By Wale Adedayo
I have always been inquisitive for as long as I can remember. But the intellectual aspect of this urge to know what is hidden behind the screen was apparently nurtured by being made the Library Prefect of my elementary school at about 10 years of age.
I devoured virtually all the books in the small library of my village school, Oke Ife Baptist Primary School, Ijebu Ife, Ogun State, Nigeria. These were mainly adventure books for pre-teenagers, e.g Simbad the sailor and the like. Of course, a village Egbon, the late Mr. Kayode Otusanya (his dad is the current Baale of my village, Okeliwo), seeing my interest in reading, had introduced me to books written in Yoruba language earlier. These include D. O. Fagunwa’s Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmole and Igbo Olodumare, which I read while in Primary Five.
There was a Miss Adekoya from Ibadan too. She was my class teacher in Primary Four (1974). Despite one’s less than nice looks at the time, I was her favourite because of quality responses to comprehension and reading. I never starved all through the session in her class because the lady would always share the food she brought to school daily with me during break. My repayment was to do very well in studies. But the most outstanding was Pa Oyemade from Idofe, Oke Ife in Ijebu Ife. Oyemade regularly organises after school classes – free of charge – for a number of us. And the old man NEVER discriminated between pupils who went to the Moslem School, Idofe and the Baptist one to which he belonged.
In addition, till date, I do not know where the old man got the energy from, because he was old at the time. Oyemade will take a gong, gather a few pupils around him, and walk the length and breadth of Oke Ife on Saturdays singing about the need for education to parents who were mainly farmers and never wanted their children to leave the farm and go to school. He would stop and engage some in one-on-one discussion sometimes.
I shed tears each time I remember his selfless service, which was one of the reasons that made me return to the same Ijebu Ife in December 2004 to give back to the community given the opportunities at my disposal till January 2009. And as our people would pray, Olodumare a de ile ure ri Baba Oyemade. Owon omo re a ri alaanu. Aanu Olodumare, iyen ma yin won nu. Dede owon Osi Ijebu Ife re ma duro ti won. Ni agbara Osi, ni agbara ore, dede oore ri Iba won se ri Ulu Ijebu Ife, ohun ne ri owon omo Oluko Agba Oyemade ma je ere re. To!
Being a mission school (it was free, we did not pay a dime as school fees), story books based on Biblical character were also in abundance. I read all these with keen interest as well. It was later in life, especially when I began a professional journalism career at the prestigious The Guardian newspaper in Lagos (April, 1992), I realised that these books were the foundation of the strings of words which I unusually tie together to create a gripping narrative or features.
But my two years stay in Zumratul Islamiyyah Grammar School, Igbogbo, Ikorodu, Lagos was also a blessing. As one of the first set of students taken to Igbogbo from the former Railway Line, Yaba, Lagos site in 1979, my first year in a high school was almost like a continuation of that in Ijebu Ife. The previous year spent to repeat Primary Six at Faz-l-Omar Ahmadiyyah School, Okesuna, Lagos (1978 – 1979) was not particularly fantastic in terms of new things in reading.
But it was a welcome development since one could not secure High School admission after leaving Primary Six in Ijebu Ife in 1977. Zumratul Islamiyyah Grammar School Library featured books and magazines I later encountered in Ogun State University Library in 1996. It was in the school, tucked away in a remote part of Igbogbo at the time, that I saw my first copy of Time and Newsweek magazines in 1979.
As a Form One student, it was fascinating reading about the Iran-Iraq war, especially the very high casualty rate among the Iranian citizen army. The school regularly stock its library with different books and magazines. But friends, especially Muyideen (we call him, Obinrin – he looked every inch like a girl, and were in Form 1A and 2A along with Lateef Dosunmu), whose surname I’ve forgotten now, introduced me to Comics. Richie Rich, Spiderman and the Fantastic Four were my favourites till 1981, when I switched to novels, especially James Hardley Chase. A friend that we grew up together in Idioro, Biodun Akanro, eventually became an endless supplier of James Hardley Chase novels to me.
But a baptism in early morning newspaper reading was done for me by my immediate elder brother, Dayo. Beginning from 1981 when he left High School, Egbon would always buy Daily Sketch and Nigerian Tribune from his meagre Agege bread and ewa Aganyin feeding allowance. Once he finished reading, it was my turn to devour the newspapers and was like that till he went to the School of Agriculture, Moor Plantation,Ibadan, Oyo State for his higher education.
