breaker? HID told an interviewer: “You see, I am the only surviving child of my mother, and my mother on her part was the only surviving child of her mother. Incidentally again, my grandmother was the only surviving child of her mother; so that all along in my lineage, it’s been only one child down the line up to me.” She survived and proved wrong those who held that one child was “simply not a family.” She used her life to show the world that one lone one can, ultimately, be abundance.

Some 98 years ago (1927), two American psychologists, Florence Goodenough and Alice Leahy, did a study of children who were their parent’s only child. They found them to be “more self-confident, more fond of physical demonstrations of affection, and more gregarious in their social interests.” In the book, ‘My Early Life’, Chief Awolowo said his wife “has courage of a rare kind.” And, to emphasise how sterner the stuff HID was made of, Awo compared the steely courage he was generally known to have with his wife’s and submitted that he was “no match for her at all in her exercise of infinite patience and forbearance under all manner of circumstances.” She was the quintessential Yoruba strong woman, every inch a leader.

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Professor J. K. Oluponna of Harvard Divinity School, in the Foreword to ‘In the Radiance of the Sage: The Life and Times of H.I.D. Awolowo’ authored by Professor Wale Adebanwi, gives a personal, graphic description of the hard stuff that was HID Awolowo. Oluponna wrote: “I first saw Chief (Mrs.) H.I.D. Awolowo in 1965 when I was fourteen years old. She was presiding over a political rally in Ile-Oluji, a town in Ondo State where I grew up. Her image is transfixed in my memory even now. A young woman of great conviction, she was holding a broom aloft, as one would wield a political symbol or a weapon. Chief Obafemi Awolowo, her husband, was noticeably absent from the rally, having been taken political prisoner. But she stood valiantly in his stead before the people, keeping the momentum of the party ablaze. Indeed, it was clear from the command in her voice that she handily took up the mantle of greatness so suddenly thrust upon her. Equal to the task of leadership, she assumed the pivotal role in those difficult years that later played so prominently in her husband’s political career.”

Oluponna describes her as “a symbol of honour for her generation.” He sees a “gorgeously attired…accomplished Yoruba woman in iro and buba, her signature ceremonial saki, the iborun, draped dramatically over one shoulder..” He could still hear her voice defiantly giving the other side a notice of defeat: “We shall use this broom I am holding to sweep away the dirt and filth that the opposition party has brought to this land.” Oluponna quotes her here as declaring “emphatically to the applause of her sympathetic audience.”

With two biographies and an autobiography, she is one of the most documented persons in Nigeria’s history.

There is her autobiography ‘A memoir of the Jewel’ published in 2003; before that one, there had been ‘The Jewel: The Biography of Chief (Mrs.) H.I.D. Awolowo’ written by Chief Tola Adeniyi. In preparation for her 100th birthday, the family commissioned a scholarly account of her life. It came out as ‘In the Radiance of the Sage: The Life and Times of H.I.D. Awolowo’ authored by Professor Wale Adebanwi. She left as the book was about to go into print. It was launched on 18th November, 2015 as part of her funeral rites. These texts are apart from her husband’s many books in which her story complements completely the author’s.

In November 2003, the Nigerian Tribune published what it headlined ‘Testimonies of the Sage’s Jewel’. It is HID’s story of survival in the face of near tragedies. The first was in the 1960s. She learnt her son, Segun, had passed his Cambridge University law exam and was overwhelmed with joy. She hired a flying boat from Lekki to take her across the waters for a quick dash to Ibadan “to send something important to him.”

