When Olaiya Igwe shot ‘Osan Gangan’ in 2004 or thereabouts, the whole of Yorubaland stood still! Almost literally. Blockbuster. Now, I just watched a video of the man groveling before Lagos NURTW boss Mc Oluomo, ostensibly after receiving a car gift from him. For me, the spectacle was depressing in its violently contrasting twist of fate.
If longevity on the big screen was human, Ebun Oloyede, for the uninitiated, is an apt replica of that word. I grew up bingeing on his arcane, fear-inducing tales/movies in his heyday. At the height of his glory, the release of an Olaiya Igwe movie was in itself a cultural festival of huge significance. No other film producer, bar Yekinni Ajileye, commanded that kinda respect across the region at the time. From the record-shattering Abela Pupa, through ‘Posi Alaye’, ‘Alase Aye’, ‘Iku Lopin’, through to the immensely popular ‘Ololade Mr Money’, his movies were culture-defining works of art that held everyone in awe and cemented his place in the pantheon.
The sad reality is that in Olaiya’s heyday, a major albatross stood on their path to financial success: Piracy. They literally worked for pirates, earning peanuts from their sweat. I remember they spent years crying, wailing and protesting to different government houses across the Southwest, seeking government (legislative) interventions. I’m not sure anything significant came out of their agitation, until time and technology elbowed them and their arts off the big screen. In a way, Olaiya (and colleagues’) ordeal at their most productive years speaks to how institutional rot can make a mess of people’s productive efforts, making them paupers at the twilight of their life/career.
(That’s also partly why I won’t entirely put the blame on Olaiya Igwe, a member of a generation of hardworking thespians now wallowing in abject poverty. Frankly, his remains a temptation that is a tad difficult to resist, in the face of grinding poverty.)
I don’t want to say much about Oluomo; I have written all I can in past columns/posts, anyway. And since this is election season, I have seen people critique Olaiya’s conduct before Mc Oluomo ONLY within the narrow prism of partisanship.
For me, this is not about any partisan gibberish: it’s a depressing reality that speaks to the ironical fate of otherwise hardworking, productive people rendered hopeless by systemic failure, in sharp contrast to how much folks who rose through commodification of violence now thrive and ‘succeed’ with the conspiratorial support of the state. And they cut across political divides anyway.
Last month, I saw a video of one huge, green-coloured edifice reportedly belonging to Lamidi Auxiliary, Oyo PMS boss and Governor Seyi Makinde’s ally and political “enforcer”. I was speechless. But Auxiliary is only following the footsteps of those before him who also lived in opulence: Fele Taofiki, Tokyo, Elewe-Omo, as well as Tawa, who ruled in the noughties. Interestingly, at the height of Tawa-Tokyo’s insanely ostentatious dominance of the Ibadan social scene, as enabled by government, a certain Baba Eleran who spent all his productive years supporting Ibadan-based 3SC died in obscurity and poverty.
So beyond petty partisan nonsense, the bigger, scarier concern for me is in how we all seem to have normalized this prevailing reality as the ‘status quo’: a disturbingly worrisome elevation of merchants of violence as ‘statesmen’ swimming in pools of money as enabled by the state, and then a systemic bastardization of productive engagements as the surest path to misery/poverty, especially in Yorubaland.
Think Oluomo/Kunle Poly (Lagos). Think Asiri Eniba (Osun). Think Auxiliary/Were (Oyo). Think Jango (Ogun). Think Ade Basket (Ondo). Think Babade (Ekiti). Think Late Bayo Ajia (Kwara).
Think, Yoruba, think. This is (one of) the real issue(s) that calls for sober reflection. Yoruba, think…think:
Oh oh oh oh
Yoruba Ro-o-o-o-nu!
