Sunday, April 7, 2013

IF YOU SEE MY PAPA, HOSANNAH By Adesina Ogunlana

There is a lawyer in Lagos. An old man just a few yawns away from 80 years. He is also an old lawyer. He’s spent more than a quarter of a century in the forest of laws.

This old lawyer is a Yoruba man, a Nigerian. A West-African. An African. He was once a village teacher. In the course of time also a village ‘Doctor’. He was a grandson of a renowned Tiger-dazer. He was a village toughie, so tough that he had the rare feat of being of very few men who ended up marrying the damsels they had beaten up in earlier years.

He became an under-graduate at the University of Lagos. And graduated. He witnessed nauseating tribal politics in the nascent students’ unionism of the University. He suffered for his communist/socialist beliefs in the hands of a ‘pro-capitalist’ American don. Albeit for a time. When he made, a seeming transformation of his maoist’ kijipa to an Uncle Tom kaftan, the oppressor don relented and our man started “eating the good of the land”.

He later became a staff and administrator of the very University of Lagos, where his toughness followed him inexorably. At the university he did his job so well that he risked certain dismissal because of “too much integrity”. This was a middle-level officer who was more conscientious, ethical and stricter than the famous Prefessor Biobaku, the Vice-Chancellor and one Mr. Eke, the Registrar.

Even before his UNILAG YEARS, his toughness was with him, it caused his exit from the corrupting environment of the Tax office.

Our man later left Nigeria on academic quest to the united States of America. The University of Pittsburgh to be exact.

Back to Nigeria, our man soon found himself in another job. A job where a colossus ruled and reigned. A colossus called, Fortune Ebie. Our man’s toughness did not leave him, only that it was not the stiff toughness of old, but now tensile, bending without shifting, an adjustment without compromise, a situation management that the Yorubas proverbalise thus-

Kape were loko Iyawo

Kale ro no

Hailing the lunatic

Mounting a barricade

As the groom, so that

The real groom would

Have access to his bride.

Our man was as a child rascally and as a young man intrepid. He applied some confidence tricks including impersonation to get inside a near convent-school to have a date with his future wife.

A local man to the core, our man was interested in his town, local government, and his state. He played Mafia politics for the betterment of his people. And when the mafia turned against him, he singularly proved his mettle. Would you know that the former communist is now, a traditional ruler. Nay a monarchist?

Ladies and gentlemen, will you kindly join me to greet High Chief Sir Olufemi Daramola, the Okobaigi himself a senior and highly respected and certainly self-effacing member of the N.B.A  Lagos Branch (Secretly I wonder what such old fire-brands are doing in the “Jejelayegba” Branch like the Lagos Bar)

The Okobaigi’s life is poured out (and certainly not fully so) in his very readable thriller of an auto-biography, wrongly in view entitled- “DOCTOR ON BICYCLE”

But the little he has allowed us to know is such a great deal of education, information and entertainment. Actually by writing this book, Okobaigi Sir Olufemi Daramola has joined the ranks of the IMORTALS. The old man cannot die again, even when he changes location from this side of the sky to the other wing of it. He will die only when his book DOCTOR ON BICYCLE no longer exists.

And this takes me to the real point of this article- who will again help me persuade my legal titan of a father, my Daddy 3, Chief G.O.K Ajayi the Odoole of Ife, quality silk, to do like the Okobaigi and write out the story of his life.

G.O.K Ajayi is simply a marvel. The little, very little slice I am privileged to know of Chief Ajayi so much that it will be a huge disaster, indeed a calamity of Boko Haramic proportions if such a wondrous wonder should enter the sod without the gospel of his existence on the terra-firma surviving him.

Okobaigi Sir Olufemi Daramola a perpetual Squibber, thank you very much for the great pains you took in writing DOCTOR ON BYCLE. However, sir  

If you see my Papa …. Hosanna

Tell am say o Hosanna

I no dey happy Hosanna

Make him write im own book Hosanna

Den I go dey happy Hosanna ….