Yemi Ogunbiyi’s Retrospections
By Kunle Ajibade
In her essay, “The Space of Reminiscence,” Toni Morrison, the 1993 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, says that they straightened out the Mississippi River in locations to opt up room for houses and livable acreage. On occasion the river floods these locations. We name it flooding. Nonetheless Morrison insists that it is now not flooding— it is remembering. Remembering where it stale to be. She goes on to leer that every body water has a superb memory and is and not using a raze in sight making an try to opt up relief to where it used to be. The award-a success creator of Loved, House, Paradise, Music of Solomon, Cherish, Jazz, The Bluest Scrutinize and A Mercy, amongst other suggestions-changing and truth-telling novels, then submits: “Writers are love that: remembering where we were, what valley we ran by, what banks were love, the light that used to be there and the routes relief to our new jam.” Cherish a astronomical river straightened out to opt up room for houses, Yemi Ogunbiyi returns with a toddle of memory. He remembers the valleys, the banks, the crevices, the byways and all of the routes main relief to his new jam. He remembers the fun and sorrows alongside the procedure.
Appropriate during the twelve chapters of his riveting autobiography, The Avenue Never Forgets, remembrances pile upon remembrances. As you battle by the ocean of his tales and backstories, which most frequently flash relief and flash forward, and then intertwine and unfold in parallel and multitude, you may well well mediate that this memoirist has a conclude to-superb memory, nonetheless he is instant to advise us in his Epilogue, that memory is forgetful; that it is “very selective in sticking to issues it chooses to be awake.” Aloof, Ogunbiyi believes that “a lifetime of denial would be costly. He then assures us that he has now not made compromises within the book with his previous and the truth. He tells his tales truthfully. He refuses to fall for any seduction of exaggeration. No conceit right here. Indeed, he believes that he’s now not the sole real orchestrator of his fate; that God or what he calls divine providence used to be repeatedly responsible, although in a subterranean manner, making procedure, repeatedly, for him. He writes that “fate runs our lives in strategies that are uncommon and odd. He additionally says: “For all its fickleness, fate would now not care what your needs or plans are.” And, once all every other time, he writes, quoting a French proverb: “You on the total meet your fate on the facet motorway you took to lead clear of it.”
In a soft procedure, he strikes a balance between fable-telling and his reflections on those tales. He would now not allow contexts and his analyses of events to trump his story. He intermeshes the non-public and the communal perhaps to cowl that, as a rule, they’re the bones and muscle groups of the manifest future of the nation itself. This is segment of what makes this book tremendously compelling.
Spiced with spectacular historical particulars where memory on my own didn’t suffice, Yemi Ogunbiyi vividly draws the story arc of his life in Kano, Ibadan, Ipara-Remo, Lagos, Fresh York, Ile-Ife, London, Germany, North Korea, India, Libya, China, Hawaii, Israel, Pakistan, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Jamaica, Bahamas, and other locations. These being his years of childhood, boyhood, maturity, manhood and extinct age. Every time he encountered the complicated issues that life unavoidably introduced, the values he had learnt and the nuggets of knowledge received, evaluated and re-evaluated, served as a compass and a veritable touchstone.
In his everyday conversations, Ogunbiyi uses the be aware ‘elegant’ plenty. On this book, he uses the be aware so many instances. To a mammoth extent, the be aware is one in every of the precise descriptions of The Avenue Never Forgets attributable to of its stylish composition and plan.
Right here we meet Yemi Ogunbiyi who didn’t exhaust his childhood bathed in wealth and privilege nonetheless who, by a combination of fate and grit, has grown to change into a merely, compassionate man with a shrewd industry sense; a charming liberal humanist endowed with a splendid organisational suggestions; a spirited and gracious cosmopolitan with polish and toddle. We meet Yemi Ogunbiyi who has lived a lifetime of combat, diligence, kindness, loving care, loyalty, generosity, forgiveness and fantastic sense of duty to man and to God. Two of his extinct site visitors, Professors Biodun Jeyifo and Niyi Osundare, within the Foreword to this book validate, in prose and verse, these virtues in him.
The Avenue Never Forgets is Ogunbiyi’s procedure of conserving his non-public receive— a justification of the life he has lived to date. For me, one main nonetheless nuanced query on the coronary heart of the book is: What’s the measure of this Nigerian new known as Yemi Ogunbiyi? The strong portrait of his life and instances in these retrospections are his definitive solutions.
Lifestyles, each person is aware of, is a scheme with many routes. And, to paraphrase the Djiboutian poet, Abdourahman Waberi, those routes are, invariably, inhabited by paradise with its serpent. How has Ogunbiyi found his non-public paradise and carried out without or lived with the serpent in it? How has he moved slowly and without note to opt up his life’s journeys thrilling? What design of bumpy and soft roads has he identified? What inflection substances has he faced and crossed?
Rendered in honest prose, this book solutions those questions and just a few extra. Alongside with his appreciable visible descriptions, largely lubricated by the cinematic operations of his suggestions, Yemi Ogunbiyi delivers a superb share of reporting.
He tells us that his individuals met in Sabon Gari, Kano, in 1945. His mother, Hannah, who died at 96 in Lagos in 2006, used to be childless for years attributable to of infertility till she went by a if truth be told painful D & C procedure instructed by an Indian gynecologist in Kano. When Yemi Ogunbiyi used to be born, due to this truth, on 13 April 1947, to his Igbo mother from Aboh, now in Delta Exclaim, and Yoruba father from Ipara-Remo, now in Ogun Exclaim, he used to be better than a bundle of enjoyment. Mother named him Ifeanyichukwu whereas Father gave him Oluwasegun and Opeyemi. With these names, each and every of them were solemnly expressing profound gratitude to God for giving them eventually this dazzling and wholesome boy.
