Sixty diamond rings for Sayo Alagbe
Adewuyi ADEGBITE
Adegbite is an historian, author, columnist and public affairs commentator
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I congratulate a childhood friend, colleague and brother on his attainment of 60 years of age. How time flies? I can remember those days at Baptist Secondary Modern School Ahoyaya Ogbomoso in the late 1970s, in modern One K with other colleagues like Akin Odebunmi (erudite professor), Ayinde Akintunde, permanent secretary ministry of health, Oyo state, Prince Akeem Bello, Adenrele Adegbite, Soji Ayoade, Olawuwo Ayegboyin, Peju Amao, Ayinde Akintola, Lasun Ofifi, and so many I could not remember now, how we played ball, crawled under the fence to enter the school after lateness, walked to school through a narrow path across the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary to reach Odo Koto then to the school. Gone are the days when seminary was a beautiful place, very sacred with few people seen but the children of the white lecturers picking fruits or riding bicycles around the expansive compound. The school was not fenced as we have it today, people were free to transverse the land but without injury to the school properties o, you could pick a fruit that had fallen but plucking one was forbidden, unless, Alsatian dogs would give you a hot chase. As a childhood friend and colleague of 45 years of unbroken relationship, I can say unequivocally that all has not been a bed of roses, nonetheless through the dint of hard work, endurance, tenacity of purpose and uncommon determination, you have weathered the storm to make a meaning out of your life in the fields of broadcasting, acting, authorship, politics and as a culture exponent. Through these, you were never in the midst of ordinary men but in the midst of movers and shakers, men of timber and calibre in the society. In a saner clime you could have been a blessing in your various fields to your mother land in her quest for development but here we are in the midst of opportunists dressed in the garb of patriots, charlatans and men of shady characters. In the midst of such, an upright man or woman hardly finds it difficult to make it to the top. Nevertheless, the great Zik of Africa, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe said that “if you cannot be found on the top, make sure you’re not found within the scratches.” This is your story, Sayo Alagbe.
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Factually, you had your own share of life vicissitudes, but you get going through uncommon determination, unbending courage and spartan self discipline. As friends, no doubt, we had periods of disagreement over sundry issues and got over them. I will be dishonest if I had said that we have never had such periods but as the Avatar and a revolutionary, Fidel Castro said in a letter to Brother Louis Conte from prison in 1953, “when men carry the same idea within themselves, nothing can separate them, not the wall of a jail or the sod of a cemetery, for the same idea, the same dignity and the same spirit sustain them all.” As you age gracefully, I put you in the care of the Lord, the giver and sustainer of life. Long life and prosperity.
