The Broadcast Industry, Movie Industry and the society generally was thrown into a deep mourning mood since the death of Pa Adebayo Faleti, one of the brilliant brains Nigeria has ever produced; his death was announced a few weeks back. He died at age 86 on 23rd July, 2017, after a brief illness. He will be missed for his talent in all the sectors he touched. He was a seasoned journalist, poet, broadcaster, writer and actor. No wonder condolences have been pouring in from every corner, to sympathize with his family and to celebrate his virtues as an accomplished man.
Alagba Adebayo Ajibade Faleti was born some 86 years ago in Oyo town, to the family of Late Pa Joseph Awotunde Faleti and Princess Mariam Durowade Faleti. He was born a talented child and this has made him successful in all his endeavors in life. Little Bayo Faleti who used to listen to stories and Yoruba poets from his late father grew to be a Colossus, mentor and important personality to reckon with in and out of Nigeria. From being a sign-writing artist: to a seasoned lecturer at the university and an accomplished journalist, who promoted Yoruba Culture & Tradition in both print and electronic Media.
His experience in journalism started at the Nigeria Tribune then later to the then WNTC/WNBS (Western Nigeria Television Corporation / Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service) now Nigeria Television Authority (NTA), where he was among the pioneer staff of the establishment and he was appointed as Film Editor/Liberian, but due to his hard work and creativity, he rose to become a producer of Drama and Cultural programs.
He went to St. Joseph Catholic School, Oyo and Ibadan Boys High School. He bagged Bachelor of Art degree in English in 1968, and then proceeded to the Radio Netherlands Training Centre, Hilversum and Holland in 1971 where he obtained Certificate in Television Production. He also attended University of Dakar, Senegal in 1966 for Certificate of Proficiency in French Language and Civilization. This illustrious playwright, poet and film producer contributed immensely to the development of Nigerian movie industry and as well featured in several films which are too many to be mentioned. He produced films like ‘Basorun Gaa’; ‘Won Ro Pe Were Ni’: ‘Fere-Bi-Ekun’ and ‘Sawo Sogberi’ and several others which are not his work.
He had to his credit several Awards and recognition above all, was his conferment of National Honor Award, Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON), presented to him by the late president Umaru Musa Yar’adua in 2008. He authored many books like ‘Maagun’ (Thunderbolt); ‘Ogun Awitele’: ‘Basorun Gaa and ‘The Freedom Fight’, with hundreds still unpublished.
Alaagba Adebayo Faleti was the one who translated Nigerian National Anthem into Yoruba which is today being used in Lagos, Osun, Ekiti and Ondo states.
City People’s Correspondent, Dare Adeniran engaged the late veteran actor sometimes in 2011, few days after his 80th birthday, in an encounter planned to be brief but this reporter ended up spending more than two hours with him.
The interview held at his resident Olororo Bus/Stop, Ojoo area of Ibadan and it was a quite revealing session with the walking Encyclopedia; Alagba Adebayo Faleti, as he speaks exclusively on his life at 80; his acting and journalism career, plus why he was not going to retire from acting and so many other interesting issues. Enjoy it.
You recently clocked 80 and it was been celebrated all over the town. What was going through your mind in the morning of that day?
What do you think should be going through my mind?’’ I am nearly my grave and every time I grow older I must remember that, life is a journey and so many people wither by the side’’. So when I grow old still talking, walking without my eyes blind and my teeth are not coming off and you can see how I am talking like a talkative. Didn’t you bless God for me? when we grow older we must think of the hereafter.
The stages of your life are kind of interesting, from being a journalist to a lecturer then an actor. What really gave birth to all these?
I will say it was circumstance, opportunity that came each time or sometimes you may simply wish to become something. As for journalism which is interesting, I was contributing pieces to the Nigerian Tribune in Ibadan here when Banji Akande was the editor. I was writing various cultural matters of the Yorubas and cultural matters generally. I could remember I was writing a series on witchcraft which was serialized. Eventually, I wanted to become a full time journalist instead of being a columnist or contributor, then I just left secondary school and I was in Oyo serving under Oyo Southern District Zone.
