One hazy morning in the second half of the noughties, I was at the Odo-Oba residence of my grandfather, Folarin Olawoyin , and we got talking about the good old days. He had just returned to Ibadan from a campaign trip to Oke-Ogun axis, alongside the fearsome Lamidi Adedibu, his bosom friend. My memory of that encounter is now blurred, somewhat, by time but I remember now that the pendulum of discourse shifted towards his many childhood friends, including then Chief Saliu Akanmu Adetunji.
That morning, as Tatalo’s sonorous voice unfurled from the gramophone, Alhaji J14 stood from his seat and looked through the windows, a smile adorning his wrinkled face, like a man peering over a blissful past. If he considered that moment quite significant for me in my never-ending desire to stand on his shoulders and peep into history, he never showed it.
To be sure, the Adetunjis and J14s weren’t necessarily the most visible businessmen of that era in Ibadan, which, true to its origin, remained a melting pot, throwing its wide arms open to strangers and indigenes. There were the Odutola Brothers, comprising of Adeola, a literate Christian, and Jimoh, a self-made Muslim. Their father was a Muslim, while their Mother, Sabina, was a Christian. There was also Chief Theophilus Adediran Oni, who was popularly known as T.
Born on August 26, 1928, at Popoyemoja, Oba Adetunji was raised by a tailor father and would later record modest success, first, in the same craft. Like most people from his generation and social class, the young Adetunji had no educational certificate and never attended any school, but he attended lesson classes. Yet whatever he lacked in western education in his early years, he made up for in native intelligence and entrepreneurship spirit that took him to Lagos in 1949.
In celebration of that epoch moment, again, the abundantly gifted Tatalo stormed the studio to make history:Ibadan a t’Eko, l’owo e lowa o/For decades, Oba Adetunji climbed the Olubadan chieftaincy stairs with patience and royal grace, staying off controversies. In a twist of fate, however, before the death of Oba Odulana Odugade, his ascension to the throne in 2016 was necessitated by the death within two weeks of Omowale Kuye and High Chief Omiyale who brought him into the line, both in 2015.
When the late Governor Abiola Ajimobi brought forward the idea of a reform , and there was turbulence, it’s a testament to Oba Adetunji’s royal grace that the city was not thrown into chaos. And we must have seen this manifest in the avoidable controversy that reared its ugly head amid conversations around High Chief Lekan Balogun’s rights to mount the stool—a chaos that every Ibadan man knows is deeply rooted more in politics than in protection of pristine traditional ethos. .
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