They soon added Vincent, his baptismal name. His little one brother, Lai, now an architect, is 2 years youthful than him. Sabon Gari, that procedure Strangers’ Quarters, where they were born and bred used to be established in 1913 by the British colonial rulers who intentionally wished to separate the Hausa from other tribes and even saved at arm’s length all of the natives whom they were presupposed to be lording it over. Ogunbiyi explains this historical previous and the makes an try at a inflexible class stratification by the colonials within the increased context of the historical previous of Kano. And 29 Aitken Avenue where the Ogunbiyi lived used to be within the origin rented and later bought from the mother of Professor Akin Mabogunje, Mrs Janet Adetola. It used to be a effectively-identified home in Sabon Gari attributable to Victor Aanuolorunpo, Yemi Ogunbiyi’s father, used to be a socialite.
He used to be fondly known as Father Dandy in Kano, nonetheless relief home in Ipara-Remo, he used to be known as Baba Kano. Yemi Ogunbiyi’s mother, to whom he used to be obviously conclude as a kid, used to be the bulwark of the dwelling front. Buying and selling in Ankara and George clothing designs, she travelled consistently between Kano and Onitsha. Very industrious, Ogunbiyi remembers her fortitude, goodness and knowledge and worship in this book. When Yemi Ogunbiyi used to be leaving Sabon Gari for the principle time to the South for varsity, she known as him to her room, prayed fervently for him in Igbo and acknowledged: “You ought to appear at out. I if truth be told non-public little to terror about you attributable to we brought you up effectively. Nonetheless as too effectively, I, your mother, who gave birth to you, didn’t paddle to college. I wasn’t so privileged. Nonetheless you would also non-public the probability. Use it effectively…” One day, Yemi fell off his bicycle and, attributable to he got wretchedness, he didn’t want to bolt the bike all every other time, it used to be his mother who impressed him to attend on using it, counselling him to repeatedly endure within the face of difficulties. Her items of recommendation non-public stayed with Yemi ever since.
Tailoring used to be his father’s industry, or extra precisely, he used to be if truth be told an clothing store who didn’t attain the particular sewing to any extent extra, when Yemi and Lai were boys, for in 1949, he had signed a contract with Arnold Riley & Firm in England to merely attain all of the pre-sewing work by taking staunch measurements of clients whereas the company’s segment of the contract used to be to opt up the suits. Ogunbiyi describes the passion with which his father did his job. He had assorted highbrow customers in all locations. And he used to be a indispensable Freemason in Sabon Gari.
A supremely assured man, Aanuolorunpo used to be very generous. His dense network of site visitors lower during many legitimate and ethnic teams now not superb in Sabon Gari nonetheless additionally in Kano metropolis as a complete and even in Jos. Beaten by the trojan horse of wanderlust as a younger 17-year-extinct man residing in Lagos in 1920, he and some of his co-travellers were swindled by some sailors who aloof 5 pounds every from them for a outing on board a ship that used to be supposedly going to the United States of The US. To make employ of the now very frequent Nigerian lingo, they wished to japa. When the ship got to Freetown in Sierra Leone, nonetheless, the crooked sailors asked the determined stowaways to pay extra cash within the occasion that they if truth be told wished to opt as much as The US. Obviously, they had no money on them. They were due to this truth abandoned in Freetown.
Victor Aanuolorunpo didn’t advise his brother Mr Ade Ogunbiyi, who used to be then the manager of CMS Book shop, about his outing. Neither did he advise Rt Rev Oliver, his guardian at CMS Grammar College. So, the family participants began buying all over the build for him. They’d to expose him missing in Lagos Weekly Document. After six months, when their hope of discovering him had dimmed, they organised a funeral carrier in his memory at St Peter’s Church in Ajele, Lagos. Nonetheless the person, now 18, had joined the Royal Sierra Leone Police Drive with his CMS Grammar College certificate. He used to be now not enjoying the job and he used to be missing Lagos badly. As fate would non-public it, someday on the streets of Freetown, he bumped into his ancient guardian, Reverend Oliver, on holiday, who persuaded him to merely about Nigeria.
When the ‘pointless’ man at perfect resurrected in Lagos in 1923, there used to be so great occasion. Very confused and audacious, he believed that he used to be a miracle child due to the circumstances of his birth which Yemi Ogunbiyi recounts within the book. He had once mistakenly led a detachment of the colonial navy into Ipara-Remo when he used to be barely fifteen. The infantrymen wished to get better weapons from demobilized infantrymen who had been conscripted for World Battle I. They didn’t desire the weapons to opt up into inappropriate fingers, or remain within the inappropriate fingers of the natives.
As if that used to be now not immoral satisfactory, when Aanuolorunpo observed that the neighborhood wished to punish his father for what he had carried out, he ran furiously relief to the infantrymen and reported what used to be occurring within the palace. The colonial authority had to drive Ipara-Remo neighborhood to signal an agreement that it may well perhaps well perhaps now not punish any member of the Ogunbiyi family on story of that incident. It used to be within the wake of that notoriety that he left for Lagos to attend CMS Grammar College. And then the stowaway incident took place forward of he then travelled to Kano in 1939 where he spent forty years forward of he came relief to Lagos where he died in 1986.