So I was bored with the job and I wanted to change my job. I wrote an application to Ibadan and I was invited for an interview. I did the interview I was appointed a reporter at the Nigerian Tribune; that was how I fully joined Tribune. But in the course of that I had also writing an application to the Ministry of Information when they were looking for Cinema Commentator, that was the time of Late Obafemi Awolowo and while still working for Tribune as a reporter my appointment letter came from the Ministry of Information, it was called the Ministry of Local Government & Mid-West Affairs then. We went for training there as a Cinema Commentator and we were showing films all over the Western region, distributing government propaganda, information and things like that.
It seems you wanted to touch everything possible then sir?
Maybe I should say this so that you could understand my point very well. When we were young, we liked the idea of becoming civil servant we knew they were there in those days for years and they will wait and wait until they became pensioners. I and a friend vowed that we are not going to work for that long in a place, so we promised to jump here and there and so it was. Within the 3 or 4 years after secondary school I must have taken up to about.......how many jobs?, I was in the council then, from the council I went to Tribune, from Tribune to the Ministry of Information, from there too I wanted to join the Cooperative department. I was jumping about and so was that my friend too, but incidentally something happened when I was working with Nigerian Tribune. I had said that I wanted to join the Cooperative Movement so there was this advertisement about the Nigerian Television when I was in the information service, the advert came and I wrote an application again and that was how I became one of the pioneer staff of Western Nigeria Television (WNTV) now NTA (Nigeria Television Authority) and Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service (WNBS). Well, as it would be. I didn’t know that I was going to stay long in the Television Service because it was not in our intention to stay long on one job, that was for a friend and I. But things went on and on at the television service, the 3 first year came, 4th and that was where I lasted for a long time. So that was how my career kept going up and down, it was from Western Nigeria Television I went to the university then came back there and I was holding different positions. I was appointed as Film Editor/Liberian when the establishment started then. From there I was asked to create Yoruba department which I did from there, I was in the main stream of the Program Department.
I became a Producer of Drama & Cultural programs and that was how my career went.
Does that means your experience as a Drama & Cultural producer at WNTV led you to acting?
You know in those days you had to act in schools at the end of the year, so at the end of the year there was what they called entertainment. You had to practice and rehearse entertainment where they give you pass; as king, trader, husband or anything in school’s drama. They give you recitation/memorizing some poems and things like that. So I used to take part in that and my acting career started that way but at a time when I left the primary school, I came to Ibadan to work and enrolled with a painting artist.
I wanted to become an artist. I was good in drawing in the school too, the man was working in Agbeni. At that time, the vogue was sign writing, you write on big size Lorries ‘’Save Journey, Good Luck’’ and all sorts of silly things and then there were framed glasses they will draw a parrot and write something below like ‘’E ku ori re o!, Ori re ni ti Awo’’ and things like that. And that was what I studied from an Ijebu man, unfortunatly I can’t remember his name any more. I was vast in that too.
Incidentally, this man too was a member of an amateur drama group and he consented to take me to rehearsals and I was going with him so my dramatic interest was growing from that. I finished the apprenticeship of sign-writing and one day my father came to Ibadan to say that I should come to Oyo. He said I should no more stay outside the Oyo town and I feared my father very much, I respected him. He didn’t know where I was living in Ibadan. But one day he woke up and said he was going to look out for me and people, his brothers and cousins were laughing at him that, how do you think you can get him? Do you know where he lives? He said i will get him. So he took a cousin of his and they came to Ibadan.
Meanwhile, I was living at Ita-Ege with a master who was puddle Inspector and he gave me a bicycle, he would go to work where I normally meet him after finishing the domestic work and things like that. I was riding through Gbagi street when I met my father and his cousin, who said he was going to look for me and his cousin was surprised and he said ‘’E’ rolohun’’ see God’s work and that’s how he met me and gave me instruction that I should come back to Oyo to work if i didn’t want to incur his wraths.
