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Men like him do not
die, I insist. To live in the hearts of those who love you, they say,
is not to die. And to be fortunate enough to enjoy, post-demise, a
perpetuation of the conditions that sustained your earthly dominion, is
never to die.

In Adedibu’s case, what, are these ‘conditions’?

Poverty, for one –
the kind of poverty that made it possible for a man to become a
near-deity simply by feeding hundreds of people every day, with –
amala! Yes, amala, alongside its for-better-for-worse consort, gbegiri.
It was said that it cost Adedibu half a million naira a day, to
discharge this responsibility; this passionate commitment to the
banishment of widespread hunger. Why teach a man to fish when you can
teach him how amala goes with fish?

At half a million
naira a day, we are talking of a mere two hundred million naira every
year. (Add a little more to cover the cash handouts for which Adedibu
was famous). The calculators must be busy in Ibadan, as claimants to
the Lamidi Adedibu throne finalise their budgets for 2011. (How much, I
ask, is three, or even four hundred million naira, in these times when
ordinary deputy directors in the Federal Civil Service have twice as
much sitting idly in their personal bank accounts?) Closely following
poverty is politics. As long as elections need to be secured, and votes
captured with minimal opposition, there will be vacancies for more
Adedibus. As long as INEC’s data-capture machines (six of which were
“installed” in Adedibu’s Molete compound during the 2007 elections)
retain their hunger for invented and magically conjured votes, Adedibu
cannot just die like that.

And then there is
the media. Whatever else might be said and debated about Adedibu, that
he sold newspapers is not a point of controversy. Adedibu was the
quintessential journalist’s delight. If you looked at it in a
particular way, you might be justified to say that a part of the
Adedibu myth was engineered in newsrooms across the country.

The weekend papers
especially loved him No one answered journalists’ questions like Baba
Adedibu. He said it as he felt and saw it. Prophet, warlord, historian,
king, entertainer, political strategist, and sound-bite expert rolled
into one, he was the kind of man you never wanted to stop listening to.
For him, battles were not to be cowardly fought behind closed doors;
anger was never to be mellowed into conspiratorial whispering.

During the Ladoja
days he openly admitted to hijacking government vehicles and attacking
government property, and he didn’t mince words in speaking of his
entitlement to a generous chunk of the monthly allocation of Oyo State.

Our newspapers are
certainly not the only ones missing Adedibu. Even you and I, ordinary
amala-or-akpu-or-tuwo-loving citizens ever in need of swashbuckling
narratives to make up for the quiet desperation of our lives, miss him
too. Remember that his disciples were mostly ordinary people: fathers,
husbands, wives, mothers, children, students (pupils even), traders,
civil servants, bus drivers, and lots more.

For some time their
faces must have been turned to the skies, hands waving bye-bye to the
“Master” perhaps even disbelieving his “demise.” But not for long: life
has had to go on. Hunger has no pause button; the recurring cycle of
school fees will search in vain for a ‘slow-motion’ option. And now
elections are here again, and political opponents’ campaign billboards
wait patiently to be turned into firewood. Who will assuage the hunger,
pay the fees, give orders to hack down the billboards?

There are therefore
vacancies, in Oyo State, even in the entire South West, for new and
improved Adedibus; men (and maybe women) of unflagging commitment to
the ideals and principles that Baba left behind. They are needed to
ensure that the region is not left, ahem, at the mercy of rapscallions
(a more interesting synonym of ‘rascal’).

In April we will
witness the first governorship election in Oyo State since the demise
of the great man, godfather of godfathers, one to whom even Emperor
Olusegun Obasanjo paid obeisance. Adedibu, magic-fingered midwife who
never failed to ‘deliver’ electoral victory. Only then, April that is,
will we know if Adedibu is truly dead and gone to his grave.

In the meantime, we
have a special service announcement – a campaign message – from the
PDP, where Adedibu served out his final years faithfully as “garrison
commander.” Governorship flag bearer Adebayo Alao-Akala, seeking an
unprecedented second-term (no Oyo governor has ever got a second term)
wants us to think of oyato-ism, that his special brand of governance
(to whose creation Adedibu contributed significantly), and “Imagine
Another Four Years!” I think I can. Can you?

This is a modified version of an article originally written and published in 2008, as “Adedibu is not dead”