In 1969, legendary Yoruba Sakara music lord, Yusuff Olatunji, serenaded and celebrated the sterling qualities of the Seriki of Egbaland, Chief Abdul-Wahab Amódemájá, who held an Egba high-ranking military-derived civil title. In his Volume 3 album entitled Amódemájá, using a twin engine of dense metaphor and vivid imagery, Olatunji advocated for the place of good people as templates of a good society. The man he called “Abudu Amodemaja” was his prime example.
He sang: “If you behold some people gaily and expensively dressed, sitting in royal poise on elegantly embroidered horses, unbeknownst to an enraptured world taken in by these adornments, these men are merely decorated swindlers.” Olatunji’s raw Yoruba rendering was: “B’óo r’òmo elòmíìn l’órí esin, jìbìtì l’ó fi ñs’èsó.” The paradox of esin (horse) and èsó (adornments), set against jìbìtì (swindle), was a potent literary tool this Sakara legend deployed to teach the virtues of the noble citizen.
Are there still good people in Nigeria? Are there good people in Nigerian politics? Can they be found anywhere in Nigerian government circles? Yusuff Olatunji sang this song barely nine years into the Nigerian post-colony. It was an era when personal honour was paramount, and dishonourable people were treated as social rejects and villains. Olatunji himself had carved a remarkable niche in the social cosmos.
A musical hippopotamus, his feat in popularising traditional Yoruba music across Nigeria and the West African coast was adjudged legendary. Deploying profound poetic lyrics, philosophical reflections on existential matters, and a mastery of the single-headed frame drum called the Sakara, Olatunji denounced societal ills, while celebrating impeccable character. Amodemaja was equally known by the moniker, “A. B. Council” due to his massive influence in First Republic’s Abeokuta Council local administration.
Musicians of the era took turns celebrating this incredibly influential powerhouse of Egbaland. Yet, Amodemaja