With subtle intelligence, Yemi Ogunbiyi fastidiously describes the hustle and bustle of Sabon Gari where misfits co-mingle with philosophers and exhausting-working individuals blended with lazy ones. Tales of anger and temperance, knowledge and idiocy and their consequences flowed eternally in this neighbourhood. In Sabon Gari, Ogunbiyi witnessed magic long previous awry. He would later survey yet every other one that failed spectacularly on the University of Ibadan.
It used to be at 29 Aitken Avenue that Yemi Ogunbiyi first met Alhaji Babatunde Jose, the then famed boss of Every single day Events’ group of newspapers. His father stale to take care of Jose with so great reverence whenever he visited Sabon Gari on his tour of duty. It is going to also by no procedure non-public took place to Yemi Ogunbiyi that he too would someday change into the Managing Director of the Every single day Events’ chain of newspapers. Every time he served his father’s creep of site visitors, which integrated Alhaji Aminu Kano and the Emir of Kano, their favourite drinks, merely food and snacks, he eavesdropped on their conversations on politics, economic system and every other ingredient in between. Yemi Ogunbiyi’s socialisation as a cosmopolite began in earnest right here.
Nonetheless as a four-year-extinct boy in 1951, he would non-public died in El Duniya Cinema home if he and his uncle Augustine had attended the boring afternoon conceal on 13 Can also. The cinema had long previous up in flames during the conceal. Ogunbiyi recalled that tragedy: “Out of its viewers of 600, some 331 individuals perished, including a 9-year-extinct child. Quite a lot of the pointless were crushed to loss of life, conclude to the superb exit door within the stampede that ensured. It used to be the absolute best desire of casualties in a one-day catastrophe within the recorded historical previous of Kano.”
For a long-time, he would now not step into any cinema home attributable to the trauma of that incident. He used to be six when he witnessed the Kano political stand up of 1953. Chief Anthony Enahoro had moved a motion of the Movement Community (AG) within the House of Representatives calling for self-executive in 1956. The Northern Other folks’s Congress (NPC), petrified of Southern domination, didn’t toughen the motion. They wished the dwelling to change the phrase ‘by the year 1956’ with a nebulous, non-committal phrase ‘as soon as practicable.’ Representatives of AG and the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroon (NCNC) then staged a walkout. And the Northerners were booed by the Lagos crowds exterior.
On 15 Can also of that year, when the AG, led by Chief Ladoke Akintola, arrived Kano to embark on a tour of Northern Nigeria, stand up broke out in retaliation. Retaliation of 1 ethnic group against yet every other has repeatedly been a habitual decimal within the historical previous of Nigeria’s political crises. Shops were looted. Houses burnt down. Many individuals were injured. Ogunbiyi would later be reminded of that incident in Sabon Gari when the Nigeria-Biafra Battle broke out in 1967 after the pogrom, and just among the Igbo he knew intimately had to cowl in his father’s home— a volatile enterprise which saved them from being slaughtered.
Yet Sabon Gari used to be extra of enjoyable than tragedy. Ogunbiyi has enjoyable recollections of all his mammoth childhood site visitors love Salihu Ehimaekhe who would later rise to the cease of their profession. At some stage in festive seasons he participated actively in assorted Igbo dances: Ulaga, Atilogwu, Ogene, and so forth., and so forth. He remembers, with nostalgia, the scintillating performances of the person known as Yankee, the resident Highlife musician at Randezvous Resort which used to be located without extend opposite 29 Aitken Avenue. The owner of the resort, Mr Abdul Walker, a Sierra Leonian, cherished Yemi Ogunbiyi to bits. When Walker died in 1978, he genuinely left some money for him in his Will and Testomony. He remembers the pranks and rascality of Man-No-Real who, someday, led Yemi and others surreptitiously to the burial floor merely to survey how the Freemasons bury their pointless.
When Ogunbiyi used to be extinct satisfactory to transfer to main college, he used to be registered in one conclude to their home: Ibo Union College. He would now not advise us what fiction he read at home and in college as a baby; he would now not advise us what grades he made, nonetheless he remembers his lecturers and nearly all of the annual events. Most importantly, he has now not forgotten the Boy Scouts’ code of conduct which he learnt there, a credo in step with carrier, admire, braveness, loyalty, believe and meticulous planning. Sadly, Ibo Union College used to be burnt down during the Nigeria-Biafra battle.
By the level he left Sabon Gari at 12 in 1959 for Victory College, Ibadan, to prepare for his excessive college training, he used to be once in a whereas a Kano Boy who spoke Yoruba with Hausa accent. He would soon learn to talk the language of his father effectively without forgetting Igbo the language of his mother and Hausa, the language of where he used to be born and bred. Nonetheless he saved agonising over the query of self-identification. It used to be as if Mr John Lipede, his father’s nephew, with whom he used to be staying in Ibadan knew what used to be occurring in his suggestions. So, he travelled with him from Ibadan down to Ipara-Remo. As soon as he stepped into his grandfather’s home, he knew without extend that Ipara-Remo used to be his origin. And that origin used to be without extend sacred and profane. It used to be his oriki from his grandmother that did it. The sheer lyricism of the oriki, the facility of the historical previous it recalled, enraptured Yemi Ogunbiyi, and redeemed him from his confusion about self-identification and self-perception.
