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High Chief Jimoh Aliu (MFR) aka Baba Aworo |
legend in Nigeria. He is one of the last soldiers of the olden day’s theatre
industry in Nigeria. He started acting in 1956 when Nigeria was yet to discover
what is today described as Nollywood.
The Oke-Imesis, Ekiti State (South West Nigeria) born actor is today a Cultural
Ambassador in Yoruba Land after 60 years on stage as writer, director, producer
and actor. An old soldier in the Nigerian Army, Chief Aliu is an encyclopedia of arts. Aworo who is famous for his several TV series of the 80s and 90s e.g.
Arelu, Yanponyanrin and Fopomoyo
is one celebrity that is a reporter’s delight any day any time.; always full of
wits, drama, oriki, native intelligence, wisdom and strength that cannot be
compared with anything.
this second episode of his historic encounter with your Africa’s Number
1 Celebrity Encounter blog, Asabeafrika
inside a Lagos 3 Star Hotel suite, Chief
Jimoh Aliu, 82 who was on his way to America for a special movie project
shared the secret of his relationship with Nigeria’s ex-President and elder
statesman, Chief Mathew Aremu
Okikiolakan Obasanjo (GCFR) with us. He told Asabeafrika why Obasanjo and
legal icon, Chief Afe Babalola are
powerful and graceful in their various endeavors. It is an interview you have not read anywhere
before. Enjoy the excerpts.
You served under Chief Olusegun
Obasanjo in the 3rd marine Commando, what kind of person is Chief
Obasanjo?
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The High Chief & The GDA meets |
you my son. You can see that I am beginning to laugh.
We don’t seem to know the brand of person Olusegun
Aremu Obasanjo the Ebora Owu, Ogbongbodu is. This
always gives me sleepless nights because here in black Africa, we don’t know how to appreciate our great men. But I can
say God the creator of great things knows how to appreciate His good works.
Anybody he creates to be special in the real sense of it, and you people now
say you want to fight or embattle such people, majority often, always destroy
themselves. You cannot destroy what God calls ‘special’.
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Chief Jimoh Aliu to Asabeafrika….’Obasanjo is a peculiar Leader’ |
Funny enough, they
will be hungry, they will face tribulations and they will now be forced to go
and meet him at home and beg to say ‘please,
save us’. Someone you know that is gifted with administrative grace, why
can’t you continue to make use of him? He was in the military, till he got to
the level of Head of State, nobody could destroy him. I call him ‘someone we chase but couldn’t catch, and
when we caught him, we couldn’t destroy him; we threw him in the fire and the
fire died, we threw him in the ocean and the ocean dried. He was turned to meat
for witches and when the witches put him in their mouth he turned to Ipeure just like the arrow of Abuja. It
can’t be eaten by the dog; it can’t be swallowed by the dog’ (Went into
deep spiritually inclined panegyrics of Obasanjo).
And you say you don’t know Obasanjo.
People like Obasanjo in the Biblical
times, which God created specially and people begrudged them, didn’t they see
what happened to their enemies?
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Chief Jimoh Aliu to Asabeafrika…’Obasanjo cannot be killed by anybody except God’ |
Those kind of specially made people like Obasanjo whom God created in the Quran and people took them for granted,
didn’t they know what happened to those who took them for granted? They even
made mess of the Prophet Anobi Mohammed (SAW) all those who troubled
him, till date, they are still crying at the Kabba. Obasanjo’s case is
not strange, God usually create some people like him in different areas of the
world, and God has just been magnanimous to us by making Obasanjo to be born in Egba.
God gave us Awolowo, that he should
be established in Ijebu. He equally
gave us Adedibu to be established in Ibadan. He graced us with Afe Babalola and made him established in Ekiti. And that is how God creates
people like that; they are not too many in their settled environment. But they
are created for a purpose but if you now say you don’t know them, God will just
be looking at you.
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Chief Jimoh Aliu to Asabeafrika….’The more you try to pull Obasanjo down the more you go down’ |
The more you try to destroy such people; they will keep
growing and succeed. The more you say you are destroying them, they will be
more successful. If you refused to follow his pattern of leadership or you are
against his leadership strides, when things gets out of hand, you will run to
him again and say ‘please, let’s invite
him to help us’. You should ask yourself this question, ‘why is Obasanjo still alive?’ He ought
to have died. His last birthday (80th) that we celebrated, anybody
that was lucky to attend will know that Obasanjo
is a peculiar creature. You will know that the Ebora Owu and Ogbongbodu is a rare creature. It is
because we don’t know his value, if we (Yorubas) know his value, we supposed to
carry him up and say ‘Oh, this is our
own MOSES that God created and given to
us’.
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Chief Jimoh Aliu to Asabeafrika…’Obasanjo is our own Moses’ |
When you said you don’t like him but God said he loves him, the
foreign countries say they value him (Chairman of Ex-World Presidents Association)
so, what do you want to do about that? No, I ask you, how can we harm such a
rare breed? During the Dimka coup, he
was one of those marked for death but he escaped death and later emerged as the
Head of State. He was captured and locked in prison with the hope that he was
going to be killed but see what happened eventually.
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Chief Jimoh Aliu to Asabeafrika….’Attempt were made on Obasanjo’s life by Dimka & Abacha but God saved him’ |
Didn’t Nelson Mandela spend 27 years in prison?
