Babatunde Omidina’s painted face loomed in the shadows of darkness, but his presence brought light and laughter to our faces. In ‘Erin Keéke’, the sitcom of the 1980s, he limped through the whole gamut of performing arts. Music. Drama. Dance. He even intoned comic melodies, although he did not sound like a Sultan of sound. But like the multi-talented Lanre Fasasi a.k.a Sound Sultan, he thrived in comedy performances. He would excel in that genre, becoming king. So let’s indulge in no merry-go-round, and simply hand him his crown: Omidina was Sultan of Comedy.
For those who knew him quite well, Babatunde was no Baba Suwe. There was a gulf between the man and the actor. The one cherished the serious ambience of life away from the klieg lights, ignored fans that craved comic dramas behind the cameras, courted controversies, and was misunderstood by his Ikorodu neighbours. The other garnered fortune and fame from tomfoolery, made high art of mere mischief, and became a household delight.
Babatunde attended shows, danced to Kwam 1’s talaso music, made love to his women, rarely smiled, preened like a peacock, and drove across Lagos in his SUVs with royal grace. Some said he cuckolded some other men. We may never know, even though the venerable Baba Olofa-Ina gave life to that myth in a recent misadventure. But Babatunde himself was a blend of myth and irony anyway, and at the height of his glory, many clothed him in the robes of arrogance.
Baba Suwe on the other hand was the eternal fool, mischievous interpreter of proverbs, Opebe’s ally, Jide Kosoko’s nemesis, Mr Latin’s rival, Bola Tinubu’s phantom brother and eternal hailer, and everyone’s favourite entertainer. He was Obelomo, Oyinlomo, Adimeru, Oko Safu, Maradona, Oluaye Marose, Jor Jor Jor, Omo na Bouncing, Kosomona, and related vanities. He was no Baba Sala, the other king whose sun eclipsed along with the tragedy of Orun Moru. Neither was he Baba Mero, or Baba Sabiko, or Dejo Tunfulu, or Baba Ijesha of the teenage rape scandal. He was no James Idepe, or L’Awori, or Ojoge, or Otolo, or Aderupoko, or Pa James, or Pappy Luwe. But he was king. When he met Bayowa of Hello Olodumare fame, he became Larinloodu, Sonto Alapata, Alani Debe-debe etc. Baba Suwe never died in movie plots, and he had an eternal smile planted on his face, even in moments of tragedies.
So for decades, Nurudeen Babatunde Omidina switched roles. He was Baba Suwe on movie sets, and Babatunde behind the camera. A comic fool in the day, a never-smiling disciplinarian at night.
It’s the stuff of tragedy that at the twilight of his life and career, both characters disappeared into thin air, leaving the man in the lurch. And so when death loomed, he was neither Babatunde of the regal airs, nor Baba Suwe of comic vanity. He became a frail-looking Nurudeen, his face a pitiable blur. He didn’t smile, neither was he fierce-looking. He exuded distress. The foolish theatrics, the sardonic humour, the stern looks, the airs of grace—-they were all gone.
I once wrote on this page that Yomi King a.k.a Opebe, the king without palace, was the yin to Baba Suwe’s yang. But Moladun Kenkelewu was indeed his partner, both on screen and in the other room. The other day at his burial, Thompson of the ‘Mr Deinde’ fame said that Babatunde Omidina died before he finally died. He died, first, in 2009, immediately Moladun died. But we may never know.
Many said the ghost of Moladun haunted him, and there were tales of complicity and cover-ups. There was also the myth of a homicide. We may never know. But what we do know is that if at all he died after Moladun’s death, he indeed resurrected. He even made plans to jet out of the country two years later. But he met a dead end at the Murtala Muhammed Airport.
The men of the NDLEA claimed he had cocaine in his bowels, but the actor said he had no such contraband. So they forced him to defecate, to discharge the drugs from his nether region. He disagreed, and then protested, á la Odunlade Adekola of the ‘She’yeye mi’ fame, who recently shone in a viral show of idiocy. The NDLEA wanted him to reel in his own vomit. He never did. In the wake of the circus show, Yoruba newspaper headlines screamed “Oyagbeti!”, and his poop took on a separate life of its own. Many wanted to know the colour, the texture, the shape. Fela Kuti would have called it “Expensive Shit”. He was later released, and then he obtained another victory in court pronouncements. He was awarded N25mn, but he never got the monetary award. His lawyer, the great Bamidele Aturu, passed on, and Baba Suwe sucked into the shadows of the silence of the courts.
It would appear that Babatunde Omidina began to die the moment NDLEA commandeered him to defecate. Ceaselessly. It was one slow and painful death staged in the full glare of the law. But it was death all the same, dramatic in its newsworthiness, spanning about a decade. It’s one death that played out before every one of us. On the pages of newspapers, in radio and TV bulletins, in the face of rights activists, in the cathedral of saints, in movie theatres, even in the temple of justice. It’s the sort of tragedy essayist Teju Cole would have called “Death in the Browser Tab.”
II
Sound Sultan, no blueblood of the Sokoto caliphate, inspired hope. He was one artiste whose works we all held in awe in our sitting rooms, but we didn’t acknowledge with similar energy outside.
