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Still, in defence of lasting values – Part 2

By Niyi Osundare
18 October 2018   |   1:33 am
I never saw people starve and die in the Ekiti of my youthful days. Whoever had a little more shared the surplus with the needy and hungry. Hard work and honest labour were highly valued and the length of your ogbausu (yam barn) at harvest time in December and/or the impressive expanse of your cocoa farm....

City of Ekiti

I never saw people starve and die in the Ekiti of my youthful days. Whoever had a little more shared the surplus with the needy and hungry. Hard work and honest labour were highly valued and the length of your ogbausu (yam barn) at harvest time in December and/or the impressive expanse of your cocoa farm were the toast of the town, which brought honour to you and your family and might even win you a new wife. Wealth, honestly earned, was respected; wealth from dubious sources was disdained and ridiculed in traditional songs and snide remarks. That was the time people asked: Ibi se ti reo re? (Where did he get his money from?/What is the source of his wealth?).

Humanity was at the very centre of our universe. One of my mother’s relations was named Eotomo (The human being surpasses money), a name I got to know before Nigeria’s 2nd Republic politics made Omoboriowo a household name. This idea also found expression in an aphoristic saying I heard quite often in those days: Eo fun ruru, e t’oniyan (Money looks so flashy, but it is not as beautiful as the human being). The electoral activities in those days had their own venal blight too, but it is surely nothing to compare with the dibokose’be, (cast your vote and earn money for a pot of soup), dibokora’le (cast your vote and earn money to buy a plot of land) racketeering of today. I remember with aching nostalgia that Ikere man who was reported to have told his wife to return to sender the portion of salt given to her to secure her vote for a particular political party, his reasoning being Me yoj’eio (I don’t want to commit an abomination). Yes, indeed, that was when moral infrastructure sustained the strength of our house of values.

Ever before the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, made that dramatic answer popular, if you asked Ekiti people in those days three items that occupied topmost place in their list of priorities, the sure chorus would be ‘Education, Education, Education.’ Up country people with no powerful political pedigree and handed-down wealth, Ekiti wrote those lines with their belief and action before the prodigiously talented Odunjo put them down on paper:
Isel’oogunise
Igunpaniyekan
Ti a kobar’enifehinti
Bi ole la nri
Ti a kobar’enigbeke le
A teramoiseeni

The heroes of my youth were educated people – or, more exactly, people who heightened our aspirations with the sheer enthusiasm and uncommon acumen with which they acquired Western education. Our aspirational anthem was composed of names such as Ojo Ugbole, Ogundare, Ajayi Ikole, Longe Odina Ukere, Aluko Ode, Akintoye, Babatola, Afe Babalola Ado, Osuntokun Okemesi, Ajayi Ugbara Odo, Olaofe Are, Okeya Emure, Ogundipe Ijes-Usu, Olubunmo Orin, Esan (of Esin Atiroja fame) Ikoro….. Infinitely fascinating is the nomenclatural peculiarity of these designations: the first being the surname of the subjects, the second the names of their towns of origin.

In a true Yoruba oriki tradition, these figures bore their towns’s names as if they were their surnames. They shone the light of their achievements on those towns, gave them a place in the sun, and brought them to fame and reckoning. For a long, long time, I thought Ugbole was Ojo’s father’s name. The juxtaposition of person and place and the merging of distinct, uneven identities provides a unique instance of the ways one person could extol a whole town, the curious manner a tree could make a forest.

And of course, all this was happening when the magic of Zik of Africa, Obafemi Awolowo, Chike Obi, D.O. Fagunwa ruled the airwaves. All kinds of myths emerged around these names and their Ekiti counterparts listed above, myths which gathered strength and girth as they rolled along the boulevards of time. Absolutely edifying were the personal odysseys of many of these individuals, the different ways they triumphed over their travails. Take the case of Afe Babalola who, owing to financial indigence, took and passed all his degree examination at home, and who, today, is founder and proprietor of a flourishing university. There is the fabulous story of Ojo Ugbole who, too poor to buy books, would simply saunter into the bookshop, pick up the required book, read and commit it to memory there and then, proceed to the classroom and excel in test based on that book! Our juvenal realities derived both fillip and fire from their myths as we strove to be like these prominent individuals and replicate their sterling accomplishments.