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They “were right in the middle of the sea when the engine of the boat ceased.” She panicked but prayed and “by some miracle of God,” she said she and the boat handler “finally made the shore.” The second was with her husband in a helicopter while on a political campaign to Okitipupa. “The helicopter was high in the air when we noticed that all the palm trees underneath the helicopter were on fire.” There was nowhere to land the chopper and time was running out for everyone. “As I wondered if this was going to be the end, by the special grace, the good Lord taught the pilot how to manoeuver the helicopter and somehow we landed at Okitipupa.” The third near escape was in a canoe during a campaign to Igbonla in present Ondo State. The canoe took in water and was about to sink. She said: “Papa asked the canoe handlers to divert to the nearest point at which we could disembark. With God’s grace, we docked somewhere and got another canoe to continue our journey to Igbonla.” The fourth was more scary. Five grandchildren who paid the family a visit were involved in a ghastly car crash on their way back to Lagos. “They were all in one car and Papa and I rode in another car that followed theirs. Suddenly, their car veered off the road into the bush, crashed into some obstacle and turned on its side. The windscreen and windows of the car were broken. I was dazed and afraid, gripped by panic. How do we explain five grandchildren in one car? How could we have put so many eggs in one basket? I was fearful and jittery but Papa tried to calm me down, assuring me that all would be well in the name of God. And, indeed, all was well. One by one, the children emerged from the crashed car. All five of them unhurt.” Testimonies of God’s mercy.

There is nothing you and I write about or on any subject in the Yoruba space that has not been written before. Writing about the Yoruba strong woman, I checked and saw LaRay Denzer’s ‘Yoruba Women: A Historiographical Study’ published in 1994. Before this one, there had been several studies and texts. But, for this paragraph and the next, I stick to Denzer and its content. It is there that I found the reinforcement I needed that Yoruba traditions record strong women playing central roles at crucial moments in the life of their society. They would not stop there; they would translate their influence into political power. In doing that, they founded dynasties and shaped kingdoms. The historian, Samuel Johnson, wrote that Oduduwa had two granddaughters whose descendants established the Owu and Ketu kingdoms. In Ondo, there are oral traditions which trace the kingdom’s origins to a woman of steel. In Ile-Ife, the spiritual nucleus of the Yoruba, two women served as Oonis. The first, Luwo, is remembered as a “strict disciplinarian” credited with constructing a network of roads around shrines and public buildings. She was later succeeded by another female Ooni, Bebooye. For details, Denzer asks us to read F.A. Fabunmi’s ‘Ife Shrines’, published in 1969.

Beyond king and kingship, the Yoruba woman has been a freedom fighter throughout history. Denzer writes that “In the late 1930s when John Blair, the district officer for Abeokuta, compiled the Intelligence Report for Abeokuta, he reported that the women told him that ‘in the old days they were concerned with war’ and kept their menfolk supplied with food, guns, and ammunition. Enlarging on this, they went on to boast that ‘A rich woman title-holder would do more than this. She would ensure that all the warriors of her township had the best guns that Lagos could produce and plenty of powder and shots, or even like (Efunroye) Tinubu, the whole army.’” Read Professor Oluponna again.

When HID was about to turn 80 in 1995, I was part of a three-man team put together by the Nigerian Tribune to make a special publication on her. In that publication was (is) a part written by me with me translating her middle name ‘Dideolu’ to mean “the arrival of the great.” I think my translation was apt just as the prophecy of her parents in giving her that name. She grew up great and married a man who answered meaningful names including the Christian name Jeremiah. And, you remember this verse in the Bible: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations” (Jeremiah 1 verse 5).

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She married Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo and became a prophet herself – complete with all the implications and consequences. The Biblical Jeremiah suffered the betrayal of friends and rejection from kings and religious leaders. They all hated his ministry and his message but he was not daunted. He was not alone in the suffering of rejection. Read Hebrew 11: 32-38. It is there I saw a list and I read accounts of prophets, great men who “were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.” They stood their course. These two Nigerian prophets, husband and wife, knew the meaning and properties of love, and with that knowledge, they conquered hate and rejection. I read in William Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ that “The course of true love never did run smooth” (Act I, Scene 1). It was so with this couple who experienced all the shades of life and triumphed over all. Indeed, “all is well that ends well.” William Shakespeare again!

