Kehinde Ayoola, Newspapers, Social Media And The Ephemerals… | Dapo Falade

I was in my house this evening (23/05/2020), about to take my dinner, consisting of two wraps of eko (agidi) and vegetable soup. The vegetable was freshly plucked, earlier in the evening, from the small garden in my compound.

While unwrapping the eko, I noticed that the outer cover was made up of a newspaper. I went on with getting the eko out of its cover in order to settle down to the main business of the evening namely, to take my dinner before 7pm.

You may be wondering what is the connection between my eko meal and the topic above…I dey come small, small…

It is not news that our people from the south-western part of the country, nay the entire country, make use of old newspapers as part of their articles of trade. The mai suya, àkàrà seller, guguru/groundnut seller, roasted/boiled corn seller, et al, more than often, do employ the use of old newspapers to attend to their customers. So why the fuse about seeing my own eko wrapped with an old copy of a newspaper?, you may want to ask.

Though quite not unusual, my attention was particularly drawn to the newspaper this evening mainly by three reasons…

One, this particular newspaper in question is not really an old one in the true sense of it; Two, the newspaper came from the stable of my employers, the African Newspapers of Nigeria (ANN) PLC, publishers of the Tribune titles and;
Three, and most importantly, most of the stories on the particular page which was used to wrap my eko were on Honourable Kehinde Ayoola, the late Oyo State Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources. The page contain(ed) condolence messages and encomiums showered on the departed.

Two things seeped through my mind immediately after the discovery:

The sweat and efforts of the editorial staff and production team of the Nigerian Tribune in the course of producing that particular edition. I realised the fact that, notwithstanding the efforts put in place to gather the news materials and the cost of production, copies of a painstakingly produced newspaper would always end up in the trash bin, while just a few will be retained in the libraries.

Most importantly, the innocent scenario with my eko brought me to a sad stark reality about the subject-matter, my late friend and brother, Honourable Kehinde Ayoola and his activities, especially his deep reflections in his postings on the social media, a little up to the time of his shocking demise on Thursday, 14 May, 2020.

Ayoola was well known to be a strong social media influencer, going by his reflections from his postings on the Facebook. Many people, friends, foes, lovers and haters alike, have all attested to his high fecundity and deep knowledge and understanding of any subject or issue he brought up for public discourse.
Alas, the traditional media and the social media is still alive, bubbling with all sorts of activities, a little over a week after his departure from this terrestrial world; the death of Honourable Ayoola is another lesson about how ephemeral the human life is.

Our effort and desire to excel in all our undertakings, and the attendant attainments, shall become a memory etched into the mind of a few and to be soon forgotten by many.
As the remains of the late Honourable Kehinde Ayoola, with his deeds, good or bad, shall soon be committed to mother earth, one can only hope that his popular sign off tune, OMI TITUN TI RU, will not go the way of the ephemerals, to be forgotten so soon.

@ Dapo Falade
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