Kola Olawuyi: Remembering the Mystery Man on Radio
Although it had become quite fragile, the corpse was yet to decompose––or so it appeared on TV. When it was lifted from where it was buried beneath the red soil, it swung around in an arc, like a poorly written letter “V”. If it indeed stunk, the two middle-aged men who exhumed it from the soil didn’t show it in their demeanor. The body was Bosede Olaniyi’s; she died after a self-proclaimed god conducted a “spiritual surgery” on her. That god lived in Alafia area, somewhere around Isolo Road Junction, Mushin, Lagos. Her name sounded as mysterious as her claims: “Malaika Agba”.
And Kola it was who ordered the exhumation of the corpse.
The proliferation of Yoruba “mystery” programmes on radio, particularly in the years after Kola Olawuyi's death, rendered that genre of broadcasting quite useless. The success and death of Kola, and to a lesser degree the late Olumayowa Orishatola, led to the influx of numerous charlatans into the genre.
And many of them made a mess of the craft with their coming: they invaded the airwaves with their apocryphal, poorly doctored pepper-soup-joint tales; the people saw through their shenanigans and lost faith in the genre.
And so, that broadcasting genre that shook and defined radio listenership in the entire Southwest and some parts of the North Central in the 90s through the 2000s, died. Literally, almost.
But before its death, Kola ruled the airwaves with deep, verifiable investigative stories, presented on radio and TV with excellent oral communication graphics. And long before I knew what “Investigative Journalism” was, Kola and his resourceful Kolbims Communication crew helped define it, warts and all.
Like Kola did with the demystification of “Malaika Agba”.
She ran a “Worship Centre” in Mushin area, this phantom "Malaika". And she was god. Originally christened Olayinka Oladipupo, "Malaika Agba" held near-total control over her disciples and terrorized the entire Alafia area with her “New Jerusalem Church”. There and then, her numerous disciples, decked out in green-colored flowing garments, sang her praises in tens and hundreds. Honest folks, they never pretended that what they termed “praise and worship” on Sundays was a poor mimicry of campus Kegites’ gyration session. They sang, drank and, report said, “shagged” themselves.
Until their "Baba"—a name "Malaika" earned in a desperate move to authenticate her omniscient aura with masculine agency—injected Bosede and she died.
Cocky and loud, Malaika first told Kola in an interview that she was the “almighty god” who would not die because she created heaven and earth and could control all terrestrial forces and death itself. She could, however, not control Bosede’s death even after conducting a “Spiritual Surgery” on her, ostensibly to “evacuate the dirt in her stomach”.
And so report said Bosede Olaniyi died after the "surgery" and Malaika ordered that she be hurriedly buried at the Matori Cemetary, without the consent of her family members. Kola came in and facilitated the exhumation of Bosede’s corpse, which was later taken to the Military Hospital where pathologists confirmed that Bosede had some bacteria around her heart and that she was possibly injected. Malaika, like a true Nigerian, initially denied but confessed after pressure from Kola showed she had a hand in the death.
The “almighty” and invincible Malaika would later be humbled and was detained at Panti, I think, where she made startling confessions about the death of Bosede and numerous other worshippers who died during her “spiritual surgeries”. Expectedly, an apparently connected Malaika Agba was freed by the Police but not after Kola ensured that her "godly" persona was blown off with evidential truths.
Because Kola’s presentation style was good, if not flawless, his contents ran the risk of being perceived as a product of fiction.
Among radio presenters, there were concerns around over-dramatization of certain occurrences that could get more rational interpretation if subjected to basic scientific enquiries. And Kola, too, fell short of this inadequacy on a few occasions. But on most occasions, Kola ensured he killed all doubts with graphic pictorial, audio and video materials. So when folks paint all radio “mystery programme” presenters with the brush of deception, without providing contexts, I get this urge to point out the exception.
Kola's Nnkan Nbe programme still airs on G-radio but the listeners aren’t up to a quarter of Kola’s old listeners. This is partly because of technological growth and shift from radio to more sophisticated communication media; but it is also about the phenomenal broadcaster that was Kola and his magnetic appeal. Kola was not perfect, but getting a replacement for him in the broadcast space has been quite impossible.
He was greatness personified, Kola.
Adieu.
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Oladeinde, writer and culture enthusiast, tweets via @Ola_deinde