That was how I went back to Oyo to work. When I got to Oyo, I established a sign- writing company of mine ‘’Kani Suru Artwoks’’ or something like that in which I was doing what I learnt in Ibadan here. I was the only sign-writer in Oyo then and there too, I established a dramatic society (Oyo Youths Superatics Society). We invited young people and that time too Ogunde was reigning and moving round all the country. I think I could remember that he was the only travelling theatre that I used to know at that time. The amateur drama groups which were formed in town in Ibadan here by various associations were meant to entertain people during holidays in their home towns in Ekiti, Ijebu and other towns like that, because that was how to entertain people during Xmas and Easter. So the people I was working/learning with were people from Ijebu who would take whatever rehearsals they did to their place and entertain their people during important holidays.
They travelled only when there were holidays and some of them were teachers like Ogunmola was a teacher and travelled about when they were on holidays. It was only Ogunde who was a professional theatre practitioner going round the country. So I established this youth society which I solely financed by myself so that will not be any problem if any one actually broke out. That was my fear because if you are running an amateur group and there was a fight each person who contributed will pick up his or her own contribution and leave. So nobody could do that to me because I financed everything we would need without asking anybody to contribute, maybe that was why I was able to actually get them going. Now, there was this advertisement that they wanted a Task Clerk, Court clerk and Teachers e.t.c in the Oyo Native Authority Council, native authorities which are now called councils and I applied.
I was still running my art studio at the same time with the dramatic society group, where members come to the meeting in the evenings where we also rehearse. So I was appointed as a Task Clerk and that really gave me a kind of relive to finance the theatre group even more. Some pupils from the Catholic school which I went, St. Joseph Catholic School Asago, Oyo and from other schools too. We were rehearsing a play which I wrote, called ‘’The end of dictators’’. At that time, you had to title your play in English even if the story was in Yoruba.
What inspired that kind of tittle?
It was just because the title is in line with the story that I wrote. The story was about two friends, Patience and Wisdom (Suuru Ati Ogbon), one of them was a know-all person, a dictator and then you have to think of the attraction your title will give to people so that was attractive; the end of dictator. You want to know who is a dictator and who is non-dictator so everything was going on well suddenly, there was a fight in the group. This was between a man and a woman, somebody has to be somebody’s husband in the story without my knowledge that the boy who was supposed to be the husband in the story was also dating the girl in real life and the girl was not responding well.
There was a big crisis and the boy said he was not going to come to the group anymore because he was been molested by this character. What we did when we cautioned him and he didn’t yield we expelled him from the group. And he said he will show us pepper and he did showed us pepper.
Now, we had rehearsed the play to a good point, we have printed posters. We were going to put the play up at ‘Atiba Hall’ during Easter period and we’ve pasted posters in Oyo, Ilora, iseyin and Ogbomosho we were going to tour the whole places. And there came a big crisis for the Oyo performance because this boy went to the school and told the Catholic Priest that, Faleti was using their girls and boys for adultery because they rehearse at night and all that. You know that will actually infuriated the Catholics and they called all their students during the school time that nobody should be part of Faleti’s plays and the posters had been pasted, the information has been all over the places. I was down casted, but at the next rehearsal the people told me that I should not worry that, they were going to be part of the play despite the warnings from the school authority, that what they are going to do was not to allow pupils from that school to enter the hall, I didn’t know how they were going to do that. To cut the long story short the play was performed in the same hall, the hall was filled, everybody did everything well.
When the Easter ended and the pupil went back to school they were dismissed from school. It does not end there, it would have been easy if they were from poor parents like myself, but they were members of the royal family, most of them. When the father of the present Alaafin was an Alaafin most of them were from his lineage and some of them were his children so you could know the problem I had. Then I was working with the council which the Alaafin was the President of the whole council you should know the level of my problem then. The news was everywhere and it was chaotic and when I reported for work, my boss called me, he was very furious with me and I explained things to him. Fortunately he was well educated; he was the Senior Task Clerk. Then the injunction came that Alaafin would want to see me, but it was not only that he said that he was going to see me alone but with condition that ‘’if the children were not going to be taken back at school then I should be dismissed from work and that I should not sound a single beat of musical thing on drama in Oyo town. So my group will be banned from Oyo town’’, I will be banned from work.