Was he not the same person that was asked to come and change the country for
good? I want to ask you this question and I want you to be very honest with me;
‘which funeral in this world is as glorious as Nelson Mandela’s funeral? Now look at Nelson Mandela and Olusegun
Obasanjo and draw your line of analysis. We Yorubas race don’t appreciate what God did for us with the presence
of an Obasanjo among us. Obasanjo is a rare gift, a prophet that
is not valued in the home front. But I want to say maybe if he was never
persecuted the way he is being persecuted for a long time, maybe he would have
died since. All the evil sacrifices they threw at our own Iroko Oluwere—Obasanjo has always turned to blessings for him. I
know Olusegun Obasanjo and he really
loves me because I understand his character. I know his chemistry. He and (Dr.)
Afe Babalola, if I storm into their
ambience, the moment I discover that the mood I meet Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo is not a good one, I will leave
immediately.
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‘Afe Babalola & Olusegun Obasanjo are God’s ordained elements’–Chief Jimoh Aliu |
But the moment I stroll in and I meet him playing his Ayo game, and he is making his
characteristic jests and I say to him ‘mo
k’ota, mo k’ope o’ and he is laughing and he says ‘you this Ekiti people’, then, I know he is happy. But the moment
his countenance is sour and you can’t find his mood lively, better leave him;
the same thing with Afe Babalola, the
moment I storm his office and I sight his countenance not too smooth, I will
leave immediately. I might leave and he will ask his aides and say “Where is Aworo?” or “where is Jimoh Aliu?” and they will
inform him that I am gone; and when he calls, I will say ‘that mood I met you, I didn’t like it and I do not want to compound
your mood’. So, there are peculiar people that God has created like that
and I always try to tell our people, to please, leave Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo alone to be doing his thing. If it is not
yet time that God wants him to come home, nobody can kill him. But they don’t
know.
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Chief Jimoh Aliu to Asabeafrika…’Obasanjo is not someone you can attack spiritually’ |
He is not a person you make evil incantation or send evil incantation to.
He is not somebody you can aim to kill because he supposed to have died long
time ago. But if you say ‘oh, let us wait
till 7am for us to wake and go meet Obasanjo’, he is already woke up since
4am. Look at the day we were celebrating his (80th) birthday, he was
so busy and restless, this same man had woken at 5 am to join the organizers
and he won’t be tired. Same thing with Afe
Babalola, he will take you touring his farm several times and he won’t be
tired. By the time you find a sitting you will be the one tired but he is never
tired. There are some people like that, created by God. God blessed them with
grace, longevity of life, glory, power, respect; influence and equally gave them
knowledge. They are out there but we that wage war against them; we find
ourselves committing certain unknown sins just from fighting them. It might be
the time you are fighting such a person that your own business will be going
down and his own will be going up. Some people don’t know. Don’t fight people
blindly; look, I am a Muslim and I am
a Christian, nobody can tell me to
hate one particular religion. It is not possible because I made deep research
and anybody that is a real Christian, a born again Christian, he should go and
read Psalm 109 and Psalm 120, then, you will be very
careful to run people down or abuse or curse people because there are some
people you are cursing and praying against but he or she is not even interested
in you. He is just busy with his own business
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Chief Jimoh Aliu to Asabeafrika…’People like Obasanjo and Afe Babalola are very peculiar in history’ |
and the curse will bounce on you
and fight you. The same thing with the Holy
Quran, there are a lot of things that you mustn’t do in the area of hurting
people but we lack understanding. Today, we have many people who adorn the Awolowo cap style but majority of them
lacks the qualities Awolowo possesses.
They can’t even behave like Awolowo.
They will say ‘oh, he is an Awoist’
but does he behave like Awolowo? But
the same Awolowo we fought, we fought
him until he passed away. But the likes of Obasanjo,
I know him very well because I lived in Abeokuta
for 18 solid years. And I married two of my wives from Abeokuta. So, I understand the under linings of Abeokuta. I joined Akin Ogungbe Drama Group
and that enabled me to live in Iberekodo
where I worked under him and even married my wife while with him. So, what do
you want to tell me about Egba that I
don’t know?
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High Chief Jimoh Aliu being honored by Fuji Music Czar, Alhaji (Dr.) Saheed Osupa aka Saridon-Papa |
There is no festival they do in Egba
that I am not conversant with; is it Olomodu
festival? It is Ewu Oniwara festival?
Is it Eleku-Losu festival or Oro festival or Ogboni festival? There is none of it in Egba that I never participated. Is it Egun (masquerade) that I didn’t carry in Egba? Is it Oro that I
didn’t participate in Egba or is it Igunnunkun or what? But the moment you
engage in all these and you remove the name of God, every other thing is
useless. Because when the herbalist dies, the spell man dies, the cult man
dies, the incantation man dies, the tira man dies, the Bible man dies and even
the yansh we streamed with Ileke now
turns to something the ants are feasting on, so if you now engage in all these
faculties of life without holding unto the pillar of God, if such person dies,
what he left behind will become dirt and be swept away. (Subscribe to Asabe Afrika TV on your
YouTube app by typing GbengaDanAsabe and watch the video edition of this
interview)