It used to be all so enlightening and clarifying. At that 2d, Omo Baba Kano, as the locals known as him, knew that he had genuinely near home. This oriki which is printed in The Avenue Never Forgets presentations the personality and contours of his roots. The home that his grandfather in-built 1914 used to be aloof standing, now not too far from where the remains of the person were interred. Subliminally, that focus on over with to Ipara-Remo triggered in him the necessity to label extra knowledge of Yoruba culture and politics. Ibadan, the ever welcoming epicentre of the Western Scheme, became the initiating level of his reports.
In January 1961, Ibadan Boys Excessive College admitted him into design one after his one preparatory year at Victory College at Oke-Ado. That college aroused from sleep his deep sense of responsibility to others and his commitment to public merely. The college, founded in 1938 by T.C. Oyesina, used to be one in every of the earliest non-public colleges in Nigeria. Ogunbiyi writes about this college with a undeniable sense of pride. J. F. Ajayi, who later became a world-famed African historian taught within the college. Chukwuka Okonjo, the daddy of Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, used to be once a chief of the college.
This used to be where Yemi Ogunbiyi made site visitors with Biodun Jeyifo, a famed Marxist literary theorist, commerce unionist and now emeritus Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Regardless that BJ used to be by no procedure an obedient student, his brilliance used to be an infinite offer of inspiration to Ogunbiyi who used to be his junior by 300 and sixty five days and just a few different college students within the college. It used to be Customary Godwin Alabi-Isama, a hero of the Nigeria-Biafra battle, and a ancient student of the college, who sponsored the Citizenship and Leadership Coaching Direction in Kurra Falls, Barkin Ladi, which Yemi Ogunbiyi attended in 1963. He used to be being groomed for the characteristic of Head Prefect of the college which he at perfect became in 1965.
That space brought him nearer to Mr Akintunde Laseinde, the college main, who, when you recall, had expelled Biodun Jeyifo from that college for main a student pronounce. He describes the impression which many of his lecturers had on him. In what is going to remain indelible as a tribute to those lecturers, Ogunbiyi writes: “It has by no procedure been complicated for me to confess that, in constructive respects, Ibadan Boys Excessive College made me; and in which I mean that some of primarily the most attention-grabbing lecturers I ever met, by my undergraduate and graduate years, and who, within the job, changed my life for merely, were one of the most lecturers I met on the college. These were lecturers who didn’t pamper or spoon-feed us nonetheless who consistently reminded us that our lives would superb be what we labored exhausting to opt up them, that with determination, every child can work their procedure up the instructional totem pole. These lecturers personified patience and knowledge, main attributes of a merely trainer wherever. I could well even by no procedure omit them.”
He used to be a member of the editorial board of the college’s newspaper, The Triumph, for which he wrote articles. He used to be additionally a member of the Debating and Literary Society. For the explanation that college used to be very conclude to Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s home in Oke-Bola, Ogunbiyi and his schoolmates felt the impression of the political upheaval within the Western Scheme at conclude fluctuate: the imprisonment of Awolowo, Operation Wetie and the tragic loss of life of Awolowo’s lawyer-son, Segun, in a automotive crash. The college students had to prepare for his or her final examinations within the course of political stress enveloping the Western Scheme. Alternatively, after 5 years at IBHS, Yemi Ogunbiyi passed his examinations in flying colors and then won admissions into King’s College, Igbobi College and Loyola College for his A-phases. He at perfect selected King’s College where he studied English Literature, Historical previous and Geography.
Nonetheless the political crisis within the Western Scheme escalated. It spiralled staunch into a national tragedy. Ogunbiyi’s residing used to be having its first exeat of the year from the college when on 15 January 1966 the principle armed forces coup in Nigeria took jam. That coup d’etat used to be led by Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Chris Anuforo, Adewale Ademoyega and Humhrey Chukwuka. They killed the High Minister, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa; Premier of the Northern Scheme, Sir Ahmadu Bello; Premier of the Western Scheme, Chief S. L. Akintola; Finance Minister, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh; Bello’s wife, Hafsatu; his Secretary, Ahmad Ben Musa and his driver, Ahmed Pategi.
They additionally killed Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun; Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari; Colonel Ralph Shodeinde; Colonel Kur Mohammed; Colonel Abogo Largema and Lt. Colonel James Pam. Nigeria is aloof being scared by the dire consequences of that tragic turn. Following the mindless killings and the specter of reprisal attack, some of Ogunbiyi’s classmates who were Igbo, had to snappily withdraw from KC. In a technique, as time passed, some measure of peace used to be restored. Yemi Ogunbiyi loved his stint within the college where he made some merely site visitors including Dr Rex Akpofure, the main of the college, and became a rookie saxophone participant. He used to be additionally made a prefect right here.
As soon as more, he remembers his lecturers including Dr Stanley Macebuh who taught briefly within the college. Macebuh once commented on one in every of Ogunbiyi’s essays: “Let readability be your fixed just.” The readability of his suggestions in this book presentations that he took Macebuh’s train seriously.
For about nine months after he carried out at KC in December 1967, he labored as a library assistant on the University of Lagos. After he had won admission to See English, he couldn’t wait to enter the University of Ibadan in September 1968 although a automotive had knocked him down and nearly claimed his life whereas using a bicycle in Lagos. Biodun Jeyifo, his superb friend, who used to be already in Kuti Hall made it more uncomplicated for him to want down snappily now not superb within the Hall where he too used to be residing nonetheless additionally within the Department of English where he used to be additionally a student. Ogunbiyi recounts his days on the University of Ibadan intimately, remembering the teachings he took and the temperament and kinds of his lecturers.