Well, as a young man I don’t know if I could say that I was heady. I said well, am only sorry for the people, but if I was banned from Oyo, Oyo was not the limit of entertainment i will go to some other towns to perform my duties. I think they sent for my father and my father was very lenient with me, he was very indulgent of me. He said what are you going to do now? and I said well, life continues.
Eventually, the children were taken back, I was allowed to continue with my job with an injunction that no school child will take part in the theatre and you know what that meant. Even when schools were taking part no girls were allow to take part except those might have lived in Lagos for some time. We were using young boys who look like girls as girls, we will buy oranges and cosset, put those oranges in cosset for them to wear so they were as girls. We now began a new problem entirely, we were recruiting people who are free and not student and fortunately I started collecting people here and there Carpenters, Goldsmiths; people who were free and I was lucky to get enough so we continue with the theatre until I now decided to go to secondary school, I had not been to secondary school then. But I had already passed out of standard six and I had been a teacher even before going to Ibadan to learn sign-writing. That was the pick of learning then, it wasn’t primary six. Standard 5 was elementary I, standard 6 elementary 2 and that is why when you went to the teachers' training college they said Low elementary and Higher elementary. Elementary classes begins in standard 5, elementary 1, 2 then Higher elementary 1 then higher elementary those were the people they took as headmasters and things like that, if you go to college you spend 2 years then if you wanted to have an HE (Higher Elementary) Certificate you have to spend 4 years.
So that was how my acting career came to be until I went to Ibadan for my high school and I had to wined everything up in Oyo.
Can you remember some of your group member then that are still active maybe in the theatre or other field?
Not many, but I know that some of them are still alive some had died. There are some of my early members who are still very much around. If you are going to Oyo any day there is a petrol station at the point of entry into the town ‘’Bisimilah filling station’’ Alhaji Wahab Alao-Yussuf a.k.a Bisimilah, yes! The proprietor was a member of my group, am happy he’s still alive and one the prosperous petrol dealer in Oyo today.
You have been around in the movie industry for a while, even with your age you are still very relevant in the industry. What is your staying power sir?
It is because I have not dropped out of the profession. I still keep myself abreast even at a time I was a producer, I could not be acting because of the professional ethics. When I was in touch with film productions in England I was reading magazines to know what the latest is.
"A man retires from his profession when he is dead." Is a doctor not a doctor until he died no matter how old is he? So also a lawyer remains lawyer for as long as he lives even if he’s not going to court again people will come to him to seek for advice. So I think that is what also happening in the acts. ‘’I will continue acting until I am no more’’.
One is also faced with challenges as long as you can confront the challenges you are the happy man. Not long ago, I was commissioned to write a screen play of ‘Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irumole’, it was a big challenge to me I know how much time and days I spent on it to re-work out the actual aspect of ‘Ogboju Ode’ as different from reading it from the books. ‘’Like an American author says, that a good book is not writing but re-written’’.
So how did the lecturing aspect evolve since you are familiar with T.V?
When I was in the Television service, there was what we called the extra moral classes of the University of Ibadan (U.I) and I was appointed among 3 lecturers of Yoruba advance studies then. Baba Alawiye was one, Baba Ayorinde who was a staff of Ministry of Agriculture was also part of us and Baba Alawiye was an educationist, he must have retired then, so I was the kid lecturer among them. Extra- Moral classes would not be held at university proper, it must be held outside the university and it was scheduled to take place in some particular days of the week over a period, that’s where I started as a lecturer.
Then after that time, even at that time I had not entered for a degree course then, but I knew the language and the culture.
Having not being to the university then, how were you able to cope as a lecturer?
I told you I was writing columns for newspapers and things on Yoruba culture, broadcasting materials on Yoruba culture and people noticed all these things otherwise I wouldn’t have been invited. I was invited among big names that actually didn’t go to the university too. Baba Ayorinde was never went to a university, but vast in the cultures of Yoruba as well Baba Alawiye. He was in England I mean he did a lot of courses on education and things like that and had writing Iwe-Alawiye part 1,2,3 etc.
