How Difficult to say Goodnight Baba In Memory of my Father (Pa Emmanuel Obafemi)

Second shock. I did not enjoy the kind of mourning-sharing that I had hoped to receive from people. Most people would rather celebrate than mourn with me. I was surprised to discover that, nearly three-quarters of the people I encountered after Baba’s passing had lost either both of their parents or at least their father […]

Second shock. I did not enjoy the kind of mourning-sharing that I had hoped to receive from people. Most people would rather celebrate than mourn with me. I was surprised to discover that, nearly three-quarters of the people I encountered after Baba’s passing had lost either both of their parents or at least their father (like me) and welcomed me gloatingly to their undesired clubs of the fatherless. Some like my friends, Femi Osofisan who had always told me long before now that my father would die (as if I didn’t know and Biodun Jeyifo who would brook no excuse from me for not feasting the world since Baba had given me an unduly long notice, would not allow me the luxury of  grief. Third shock. I suddenly began to feel old, deprived of the protection I had always taken for granted. My being a oldest son suddenly made a frightening meaning to me as my siblings began to make me look as their father!
No doubt, therefore, I must come to terms with the departure of a father, a mentor and a friend—this is how we all felt, and this is how most people who knew him expressed the sense of loss which the generously shared with me, after all.        
Pa Emmanuel Obafemi was born in the earliest days of the year 1919 at Itedo Quarters of Akutupa-Kirri, Bunu to the illustrious family of  Pa Salami Ole-Mege Obafemi and mama Sarah Temopinni (two great achievers whose lives were characterized by industry, compassion and all-round adventurousness. ) Pa Salami Obafemi left home early, during the Nupe raids to kirri-land and joined government service as a Road Overseer, living a working, itinerant life of supervising road in Bunu. He indeed died on active service and was buried in Illah-Bunu, but not until he came with his children, especially the young Buraimoh, whom we are told was the most beloved of all his children, to Kabba to  build the little mud-house with thatched roof, in the choicest part of Kabba, Odo-Aoffin, Kabba in 1935. Mama Sarah Temopinni had the arduous task of bringing all her children up in Kabba. A woman of many parts—a surgical artist who circumcised most of the male children in Odi-Affin Kabba of ages between 1936 and 1973, mama Temopinni was also a brewer of corn wine (usually called pito, a weaver, a baker of bean cake and corn mill).
Early in life, Pa Emmanuel Buraimoh had had to assume the leadership role of a family builder, a bread-winner for the Obafemis, a successful farmer, a sought-after tailor, a saw-miller, a government employer as an agricultural assistant, a devout Christian, who left Islam (note that his father was a Muslim and his sunna name, which he kept for life and by which he was known by the older generation of his times) and became one of the founders of the Araromi Baptist Church in Kabba.
A man known for his perfectionist spirit and nature, he went after the best in life, for himself, his family and his community. He sought the hands of the young, simply the most beautiful cherub of women around Kabba then. It was a long period of courtship as the parents wanted her for someone else. But it was destiny as the young Omorewo, who later got baptized as Hannah and became the Iya Egbe of the Christ Apostolic Church, Kabba, would not accept any of the rich suitors that were imposed on her, until Buraimoh was well-off enough to marry her. They had nine children and lost one, leaving eight of us –Olufemi, Sunday, Modupe, Michael, Rebecca, Grace, Bosede and Olusegun- all of who happily survived him. A purist of sorts, Baba and his wife stuck to each other like moth on the burning lamp. None of us ever saw our parents with ANY OTHER WOMAN in all their sixty-five years of devoted married life.
Baba was an exemplar of compulsive industry, tireless worker and seeker after professional and vocational excellence. Baba raised two major farms- one at Edunmo (crops of yams, cassava, beans, and maize and later a plantation of cocoa and coffee at Ereka, along Oke-Offin) the second an extensive plantation at Igbo-Epu miles after Oke-Offin. By any reckoning, and there are numerous witnesses to this fact, Baba was a gifted farmer with a seeming talismanic gift of yielding the best and fattest crops on the land. He later, when the children began to go school, and he had to raise, not just us his nuclear children but our cousins from his brothers and other children from other parents who were sent from all parts of Bunu land to live with him, Baba decided to get apprenticed to tailoring (in 1943 and graduated in 1946) He rapidly became the most popular tailor in Odo-Affin, Kabba. Every parent wanted Buraimoh to sew their children’s Christmas attires—a demand that kept both his apprentices and his children away from the merriment of the Christmas eve. Baba was an honest and generous man who shunned the usual lies of workmen on delivery times. He delivered on time and at cheaper rates than other tailors.  When it became obvious in the early seventies that he could cope with the demands of his customers, Baba gave up sewing all-together and returned to his faming—his first love. Sooner than later, the house at Odo-Aoffin was no longer known as Obafemi House but the Bunu House. Every Bunu man who came together knew and lived in that house. All meetings of Bunu people who live in Kabba were held in the house for over five decades. Baba was a man of the people who never discriminated against any children who lived with him, such that we his direct children never enjoyed any special family exclusive rights different from his ‘other children.’ This is a major legacy he left us- a life of equity, fairness, community spirit and good neighbourliness.
Baba did not receive any formal education but he was an educationist per excellence. He believed in the value of education and spared no effort in training all his children. Even to the derision of his friends, Baba would sell portions of his land to make sure that we remained in school. He gave his children the best education money could buy and it is with great joy that when he was no longer able, we rallied round ourselves, we the older ones, beginning with the eldest, to make sure all of his children received sound education and rose to become successful children that he lived to become proud of before answering the call of the ancestors. He loved education with incurable passion and went on to receive adult education. He read and wrote in Yoruba. He sang the hymns and read his bible by himself. He kept personal records of births, events and situations around him throughout most of his active life.
Baba lived and died a devoted Christian. A strict disciplinarian, every child under his care knew that knew that Sunday School, choir and evening church attendance were inviolable duties. He was one of the six founders of the Araromi Baptist Church, Kabba, led by the Baptist Missionaries. The native co-founders are all late. This was in 1949-50.That single church on the Asuta hill in Kabba has produced four new branches. An exemplary practitioner of the church tenets, Baba left, every year, a tenth of his  yam produce in the heaps for the church and brought for the harvest the biggest and the sleekest of his yams to the church. For many years, he was adjudged the first in tithes and offerings in the church, even he was by no means the riches.
Here then is the translation to glory of an exceptional husband of the best wife in the world, father of exceptionally lucky children, grand-children and great grand-children; a selfless and compassionate giver, a lesson in humility and an uncritical server of humanity, a disciplined follower of Christ and his teaching, a community and church leader, and above all, a sincere, humane and genuine personage       
So, you can see how difficult it is for me to say goodnight, Baba.