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Senator Adefuye tells me that Senator Adesanya regretted what happened to him at Abiola’s house and apologized. He is happy he is alive to tell the story. He said part of the ache of those who went after him was that his UNCP was holding sway in Lagos then and envy peppered their malice-Omatseye
1.Brave and Blunt : Sen. Anthony Adefuye, by Mark Orgu,
2.The Man, Sen. Anthony Adefuye , by Assoc. Prof. Taye Poopola
Military interventions do not help the cause of civilization, but hear this story from Chief Anthony Adefuye, who rose from a fufu seller to a statesman of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Maybe you will change your mind about the army from what it did to who would later become a democrat and senator in a fledgling democracy. It was on the night of Nigeria’s military intervention, a coup in 1966, and Anthony Adefuye, a young man, was having a stint at the Water Corporation premises in Ibadan.
He was sharing a residence with a snake. Not in a house but in a danfo bus. Neither he nor the beast was aware of their roommate. It was a nightmare Eden without the trees or fruits or sky, an Eden in a metallic enclosure. He escaped the day’s sweltering heat to loll at night while the slithering creature took turns during the day.
Then the coup happened, and straggles of soldiers cast shadows at different parts of the city. Unaware of the turbulence, Adefuye made a date with the rendezvous but so did the serpentine roommate that was running away from stamps of boots and rattle of guns for shelter in the danfo. “Yeh,” he must have yelled when he saw the cold, rattling neighbour. The cry of horror did not amuse the soldiers who opened fire on the bus. The snake turned to shreds but he managed to survive without a bullet on his body. Some may see it was a contradiction, on a symbolic level, of the military doing a good thing.
They saved him from what might have been a bite to the death. So, if, as he would show as he grew into maturity, he did not like the coming of the jackboot boys, he certainly was thankful for this military intervention, although it was not a happy night as he followed the soldiers to the state house in Agodi where, in the words of Shakespeare, he “destroyed his sight” as the corpse of assassinated Samuel Ladoke Akintola lay blood-spattered on the floor. As will be shown in the two books under review, the life of Senator Adefuye was a parade of interventions, not only by soldiers but a variety of forces, some superhuman and others by human agents of fate. Fatalists may draw their conditions and so proponents of rational choice.
The books, Brave and Blunt: Sen. Adefuye setting standards and truism by Mark Orgu and The Man Senator Tony Adefuye, Olugbon of Lagos by Professor Tayo Popoola, take different tacks on this enigmatic figure. Each book projects a distinctive voice while, inevitably, they overlap to reinforce aspects of his biography.
While this sort of offering cannot dilute the man’s politics, yet the Senator was not always a political animal. Not when he was a child, and what many called mummy’s boys as the first child of a mother who was the first of his father’s harem of four wives. Not when he had to hawk fufu to assist the woman during which he was hijacked to register to become a pupil in a primary school. That was a rude intervention but not as rude as when the father wondered who could have named his son Anthony when, he though a Christian, had Christened him Ogungbemi on the eighth day of his birth on August 14, 1944 when the world was reeling at the last blasts of the Second World War. He loved his name too much that he retrieved it even after his father’s nationalist militancy for insisting on a Yoruba name in a Catholic school. Also not when a girl with polio turned down his offer for dance on their valedictory party in primary school when every able-bodied girl would not share a dance floor with him, he who was mocked at school as omo’ni fufu. But interventions, for good, were to come.
Even to become a mechanical engineer he met a prominent name, Professor Ayodele Awojobi who, not knowing him from Adam, decided to admit him at the University of Lagos for mechanical engineering after his meritorious scores at WAEC. Before that, he was challenged by a boss who would not pay him his night allowance where he worked, and mocked him that he, Adefuye, was no university graduate like him. That compelled him to study to make the high grade and meet the august professor’s grace.
Like the bullets and the snake, not all interventions smelt like roses. He was a highflier in corporate Nigeria and was declared the best salesman in Africa and Asia at an international trade fair in the United States. But his bosses wanted to take wrest the credit from him. He was working with the multinational Blackwood Hodge. He became disenchanted and that turned him to realise himself and his work as an entrepreneur. He tapped his friend, the late Funsho Williams, whose benevolence with little contracts set him up as a man of works in the Lagos area and gave him the fillip to resign and strike out on his own. But that was not before a little domestic tiff. The hierarchy of Blackwood Hodge did not want him to resign. Since they could not entice him with a Nigerian position, they offered him a general manager position at Northampton in the United Kingdom. He turned it down. The company told his wife, who thought it was a good enough reason to remain so they could educate their children in good schools in that country.
As the senator told me, he preferred home to the uncertainties of a foreign land whose office politics might lead him to a dead-end. His wife, the beloved Sunmisola, took a while to reconcile herself to a man who became a drainage contractor and came home in dirty apparel when he should look the scented and spick-and-span executive in western suits. The wife, in the end, reconciled herself to her husband’s position. Obviously, his gamble paid off. If you thought the 1966 military intervention in the danfo bus was his last, hear this. Civilians in the Lagos bureaucracy wanted to get rid of him, so his contract another should take. It was during the governorship of Air commodore Gbolahan Mudashiru. The man did not trust his ministry mavens. So, he inspected the man at work and realized for himself that the officials were Gog and Magog, wicked people in high places who did not seek the progress of Lagos. He met Adefuye at work and it was then he ordered that he be paid forthwith all he was owed and exposed the lickspittle officials, rulers of the darkness of Lagos.
