3rd April, 2014
By Kola Johnson
About 50 years ago, when Segun Awolowo, the scion and a most precious jewel of the Awolowo family died, the pang of that tragic occurrence was such that devastated the mind as one death too many.
This was because for one thing, not only was Segun the first break offspring of the family, but the first son for that matter.
And as a Cambridge educated lawyer, Segun with a naturally endowed intellect, and a striking physical similitude of his illustrious father, was every inch, a chip off the old block.
And to worsen things, was the tragi-comic humour of the merchant of death, which in the omniscient wisdom of its timing, had chosen to unleash its “happy tidings” at an epoch of acutely dire strait in the life of the family, when the distinguished patriarch of the family (Chief Awolowo) languished in the gulag courtesy of the authoritarian power cabals of the day, as he awaited their verdict on the phoney charge of treason foisted upon him, by the same leviathan of state authority.
While Papa, enamoured in the manly steel of philosophical equanimity, was wont to take things in their stride, animated by the magisterial unquestionability of mother fate – it was not so for the mother – whose emotional defences could not but succumb to an unfettered cascade of invading tears.
When at a point in time, Papa’s brilliant and beautiful daughter, Dr. Tokunbo Dosunmu, possessed by the progressive idealism of her father, sought to construct the same path of pursuit that defined her father’s trajectory in political activism – hitting out as she did at that time, with a campaign for the Lagos guber seat – the rebarbative sarcasm from certain cabal of vested interest as openly pronounced then to popular public knowledge – was A O le sin Baba tan, ka tun maa wa sin omo (We cannot serve a father and also serve his son).
It was not unlikely that at this point, Mama had quickly read between the line and took measures that only fell short of asking her children to swear to an oath binding them to steer clear of the vocative pursuit of politics that had fetched their father a national and continental fame and acclaim.
And do you question Mama’s logic of action in the face of the hobbesian savagery, defining the creed of politicking in such peculiar clime as ours.
This action becomes all the more unassailable in the face of the rumour which increasingly dominated grapevine discourse, to the effect that there was more than meets the eye than sheer stroke of happenstance to Segun’s death – which in point blank explication – boils down in interpretatively poignant relief – to the fact that Segun was a victim of the diabolical sadism that if you cannot get the father, then you would have done well, to settle the matter by getting him, by proxy of his most prized offspring.
Going down memory lane, precisely 7 May, 1987, when the world was greeted with the devastating announcement of the death of the great Awo – 1 remember as if it were yesterday, how one illiterate next door neighbour friend of my mother burst into our apartment, where we then resided somewhere in Ebute-Metta behind the popular Oyingbo Market : “Iya Kola, abi eeri bi tira awon Fulani se pa pa wa mu Baba yi ba le nigbeyin”(Mama Kola, the Fulani have used black magic to kill Pa Awolowo), the cow-leather meat seller, who hailed from Ilorin Kwara State, remarked before my mother.
To be sure, that remark was undoubtedly laughable because one knew for sure, that no magical talismanic contrivance be it of the Hausas or Fulanis, would have fallen the great Awo – but only a fool would have failed to take away from that message – the viciously depredatory sadism epitomised in the voodoo politics then extant at the period in reference.
Only recently, a writer, and an Igbo man for that matter, Emma Okocha, seemed to have corroborated the weird but possibly realistic influence of the supernatural power of the unseen, in his cognitive discernment, underlined in the expression that Segun Awolowo died on the same spot where Adegoke Adelabu a.k.a “Penkelemesi”, the Ibadan-born stormy petrel and enfant terrible of NCNC – the opposition party in the Action Group-led government of Western region, died. He went further to express that even Wole Awolowo died still on the same spot. The foregoing to be sure, is undoubtedly pregnant with meaning. It’s a reflection of the popularly imbibed notion that Awo’s enemies killed his most beloved pearl, Segun.
And when the nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, did express on the occasion of the Awo Leadership Award conferred on him last year, that a lot of these reactionary enemies of the masses could for the first time sleep with their two eyes closed after Awo’s death – only the perceptive would be able to decode the deeper undercurrent of that statement, in the sense in which it bespeaks the reality of the jungle brand of voodoo politics earlier aforementioned.
And perceived from a different but commonsensical tangible of that, which all eyes could behold – stripped this time around, of the metaphysical supposition as depicted here-to-fore – one cannot still but align in symmetry to the same conclusion of Awo as a victim of the national question – who in an unsalutarily grim continuum had to carry to his grave – this burden of humanity, etched in the Nigerian geo-political space – especially the teeming mass of the down-trodden, who ensconced in the suffocating yoke of poverty and oppression of the imperial ruling class – had in a frenzy of heightened expectation, looked up to the messianic propensity of Awo’s leadership for redemption – of which unfortunately, all efforts to consummate this tall order expectation on the part of Awo, was viciously countervailed by the same oppressive feudo-fascist cabal in power.