When BJ ran for the jam of work of Public Family participants Officer of the College students’ Union, he helped to advertising campaign vigorously for him. BJ won. That non-public fascinating him for his non-public winning advertising campaign for the chair of the Kuti Hall. While BJ used to be an active member of the Pyrates Confraternity, Ogunbiyi joined the Sigma Membership the organiser of the massive and repeatedly effectively-attended Havana Night to which assorted artistes love King Sunny Ade, Sir Victor Uwaifo and Fela Ransome-Kuti were invited yearly. Obviously, as Hall chairman, he used to be very neatly-liked most particularly with females.
He interacted with the University authority consistently which bolstered his self belief. Dr Obaro Ikime used to be the hall warden during his tenure. It used to be at his first attendance of St Valentine’s Night Dinner and Dance of Kuti Hall on 14 February 1969, that he met the worship of his life, Folasade Towobola Osiberu. When Billy Amuka, the youthful brother of Uncle Sam Amuka, invited him to the birthday celebration, he reluctantly permitted the invitation attributable to he used to be sulking over a lady he had merely split with. The dazzling, good and happy girl used to be additionally discovering out English and she used to be a year his senior. Sade’s classmates thought to be her desire under par. Nonetheless that didn’t bother the bubbly girl. This book is deservedly dedicated to his “great-cherished wife, Folasade, for her unbridled worship, her steadfastness, tolerance, forbearance and unwavering commitment for the previous fifty-three years,” even despite himself. The attention-grabbing fable of their first kiss, on which BJ is an impeccable authority, is now not integrated within the book! In 1971, he witnessed the scholar pronounce on the University of Ibadan that resulted in the killing of Kunle Adepeju. He describes the circumstances that resulted in it and the mismanagement of it by the University authority.
Regardless that he had met Wole Soyinka on the University of Lagos as a student of King’s College in 1966, meeting him all every other time after his unlock from Kaduna detention heart in 1969 marked the origin of what has now change into a lasting trainer-student friendship. About a weeks after his unlock, Soyinka, 34, delivered a lecture on the College of Arts auditorium. At some stage within the Q&A that adopted the lecture, Ogunbiyi asked a chief query about Soyinka’s play, Kongi’s Harvest, brooding about it considerably reactionary. Nonetheless Soyinka admonished him now not to be doctrinaire in his technique to discovering out a elaborate murals. After the lecture, Soyinka sought out Ogunbiyi and invited him to his jam of work the next day. He then visited Ogunbiyi in Kuti Hall and took him to Femi Johnson’s jam where he met Bola Ige, then a commissioner in Western Exclaim and then to a cafe where, for the principle time, Ogunbiyi had a taste of vintage wine.
He remembers that it used to be on the strength of Wole Soyinka’s recommendation that he used to be admitted into the well-liked Graduate College of the Arts and Science of the Fresh York University (NYU) first for a Grasp’s diploma in Dramatic Literature in 1972 and then a PhD within the identical discipline in 1976. BJ used to be already on that programme at NYU when Ogunbiyi got there. He, all over all every other time, became a purposeful facts. Ogunbiyi got married to Sade on the University of Ibadan’s Chapel of the Resurrection on 29 July 1972 almost at present forward of they left for the United States. She too had, fortunately, secured an World Teacher Change programme within the US. With the recommendation of Professor Joel Adedeji, he won a Fullbright scholarship that made the hardship of student life bearable.
He recounts the rigour of the programme and the enjoyable he had in company of Tunde Adeniran, George Obiozor, Ibrahim Gambari and others in Fresh York as he tried to unwind. Gambari used to be a respectable DJ. Yes, the identical Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari! He used to be then a PhD student at Columbia University. Ogunbiyi writes fondly of the famed Greenwich Village and the Jazz greats such as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane whom he watched play on the Village Gate Night Membership.
His wife, Sade, would soon opt up a grasp’s diploma in Academic Administration on the City University of Fresh York in Fresh york after which she labored with the United International locations. They’d Tokunbo, their son on 16 July 1976. He offers cases of his bump into with racism, the Authentic Sin of The US. His perfect moments were those he shared in Fresh York with site visitors and family participants love Yemi and Lolade Adefulu, Tunji and Yinka Ayanlaja, amongst others. In their residence at Stuyvesant Town, a Fresh York City housing Estate, he and Sade hosted many site visitors. Ogunbiyi’s accounts of the dinner with Wole Soyinka, Femi Johnson and Yemi Lijadu and the one with Duro Ladipo, his wife, Abiodun, and Biodun Jeyifo, are wonderfully witty and spirited. Their residence additionally became a magnet to Leslie Harriman, Dele Giwa, Yomi Durotoye and a lot of others. After his PhD, he studied film-making on the Movie College of the Fresh York University and taught briefly at Brooklyn College of the City University of Fresh York forward of heading relief to Nigeria.
As fate would non-public it, Professor Ojetunji Aboyade who merely resumed as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ife had asked his superb friend, Wole Soyinka, then Professor of Comparative Literature, to transfer the newly created Department of Dramatic Arts. Yemi Ogunbiyi used to be one in every of the muse lecturers of the contemporary department. Ahead of the introduction of that department, Ola Rotimi used to be the head of the drama unit of the Institute of African Reviews which additionally had tune, and so forth., and so forth., as separate items. Rotimi, who had a if truth be told spirited theatre, Oriolokun Theatre Firm, located within the coronary heart of Ife town, felt shortchanged and had to transfer away for the University of Port Harcourt in anger.
