I first set eyes on Baba ‘You Know’ on the 7th of March, 2008, at 10.30am in the morning. I had just landed back in Nigeria after four long years in the United Kingdom, my first homecoming in what felt like forever. There he stood, towering well over six feet, a gentle giant in the doorway of his home.
I dropped to the ground in the traditional prostration, paying my respects, but he lifted me up almost before my knees touched the floor. I visited him as part of the rituals of my pursuit of his daughter, the delicately slim damsel who would later become my wife.
We talked for six solid hours; I seized the moment to ask about his own adventures in the United Kingdom. When I asked where he lived in the United Kingdom, he said SW11. I lit up and told him that was Clapham Junction, South London, a place I had earlier worked as night security guard whilst studying for my master’s.
He opened up about leaving Colonial Nigeria behind in 1958, landing work at Heathrow when the airport was still a modest affair with just two terminals. By day he studied at a polytechnic in Croydon, and by night he hustled in the heart of London. He painted a vivid picture of those times, how black folks, the Irish, and even dogs were lumped together in the eyes of racist Britons. Certain pubs went so far as to hang signs declaring no blacks, no Irish, no dogs allowed. My mother in law sat nearby, wide eyed, whispering that he rarely ever spoke of those days.
His roots ran deep in the rich soil of the old Ondo province. His father, High Chief Olaniyan, alongside my own grandfather the late Chief Jimoh Akinfolarin and the late High Chief D.R. Akinola, ranked among the wealthiest cocoa merchants of the 1950s and 1960s. Beyond the farms and the trade, they pioneered the first haulage outfit in the region, Ondo Transport Company, with a fleet of trucks hauling cocoa beans all the way to Lagos for shipment abroad.
When I married his daughter, it felt like the closing of a century old circle, reuniting the Akinfolarins and the Olaniyans. Their bond stretched back over a hundred years, forged in the fires of friendship and business between my grandfather and his father.
I will carry his wisdom with me always, especially the counsel he gave during one of my darkest hours. After I lost my job, he kept me on the phone for a full ninety two minutes. He laid bare his own missteps when he walked away from steady paychecks and urged me never to repeat them. He warned that my wife would test my patience time and again, but to let it roll off. Women, he said, run on emotion more than logic, and a man should know that.
Inspired, I turned my back on the nine to five grind for good. I even let my UK Indefinite Leave to Remain gather dust, choosing instead to hustle here in Nigeria. Friends called me crazy. People whispered about spells and bad juju. To top it off, I dove into ventures that raised eyebrows, businesses far from the glittering path most admired.
For eight weeks I camped out in Ondo town, testing the waters with greenhouse farming powered by smart tech. Baba ‘You Know’ would come to the site two or three times a week in his car, just to cheer me up. Ignore the naysayers, he would say, pour your heart into the dream. He had a passion for farming as he grew up in a cocoa farm.
He could not string together a sentence without slipping in that signature ‘You Know’, a habit picked up from the Brits he rubbed shoulders with back in the day.
Every month I travel to Ondo to visit my parents, and I always carve out time for him and his wife. Just last Saturday we sat together for five hours, lost in talk of politics, the economy, and the great exodus called ‘japa’. Like so many who chased opportunities in the UK during the fifties and sixties. He never liked the United Kingdom and believed that if you are not too careful; your life may be messed up living there.
In that final visit, I pulled out my phone to show him photos of the story building I had just acquired in Ibadan, Oyo state, four flats and six stores ripe for transformation into a warehouse. His face broke into a wide grin as he recalled my leaner days. Speaking in Ondo dialect, he praised my tenacity, how I had drawn his daughter even closer to him and her mother. I promised him I was pushing hard to hang up my boots by 55 years. Little did I know the clock was ticking on our last shared moments.
He was no religious fanatic, when it came to faith, his heart wide open to all paths. He rejoiced with Christians at Christmas, broke fast with Muslims during Eid, and embraced every tradition with equal warmth. Come Eid Kabir, he was often among the first to call at my father’s home, bearing greetings and goodwill.
If there is really an afterlife, Baba, please say me well to my grandparents and loved ones who have passed. Tell them I am carrying the torch.
Baba ‘You Know’, Odi gba ooo, Odi gbose!