My father knew I loved playing football.
I enjoyed every minute I spent on the football field with friends kicking a ball around, dribbling to the delight of onlookers and scoring goals. It is the goals that make every one to momentarily go ‘mad’.
It is that ‘madness’ that Pa Jacob Adebola Odegbami knew would not make even a 10-year old boy to give up football for any reason. I was not going to give it up because of the spanking that I received particularly from my mother almost on a daily basis after our games.
The punishments became predictable and a routine, oxygen for even more defiance.
My father’s consolation was that I was a bright student in my primary school. It was my response to his endless admonitions to ‘read your books’.
Back to my story.
It was a neighborhood police station that we were taken to. I was returned home by one of the familiar policemen on duty that night.
My innocence was now established in the matter of the Jerseys that I took home that were bought with money that Lawrence stole from his father’s till. The policeman explained to my father.
My ‘old man’ thanked the officer, relief and happiness now replacing the anger on his face earlier that evening.
At home, we all thought everything was over. Supper followed in silence, everyone to their thoughts. Mine was the trepidation and realization that I could have been in ‘jail’, plus my incomprehension of why my father would be willing to send his son to ‘jail’ to right a wrong.
I was too young to understand that, even though, deep down, I was remorseful that I had let my family down by my conduct.
At about midnight, I was roused from sleep by a slap on my backside. It was my father again. He was summoning my siblings and I to the first family ‘meeting’ in our lives. All 3 of us then were children, the oldest (my sister) being about 15. Our eldest brother, Dele, had left home and was in secondary school in Abeokuta.
Our meeting was a Sermon. It was my first contact with my roots. My father had a lot to say that midnight hour.
He started by pointing to an almanac hanging on the wall. It was a picture of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s head peeping from painted clouds in the sky.
I cannot recall all that he said that night, but a chunk of his message has remained with me till this day.
Chief Awolowo was a political as well as cultural Yoruba leader. He was worshipped like a god for his deeds, his vision, his personality, his leadership, his simplicity, his wisdom, his spartan lifestyle. His life and teachings were lessons to be imbibed by every Yoruba person (even though he was Ijebu) – equity, all-round development, education, respect for established traditions and traditional institutions, integrity, honesty, transparency, religious freedom and tolerance, justice and the interest of the common people. He not only propagated them all, he practiced and lived them.
My father then told us about Abeokuta and the Egba; our Itun (township), Ago Ododo, in the Oke ona Egba part of Abeokuta; my mother’s township, Imo, in the Egba Alake part of Abeokuta; the Ogboni connection with Egba; the sophistication of the people; the depth of their history and culture; freedom of all and any religious practice; the well-established traditional institutions; leadership in Egba land; the pride of the Egba people in their simple, honest, decent, sophisticated and peaceful disposition to life; and so on.
He told us about his place of birth in his village – Wasimi Orile Olose, a farm outreach some 24 kilometers from Abeokuta founded by his father and his Uncle Sharayi; he told us about one of his brothers that had become globally famous, the writer and author of the book, ‘The Palmwine Drinkard’, Amos Tutuola; and how both of them could not go beyond standard 3 in their education at the time.
My father also confessed he played a little football in his days too, but not obsessively like me.
He said, we must always remember where we came from, and the values that the Egba’s embrace and live by, that of impeccable good conduct and character.
He warned: never to accept a bribe to grant a favour; never to accept a gift from a person whose source of wealth you do not know; never to mortgage our place and rights as Egba for any reason; always to find out the background of anyone that wants to befriend you; that a good name is better than all the riches in the world.
His words that night were deep and profound, and resonate well with me today.
Finally, he spoke about leadership in Yoruba land. How never to choose a leader on the basis of who is the richest, the most powerful, or even the most educated, but to choose the one that best demonstrates the cherished values and characteristics of an Omoluabi – good conduct and character, not a thief or a liar, one that serves others, one that lives for the common good of all, one that is fair, simple, humble, honest, just and wise!
A true leader will emerge from amongst you and will be clearly defined by his ways and his life.
I remember these things now because I am in Abeokuta where I have been living these 20 years striving to find and to enjoy my roots and all that my father taught me about the people, their pride, their place and their peace.
Things are happening around me now that I realize that he NEVER taught me. He never told me the price for an Egba man to mortgage all that he stands for – his person, his values, and his heritage.
I asked my friend, a political scientist, from ibadan the other day what it will take for an Ibadan person to accept for an Egba man to lead Oyo State. Or, hypothetically, what an Ekiti man would be willing to accept as gratification to surrender their leadership rights to an Ijebu man.
‘Nothing’, he said. ‘It is simply not possible. There is no amount of money that can make either of that to happen’.
I should have asked my father about the Egba person and his price. Too late, he died 24 years ago.
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