By Yinka Fabowale
I’m posting this story for your enjoyment and in tribute to one of my theatre icons, late Moses Olaiya Adejumo (aka Baba Sala), who passed on on Sunday.
The report, first published in Sunday Sun some years back, is the archetypal narrative of Nigerian artistes – their rise to fame and riches, the glitter of their talents and ever- present vulnerability to losing the harvests of their hard labours to stalking vicious pirates of intellectual property.
As I fetched this piece from my archives and re-read after news of Baba Sala’s demise hit me, memories of my encounter with the great comedian and thespian came alive all over again.
Enjoy!!!
A welcome unusual
“You will have to dash me something if you must interview me,” our host announced after he had been helped into the living room and eased into a chair directly facing where we sat by Mr. Gbemileke Amos Areo, who doubles as his personal assistant/ nurse and driver.
The legend looked radiant and younger than 74, his actual age, despite his grey hair and silvery beard. There was a slight hint that his health may not be in the best shape, though, as he had to be supported again to go ease himself in the toilet by Areo as the interface progressed.
We let out a throaty laughter, taking his statement as his comical way of welcoming us. What else do you expect from a veteran comedian like Moses Olaoluwa Adejumo’s (a.k.a Baba Sala)?
But there was steel in his voice and expression that told us he was dead serious when repeated the demand: “you must drop something if you want to interview me”.
Tensed silence.
Momentarily tongue-tied, Dada Osasona, The Sun photographer and I exchanged awkward glances, wondering if our prospective interview subject was same Adejumo, accomplished entertainer, theatre artist, film maker and ingenuous creator of the popular comic character, Baba Sala, who made waves on stage, radio, television and cinema, particularly among Yoruba audience for close to three decades (mid 60s to early 90s).
Baba Sala’s productions were invariably always box office successes because of their creative plots, enthralling humour and clowning of the central dramatic character around who the stories were woven.
Referred to as the Father of Nigerian Comedy, Adejumo was also a shrewd and successful businessman who maintained a full-time theatre company, paying competitive wages to artistes in his troupe, with personal cars as incentives to senior ones in his hey days.
What would he need money from poor newspapermen for? And how much can we offer that would be deemed adequate?
These questions raced through my mind as I shot quizzing looks at the squat septuagenarian actor, who sat comtemplatively awaiting our response.
The answers were to unfold later. But, part of them had actually been starring us in the face in our search for Baba Sala, which took us from Ibadan, his former base to Ilesa, his hometown in Osun State, where he had retired a few years back.
On the trail of a fading legend
“Baba doesn’t live here anymore. You will have to go to Ilesa to see him…”, the manager of Alawada Spot (Lodging and Bar), had told this reporter when he went to inquire after the film star at his old address at 27, Yemetu Alawada, Adeoyo area in Ibadan the week before.
The joint, one of a chain of hotels owned by Baba Sala across the South West region of the country, has become a shadow of its past. A two-storey building with a jutting extension by the right wing that served as a night club, had evidently seen better days. Save for a provision store occupying the ground floor and a GSM recharge card seller and some youths playing at the frontage, it was virtually desolate, with no sign of guests.
The youths gestured towards the night club entrance, for me to direct my enquiries there. Inside I met a vacant spacious hall, with tables and chairs arranged in a not- so- organized order. On the walls were artistic drawings of Baba Sala, King Sunny Ade and girls with erotic curves and bums ostensibly aimed at titillating and provoking the passions of the male patrons of the club.
There was only one burly fellow drinking a bottle of 33 beer at a table in a corner of the hall, whom I was to learn is a son of Baba Sala. He asked me to wait for the manager, who arrived shortly to give me the earlier disappointing news, but gracious enough to oblige the star’s phone number.
“This joint must have been a happening place at a time”, I remarked, as I made to take my leave. The two gentlemen’s reply suggested that was an understatement of the year, saying there used to be an in-house live band. But, they regretted, that business has turned awry lately.
Four days later, when the Aspire team arrived Ilesa to keep an appointment with the famous actor, locating him was not difficult at all. Eager town folk and traffic wardens took the trouble to give directions to Abiola Avenue, off Ijebu-jesa Road, where the artiste has his residence. Close by, however, was another relic of the chain of hotels belonging to he man, the Alawada Standard Hotel, located behind a mechanic workshop off Ijebu-Jesa Road. A youth had pointed it out to us, thinking that was our destination. Derelict and deserted, the two-storey edifice hinted at a once- great and prosperous past.
It was securely locked. We called out, but, there was no sign of life in the building, making us to retrace our way back to the main road and Abiola Avenue where we finally found our target.