My Uncle, Engr. Joseph Bejide, indirectly introduced me to bookss about Eastern religious beliefs. It was in his small but well-stocked library at his Ogba, Lagos home I first read all the books by Lobsang Rampa and the crisis in the Chinese-occupied Tibet shortly after leaving High School in 1984. This was the same year that Major Adewale Ademoyega had swept me off with his fantastic narration of how the 15 January 1966 coup was executed.
Other American authors were also well represented in my uncle’s library. Thus, when I was introduced to the Grail Message (I finished the three volumes in my 100 level in Ogun State University), I felt it was not different from Guru Maharaji or Awolowo’s Rosicrucians, given what I had learnt reading from my uncle’s library. But despite the fact that I did not continue with the Grail Message (i.e become a full member), it was the books that gave me a better idea of relating with the Christian message, thus making my conversion to Christianity easier.
In explaining how Jesus Christ could be Son of God, my Ijebu traditional beliefs and Muslim one were taken through how the Abiku and other less desired children often get into a woman. Being spirits, there is no physical boundary that can deter them. But they need a physical body to manifest in if they have an assignment on this side of the divide. More on that for another day because one had a little baptism in traditional beliefs while growing up in Ijebu Ife, where the wise ones, well versed in esoteric words (Oro Ife or Oro Ijimji), still practise their vocations.
But shortly after the experience at my uncle’s in 1985, before I found myself at the Selection Board interview of NDA’s 37th Regular Course. And despite the Commandant’s special commendation given to me for honesty and exemplary behaviour, I left Kaduna for University of Ilorin and from there to Ogun State University, where the library under Mrs Wole Soyinka welcomed me with open arms. Instead of staying in class with fellow medical students in my 100 level days, I was either reading one non-science book or magazine, or writing the latest story in Yankari Girls Reserve (female hostel in Ago Iwoye, very close to the mini campus). It was in Ogun State University Library the idea of Trends magazine first came to me.
Being a Science graduate – Zoology , my friends had expected I would end up on the Science Desk of The Guardian newspaper. But as fate would have it, the Desk had been suspended before I joined in April 1992. It was on the Foreign Desk of The Guardian that I cut my teeth as a professional journalist. Head, Foreign Desk, at the time, Hugo Odiogor, was a hard teacher and one of the best hands in Foreign Affairs reporting in Nigeria. And I doubt if he can ever survive outside a newsroom or classroom (teaching journalism). But till date, I cannot understand why he left journalism for good.
The News Editor at the time I was employed, Ogbuagu Anikwe, stands out for one thing: “I don’t care how badly you write, just go and get the story for me. We’ll do the re-writing here.” The fear of a fresh blood is that your material will be rejected and you become a subject of ridicule because of inability to measure up to standards. Not so with Anikwe and his crew. The first law is to get the story. He will sometimes invite you to explain certain things. Thus, in my first week as a test candidate, I had two page one stories, which was a feat for even those who have spent years with The Guardian. Colleagues began peeping into the small office beside the Editor’s, Eluem Emeka Izeze, to ask who Adewale Adedayo is. I began to feel like a journalist from then on.
Izeze was almost always like a Pastor from the very first day I met him. In an instant, his shouts of “mooooove” will almost confuse you. And he will be banging the table where you are writing in long hand (‘Move’, in the Izeze parlance, means “Write fast and give me the story”). In another instant, he’ll look at you with the kind-heartedness of a credible Pastor and ask after your welfare. Sometimes, you’ll be shocked how he got to know certain personal things. He will not allow any editorial staff to resign until he was sure of where you were headed. And it was not being done on behalf of the Management. I believe it was the Pastor in him. Izeze is a member of the top echelon of Deeper Life Bible Church. But it took me a while before I knew this. My first impression was that of a firm, but kind-hearted Editor.
Up till now, it awes me when I look back and realise that nothing brings pleasure to me more than writing a critical analysis of something I observed. It goes beyond writing a captivating copy for my newspaper. It could even explain why I have found it so difficult making a change to broadcast journalism despite pressures from friends to join the initial wave of entrants to the early boom of independent television in Nigeria.
I write with ease. And the appropriate expressions unusually find their way into my subconscious from where I pour them down. Sometimes, especially after checking the dictionary and confirming the genuineness of what I had written, it amazes me how such words got stored in my head. But given the benefit of being a pupil of that mission school (Oke Ife Baptist Primary School) in my formative years, I believe that the foundation was laid there.
