Adedibu, Half of Ibadanland, the man is no more

Is it really dead?

Ten years ago, when I was informed that the despot General Sani Abacha had died, I was walking off Tottenham Court Road into Goodge Street, the street itself looking for a place to sit down because the story was unbelievable.

I also asked for the meat left behind to be slapped with the best side of a shovel just to be sure that he had really departed.

Earlier in this evening, I caught a whiff of news that Alhaji Lamidi Akanbi Ariyibi Adedibu, half of Ibadanland that the uninitiated erroneously describes as one person had kicked the bucket but I was not sure the cat had exhausted its nine lives and did not have a joker life to spare – well, it would appear he had used them all up.

The legacy of works reviled

Probably all that can be written about Alhaji Adedibu has been written that speak no good of a man so bad that the mourning of his demise unleashed thugs on the streets of Ibadan – the evil men do does live after them.

But like a beach whale, the evil he unleashed in Ibadanland shall slowly have live ebb out of it till he becomes part of the unpalatable history of Yorubaland.

Once again, there may be many who would not speak evil of the dead, they should not at the same time speak lies of this man, there was no reason to revere him apart from the perversity of the patriarchy of old age, but that is Nigeria..

He was an unconscionable menace, an executive hoodlum with the basest intents and a thorn in the sides of everything that tried to rise as progress in Yoruba politics.

Gone and well gone

At the death of Chief A. M. A. Akinloye last year, a man whose legacy includes nurturing people of Adedibu’s ilk it would appear the only notoriety they had not gained was that of immortality.

The man shall be committed to earth tomorrow, as a Muslim, on the 15^th anniversary of the June 12^th nullification of democratic results debacle; we might well begin to rid ourselves of those whose presence has haunted Nigerian for decades, who in death shall have gone forever.

However, I write this to bury Alhaji Adedibu not to praise him, but he would only be so well eulogised in lyrics of the musician (Alhaji Odolaiye Aremu) who praised him years ago – he summed up the man in words I cannot better.

The tribute

Adedibu, half of Ibadanland that the uninitiated erroneously describes as one person

Death that taunts before it strikes

Wicked man per excellence

The son of a witch who buys on credit and still demands a bargain

The man who deliberately harms and yet commiserates with his victim

The man who owes you and you dare not ask to be repaid

The heir rejects his inheritance, Adedibu appropriates it

Akanbi who demands two pence from a man with only two and a half pence

Adedibu went to the Ibadan city centre and came back with several chickens

He did not buy them (the chickens),

He did not steal them (the chickens),

And nobody gave them (the chickens) to him as gifts,

The chickens just ran into a monumental calamity!