On the raze of 1976, Ogunbiyi, Sade and their son, Tokunbo, arrived Nigeria en route Jamaica and the German City, Munich. On the Munich Stadium where they had long previous to transfer making an try to search out a game, the German younger individuals mistook him for the African-American actor, Richard Roundtree popularly identified as Shaft. He genuinely looked very great love Shaft within the boring seventies. It used to be an American, who had to convince those excitable younger individuals that he used to be now not Roundtree.
When he resumed work at Ife, nonetheless, in September 1977, his college students who didn’t know what transpired in Munich additionally began calling him Shaft. Till this day, some of them aloof name him by that name although he is now a excessive chief of Ife, Ipara-Remo, Remoland and the Anglican Church. This used to be Ife in its top allotment: the seventies and early eighties. He’s extremely proud of the work he did within the jam and the college students love Bankole Olayebi (the owner of Bookcraft, the author of this book) Gbenro Adegbola, Ahmed Yerima, Tejumola Olaniyan, Awam Ankpa, Niyi Coker, Kemi Ilori, Maxim Uzoatu, Folake Doherty (now Folake Wole-Soyinka), Owei Lakemfa, Edmond Enaibe, Mahamud Alli-Balogun, Funsho Alabi, and so forth., and so forth., who challenged and impressed him.
He absolutely cherished his membership of the Editorial Collective of Sure Review Journal comprising Biodun Jeyifo, Kole Omotoso, Femi Osofisan, Eddie Madunagu, John Ohiorhenuan, Odia Ofeimun, GG Darah and Molara Ogundipe-Leslie. He used to be a Marxist-inclined scholar and theorist who wasn’t certain whether he used to be a Marxist or now not. He felt awkward ideologically within the company of unrepentant Marxists love Jeyifo, yet he believed in innovative interpretations of realities and products of creativeness. He confirmed this in his review of Wole Soyinka’s Opera Wonyosi, a convocation play performed on the University of Ife on 16 December 1977. Soyinka filed away Ogunbiyi’s biting criticism. He superb spoke back to him and others when he delivered his inaugural lecture on the University of Ife in 1980. After that effectively-attended lecture titled: The Critic and Society: Barthes, Leftocracy and Other Mythologies, the two of them met over a bottle of wine and Soyinka didn’t mention the relaxation about his public rebuttal of Ogunbiyi’s criticism of his play.
In 1978, when Ngugi wa Thiongo used to be imprisoned on the Maximum-Security Jail in Nairobi attributable to of his criticism of Jomo Kenyatta, it used to be Yemi Ogunbiyi that Soyinka, who used to be then the Secretary-Customary of the Union of Writers of the African Peoples, sent to Kenya on a cohesion mission. Ogunbiyi remembers that he had a clandestine meeting with Micere Mugo who took him to Ngugi’s wife. Quickly after that bump into, Mugo herself had to transfer on exile.
In 1981, Drama and Theatre in Nigeria: A Serious Source Book which Ogunbiyi edited used to be published to main acclaim. He used to be obviously enjoying his work and his stay at Ife. He used to be conclude to Professor Ojetunji Aboyade, the Vice-Chancellor. Dele Giwa and his site visitors consistently came from Lagos to Ife. Ogunbiyi had plans to post other books and write for journals. He used to be spending a form of his exhausting-earned money on art-works attributable to for him, “collecting Art-works is better than a transaction. It’s an emotionally non-public ingredient.” He became Performing Head of the Department. One amongst his low moments at Ife used to be the inappropriate accusation by Chief Michael Omisade that he used to be preserving secret meetings in his campus home with the Modakeke those that were consistently at battle with the Ife individuals. It used to make sure in court docket that the person used to be misinformed as Omisade lost the case.
He used to be planning to transfer on Sabbatical in 1983 when Dr Stanley Macebuh mounted stress on him to be half of The Guardian as one in every of the muse group. He wished him to be half of “a dream group to relieve build a excessive-quality newspaper that is possible to be dedicated to the superb traditions and beliefs of republican democracy, a paper that can perhaps well perhaps owe no allegiance to any political birthday celebration, ethnic group, non secular group or other interest teams, nonetheless rather one that is possible to be dedicated to the promotion of the superb interest of Nigeria.” Ogunbiyi describes how he gave in to Macebuh’s stress after he had made a lot of journeys to Ile-Ife. He used to be 36 when he permitted to exhaust a year of sabbatical paddle away in The Guardian. Nonetheless forward of his departure to Lagos, he and his wife went to focus on over with Oba Okunade Sijuwade, the Olubuse II, the Ooni of Ife, with whom he had developed a warmth relationship. All pleasantries over, the Ooni looked him within the label and acknowledged: “My son, merely success in your outing to Lagos. Nonetheless we know you’re now not going to conclude relief right here all every other time to coach. Possibilities are you’ll perhaps well be relief subsequent year after your paddle away. I heard you! Nonetheless what we have got been told internal the temple is assorted. We have been told that you’re now not coming relief right here to coach! You admire, even The Guardian job is now not your destination. You’ll be going to an out of this world bigger jam after The Guardian. That’s what we’ve been told. When and how I don’t know. Nonetheless you’ll admire, and then, you’ll be awake what I am pronouncing to you now.”