Even at that time too, I must have written one or two books or so, appointing me as a lecturer then was not based on the fact that I have to go to university it was because I knew the language and the culture. It was matter of love and talent. I lived my early life in the village and my father was a good cultural man who taught quite a lot of things. It might be a former learning or so, but from time to time my father was in the village and would tell me stories and to others too. But I picked them up, I was vast in quite a few things at that time in Yoruba traditional poetry, Yoruba music, Yoruba culture and part of Yoruba history all either read out or taught me by my father. I think that was my qualification as I could see it not because I was in the university.
You must also understand that, then there were not many universities around and even Ibadan University was just growing. So they were trying to reach out to all materials that could help the growth of the university that was how I came in.
With your deep knowledge of Yoruba culture and tradition, does being a Yoruba Culture custodian or having knowledge of tradition make one diabolic or fetish?
What is being diabolic?. What is that? Can you please explain that to me? Now, being a Christian couldn’t be diabolical or being a Muslim couldn’t make one a diabolic person? If you want to say fetish........that does not make you a devil. If I had wanted to join secret cult I would have joined 1001, but unfortunately my father who was not a Christian early in life or being literate had warned me not to join any cult group or money doubters. Even as a producer on Television I have seen many shrines. Either in Ijebu, Akure, Ondo towns, Osogbo and other nation.
‘’Having moved about, witnessing traditional and cultural festivals at least I am a Christian, I practice Christianity’’. But one thing that, there are so many people that are more fetish than us even as a nation. Israelis are most fetish. They are interested on dead people, you can’t take water from red sea outside Israel the security will do thorough check because they believe the water might crash the plane if it’s taken in. Look at that fetishism in a civilized nation. So being a producer of culture and tradition or a cultural ambassador that does not make me fetish or pagan. ‘’I was baptized in the river Jordan so what else do you want me to be.’’
There is this notion that, part of what acting does to one is to make one a polygamist after the fame and all. What is your take on this?
If that is common now then most of them are greedy. Then, Ogunide, Oyin-Adejobi, Duro Ladiipo had to have as many wives as possible just to have women working in their groups. Because it was not easy to get women in those days working for theatre groups. Most parents believed theatre is an idle man’s work. Unlike today that most ladies voluntarily join theatre with support of their parents, no region or group support polygamist except in some countries like Senegal who has a specific constitution backing a man marry more than one wife. Even in Islam, there is a popular saying that, ‘’Me Ni Olorun Wi’’, Alfabatomeli is a Muslim leader and a great scholar he had only one wife. It is just greediness that makes one marry more than a wife.
So with the fame and attractions you have only one wife sir?
At least I have a woman with me now. I had one before which I had divorced her, but now is only one woman I have.....though there is nothing wrong in having more than a wife really, but mostly its common among the illiterates and even the elites but they are being pretentious about it. One of such who commit such abomination is mostly among law profession. Most of the judges have more than one wife.
With your age you are still very strong and relevant in the movie industry. What is the secret?
I realized that God loves me long time ago. No musicians keep their reputation and relevance for so long but we have just two of them today. Sunny Ade and Obey and there are so many of their contemporaries that are not relevant again, so if we have such quality then we should count ourselves lucky. Not because I know more than my peers or I practice more than them. It is only the question of opportunity and God’s love.
What would you like to be remembered for?
I hate that question from journalists, somebody who has only one job what else do you want people to remember about him? They will remember so many parts of character of such person like if I go out people will be singing ‘Ko e ye won, Yo ye won lola or Yo ma leyin. Yoi ma leyin. Oro yi o ma leyin Aja n tie le....e.t.c. People will remember my deliberate image in Basorun Gaa. The image is deliberate because of the lines and instructions are fantastic and that is what a writer should establish because people will remember it from time to time. Some of my work like ‘Won Ro Pe Were Ni’, ‘Padi Mukaila’ , ‘Sawo Sogberi’ and ‘Fere Bi Eknu’s dialogues are mostly use by actors in their films and that is how it should be.
Credit: CityPeopleMagazine.
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