The state of the hotels should have warned us of the present condition we met their owner, who, since the monumental loss, arising from the piracy of his first movie, Orun Mooru in 1983, has suffered one economic reverse after another.
Driven to despair, he had sold off his estate including a three-storey block of flats in Lagos to offset the bank loan he took to shoot the film and moved to Ibadan with his family.
Although a comeback bid he staged in late 80s resulted in the release of two block bursters – Mosebolatan and Aare Agbaye, Adejumo never fully recovered from the setback.
As if these misfortunes were not enough, his hotel business nosedived, while his famous picture house, Cinema De Baba Sala at Agbowo, Ibadan folded up owing to insolvency.
These business woes resulted in increased personal and professional frustration that affected the health of the old comedian and ultimately forced him to withdraw from limelight.
He took solace in spirituality, returning to his native Ilesa to shepherd the flock at his local church, the Sacred Cherubim and Seraphim Idasa No 1 Model Parish.
His fame nevertheless persists, although the millions were gone.
His insistence on being paid before granting the interview was, therefore, perhaps, a measure of this great artiste’s predicament.
Glimpses of a glorious past
At last, Osasona and I managed to find our voices. We had no money to give, we said.
What we offered, we tried to explain carefully, was an opportunity for Baba Sala to connect with his numerous fans concerned about what could have happened to their idol, since he slipped out of the public glare. Certainly, he would not want to disappoint them!, we coaxed.
Besides, there were the new generations who have only heard of his exploits, who would be delighted to read an interview with him, we pursued further, encouraged by a slight positive wavering we thought we noticed in his disposition.
Then, I added the clincher, reminding him of the mutually beneficial relationship between celebrities and media and the role the one played in the other’s career. “You may not exactly remember now, sir, but, I once interviewed you at your Musin residence in Lagos, as a young entertainment reporter way back in 1988 and I can’t recollect your making this kind of request”, I finished.
To this, the old entertainer’s face lit up. And after a prolonged scrutiny of my face, he smiled repentantly and said: “Alright, let’s have the interview”.
Why Olaoluwa and not Olaiya
Moses Olaoluwa was born at Ilesa on May 7, 1937 to Pa Oyewole Adejumo and his wife, Celina. Left to his father, he would not have been born, as the old man had foreclosed the idea of having another child, after Moses’ sister, Olabisi (now late). But, he was persuaded against this resolve by his mother. Hence on being born, Moses was Christened Olaiya (meaning for the sake of mother), a name by which he was known for most part of his career, but which he lately changed to Olaoluwa (Grace of God) with his deeper involvement in the ecclesiastics.
“I changed it, because when I was in the secular world, people thought my success and fortunes must have been because of the grace of one ‘iya’ somewhere; but I prefer Olaoluwa, because it’s to God that I owe everything. How I came about Olaiya I already told you”, he explained.
Moses lived with his paternal grandmother at Oke Iyin in his native town and after three years of primary school education at Oke Ese Methodist Primary School, joined his parents in 1950 in Jos, where his dad was an account clerk with Arab Transport Services, and his mother a trader. Here, he finished his primary education at St. Luke School, Jos in 1953.
In the beginning was Adejumo, the musician
He returned to Ilesa the following year as one of the pioneer students of the Obokun High School, where he developed his interest in the arts, especially music. He left the school in 1959 in Form V for Lagos where he took a job as Health officer with the Lagos City Council, while playing maracas for the Empire Hotel Orchestra, at Idi-Oro at nights for a salary of One pound, 10 shillings, which he used to augment his official income.
At the same time, he took tutorials from a Ghanaian guitarist in the band, one Samuel Kwashie.
Moses spent only one year with the orchestra after which he joined Ade Ade and his Federal Dandies, a juju band led by his uncle in 1960. He left to form his own band that same year, with Moses Omole, John Bull, and two other friends whose names he gave as Gabriel and Adeniran.
The band rehearsed and played regularly at Palace Hotel, on the spot later occupied by defunct Habbacus Merchant Bank on Broad Street. It became popular with patrons of the hotel and Lagos socialites including Chief Johnson Modupe Johnson (a.k.a JMJ) the colourful National Council of Nigeria and Cameroons (NCNC) politician and former Minister, who developed a personal liking for the leader, Adejumo.
The group also played at social events. Adeniyi Adegeye, later to be known as King Sunny Ade, the Juju music maestro, joined the group in 1962, understudying Adejumo play the guitar. “Like me, he was very interested in guitar. He spent six years with us. In fact, we started the theatre together. He’s an actor and a great dancer- that’s why he’s able to act in Fopomoyo”, Baba Sala said of his former protégé, who was to revolutionize the Juju music and hit international stardom himself few years later.