That imaginative and prescient has merely about movement, for Ogunbiyi genuinely returned to Ife as Knowledgeable-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of the University on 6 January 2017 long after he had served in other capacities. He describes how Adamu Adamu, the Minister of Schooling, from whom he wished a contract to print textbooks, gave him the job. Nonetheless the prediction of Mr Osunyejo, one in every of his lecturers at Ibadan Boys Excessive College, that he would change into an Ambassador of Nigeria to the United International locations, is yet to merely about movement.
He found the ambiance at The Guardian very liberating. The truth that the jam bustled with promise and a generous dose of the spirit of public merely infected him. He now not superb wrote editorials and columns, he additionally labored as Director of Advertising and marketing and Public Affairs from 1985 when he used to be elevated to that space. On this skill, he coordinated the gross sales, advertising, and advert departments. He used to be additionally responsible of the annual lecture sequence of The Guardian which some worldwide figures love Micheal Manley were invited to raise. The Guardian Literary Sequence, now aloof in two volumes as Perspectives on Nigerian Literature, used to be one in every of the excessive substances of his profession. The different, Encounter with Historical previous, now within the works, is a assortment of the interviews he and his colleagues at The Guardian had with thirteen main world leaders. He offers credit in The Avenue Never Forgets, to all his colleagues in The Guardian: Stanley Macebuh, Femi Osofisan, Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie, Sonala Olumbense, Eddy Madunagu, Odia Ofeimun, Sully Abu, Olatunji Dare, and so forth, and so forth. It used to be a galaxy of highly gifted writers complemented by Lade Bonuola, Femi Kusa and just a few others who effectively took fee of the excessive-energy newsroom of The Guardian.
One amongst his mammoth moments in The Guardian used to be when Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986. He, whose other sobriquet is Mr Match It, became the organiser of the Nigerian delegation to the award ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden. It used to be the principle time that a dim African would receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Ogunbiyi, in his charming story, captures the significance of the tournament at which Soyinka delivered his Nobel Lecture, This Past Must Address Its Reward, which he dedicated to Nelson Mandela who used to be aloof in detention heart. Sadly, that similar year, Dele Giwa, one in every of his bosom site visitors, who had been a pallbearer at his father’s funeral, earlier within the year, used to be assassinated by individuals suspected to be in IBB’s executive. Ogunbiyi writes within the book that “when Dele Giwa died, a segment of me died with him.”
He explains how the imprisonment of Tunde Thompson and Nduka used to be a if truth be told complicated time for The Guardian. It dimmed the light of the paper attributable to, on story of Chief Rotimi Williams, The Guardian lawyer, the newspaper dropped its Merely Mr policy. This stirred a effectively of anger in hundreds of its readers and, looking out relief, Ogunbiyi admits that it used to be a astronomical mistake. When he and Macebuh were sacked from The Guardian by Mr Alex Ibru on story of a baseless allegation that they were into Sugar industry, Ogunbiyi had merely arrived London from Pakistan where he had long previous to interview Benazir Bhutto with Amma Ogan, the editor of The Guardian on Sunday. To Macebuh, that sack used to be previous betrayal; it used to be execution.
Ogunbiyi doesn’t rather put it that procedure within the book, nonetheless Macebuh, a chief, honest judgment of staunch and wrong, an urbane public intellectual, one in every of the principle main scholars on James 1st earl baldwin of bewdley, the feisty African American novelist, went quietly into the night, badly tormented by that sack which resulted in his untimely loss of life. Fortunately for Yemi Ogunbiyi, President Babangida made him Managing Director of Every single day Events internal one week of his sack at The Guardian. He had met IBB for the principle time in Kano in 1976 at a nightclub owned by a mutual superb friend, Kura Muhammed. Ogunbiyi used to be then a graduate student at NYU rounding off his reports whereas Babangida used to be a colonel within the Navy. They renewed their friendship when Ogunbiyi became a neatly-known person at The Guardian.
As that you may read within the book, Babangida, out and in of energy, has remained very conclude to Yemi Ogunbiyi and his family. When his lady friend Wunmi, as an instance, used to be seven months pregnant for Ogunbiyi and he didn’t non-public the braveness to advise Sade, President Babangida drove himself to their home to pacify Sade and doused the flame of a home mumble. Yemi and Wunmi non-public since long previous their separate strategies, nonetheless their liaison has produced two mammoth younger individuals, Anu and Ore. This must be one in every of primarily the main reasons he praises Sade’s tolerance and forbearance now not merely within the book nonetheless at every given different.
With Onyema Ugochukwu as his merely-hand man at Every single day Events, he tried very exhausting to opt up winning of his job though he didn’t non-public unfettered freedom to attain it. In his words: “I had arrived at Every single day Events certain that under my look for the paper would now not note what the famed editor of The Sunday Events and later editor of The Events of London, Harold Evans, once described as ‘invertebrate journalism,’ one that merely recycled speeches and statements and delivered classy opinions on routine public officers, I had near with excessive hopes, perhaps naively as ‘a executive’ newspaper, we may well attend energy to story, that we can also every so steadily are attempting to undertake main scrutiny of institutions and activities which non-public an imprint on the lives and security and happiness of millions of peoples.”
