By Bolu John Folayan, PhD

I ran into the name Otunba Sola Olatunji in the social media because he used to write a lot about Ondo State. I must have published more than three articles by him in Ikale News. Mee ma fo onuya ghon gha rin. Just imagine the words coming out of his mind, just because he is consultant to Okitipupa Oil Palm Plc!

After reading his insult on my ancestry, I called one or two people to find out if he is related to Baba Alaba Abo, the late veteran tailor and community leader in Igbotako in those days. Lo and behold, Alaba Abo was the person who transmuted to Otunba Sola Olatunji, as I was told. He claims now that he is from Erekiti.

Read: Leave our Lands Ikale Obas Tell OOP PLC

If I had known him to be a complete o-ne ghe-e, ghe e, I would not have bothered to chat him. What was my offence? When the non-governmental organization, Ikale Supreme Civil Rights Council (ISCRC), informed me that it was taking up struggle with OOP Plc which has usurped our land for over 70 years (it wasn\'t bad to be so informed because I have published Ikale News for over 30 years and by His grace I have a reputable name across Ikale), I advised the spokesperson of the group, Mr. Orimisan Adelokiki, to look for one Otunba Olatunji, so he could properly dialogue with the company. I had heard he was a consultant to OOP Plc on corporate social responsibility.

Adelokiki went searching for this Otunba. He lambasted Orimisan Adelokiki as joining the Igbotako rebels. I now messaged him, asking him why he was giving wrong counsel to the management of OOP Plc against Ikale people.

He replied that he wondered why I decided to join Orimisan and a group of Igbotako people against OOP Plc when other communities were cooperating with the OOP Plc. He said Orimisan was acting alone and that OOP Plc had done its CSR over the years and had paid its dues to the landowners. The MD of the company later echoed that same lie.

Haba! I now took time to lecture him on the facts of the matter. I think, seeing how ignorant he had been, putting mouth in what he knew next-to-nothing about, got him angry, and he sent me torrents of insulting texts. I had told him that I am not a landowner, being Akoko, but that as a legit Ikale, I have a right to do advocacy for the landowners.

In any case, the entitlements belong to a tripartite of Obas, Landowners, and the Community, of which I am part. Of course, we (Akoko-Ikale) have land. Iju Oke land is owned by Akoko. We have Ilado village. In Ilutitun and other places where Akokos settled that have expansive land, and you must buy land from them. Ikale is in my blood up to the third generation on either side. My father\'s mum is from Okerisa, Ilutitun. My mother\'s mom is from Agirifan in Ilutitun. Her mom from Iju-Odo. I can go on. I now began to wonder where this Obuko grew up to insult my ancestry. Everyone knows who I am in Ikale. I don\'t make troubles. If you abuse me, I may not bother. But if you insult my ancestry, I won\'t take it lightly.

At the Ikale Awards last December, I took time to explain the origin of Ikale. Different authors have slightly different accounts but the incontrovertible fact is that Ikale is a federation. People came from different places to settle in what is known today as Ikale. A majority came from Itsekiri, Bini, and Ugbo and this reflects in our language and culture. Some of our ancestors came from Akoko, Ondo, and of course Ife. It is the same with other tribes. The Ondo (city) people came mainly from Oyo and Ife. No ethnic group dropped from the sky and emerged from the ground.

Amb. Abagun Kole Omololu, a respected pan-Yoruba advocate, who steered the Ikale Awards ceremony, even pointed out that once you have lived in a place for over a period of time, you are no longer a non-indigene of that place. Omololu has lived in London for over 40 years and is a British citizen. He found no reason Urhobos and Itsekiri who have lived in Ikale for over a hundred years should not be seen as Ikale. A ten-year-old boy in Igbotako last December was the lead drummer (agba-drum) for the Umale masquerade of Odojomo. His father is Urhobo.

So, you wonder what came upon this Alaba Olatunji for him to profess his ignorance through insults. I don\'t need to be a landowner to advocate that OOP Plc should quit our land or renegotiate its tenancy. Landlords in Lagos and elsewhere renew tenancy agreements almost every other year. How can you leave your own agreement untouched for 71 years, 21 years after the expiration of the original agreement?

We need our land for commercial agriculture. Alternatively, a fresh agreement has to be done, and we need more presence in the management of the company.

Journalism, according to Harold Lasswell (who propounded the Functional Theory of Mass Communication), carries out the function of information, surveillance, correlation of the environment, cultural transmission, and of course entertainment. This gives me the right to support the current struggle to retrieve our land from the moribund Okitipupa Oil Palm Plc – an organization that has turned our dream into a nightmare in Ikale.

I advised this man that he could not be talking about CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) when the company has not even fulfilled its statutory responsibility. CSR is voluntary support to the host community. It is even different from Community Relations. Both are part of Public Relations, which I studied to PhD level and have practiced for over 40 years!

My credentials intimidated this man, and the next thing was for him to say he could pay my salary five times over. You don\'t blame interlopers like him. You blame the interloper who hired him. I told him that it is preposterous for someone hired to consult as a community relations manager for a company to be creating enmity between the company and the communities.