Shift into theatre
Adejumo had to abandon music and go into full scale theatre practice following pressures from fans, who noticed his dramatic talents. He told Aspire: “What happened was that we normally had intervals during our performances, during which we staged drama sketches to break the tedium of music and dance. Now, people increasingly expressed interest in that more and so in 1965, we rested the band and went into full scale drama”.
The group began by doing serious plays like some of the established dramatists of the time such as Chiefs Duro Ladipo, Hubert Ogunde, Akin Ogungbe and Ogunmola and made statements on the scene with some plays like Esan o gbogun and Angelina, which Adejumo wrote.
Comedy and the evolution of Baba Sala
But, the dramatist only came into serious public reckoning when he broke off and went into comedy. “I just thought of specializing, of doing something unique, that’s how I struck on comedy. You know, it makes people to laugh. So, we developed the character, Baba Sala. He had to be a retired PWD worker, fed and clothed by his wife, while he does the home chores-just to make things funny”, Adejumo said.
To Adejumo, humour has for long been second nature. He told Aspire: “Ah, I’ve always been very funny. I remember when I was young, I used to imitate my sister. I put stones in my bras and foams on my buttocks and I would be wriggling the buttocks like women do about the streets and people would be laughing”.
Such queer dress sense informed the clownish costume and dress mode of Baba Sala, who, on sighting, immediately triggered off laughers with his over-sized dotted bow-tie worn on an European jacket and sooro, Yoruba bell-bottom pants.
Romance with the radio and the screen
Adejumo’s career got a fillip when he secured a year contract to stage a weekly 30-minute skit on radio with the defunct Western Nigerian Broadcasting Service WNBS. The comedian’s group had come first in a talent hunt show organized by the organization in 1967, but was denied the prize, which was a sponsored trip to Germany, on the ground that another drama group led by Duro Ladipo which emerged top the previous year had enjoyed the privilege before.
Instead, a pop musical group which came second was given the chance while Adejumo’s group was offered the radio appearance contract as compensation.
The radio programme became an instant success and from there, Baba Sala received invitations to appear on TV, which further turned him into a household name.
With fame, however, he was forced to quit government service to avoid sack for violating the regulation forbidding government officials from taking extra job.
The artiste as a businessman
But, the entrepreneurial streak of seeing art as business investment with profit motive had already taken root in the artiste. He established a recording label company, Adejumo Record Company, which produced several works from notable artistes such as Lere Paimo (Eda); Olatunbosun Odunsi (Padre Minkailu); Yemi Elebuibon; Alabi Ogundepo and Wale Hassan (Erisebe Kowe).
Other albums done by the company included: Aare Agbaye; Ode Aperin; Agbo igbotan Ede; Oorun Mooru; Mosebolatan; Omo Oloku; D-Director and Ana Gomina, which came from Adejumo’s prolific hands.
In 1980, Adejumo also went into film-making, following on the heels of Ogunde, who had released three movies- Aiye, Jaiyesimi and Aropin N’ Teniyan on celluloid, as well as his former artiste/ apprentice, Yemi Afolayan (a.k.a Ade Love) who had dropped Ija Ominira and Taxi Driver.
He explained his incursion into the industry: “Film paid better than stage productions, because you can show it at three, four or more venues at the same time and that fetched you a lot of money many times more than one stage production can give you”
The Oorun Mooru disaster
He began shooting his first movie, Oorun Mooru, which was directed by Ola Balogun, international award-wining film maker, who brought the professional crew in from Paris.
The movie, which had to be processed abroad cost Baba Sala N1.5million, an awfully prohibitive amount then, which he raised by taking a loan from the defunct National Bank of Nigeria (NBN).
To obtain the loan, he had staked his three-storey building in Lagos and three choice property offered by his old friend and patron, JMJ as collaterals.
Unfortunately, when the film debuted in 1983, it was pirated within one year, plunging Adejumo into debt and misery. Unable to repay the bank loan, which interests mounted to about three million Naira, the bank threatened to sell off the property to liquidate the debt.
In desperation, he sold his own building off to salvage JMJ’s.
Things got worse and Baba Sala had to move with his family to Ibadan.
The old artist’s eyes misted as he recalled the incident to Aspire over two decades after the incident.
But, he managed to release two more films – Aare Agbaye and Mosebolatan in 1986 in a bid to disprove skeptics, who had written him and his career off.
Assistance arising from a chance meeting he had with Ibadan-based multi-millionaire and businessman, Alhaji AbdulAzeez Arisekola Alao as well as former President Olusegun Obasanjo on his return flight from London, where he had gone to process Mosebolatan temporarily put his business on an even keel.
