Oh Dele, Christmas day is coming fifteen days earlier on December 10th. His present ordeal represents a climax of the crucial role he has played in the political firmament of Nigeria. He will be rapturously celebrated on that day.
The first time I encountered him was as the lawyer who perfected the title of a land I bought twenty-five years ago. I never knew he was far bigger than that occupation.
The first notion I have of him as a public intellectual was a message I received from him while I was at the University of Oxford in 2020.
He wanted my permission to use a column (I had written on the passage of the erstwhile Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari in his book, “Don’t die in their war”. I, of course, had no reservations whatsoever in granting his request.
When I returned to Nigeria and heard him speak on the cable TV network, I realised we have another giant in our vocation of public intellectualism. I sought him out and we became brothers. I subsequently recruited him for the role of spokesperson, Peter Obi presidential campaign.
The uniqueness of Dele does not merely lie in his intellectual flair. He shoots from the hip and takes no prisoners.
Chief Afe Babalola is my uncle from my mother’s side. In the thick of the violation of the Yoruba territories by rogue Fulani militia, I got President Olusegun Obasanjo and Professor Wole Soyinka to sponsor a Yoruba political summit.
In our search for a credible Yoruba man of sufficient stature, we easily resolved on Chief Babalola as the convener.
Of all his outstanding attributes, the one I admire most is his unwavering commitment to constitutional reforms with the specific objective of the restoration of federalism.
Hardly a month passes without Babalola advocating for this Nigerian life saver (true federalism) in his regular public interventions.
He is one of Nigeria’s biggest role models in the legal profession, education, community development leader and as an investor.
As my father’s pupil in the senior standard school in the forties, he did so well in an English language test that my dad scored him eleven over ten.
Babalola once told me a tragic experience he would never forget (a first-hand experience of how destitute Nigerians had become).
About 10 illiterate petty traders came to seek his financial support in Ado-Ekiti. He asked them how much they needed to start off. They said N10,000 per person. He said he rushed to the restroom to cry. Ten thousand naira!!!
Dele constantly briefs me on his difficulties with Babalola. When we recently had a ceremony in honour of Professor Jide Osuntokun, we had lined up Chief Babalola as a special guest of honour.
Dele expressed reluctance to attend, drawing my attention to the attack he was certain to receive from the legal luminary and potentially two others who were going to play significant roles.
The first inkling I heard of his plight was from Chief Ayo Adebanjo, whom he was getting set to visit when the storm troopers struck and bundled him into their vehicle en route to Ado-Ekiti.
Predictably, the backlash came thick and fast and in torrents. It is a public relations disaster for my Uncle (Babalola), the Nigerian police force, and the judiciary. Given our contemporary experience with these dysfunctional institutions, this is not the company Babalola should be in active connivance. This is not the resplendent image we have of him.
To the contrary, this is Dele’s finest hour as the nation rose as one to canonize him as the embodiment of resistance to all that is wrong with Nigeria in this season.
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OSUNTOKUN, journalist, essayist and political thinker, is former Director-General of Peter Obi/Datti Ahmed Campaign Organisation.
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