In 1969, legendary Yoruba Sakara music lord, Yusuff Olatunji, serenaded and celebrated the sterling qualities of the Seriki of Egbaland, Chief Abdul-Wahab Amódemájá, who held an Egba high-ranking military-derived civil title. In his Volume 3 album entitled Amódemájá, using a twin engine of dense metaphor and vivid imagery, Olatunji advocated for the place of good people as templates of a good society. The man he called “Abudu Amodemaja” was his prime example. He sang: “If you behold some people gaily and expensively dressed, sitting in royal poise on elegantly embroidered horses, unbeknownst to an enraptured world taken in by these adornments, these men are merely decorated swindlers.” Olatunji’s raw Yoruba rendering was: “B’óo r’òmo elòmíìn l’órí esin, jìbìtì l’ó fi ñs’èsó.” The paradox of esin (horse) and èsó (adornments), set against jìbìtì (swindle), was a potent literary tool this Sakara legend deployed to teach the virtues of the noble citizen.
Amódemájá and Nigeria’s political paradise of lies, By Festus Adedayo