Obasanjo, Adejumo said, was instrumental to his securing the dome-shaped hall he converted into a cinema house at the Agbowo Shopping Complex, run by the Oyo State Housing Corporation. The former Head of State, he said, also helped him in acquiring three foreign films including one on apartheid South Africa along with their posters with which he commenced business there.
“Business was alright, but they continued to increase rent. It was N30, 000 under (Col. Abdulkareem) Adisa until the Housing Corporation raised it to N200,000. So, debts piled up. It was (Governor Rashidi) Ladoja who eventually sent us packing from there. Again, some churches lobbied to take the place over. The coming of the videos also affected us, it destroyed the market, because people were not coming to watch shows again, whereas abroad, they still go to cinemas and theatres.
Nollywood and the dread of pirates
And why is he not in Nollywood? Why did he not latch at the immense opportunities the coming of the video offered when others jumped on the train? I asked.
The old actor was pensive.
It was Areo who answered. “The Oorun Mooru crisis really affected Baba, so, he was wary of going into the new business to avoid disappointments. You know the pirates were still at work. Even now, he has plans to turn his past works into CDs (Compact Discs), but he lacks the finance”.
Thoughts on contemporaneous comedy
Adejumo is full of praise at the rich burst of talents in the contemporary comedy industry. He said of stand-up comedians: “Their concept is a bit different from that of our time, but you can see a lot of creativity, that’s why they’ve been accepted. It was just like what I did- bring something unique on board that was the secret of the success of the Alawada brand. It was a new idea. I didn’t copy anybody. It was unique and creative”.
He, however, considered the new generation particularly lucky with the huge sponsorship entertainment has come to attract from big firms- telecommunication giants like MTN, Globacom, Airtel and brewery companies among others.
“If I had such opportunity, I’d not be in debt. I’ll still be on stage or in front of the cameras doing my thing. Yes, I miss the stage, I miss rehearsals, I still love acting. It’s my life”. He replied to another question.
But you wonder how spritely a man his age could be on stage, with the sedentary life he confessed he now kept in his country home.
Baba Sala surprises you with his answer. “How old is Fatai Rolling Dollar? Is he not better at stage performance than many of today’s youths? Eyan mi (My man) this thing is about innate ability and talent. I’m a professional and I am yet to exhaust my God-given talent. I will bounce back if I can find a sponsor. Na condition make crayfish bend”.
Epilogue
The interview over, it was the lot of the actor-turned priest to “dash” us something. He prayed for us and wished us a safe trip back to our destination. Despite his seemingly meagre pockets, he had played the hospitable host, ordering for bottles of Maltina for us to sip while the interview was on.
The session, as insightful as it was, raised fresh questions in me. Could Baba Sala’s travail be a consequence of not cutting his coat according to the cloth? The man is a self-confessed polygamist with a large family of eight wives and in his words, “uncountable children”, whose u keep can consume the resources of even a state.
But, Adejumo had said like his contemporaries, he came by his harem and populous brood by necessity.
According to the veteran actor, his wives were actresses in his group, explaining: “In our time you had to marry them to retain them in the group, because the public looked down on them as unserious and nobody wanted to marry them. So, many often quit to go and find husbands and that affected us”. Despite the largeness of his family, Baba Sala declared that he was able to care for them, while he bought cars for senior members of his group suh as Aduke George (Iya Sala, his stage wife); Sola Soremekun (Okondo); Folake Adejumo; Adedeji Bankole (Adisa); Ayoola his manager and also secretary with others enjoying good salaries and allowances.
Of the eight wives, however, only two now stay in Ilesa with Baba Sala, whose typical daily itinerary reads something like this: Wakes up at about 6am, goes to the church to pray, returns home to shower and have breakfast, visit his hotel for about an hour and then return home to rest at about 10:00a.m till the rest of the day.
Occasionally, church members and artistes from outside town visit to confer with him, but the legend spends most of the time in solitude, save for Areo’s company and glazed photographs of his youth and such historic events such as his conferment with the national award of Member of the Order of Nigeria (MON) by Obasanjo in 1978, and ordination as Elder Most Senior Apostle of his church.
Also hung on the shelf are numerous awards he bagged including: The Legendary Award for Achievement and Excellent contribution to entertainment in Africa, London; Ambassador of Excellence by C and S; Merit Award by Radio Nigeria, Gold F.M Ilesa Osun State; Nigeria Union of Journalists, Osun State Broadcasting Corporation (OSBC) 2000 (leadership Award); NTA Ibadan at 50 Award for Outstanding Contributions to TV Broadcasting in Nigeria; Award of Excellence by Laffmatazz, (2010); Love Entertainment, Golden Comedian Award and Obokun Class Club Certificate of Honour as Art Ambassador.
Do these assuage the chill of loneliness that pervaded the house? I wondered as we parted with handshakes