Beyond writing, my values as a journalist revolve around what the former Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Lagos State, Mr. Lanre Arogundade, would describe as Journalism with Social Responsibility. It is my belief that I have deliberately elected to be the eyes and ears of the average member of the public in the discharge of my work. While, I would not like to describe myself as an activist, maltreatment of others by those in higher social or professional positions offend my sensibilities. Often I find myself making attempts to assist the ‘unfortunate person’.
But in the same vein, I also detest so-called oppressed people going to the extreme in agitating for what they believe is their right. During my university days, colleagues often find it difficult to understand these two aspects of my life. I was involved in student activism as a campus ‘comrade’ and campus journalist. I published a weekly magazine, Trends, during my days as a student in Ogun State University (1996 – 1990). But I would also be among the first set of students to organise opposition against any attempt to burn or destroy properties around the campus during protests.
The erroneous belief among most student activists in Nigeria at the time was that, any agitation that was not violent could not make a meaningful impact on the authorities concerned. But a similar experience during my student days at the University of Ilorin (1985 – 1986) produced fantastic results without a single incidence of violence. Thus, my answer, after the Unilorin experience, has always been that, whatever that is destroyed will have more impact on the ordinary people and students instead of Nigeria’s ‘Big Men’ and those in authorities. Unlike abroad, all the telephone booths destroyed by Yabatech and Unilag students along my street on Agege Motor Road, Mushin, Lagos during protests against IBB in the late 1980s have not been replaced till date!
This may also not be unconnected with my experience while growing up. I stayed with my grandparents in our village, Okeliwo, Ijebu Ife (1970 – 1977), following the family’s return from Monrovia, Liberia in 1970. It was after dad’s death in 1972 that my elder brothers, Dayo and Ibrahim, left Children’s Home School, Ibadan, to join me in Okeliwo. But during those first six years in school, there was no electricity in Ijebu Ife. For us in Okeliwo, pipe borne water flowed once a week at the central tap for the community of seven villages that make up Oke Ife. I was opportuned to donate a borehole with generating set to the village in 2006. I also gave two desktop computers and a laserjet printer to my primary school in 2007.
But while there, what served us for drinking and other purposes was the stream (Eri Okeliwo and Odo Odosennuwa) that passed through all seven villages of the community as if it is a permanent bond trying to unite us. Passing of excreta and urine directly was disallowed. But we swim and wash clothes directly into the stream. An unwritten law, which could destroy native protection against bullets and machetes later made more sense to me when I remembered this village setting. If you have ‘eaten’ any of those things or have them on your person, you cannot urinate or pass excrement into ANY stream in whatever part of the world you find yourself. Our people were only trying to be environmentally friendly!
It was on getting to Lagos for high school education I discovered a different world. It was as if my village belonged to another time. Health, recreation, feeding and other matters received prompt attention unlike back in the village. The activities of my maternal grandfather, who we lived with, then began making sense to me. It was not punishment that we had to go into the bush far beyond Tirosogun before we can return for breakfast every Saturdays and Sundays. It was from the ‘Egan’ we often get meat from traps set for different animals including snakes. Wood for cooking was also from the same places. And we usually leave home about 6am shortly after the old man would have finished his early morning Islamic prayer, Subhi.
Apart from being a part-time herbalist, grandpa, Chief Sedun Adeeko, was also a village activist, if there could be anything like that. And more than once had entered the bad books of his colleagues on the village elders council. But he was pragmatic enough to know that compromise applied with a measure of diplomacy helps more than a rigid position in tackling issues. He was to later become the village chief before his death in 1988.
These early experiences have assisted me greatly in the course of my work. The books from the mission school have been of tremendous help for my vocabulary and understanding of issues. But the most significant has been the experiences with my grandfather in the village.
I prefer to do extra work in trying to understand a story than just rushing out to write it. These painstaking efforts to understand all the sides in a story could rile some in Nigeria’s often volatile socio-political climate. You are expected to support one side or go against them. And in a polity where the print media is the major beacon in directing the people’s political thoughts, this, to me, is unacceptable.
Above all, I am not given to being in a place for too long. I enjoy change, which is like an elixir to me. Journalism has afforded me the opportunity of enjoying this aspect of my life.
*This updated piece was first written on 27th December 2000.
