The Metamorphosis of ‘Brother Jero’ from Kongi to Presido!

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You need to see him at the old Race Course, Ibadan, (now Adamasingba Stadium), the setting of a scene in the filming of KONGI’S HARVEST, he was a fierce looking character, Kongi, the fictional dictator of an imaginary African country. 

Was I there?

Yes, I was, though a very young ‘Soyinkaist’ right from the cradle of creation.  Ibadan has always been my second home where I ‘schooled’ and worked and did OLOMOKUNRIN show as an adventurous adolescent.

Hmm…

Hmm na ni. Though not a Grade A film as such by today’s Hollywood standard, Soyinka’s performance in ‘owning’ the character was 5-star. Kongi, thereafter became his “middle name” though I doubt if anybody called him so to his face.

Because of his exploits in various spheres in life, social, academic, literary and political, the Kongi man qualifies to be whatever he wants to be. The Nobel Prize is the ultimate. 

Yes, the ultimate for the Iroko and Obeche of Literature worldwide.

If art truly imitates life, will Kongi like to be President one day? The question was not put to him  directly in a BBC-Yoruba interview  which supposedly must have gone viral on the social media , but in a light hearted chat over the cancellation recently of his visa to  the Trump USA he said, in future,  if the Consular section of the embassy needs him they  know where to find him  though they too will have to apply for visa in order to see him in his own Republic.

Republic? And which Republic is that?

The Republic of IJEGBA, he said.  WOW! KONGI’s sense of humour almost made the interviewer miss her lines in the follow-up question, a journalist’s delight to close in on the interviewee.

But that was Vintage Kongi! Or is it IJEGBA Presido?!

If you so desire to know more about the old man’s ancestry and his IJEGBA heritage you may want to sink your teeth into his trilogy: AKE, The Years of Childhood ( where he nicknamed his mom ‘’Wild Christian”), ISARA(pronounced ISHARA), A Voyage Around Essay (nickname for  his father) and IBADAN, The Penkelemes Years (years of peculiar mess in Nigeria’s political history especially in the then “Wild Wild West” with Ibadan,  the Oluyole city, as the epicenter of ‘amala politics’ served hot with “abula” violence.

To read the three is to get a 3D assay into the quintessential man nicknamed, himself, by his protégés as KONGI. You will be glad you did.