THE MAN KSO AND A FUND MEMORY OF HIS AMALA LUNCH DATE

By Razaq Adedeji Jimoh; Culled from Civics Weekly Magazine, Vol 2, No. 47; August 23, 2025 Edition, p29

ANY wonder he's fondly called 'Omo London' by the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu (GCFR). His look is always charming with appearance cutting a dash inevitably at every outing. The impetus to the dashing is his feminine voice that is trapping too. I caught this not as a glimpse of him at our first encounter. I felt his real world of it. You may never escape the temptation to steal a third glance at his girlish look in passing. First is to behold a complexion of Arabian whiteness in tone of tropical summer nurture. And when he speaks under your holding spell of this affection, you only see a bloke in nature of women folks.

This should not be something of intriguing amazement, but an inexplicable reality of how nature could endow handsomeness with beauty. But then, a beauty devoid of character is a wickedness of deception by nature. In him, however, integrity matches the value of fine character in beauty of Angelic strides. That is simply the nature-trimmed body frame five plus-footer man called Kunle Sanyaolu Olowoopejo (KSO) for you.

To encounter him is to get more of cultural ethics of human compassion. And when you seek to know him in the garb of his political calling as the third Executive Chairman of Egbe-Idimu LCDA, it would be an impressive humility of power you are about to encounter. My own experience of this was defined by the former – the part of his cultural ethics. Upon his arrival as a Diaspora bloke seeking a striker shirt – call it Maradona/Messy jersey – for a place in the metaphorical football game of Alimosho politics, his humility was the first striking feature I would get to size up his personality trait.

The table was just set for his lunch at a time I barely settled down in the living room of his Isolo Road matriarch residence in Egbe – a part of the three major conurbation kingdoms making up the geographical bounds of the LCDA. It was our first acquaintances – a move I made to 'sell' our publication title, The Tabloid, as one available to him for the media thrust of his council chairmanship aspiration. His call to me to join him at the table was literally deemed to be the usual 'Omoluabi' cultural courtesy. “E bani re” call is a part of food and feeding culture in Yoruba Nation. It is literally an invitation you are expected to make to anyone around you at a time you are set to eat alone. 'Come and join me', it means.

Of course, the invitee knows the allegory thus intended and will reply: “A gba'bi re” – 'it will go down well'. So I thought it was to be between the two strangers in that modestly furnished apartment, wherein I was the ‘interloper’ sort of. But I was wrong, thinking of a flow of culture was at play. I would later realise that this time, it was personal generosity transcending fulfilment of culture. My host was not ready to go on unless I practically joined him.

“Let me come and put his own” Mama, the Matriarch, offered.

“No, we will eat this together and when it’s not enough, we will get more”, KSO insisted.

And so we ate the Amala together that day – an experience I would later realise had retained in his memory over a decade years after.

In a publication I would later make in tune with the pleasant experience, he was surprised to read me described him as “The New Broom” in Alimosho. I so held because he joined the progressives at the dusk – of its first identity – Alliance for Democracy (AD) and the wee hours of the birth of its new identity – Action Congress (AC). Its logo turned out to be mythically symbolic too.

Earlier, a couple of months back, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had decided to invoke the convergence of global ‘witches and wizards’ on Lagos under aegies of “Tsunami” – a recent foreign fatal disaster that resonated globally at the time. The PDP objective about this was for the astral bodies to come down and cast a spell of what the Yoruba would describe as “Asasi” (cause of misbehaviour on the ruling government of Bola Tinubu, who had just survived an offensive electoral onslaught of the behemoth government at the centre.

Tinubu, as the sole survival out of six victims of the assaultive electoral ‘ballistics’ in the Southwest, was believed to have a mystic strength of defences. Hence the Lagos PDP’s resort to the sorcery. Curiously, to keen followers of political events of this fourth republic, the outcome of that 2004 battle of the astral bodies on Lagos land should suffice enough for any discerning mind to appreciate that, indeed, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had long been identified as the “Chosen One” to lead Nigeria’s version of the biblical “Exodus” to the Promised Land.

The metaphorical PDP invocations gathered in Lagos quite right for what it unequivocally described as “Tsunami Rally”. It was huge crowd of the faithful indeed! But Governor Tinubu had his own latent counter strategy too. Just a couple of hours after dispersal of the gathering, he convened an impromptu gathering of the Lagos AD faithful. In drama-like effect, brooms were distributed to them. The mission: the imprecations of the PDP witches and wizards must be swept back to the senders. The next news to come on the media waves was the report of a fatal multiple accidents involving some of the PDP members that came for the rally in Lagos. It was therefore not any surprise to someone like me when Broom turned out to be the logo of Action Congress.

Reflecting further on the adage that “The new broom sweeps clean while the old broom knows the corners of the room” in reconciliation with the potent effectiveness of its earlier wonders of the mystery battle for the state, I was to view the aspiration of KSO in the light of the newness about everything symbolic of the Lagos progressives. In that way, he symbolised the newness in Alimosho as the stranger among the regular and known faces among the aspirants for Egbe-Idimu LCDA council chairmanship. Thus, as I held, he was the AC personified in Alimosho and “The New Broom” I believed would have a rated cleaning efficiency.

Today, that coinage made about two decades past would seem to be my prescience at the time, given the performance record of Olowoopejo that resonated at his service year as Executive Chairman of Egbe-Idimu – the aspiration of which informed his cliche of “The New Broom” back then.

Unfortunately, we never got along well and, indeed, fought a battle that would deepen the gulf between us through his 8years of his administration. It was only divined that we would have cause to interact – albeit on ground of professional duty – at the twilight of his administration. That came on crest of the Jury of the Civics Man of the Year announcing him as the honouree for the award.

ALL THIS IS TO SAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO A MAN OF COMPASSION, HUMANITY AND HUMILITY!