With the question of the sworn abstinence of her children from politics settled, Mama would have revelled in joyous ecstasy, that at least for once, she would eventually be settling for meaningful space of peace from the turbulence of politics for which she had devoted a better part of her life in the trenches – even though mama in the first place, would in all probability, have wished that her husband and she, recline in comfortable privacy, devoid of the buffeting of politics – but was nevertheless compelled as the quintessential wife, to marry herself in addition, to any aspiration whatsoever, held resolutely dear to the heart of her husband.
But Mama’s Niravana of peace, was to suffer a severe setback when eight years ago, his only surviving son, Chief Oluwole Awolowo was involved in a ghastly motor accident.
So terrible was the accident that those who had the first hand opportunity of beholding it couldn’t have given him any chance of survival. But given that he surmounted the terrible odd, one ordinarily would not have expected him the grace of much days on earth, considering the devastating toll the accident had exacted on his physical body.
But all these to Mama – would appear as bunkum. That Wole survived the accident at all, was a qualification that all hopes were not lost for Wole to spend not only more days, but even much time on earth.
Mama had every cause to hope. Not only that, she had cause to hope even against hope.
Now come to think of it, no mother on earth, no matter how unkind, would gladly have suffered her dear children to die before her – more-so a child who was so special as Wole was to Mama.
You cannot understand Mama’s special love for Wole, until you read Wole’s own first hand expression of the special place he (Wole) occupied in her mother’s emotional closet.
Moreover, Wole was the only male child, whom you could describe as the Arole or Dawodu or Aremo – which translate in literal sense to the scion or heir apparent of the Awolowo family.
This is to say that while other members of the family constituting three male stock had by virtue of marital conjugation veered from the Awolowo nomenclatural identity to answer to other family name, only Wole, as the only male child symbolised the nomenclatural continuity of the Awolowo family tree – thereby putting him as earlier mentioned – in the vantage platform of the Aremo or Arole or Dawodu of the family.
It is against this background, and the fact that Mama saw in Wole being the only surviving son – the image and symbolic representation of her departed beloved husband, that she (Mama), will be ready to give all it takes for her beloved and only surviving male son, to not only live, but outlive her.
It was this traumatizing suspense of Wole’s fate that Mama was contending with, when the sardonic messenger of death announced like a thunder bolt from a most unlikely quarters, to claim a most precious jewel of the Awolowo biological family in the person of Mrs Ayo Soyode.
If before now, Mama had managed with bathed breadth equanimity, over Wole’s fate, one required no prescience or extra sensory clairvoyance to comprehend the paranoia of heightened anxiety assailing Mama’s spirit over Wole – immediately following the death four years ago, of Mrs. Soyode.
And today four years after, the rest is history. Mama’s worst fears are confirmed. I join the millions of Awo’s larger ideological family all over the world, to admonish Mama and members of the Awo biological family, to weep no more.
There is certainly no doubt that Wole has in his own right, registered an indelible footprint in the sand of time.
Wole like his father strikes you as a philosopher, with a profoundly original mind. I read some of his motivational treatise serialized in the Nigerian Tribune and I could not but stagger at the breath taking pragmatism of its content, which I am sure, would have contributed to no mean measure, in shaping many lives.
Only a profoundly fecund mind, would have churned out those great works, which boasts in addition, of remarkable literary felicity.
His religious piety, which was a theme of popular public knowledge – was also such that equally staggered the imagination.
There is no doubt that Wole lived an exemplarily inspiring life. He gave his all materially, financially and spiritually, to humanity on whom he impacted, even through his illuminating discourse on the path to good living – and in particular to his maker, to whom he devoted himself in unalloyed love and service.
It’s a thing of celebration, that Wole did not disappoint the family and the teeming number of Awo’s ideological family scattered all over the world. There is no doubt that his legendary father, the immortal Awo, would be proud of him.
It is against this background, that I join the teeming number of lovers of the Awo family not to mourn, but celebrate the glorious passage of their son.
And for every right-minded Nigerian, whose life the great Awo had touched in one way or the other, I appeal that he/she identify in prayer with this distinguished Nigerian family, particularly at this trying moment of tribulation in the trajectory of their existence, when the incident of Wole’s painful death, still remains fresh in memory, a year after.
Oluwole has fought a good fight. May his great soul rest in perfect peace.
•Johnson is a writer and journalist