Ebenezer Táíwò Adéẹ̀kọ́: 20 Years After & Notes Towards a Memoir

Ebenezer Táíwò Adéẹ̀kọ́ | 1918-2000

My father, E. Táíwò as he was called by many, left his home town at about the age of eight with something like a second grade education in his pocket. I am talking of Òdoláamẹ́sọ̀ of late 1920s to early 1930s. First, he moved to Ìjẹ̀bú Òde (Metropolitan Ìjẹ̀bú) to live with his uncle (the late S.J.O. Òtúbúṣẹ̀n, alias Bàbá Télọ̀) who realized quickly that schooling was not this boy’s thing and sent him further away to Lagos (!) to learn carpentry, one of the newer (historically speaking) building trades. After finishing his apprenticeship successfully and working for a while in Lagos, he followed the call of other relatives to move further away to Kano, in the “land of the Hausa” as we used to refer to Northern Nigeria generally even in my own childhood of the 1960s in south western Nigeria. At the end of WWII, during which he worked as a rifle carpenter in Kano, he returned south to Ìbàdàn, where he lived the rest of his life. Ìjẹ̀bú Òde, Lagos, and, later, Ìbàdàn, are all major Nigerian cities that were away, and different, from his little hometown. 

Mom & Dad | Lékè & Táyé's Engagement | Èṣuré, Ìjẹ̀bú Imuṣin | 6 June 1986

His life was cosmopolitan, and he took all the rapid changes in spaces of living, means of livelihood, multiple languages and registers in stride. (An emblematic study of his generation and socio-economic class, so far as I can tell, is yet to be written.) He walked away from Islam, the faith of his parents, and Ṣàngó, the faith of his very influential paternal grandmother, to Christianity. Because he spent the longest of his working years in Ìbàdàn, where he breathed his last, his Ìjẹ̀bú speech always had a tinge of Ìbàdàn in it. (For example, he would say ìgànná and not ìgọ̀nnọ́.) And when he spoke Yorùbá, it was always devoid of the Ìjẹ̀bú inflection of many of his contemporaries. He learned to speak fluent Hausa, a facility he kept his entire life, when he lived in Kano. While he recognized the limited extent of his facility in English, he never apologized for it. (I still remember vividly how he told off Bàbá Ṣẹ̀yẹ, a younger, arrogant, neighbor with whom he had a tiff, that “Yes, you may speak English better than me, I have spent my money to educate kids who can finish your life with English.”) 

But he remained rooted as well. He married three women although his uncle baptized him and Christened him Ebenezer. (None of his 6 male siblings that I grew up to know had more than one wife.) He was, like all his wives, a communicant in the Anglican church. He built his first home in the town of his birth, Ìjẹ̀bú Imuṣin, a house he never occupied continuously for three months at any time until he was struck down by a stroke and had to be brought “home” because the family was afraid he was not going to survive. Of course, he did survive. (He was the strongest man, I have known all my life.) As soon as he got on his feet, he returned to his beloved Ìbàdàn, the city in which he had all his important, everyday, social networks.

1980. Some of the Master Carpenters Dad Trained at J.F. Ososami & Co, Ltd., Ìbàdàn
Organized a Retirement Get Together at his House in Ìbàdàn.
The two young girls on the front row are my sisters,
Déọlá (3rd from left) and Tóyìn (3rd from right).
Sitting next to Déọlá are Màmá Tóyìn and Dad.
On the back row, my friend, Ven. Dr. Stephen Adédọ̀tun Adésànyà (8th)
and I (11th) snucked into the picture.

On this day, the 20th anniversary of his passing, I note, in homage to my father, that my only unencumbered home is in Ìjẹ̀bú Imuṣin, although I have lived away from that place since I went to high school in Ìjẹ̀bú Òde, where, it ought to be noted, I lived with the widow of my father's mentor! Like my father, I maintain membership in the hometown church, one into which I have stepped just three times over the past 30 years. As I saw my father did to his children, my kids are given the freeest range I could afford. I always wished--and still wish futilely--that I was as strong as my father. He had no stomach for idling about. He was incapable of malice, except towards cheats. He will not hesitate to harm a thief any time, any day. Family was on top of his mind always. Because he was great at his craft, he swore by the quality of his work. He would not brook shoddy carpentry. Never. He followed his own path, once he is convinced that he was doing the right thing.

At My Graduation | December 1982 | University of Ifẹ̀, Ilé-Ifẹ̀

I still wish for a fraction of what he was. 

Mom, Dad, Diméjì (held by dad), Táyọ̀ (left front), & Bọ́lájí (right front).
Photo by Táyé.
St Anne's Anglican Church, Màlété, Ìbàdàn.
1992 Annual Harvest & Thanksgiving Service of the Ìbàdàn Branch 
of St. Mary's Anglican Church, Ìjẹ̀bú-Imuṣin.