ON Sunday, December 9, popular Yoruba poet, writer, artiste and religious leader, Alhaji Ma’ud Olanrewaju Adepoju, passed on in his Ibadan, Oyo State home, aged 83. News of his demise was confirmed by his son, Adejare Adepoju, who simply announced: “Baba has gone to rest.” Naturally, the transition has been greeted with glowing tributes. The Oyo State governor, Mr. Seyi Makinde, while stating that Adepoju was one of Oyo State’s worthy ambassadors in the entertainment industry who flew the flag of the state for decades, described him as a renowned social crusader who used poetry and music to correct social ills. On his part, the Olubadan of Ibadanland, Oba Lekan Balogun, described his demise as a great loss to the entire Yoruba nation. He said: “The late Yoruba icon was not just a poet, he was also a musician and an activist who used his God-given grace to fight for the common good as well as good governance. A democrat, he didn’t sit back during the struggle to free the country from the firm grip of the military. He also associated with the pro-democracy groups during the efforts to revalidate the annulled election of the late Basorun Moshood Abiola as the country’s president on June 12, 1993, deploying his energy to fight the military.”
The Olubadan also noted that the late Adepoju would be remembered for his religious activities through his group, Universal Muslim Brothers, with which he propagated his faith and earned himself accolades of immense proportions. Practitioners in Nigeria’s entertainment industry have also paid the poet glowing tributes. The tributes have been richly merited. A household name for decades, Adepoju was a poet, writer, theatre arts practitioner, singer, activist and social commentator who dared the odds to establish himself as a leading force among the pantheon of performers of the genre of Yoruba oral poetry called ewi. Although he started off with many other contemporaries in that genre in the late 70s, admonishing the citizenry on proper values, Adepoju became so proficient in his art that he was, for decades, virtually synonymous with that genre. His albums dominated the airwaves between the 70s and the early 90s. A thorn in the flesh of successive military administrators, Adepoju was detained by the military junta more than five times in various prisons for his open, often brutal denunciation of military rule.
Like the inimitable Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Adepoju was not the kind of poet to shy away from controversy. In fact, he actively cultivated it, mentioning the objects of his pungent tongue by name and daring them to do their worst. His poetry was a metaphorical graveyard for the despots who held sway over the Nigerian polity: to their utter disbelief, he treated them with absolute contempt. Among his timeless statements, Nigerians would no doubt still remember the following: “Awon dindinrin ti I ba ma gba’aru ni Sabo, won a di kongila pajawiri.” (Idiots that ought to be mere porters (luggage carriers) at Sabo market become emergency contractors.” Even his harshest critics would acknowledge the sheer beauty of his use of the Yoruba language as a poet well grounded in the vocation of his forebears, a force for didacticism and social change.
His path to success paved with thorns, Adepoju triumphed by sheer force of resolve. He told this newspaper in a 2004 interview that his ability to read and write was the product of his steely resolve, not formal instruction. He said: “My parents never sent me to school. I never went to school for one day. I had cousins who were in school in the town. They visited our village during the holidays and we would play together. We would go hunting for fruits and animals and sometimes, they would switch to the English language which I didn’t understand. Then, I would be shut out. I would feel bad whenever this happened. Then I decided that I would get western education. I began to save my earnings from basket weaving, a craft I’m adept at; firewood-hewing, picked kola nuts and so on. I saved the money from these ventures until I got one and a half pence with which I bought my very first book, ‘ABD Olope’. One of my younger cousins, Muili Oyedele, who had obtained the First School Leaving Certificate by then, was my first teacher. He taught me the direction of the letters of the alphabet and in one week, I had finished the book and was proficient in it. I built on this knowledge until I could read other texts and literature materials. I sometimes even stopped people on the road to seek their help with some words or English expressions.”
The Western State Library being his “second home” in those days, it is noteworthy that Adepoju’s lack of formal education did not stop him from morphing into an institution on whom many academic papers were written and studies conducted at different levels of Nigeria’s educational system. Adepoju honed his raw talents and grew them to maturity, making an indelible impact on radio and television stations and his larger environment. At the beginning, he started off as an oral performer on radio and television stations, growing in leaps and bounds to become a household name. From his first poetry rendition on the broadcast station in 1964, Adepoju would go on to produce over 80 albums.
Among other endeavours, Adepoju worked as a barber, manual embroider and newspaper vendor. His modest abode in Ibadan serves to accentuate his self-worth in a crazy, materialistic world. His impact on his immediate environment was huge. Elsewhere, in the civilized world, personages like Adepoju with such phenomenal achievements would have been duly elevated to higher levels without hassles.
We commiserate with the Oyo State government and the family and friends of Olanrewaju Adepoju. He was such a courageous fighter of societal ills. May his soul rest in sweet repose.
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