He managed to replicate in a lot of strategies the editorial construction of The Guardian in Every single day Events. He had on its editorial board Dr Chidi Amuta, Dr G.G. Darah, Dr Ayo Olukotun, Idang Alibi, Dr Ngozi Anyaegbunam, Dr Iyorcha Ayu, Omar Farouk, amongst others. Dr Stanley Macebuh, Professor Femi Osofisan, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Sonala Olumhense, Muhammed Haruna, Ndaeyo Uko, Dr Kayode Soremekun, Amma Ogan, Dr Onwuchekwa Jemie, Donu Kogbara, Gloria Ogunbadejo and others wrote for the paper.
He snappily refurbished Events Press and Nigerpak, computerised the factory and carried out all of the spade work on the contrivance to imprint Kakawa Tower in Ikoyi. He additionally refurbished the group housing property. As MD of Every single day Events, he used to be on the advertising campaign group that labored to opt up Chief Emeka Anyaoku elected as the Secretary-Customary of the Commonwealth. He used to be additionally on the group that helped to jot down the eloquent speech that President Babangida gave on the United International locations Customary Assembly. He equally went on a outing to North Korea with Chief Alex Akinyele, the Minister of Recordsdata who changed Prince Tony Momoh. Regardless that Akinyele had been told by Gbenga Ashiru, the Nigerian Ambassador to that nation, that folks were forbidden from using the be aware God in North Korea by the Eternal Astronomical Leader of that nation, President Kim 11-Sung, nonetheless Akinyele saved declaring God to the teach consternation of the Koreans and the embarrassment of Nigerian embassy officials. The same Akinyele would later gloat over the sack of Ogunbiyi.
Every single day Events under Ogunbiyi used to be a winning enterprise and the board and shareholders were very tickled with him. Nonetheless the safety apparatchik and some formidable substances internal the executive of Babangida, individuals love Customary Sani Abacha, who’s portrayed in The Avenue Never Forgets as a share of dogshit, were hell-crooked to build away with Ogunbiyi who dared to toddle what they thought to be a executive-owned newspaper that used to be main of IBB’s Structural Adjustment Programme and the annulment of June 12 elections which Chief M.K.O. Abiola had won handsome and sq.. When he used to be sacked, the job used to be given to Chief Tola Adeniyi who did their bidding.
Yemi Ogunbiyi writes referring to the best time he observed M.K.O. Abiola alive. He used to be in detention with his legs a little bit swollen when a excessive Egba Chief, obviously sent by the armed forces, used to be pressurising him to offer up his mandate. He pays tribute to Abiola for his unflagging braveness within the face of armed forces tyranny, and his kindness and generosity to him and millions of others.
Ogunbiyi tells the fable of how, during the crisis that adopted the annulment of June 12 elections, he used to be invited to Abuja by a top snooper, then a general within the Navy. The person, who had some publishers and journalists at his beck and make contact with, told him that President Babangida would really like him to commute to Europe and The US to advise the international media why the annulment of June 12 presidential elections used to be main. The regime used to be then on the ropes. He listened intently to all of the insipid drivel. The funding allocated to the image laundering project used to be huge, nonetheless Yemi Ogunbiyi, who aloof possessed reserves of braveness and can, acknowledged no. He became down the offer and the money. He then left Abuja snappily on the next available flight to Lagos.
Nonetheless a effectively-identified author in Lagos, a shameless reprobate, aloof the money and went out of the nation, now not superb to unfold the astronomical lie that Abiola didn’t receive the June 12 elections, he additionally went spherical negative the recognition of an innocent man in jail. Taken collectively the tales of his nine years at The Guardian and Every single day Events are additionally strategies of the historical previous of the print media of that period and the historical previous of the self belief of energy by the armed forces exemplified by Generals Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar.
When he used to be sacked at Every single day Events in 1991, President Babangida equipped him an ambassadorial space which he became down. The same procedure that Customary Abdulsalami Abubakar would later opt up a ministerial offer to him which he additionally civilly rejected attributable to he had sworn by no technique to work for anybody all every other time. He used to be forty five on the time. Since then, he has been pumping his energy into and using his skills for his non-public company TANUS Communications which now publishes secondary college textbooks, handles public family participants, plus other jobs.
In the book, he describes his attention-grabbing bump into with Fela Anikulapo-Kuti during using him for one in every of his company jobs. Donald Duke, Rotimi Amaechi, Seriake Dickson, Godswill Akpabio, Laolu Akinkugbe and a lot of company organisations are on the checklist of his previous clients. The company has its modest origin in one in every of his mother’s blocks of apartments in Ikeja, Lagos.
Ultimately, right here is autobiography as regeneration. In 1986, after the effectively-attended funeral church carrier on the Vining Memorial Church in Lagos for Ogunbiyi’s father which Chief Obafemi Awolowo and H.I.D, his wife, patiently sat by, Chief Awolowo gave Ogunbiyi an envelope containing a immense amount of cash and then whispered to him: “Regardless that I didn’t know your father, I am tickled that Mama and I came for his funeral carrier attributable to we know that superb a merely tree brings forth a merely fruit.” Awolowo used to be hinting on the significance of nurturing contemporary generations and how one effectively-tendered period can yield a bountiful harvest of others. It is unheard of that one in every of the explanations for writing The Avenue Never Forgets used to be that Feranmi, the principle granddaughter of Yemi Ogunbiyi, asked for it. Now that she and her siblings and the relaxation of the youthful Ogunbiyis know their roots, we hope that they’d all repeat great of the labour of their ancestors and that they’ll label contemporary strengths and potentialities under a brighter sky. The inter-generational baton is now passed. Let the flee continue.
– Kunle Ajibade is Govt Editor/Director of TheNEWS/P.M.NEWS
