Ifa-O-Se – Oran-Ti: The Titan and The Jesters, By Oloroogun Sola Ajisafe

On October 22, some days after Baba embarked on his heavenly journey, I wrote an article titled “The Last AWOROSASA: End Of The Old Stock.” In that piece, I discussed Pa Reuben Famuyide Fasoranti and what he represented as a vestige of the expired golden generation. I received commendation, even from those who once called me a hack writer. That is not the business of today.

Today is about how human beings are calibrated. It is about virtue, and about men who wear virtue like borrowed agbada.

Pa Famuyide Fasoranti lived a life of impact and exemplary status. Not because he was a famed Anglican, nor merely because he was a teacher of the highest order. Perhaps it was the home training he received from his parents, steeped in Yoruba moral philosophy.

At this juncture, let me hazard a lexical guess of the name of Baba. To me, reading Fasoranti parses as IFA – O – SE – ORAN – TI. “Ifa has found the solution to the matter.” Famuyide parses as IFA – MU – YI – DE. “Ifa brought this.” or ” Ifa has brought honour”. The two names announce a rootage in Ifa epistemology, in a cosmology where character is destiny. He may have taken “Reuben” later, but the Yoruba names tell the truer story.

Yet, a name alone does not make a man. It is iwa, character, training, and personal discipline that strikes a man and forms him. And Baba’s iwa was forged in three crucibles. First, the Yoruba ethos of Omoluwabi that is, integrity, humility, truthfulness, and service without noise. Second, the progressive training of the Action Group and Unity Party of Nigeria ( UPN) of discipline, welfarism, and the conviction that  politics must serve the common man before it serves the politician. Third, the vocation of the teacher, of patience, of pedagogy, and the belief that a nation is built first in classrooms before it is built in assemblies.

A glance at Baba Ajasin’s record points to who Baba Fasoranti was. As Commissioner for Finance in that administration, the government remains a reference point for prudence in the use of State resources. It was Action Group welfarism in practice that is, free education, free health, infrastructure with purpose.

On a personal level, his refusal to run for governor when he was offered a free zone was almost mythic. It was renunciation in an age of desperation. As leader of Afenifere, he embodied the organization’s founding ethos. Not rabble-rousing, but mediation. Not self-aggrandizement, but consensus.

His habit of settling disputes without raising his voice was itself a political philosophy to the effect that, authority does not need to shout. This is the Yoruba progressive tradition. From Awolowo to Ajasin to Adefarati, it was ideology before appetite. It was iwa before office.

What do we find today? Politicians of every hue and Nigerian elites have turned Baba’s house into a pilgrimage site. They have turned his death into an opportunity to return to the limelight. They speak in flowery adjectives about “progressive values,” “integrity,” and “service.” Ask them to behave a little like Fasoranti and they will say, “That was the period of Oduduwa.”

Let me honest. By jesters I do not mean men who dress like Baba Sala, Papi Luwe or Baba Suwe. I do not mean those who talk like stand-up comedians like Ali Baba, Akpororo or their ilks.

The jesters I speak of are far more dangerous, because they wear agbada and carry titles. The one that go about with designer suits or well decked traditional beads, or ones with long cassocks and collars with big cruxifics on their necks. Their conduct at every opportunity is opportunistic and disgraceful. They say one thing in public and do another in private. They project virtue and represent vice. They are a people without scruples, calibrated only to the direction of power and the smell of filthy lucre. They are always at the forefront of every committee where popular issues would be decided and where money would be expended. At the very least they should show some modicum of personal self-respect in their public conduct. But they do not.

And now, Fasoranti’s passing has become their cover page to public acceptance. They queue at his house, speak his name with honeyed tongues, and use his death as a ladder to relevance, while in their lives they embody everything he stood against. That is not honour. That is desecration.

Let them step out of hypocrisy and do what Fasoranti did in his lifetime. Can they refuse power when it is offered? Can they serve without stealing? Can they settle a dispute without calling the press? Can they build a school instead of buying a convoy? Many of those now celebrating his sterling qualities would not measure up to what he represents. Their lives are rudderless. Their politics is penkelemesi , of a confusion compounded by ignorance and arrogance. The Action Group stood for ideas. Afenifere stood for consensus. Yoruba ethos stood for omoluwabi. Fasoranti lived all three. The current elite stand for nothing except proximity to the treasury.

In all of this, while Fasoranti remains the Titan. A man in whom Ifa truly found a solution, those politicians and their ilks who have come to show off are “The Jesters”. They are court jesters in the palace of history. They will clap, they will cry, they will take pictures. But they will not emulate. And history, like Ifa, remembers. It remembers the Titan. And it remembers the Jesters.

May the soul of Baba continue to rest in the right place where his ancestors welcome him home into a blaze of glory and bliss.

_Afenifere…Ire Owo
Afenifere…Ire Omo
Afenifere…Ire Alafia
Oodua a gbe wa ooo_

Oloroogun Sola Ajisafe writes from Akure, Ondo State