Ki le leyi o… Eja osan (What is this? It’s fish . . .)

In my time as a proper Lagos school boy, the legendary musician, King Sunny Ade (KSA), and the unmistakable Sir Shina Peters (SSP), of the wish you soonest recofer fame, used to belt out heavily percussion-infused dance numbers. A chorus from one of the very popular owambe (party) songs of KSA was Ki le le yi o (what is this) … eja osan (it’s fish) . . . po ko ya ka ta (it’s scattered all over the place). For those of you who might want to contest my putting KSA and SSA as competitors, I do that for a reason.

This was a time SSP was on top of his game in the area of Afro juju music (one that had the impact of pop music). KSA was already the master guitarist that he still is. Every part of Lagos, especially the Isale Eko (Nigeria’s own Ibiza and Ayia Napa put together), was abuzz with parties where energetic dances were the order of the day and needed an equal dose of energetic music to make them come alive. It is in this context that King Sunny Ade, arguably one of Nigeria’s top three finest guitarists, moved to up the tempo of his music in the 1980s and early 1990s (away from the traditional competitive arena he shared with Ebenezer Obey’s melodious ‘inter-reformers’ tempo) to square up with pleasant commotion SSP’s music was causing on the streets that the owambes (parties) had taken over.

If I am sounding Greek to some indulgees, they should take it easy on me as my hands are up in the air holding out my white flag for peace. For if the streets that you are familiar with today are no longer used for staging those eclectic but highly energetic Yoruba parties, you can blame it on insecurity, an economic downturn that has wiped out the middle class and the mind switch against hedonism! You can be sure that were that era to suddenly make a return, there would be bloodbath on the streets that hoodlums and terrorists have taken over; streets that have become harvest grounds for their activities. But make no mistake about it, folks, in the ’80s and very early ’90s (my time) it was great fun to watch people, men and women, boys and girls, display so much energy on the dance streets (not floor, I beg your pardon) dancing to the music of King Sunny Ade as he belted out the chorus, ma fo wo kan be yen… ijo ni ko ba mi jo o (don’t touch that place, it’s dance I asked you to dance with me).

Those were the days when we thought, with our young untainted teenage minds, that Nigeria was good, would remain good, and would continue to be good. We thought that the country had sincere and purposeful leaders, or that it would have sincere leaders who would improve on what we had and make the country better. We used to think then that life was easy and that it was going to be even easier; that our leaders would do the right things. I and others like me must have been carried away by our ignorance of how things really worked in politics and government, or better still, how the minds of those in power in the country worked. We heard about corruption, but it did not register with us because it probably wasn’t at the scale it is today; or because in spite of it, there was still some sanity. We heard about bad leaders, but we thought that there would be a few who would come up and make a difference when they found themselves in position of power. We never knew you could have, successively, over decades, generations of bad leaders who would come and go without caring about making sure they brought positive and meaningful changes to the lives of people and the country.

The Yoruba owambes (parties) of the ’80s and very early ’90s that I was familiar with still happens, but they are now of a different kind. King Sunny Ade and Sir Shina Peters are no longer in competition. Theirs is frozen in time. For us it is nostalgia and memories we carry with us of a period when the streets of Lagos, Ibadan, Abeokuta, Ijebu-Ode and further afield in the country, echoing with music, with people wriggling their waists to the rhythm, offered hope that this society would permanently be hedonistic. Sorry if you didn’t see that era and you are wondering what I am talking about. It’s not my fault mate. Like Prince (the diminutive musician that Michael Jackson was reportedly very jealous of at some point in his career) would say, “Blame it on the rain”.

Yes, we now live in a country rained on by terror and mismanagement. Hoodlums and terrorists make life difficult for all of us; and politicians, cowboy businessmen and women mismanage our resources and thereby make life even more difficult. So it is not out of place to bring back the chorus of King Sunny Ade asking that all important question: Ki le le yi o (what is this o) in reference to the jaundiced decision of the Speaker of the Oyo State (the amala state) House of Assembly (a woman indeed) to gather together 32 wives of the members of the House along with some hangers-on and bundle them to a London Hotel for what they called a “Husband Support Programme” where the women were to “learn how to cook for their husbands”! Can anything beat this in how we have truly lost it in this country? Is it not a clear example of how some of our politicians are mismanaging the brains that God has given them to manage the resources of our country? How much vainer can anyone get?

And for indulgees that always like to challenge me whenever I say this country is a huge joke and a theatre of comedy, bigger than any “Night At the Apollo” there can ever be, does this not prove me right that we are on a permanent stand-up joke from which we do not know when we shall be asked to sit down? I am just sitting here and laughing out loud (lol) and laughing in loud (lil) at the same time. This is because I can hear the voices of a few of the uneducated wives of some legislators among the lot asking “Ki le le yi? Amala nikan ni mo mo se o” (What is this? Amala is the only food I know how to prepare) when they found themselves in this state-of-the-art kitchen built to cook European dishes!

I can even hear another one complaining that this exercise was a bloody waste of time for her: “Baba Rashidat kii je awon jati-jati yi o” (Baba Rashidat – her legislator husband – does not eat this kind of nonsense). To imagine that the chef-de-mission is Mrs Monsurat Sunmonu, the Speaker of the House, who, by the way, did not take her husband on the trip (perhaps she didn’t think the man should learn a thing or two about how to prepare full English breakfast for a hardworking speaker who always comes home late from state duties), shows how bereft of ideas some politicians can be. Almost close to what that governor, seeing the enormous challenges in front of him (my mistake: he probably didn’t and doesn’t see them), chooses to, as one of his most important decisions, appoint the president’s wife as a permanent secretary! Do we still say we are not in trouble in this country? Ma fo wo kan be yen, ijo ni ko ba mi jo o… Daddy!

By: PHILLIP ISAKPA