Yes, education was the core value and driving dream of the Ekiti of my youth. And I, standing before you today, am a grateful beneficiary of the Ekiti Ideal. Many fathers leased out their cocoa farms; many mothers sold their favourite clothes to fund their children’s education. It was universally seen as the worthiest investment, as demonstrated clearly in the following song, which was one of my mother’s favourites:
Elu o e Elu o eee
Elu o aaaElu o aaa
Ku ‘kubatimomop’omo mi luleoko o If death does not kill my children in my husband’s house
Mo ti a p’itanijomo je o I will one day tell the story of when I had enough to eat
Mo ti a p’itanijo mom un o I will one day tell the story of when I had enough to drink
Mo tias’eyeOlogun Tisa o I will be the proud mother of the Gallant Teacher

Particularly significant in this song is the singer’s aspiration to become ‘eye Tisa’ (Teacher’s mother), a clear indication of the high esteem in which the teacher was held in those days. An institutional figure whose role and impact went beyond the classroom by virtue of his enviable learning and education, the teacher was regarded as an embodiment of enlightenment, a community leader, public letter-writer/reader, consultant on matters many and varied, disciplinarian of the community’s wayward children, who also sometimes doubled as lay reader or choir master in the community church. In many communities, the Teacher’s pantry was regularly stocked with all manner of farm products as a token of appreciation of and gratitude for his teacherly duties and other services to society. Yes, indeed, time there was when the Teacher was both gallant and glorious. And Ekiti society was the better for it.

The Ekiti saw education as fortune-changer and tool of empowerment, the only way out of their land-locked lot with its rural privations and limited opportunities. People worked for it, hoped for it, prayed for it. Permanently etched in my memory is one of the events which occurred in Ikere in December 1971, during the Ikere Students Union public service drive.

As Secretary to the Union, I was leader of one of the bob-a-job groups, armed with hoes, machetes, brooms, buckets, and all manner of tools, ‘jobbing’ all over the town for donations to our bursary fund – an ISU initiative designed to provide modest financial relief for needy and deserving Ikere students. As our group trooped through Ikere streets, townspeople stood by the roadside greeting In okun o; In sere o; and praying A ye in o; Uku a pa in (Greetings. Thank you. It will be well with you. May you live long); with the women intoning this particular supplication Ori mi, jomo mi sayiye; mojan an mu temis’apinle (My God, let my children succeed; don’t let my own fortune become an additional bonus for others) . When we got to a compound in Iro quarters, greeted the family head, explained our mission, and were about to commence the clearance of the bush around the house and sweeping the dirty patch behind the kitchen, the man hailed us to a halt, and shouted Abaekere, i a o (Young man, come here).

A sully-looking boy emerged from the house and the family head, his father, requested us to kori ire ran (infect him with your good fortune/success). Asasukuruni (He is a truant), the man continued; Inba mu sure koo, kounnaayori bi tin in. (Help me pray for him so that he too can be like you’. Whereupon yours sincerely went from bob-a-jobber to priest, and a chorus of Ase, Amin pervaded the early morning atmosphere of the neighbourhood. But our advocacy went beyond mere prayers. I drew the young boy to my side and asked what was his problem with school. Tisa ra i naniyanyiye (Our teacher canes people too much), he complained. We counselled him to stop doing things that usually attracted the teacher’s cane; to work hard and be of good character. We also told the father to see the teacher. The cloud on the young boy’s face cleared. He promised to mend his ways. Years later an acquaintance gave me the happy news that Abakekere had become a university undergraduate.
Prof. Osundare, a prolific poet, dramatist and literary critic is a laureate of Tchicaya U Tam’si prize for African poetry, teaches stylistics in a New Orleans University, delivered this paper at Governor Kayode Fayemi’s inauguration lecture recently.

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