Juju musician, Ebenezer Obey, sang that the most beautiful wife is the one who serenades her husband, understands him and accommodates his interest (Aya to mo yayi lo nseke oko re). Mama HID said she initially resisted her husband going into politics. But he persisted and she gave her consent. “Genuinely, I didn’t like him entering politics. But because I loved him and he was insistent, I agreed.” She said in a newspaper interview. In the same interview, she was asked how she transited from “ordinary family life” into a life of politics and politicking when her husband became the secretary of the Nigerian Youth Movement. There is more than something in her answer for the benefit of wives of politicians and political persons: “It was strange. People who hadn’t been coming to our house suddenly began to flock in; people who were not our friends, you know, just acquaintances. They would come in sometimes in the morning to see my husband who was the secretary of the movement and would talk on and on till evening. I didn’t like that at all! But because I loved my husband, I adjusted to our new life.”

A good wife makes a good home (ìyàwó rere, ìdílé rere). Papa Awo summed up his life with his wife in these words: “With my wife on my side, it has been possible for us to weather all financial storms. Due to her charm, humility, generosity and ever-ready sympathy and helpfulness for others in distress, she is beloved and respected by all our friends and acquaintances…She absorbs without a word of complaint all my occasional acts of irritability. By her unique virtues, she has been of immeasurable assistance to me in the duties attached to my career as a public man. She has taken more interviews: and listened to far more representations from the members of the public than I have times or sometimes patience for. I do not hesitate to confess that I owe my success in life to three factors: the Grace of God, a spartan, self- discipline, and a good wife. Our home is to all of us (us and our children) a true haven: a place of happiness and of imperturbable seclusion from the buffetings of life.”

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I was lucky to be on the management team of her newspaper during the last three years of her earthly existence. That position gave me priceless opportunities to read and study one of the most remarkable women of the 20th and early 21st century Nigeria. She was considerate and compassionate; she was a great host who feted her visiting staff after every meeting. She was meticulous and alert throughout. Her mental strength defeated old age and its gnawing war on cognition. She was firm and businesslike in the face of business. Imagine a 99-year-old presiding over a meeting; she saw the meeting becoming needlessly prolonged, she sat up and applied the break by saying the Christian Grace: “Oore ofe Jesu Kristi Oluwa wa…” Everyone there took a cue, joined the chorus and had the prolonged meeting ended.

Two weeks before the late Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade joined his ancestors in July 2015, he told Adebanwi, her biographer, that H.I.D. “is just unbeatable…she is almost 100 and her brain is still intact. She still does everything. She will remind you of what you have forgotten. I have never witnessed this kind of thing before. Papa Awolowo was very lucky to have married Mama.”

What else is there to say other than to congratulate her on her life of success? It is ten years this week that the music stopped; but the melody of her priceless existence lingers. She lived strong; she died well and strong; she handed over to worthy children in whose hands the banner flies endlessly on without stain.

Nigerian singer and songwriter, Seyi Shay has opened up about the impact of her mentor, Sound Sultan’s death on her career.

She revealed that after Sound Sultan passed away in 2021, she lost the zeal to continue music.

Shay further explained that she became pregnant with her daughter around the same period, which also encouraged her to embark on a break due to the “toxic” nature of the music industry.

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“During the filming of Nigerian Idol, my mentor, also my best friend, who is like a father figure to me, and also the person who brought me to the Nigerian music industry, died. He passed away; Sound Sultan,” Seyi Shay recalls in an interview with TVC.

“When I first came to Nigeria, I was living with him and his wife in FESTAC for a year. He was the one who co-signed me and introduced me to everybody in the industry to make sure that those who were his people look out for me.

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“So, when he passed away, it was really hard for me to complete the filming but I made it to the end. What hurt the most is that I didn’t get to see him before he passed away. I was supposed to fly to see him in New York that weekend when we had a break. He asked me to bring him something specifically. It just torn me apart. I felt like I didn’t have the will to continue to do music without Sound Sultan, my peace of mind, and my mental health. So, I decided to go on a little break.

“Also, during that period, I got pregnant and I told myself there’s no way I’m going to have my child in the toxic music industry that I’m in and under the scrutiny that I was constantly under. So, I just thought I should take a break.”