Their mischief continued with Mudashiru’s successor, Commodore Mike Akhigbe, who also visited the site incognito and Adefuye, again was saved by the soldier. Not his body this time but both soul and the soul of his pocket. He noted though, that Lateef Jakande, as governor, held on to his file for a contract until he was ousted by the army.
The political animal in him may not have growled while he tried to cement himself as a man of means. That was Aristotle’s prescription that professionals should succeed before venturing into politics. After all, as a student at Akoko, he was the treasurer of the student union when his fellow students tagged him T for T, that is Tony for treasurer. He was a beneficiary of Obafemi Awolowo’s free education programme, and it lit a tinder in his heart when the chief himself handed him his certificate and he lingered with him onstage shaking his hands over and over again, attracting the crowd. The big man asked why he did that. He said he was showing his gratitude as a free education beneficiary, so Awo shook his hands again. But he was to meet Awo again, not as a beneficiary, although their meeting seemed so. He flipped it. He was to interview as a director with the Unity Party of Nigeria but they were offering a pay lower than he was earning. They offered him N6000 per Annual, quite a princely sum in 1977. He was earning N14K. He did not take the job but offered to pay who secured the job the salary. Critical in both books were his June 12 encounters. He was an obvious associate of Chief M.K.O. Abiola but he ran into rough waters with the army. In his paradox with the army, it was the army that saved him from the army. He was about to be taken away to Kwara State and dumped for dead on the orders of Abacha. Who saved him? General Oladipo Diya, who pleaded for him but would not take credit until he was prodded to confess his role. Another paradox was the then governor Oyinlola who would be in polar political positions with him later.
At another instance, another fellow would have to take him to Abacha when they would say the time they wanted to kill him had passed. He seemed to be walking a thin line between safety and perdition in those years. But his main fight in the end turned out to be at home. The drama that unfolded in the home of Abiola after the man’s passing has resonated as an intrigue in the staple of political intrigues in the southwest. It was a period of dark daggers, of courage and perfidy, of sleight of hand and slight of men, of holy men and Mephistopheles, of death marches and heroism. It reminds me of a song by Tunji Oyelana They were seventy, and part of it reads, “for they were seventy, but when they were seventy-one, you don’t know who you trust, you never know your man until you find out in the end.”
When a meeting of some Afenifere chieftains was taking place in Abiola’s house, Sen Adefuye was almost killed in his house when he was refused entry at the meeting. Inside were some chieftains, including Bola Ige and Abraham Adesanya. Here again, he had to flee for his life, scaling fences with his clothes torn, and death staring him in the face. He met some Hausa fellows who first thought the mob was after them for killing Abiola and almost macheted him in self-defence. Where did he hide? In a manhole, and what did he meet? Snakes again. But it was not soldiers that saved him but Hausa fellows who asked him not to move. He was rescued by young men he never knew before then and never saw since they dropped him off after ploughing through the daredevil mob.
Adefuye put this incident in context. One Lateef Shofolahan, who turned out to be accused over Kudirat’s death led the charge against him. The senator had warned Kudirat Abiola not to leave her home on her fateful day. The senator also raised an issue with some of the fellows of the southwest in the same NADECO enclave who had held a meeting with the army. His position is that some of the men were not for Abiola. So, he asked if they were for Abiola why did they ask for Abiola’s release and at the same time, they asked for a transition period while Abiola was alive for as long as nine months to begin a new political election cycle? So, he felt that they were playing cloak and dagger with June 12.
The other issue he raises in the books is that, why did they not allow Abiola free first and then he could go abroad and renew his battle even by setting up, like Charles De Gaulle of France in his days in London, a government in exile? After all, the same Abiola and these same NADECO votaries agreed for a government of Abacha to take in some of the men that remained like Jakande and Onagoruwa. He turned round to fight it and asked all the men who joined to leave. He could also have played coy and left jail in order to regroup.
These are unresolved issues that pundits, intellectuals, statesmen and politicians ought to interrogate about that epochal era. The wounds still ache our psyche and we shall never escape it until the end. Senator Adefuye tells me that Senator Adesanya regretted what happened to him at Abiola’s house and apologized. He is happy he is alive to tell the story. He said part of the ache of those who went after him was that his UNCP was holding sway in Lagos then and envy peppered their malice.
Both books also enunciate his views from the national questions to national figures, from the 2014 confab to state police, to the issues of rotational presidency. You cannot escape his views of some figures. For instance, he says boldly that Obasanjo is an Igbo man. He describes Ayo Adebanjo’s faction as “has always been a failure.” He has kinder words for others like President Bola Tinubu, who he predicted “would win the presidential election.” On Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, our BOS of Lagos, he says, “the governor is fantastically doing well.”
He gets tributes from prominent names like the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, Ojaja II, Deputy governor Femi Hamzat of Lagos, Speaker Obasa of Lagos, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, Senator Tokunbo Abiru and many others.
These books are engaging, Orgu’s is more of a compilation and commentary while Professor Popoola’s is more of narration, both blended well to tell a good story. What is essentially missing is that we don’t have a good story about how the man became a senator, who he fought, what were the stakes and how he triumphed. As a senator, we get glimpses here and there of how he performed.
Otherwise, these two books are worth reading as insights into one of the consequential figures of his generation and southwest region.
