Akeem Lasisi
When former Minister of Justice and Attorney General for the Federation, Chief Bola Ige, clocked 70 in December 2000, he neither threw any big party nor accepted offers for such from some other people eager to pamper him. The reason, he noted, was that the situation in Nigeria, which had just escaped from the jaws of the military then, did not call for much celebration yet. He said, “Although we have left Egypt, we have not got to Canaan.”
Yet, there was one idea he could not resist from the arts community: a literary night to mark the birthday. Held in Jericho, Ibadan (Was it at the Booksellers?) it was a beautiful night of performances, readings and tributes. Although an emerging poet then, I was summoned by the organisers to participate in the feast. It was a great occasion for my muse as it (event) convinced me that even the fiercest mortal can bow to the power of poetry.
As I cruised towards the end of the rendition of the poem I dedicated to him, titled ‘This is not the Time to Grow Old’, I saw Bola Ige rise onto his feet. He started walking towards me, his steps unstable while his smallish frame housed in an esiki of ofi fabric swung dangerously, apparently to the wind of the verses. It was a glorious moment for the chanter and his victim minister as the audience kept clapping.
When Ige eventually got onto the stage, he embraced me and wrapped me in his esiki for some three minutes. He started whispering something into my ears as the applause multiplied and lingered. The crowd never heard what he was saying but I did. The birthday minister prayed and prayed for me – not in English language, not in the ‘standard’ Yoruba language, but in his sweeter Ijesa dialect.
This feast of memory is not for self adulation but it is my own way of remembering Ige today, which marks the 17th anniversary of his assassination. The encounter meant a lot for my art. He formalised the acknowledgement he gave me that night when, in a thank-you reflection he published in ‘The Comet’ a few days after, he identified one Akeem Lasisi, a ‘young Yoruba and English poet’, among the many people that made his 70th birthday wonderful. It was one of my ogas at ‘The Comet’, where I was then a features writer, that first called my attention to the article, asking, ‘What did you do for Bola Ige that he is praising you like this?’
The Cicero of Esa-Oke, as the lawyer, politician and orator was fondly called, meant well for the cultural sector and we hoped to benefit from his re-union with us following his resignation from the PDP government in 2001. The need for him not to relent in his efforts at nation building is the thrust of that poem of mine. Here I struggle to remember the opening stanza:
This is not the time to grow old
Nor rest your laurels on the pillars of the past
Can the blacksmith afford to age
When his children have yet to master the art and science of the steel,
Can the farmer afford to go to bed
With rodents are prowling at the edge of the farm?
This is not the time to grow old
Nor rest your laurels on the pillars of the past.
I have a feeling I mixed up some of the verses and words but that was the idea of the poem from which I also fondly remember:
The schools you built in the days of old
Are now a training centre for an illiterate future…
The lines seek to capture the state of the schools that the military had just bequeathed to democracy then. But, 17 years after, whatever has happened to the education industry in Nigeria? Anyway, while believing that those who killed Ige must, by now, have finished eating his flesh, all one can say is: May his inassassinable soul rest in peace.
I dare add that it was not surprising that I composed a dirge for Ige when he was killed. The poem I later published in my third collection – ‘Night of my Flight’ – is titled ‘Now that the Snail is out of the Shell’:
Now that the snail is out of the shell
They are riding on a wild lion to the market place
With the Cicero’s temple relieved of its root
We are learning to dance to their music of death
Accordions of martial suns,
Acidic whip of midnight rains.
Now that the snail is out of the shell
They are riding on a wild lion to the market square.
The poem is also one of the subjects of our album titled ‘Wonderland’ – in the track, ‘Erin ka re’le’:
Erin kare’le o waa joba
Erin wewe, erin wewe…
