TRIBUTE: Ayo, Omo Olukotun, Odabo! By Prof. Olu Obafemi

Ayo, Omo Olukotun, Odabo!
Orere tigbo
Oba re re
Aghoin bo*

No matter for how long
The Minstrel of the forest
Roams and roams,
Return he must
To the warmth of the thicket.

Orere tigbo.
Ayo,
You have crossed numerous brooks,
Bare-footed, you have allowed the weeds,
Blown by the gentle morning wind
And the dawn- dew at
The streamlets of Jege
Of your Yagba”** homestead,
Lift you unto the seductive embrace
Of the wisdom- wild- world.
From your humble descent
You have climbed the rooftops of knowledge
Dining and wining in discourse
With the Globe’s brightest and shinniest:
From the ECWA choirs and melodious pipe-organs of Cherubic Titcombe of Egbe***
You have sauntered, armed with brain power,
Through the loftier high cultural crevices of Ile-Ife**
Its watery presences, alluring fauna, seductive flora: it’s values and ethos
Powered you into the brave new world of learning and daring,
Breeding and breezing to quaint know-how.

At Ife,
You had been at the forefront, leading
When the sea- waves of youthful anger run the streets in protest against unruly rule.

You have risen beyond tempests and distempered times
And the disturbed peace at moonlight of provoked youth rage;
You have stood firm at the head
When the sun rose beyond the lightening scourge of angry horizons
burst the seams of the azure skies
Your gentle, unruffled mien calmed the nerves
Winning popular acclaim.

But at the homestead we wait,
Now in vain, alas
As you have flown
Beyond the Okun firmaments and the wide, wild world that took you from us.
You have gone beyond the reach
Of the throng of admiring egg- headed cohorts and The mammoth crowd of votives and acolytes,
Lined up in final salute with a wreath of swan songs to a departing hero.

Ayo,
Boundless bundle of joy and bliss,
The infinite genial genius of a generation,
The flowing fount of cerebral lyrics
And the dying echoes of tomorrow’s lullaby.

Okun, Omo eleja**
Who sat down on today’ stool
And sighted the fortunes of decades ahead.

So then, Ayo,
Till the gods permit,
Tomorrow, when the new dawn will break
And the wandering Minstrel,
Shall climb beyond the rafters,
Joining the immortals, Singing the Swan song– tetebiare–***
Until the arrivals of pithless tomorrow.

Orere tigbo,
But it is unlikely that our sage in the Grove
Shall tread this rough paths again.
It is doubtful that this adventurer into the forest of knowledge
Shall return to these shores again.

Goodnight then, Okun, son of Jege, wrest by the world; hero of the Globe.
Footnote.
* A hunter/adventurer song in the Grove who must always return with huge kills. Sourced from the archives of the Okun Yoruba, Kogi State, where Ayo hails from.
** Jege is the little Yagba town where Ayo was born.
* Titcombe College Egbe in Kogi State where Ayo earned his Secondary School education found by the ECWA sectarian avatars.

** Ile-Ife, where University of Ife situate, where Ayo led the Student union Government memorably.
*** Omo Eleja. Son of great ancestry and visionary.