Baba Isila, The Arrowhead Of A Prodigal Generation

There are times you feel some matters must be kept in the family can... afterall, families reserve the right to habour all sordid deeds and slime and grime in the family can of worms. But there is a greater duty of "share" to humanity so that as it learns from our ugly life experiences, it is spared the horror of repeating mistakes! Yet another school of thought would insist that the events so chronicled are replicated in families....especially of southwest Nigeria....so why wash our dirty family linen, or throw our family worm can open to the public? And there is the x-factor....the "author's bug"...which won in the end!

A brief historical background. The family land of Igbe Igboken in Ikorodu is credited to a certain Chief Lenuwa who settled there centuries ago.

Legend has it that he migrated from Idowa. Since his death, this land has passed down at least five responsible and well-behaved generations which kept, preserved and nortured it until the generation of Baba Isila and his prodigal siblings.

His profile: His real name is Adebayo Akindele. But he is better known by his alias...Baba Isila...and of course, his relative ease with wicked acts!

He is the current Baale of Igboken...one of the ten Igbe villages of Ikorodu...thus the custodian of that land.

He sold such family land to himself at rock-bottom price, then resells it piecemeal at humongous prices!

He is a stark illiterate. Rather than send his kids to school, he would rather enroll them to undergo tutellage with land-grabbing thugs to train as "ajagungbales".

His most notorious son, a high-calibre thug and thief was fond of "picking up" bullet wounds.

He had a bitter quarrell with me for not offering his son treatment for such bullet wounds at a time when The Nigerian Police was locking up doctors for framed-up complicity in armed robbery!

He sought other ways to pick quarrels with me. He spread baseless rumours about me in a brazen attempt to discredit me!

He offered to initiate me into his cult. He openly threatened my father for no just cause. He regularly issues threats to other family members...often threatening his siblings with death.

Wives in the family have been known to hold him responsible for the death of their husbands.

His is a name that evokes terror in the Akindele family.

People like Baba Isila brook no questions on the propriety of their deeds. Propelled by a strong belief in sorcery, and the occult, they simply act with impunity and dare anyone to ask why...

They long for respect and seek respect...but hardly conduct themselves in ways worthy of respect.

They lack the good sense to realise that respect is earned and not demanded!

And such are the likes of lousy old men who lead some persons to describe the Yorubas as "owambe" people...

For in which other part of Nigeria do natives so readily sell their father's land and their kids feed off other hardworking persons... lousy street urchins called "omo oniles"

And to what use do they put such money...as they scare away other family members from the commonwealth? Needless extravagance on endless partying and women!

Only an irate fool will trade off his heritage for a pot of porridge!

Such are the idiots who soil the image of the Yorubas...

Not the vast majority of hardworking, law-abiding and self-respecting indigenes of southwest Nigeria....

Dr Tosin Akindele is a medical practitioner and public affairs analyst.