Osoogun, a popular village in Iseyin Local Government area of Oyo State is synonymous with Bishop Ajayi Crowther, a renowned slave boy turned clergyman. But in spite of the international status of the Bishop, the people still live in the stone age with the community lacking basic amenities of Life. Olu Osunde and Taiwo Olanrewaju visited the community recently and report.
Mere mentioning Osoogun, the birth place of a religious legend and the first Bishop of Anglican Church in Africa, Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther could spark off an adventurous spirit in anyone, any time. The big name behind this tiny community of about 15,000 people on the northern side of Ibadan city in Iseyin Local Government council of Oyo State, on the way out to Badagry and Sokoto, attracts a lot of visitors from different parts of the world. Unfortunately, although the religious influence of the legendary Bishop pervades the community as traditional medicine and divination have no bearing on the people, the entire community with its adjoining villages are in a sorry state.
Despite its long period of existence which is put at about 200 years and the present level of technological development, the inhabitants of Osoogun are still strapped to the old way of life bereft of an iota of civilisation. Apart from the change from thatched roofs by most of the houses which now carry corrugated iron, the community in terms of facilities is dead. The people who are farmers live in tattered shelters with the rust corrugated iron roofs also suspended by decaying woods. Most of the living houses are mud and until recently, the people depended on a stream for their daily water needs. When Sunday Tribune visited recently, the journey to the historical community was smooth and interesting. Apart from stopping at check-points to ask for directions, there was nothing too unusual about the road.
As the Sunday Tribune crew chatted in the car, driving on the well-tarred Badagry-Sokoto expressway with curiosity looking for a tourism sign post with information about the place, one of the crew members spotted the name, Bishop Ajayi Crowther, inscripted in blue ink on a mould and quickly asked that the car be stopped. In obedience, the driver reversed the vehicle and veered into the untarred road. Behold! That was the turning to Osoogun. But for the eagle-eye of the reporter, the crew would have missed its way. It is unthinkable, that there is no sign-post to herald visitors and tourists to the birthplace of the first African Bishop, the Late Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther. The inscription that our reporter saw was even the signposts of the primary and secondary schools in the village. The inscription read thus: Bishop Ajayi Crowther Memorial High School, Osoogun. Founded: September 1980. Motto: Aspiration with humility. Donated by: JSS III Students 2003/2004 set. While on the right was another inscription, written in green ink—Bishop Ajayi Crowther Memorial School. St. Mary Anglican School, Osoogun. A block of 3 classrooms constructed by Oyo State Primary Education Board.
The first information gathered from our host as we alighted from the vehicle was that on Friday, 31st August, 2007, four white men from the United States of America, in company with the Bishop of the Ajayi Crowther Missionary Diocese, Rt. Revd. O.O.Oduntan, visited the historical village. The august visitors couldn't have been less disappointed with the rate of development in the village than the ST crew was. The untarred road to Osoogun is sandwiched between farmlands while the major means of transportation in the village is the Okada (motorcycle). Built at the entrance to the village is the moderately furnished high school while not too far away from it, on the same left side, is Bishop Ajayi Crowther Memorial Hospital. The ST gathered that the first two buildings, painted in light blue colour, were the nursing hostels of the staff who worked at the hospital when it was commissioned in 1970.
Further up was the main hospital building, which has five rooms. The staff room and examination room were locked up while the ward's key was in the key hole. The ST crew opened the door to discover five ordinary empty iron beds without matresses. The crew was trying the handle of the door of the examination room when two men—one elderly and the other middle aged—jolted them with greetings. Having explained the crew's mission, the elderly man, who doubles as the hospital's gardener cum security, said the hospital, built by Christians, was for some time maintained by the Oyo State government. According to him, the hospital, now abandoned, used to have a doctor and eight nurses plus a giant generator, adding that the hospital's matresses and other equipment were locked up for safe-keeping. He explained that the hospital, which now has no doctor and nurses, is currently being managed by the Iseyin Local Government, while the staff comprises a ward maid, a gardener and a head, who is a professional in community health.
At the back of the main hospital building is the children's ward and dispensary, now dilapidated and overgrown with bush. Lending credence to ST's view, the middle-aged man, said that the hospital, which used to be the glory of Osoogun, providing medical services for her people and those in the neighbouring villages, is now a shadow of itself. He said that the people of Osoogun now seek medical services at a private hospital in far away Eruwa, about 25 kilometers to the community, where they pay through their noses. "Yesterday, I took a woman to Eruwa for child delivery. She gave birth to female twins and paid N6,500," added the Okada rider. The elderly man, who said he had been working in the hospital since 1976, said the other members of staff were not around because of the on-going strike in the state. On source of water, the hospital relies solely on rain water which is stored in a reservoir. While another reservoir, built during the late Chief Bola Ige's administration, is used to store well water brought by tankers from Eruwa or by cyclists from neighbouring villages.
The well, also dug behind the main hospital building is not functional because rather than get to water during the digging process, a substance like chalk, powdery form surfaced and the substance is said to be in abundance in Kainkain, a neighbouring village. A pointer to the fact that a deposit, which could be useful, is in Osoogun. At the first Anglican Church built in 1912, the vicar-in-charge, Revd. Emmanuel A. Ajulo, explaining the pain of having a dead medical centre said, there was a time a man died of a snake bite before he could be rushed to Eruwa for treatment. According to the Basorun of Osoogun, Chief Bola Bambi, some foreigners who visited the village while the hospital was still under construction, doled out £50,000 with which the hospital was completed. Chief Bambi also attested to the fact that the hospital was well equipped on completion, saying that it had two ambulances, donated to it by the missionaries and the Oyo State government. The ambulances, he said had since been withdrawn by the state government.
He also added that the giant generator, which is presently non-functional, only needs servicing and replacement of its heavy battery. Today, though one could access information on Osoogun on the internet through the efforts of its Bishop, Rt. Revd. Oduntan, it is however pitiable that the town is in total darkness as it lacks electricity. Although there are electricity poles erected in some places in the village, the termination of the administration of Governor Lam Adesina, who the villagers said, made effort to ensure the supply of electricity to the community killed the project. Basorun Bambi recollected that the committee set up to look into the electrification of the village went to Ibadan during the regime of Governor Rasheed Ladoja to see the transformer meant for the village and in the process also met with the contractor assigned to handle the project, who promised to complete it by December 2006.
Again, the committee was said to have met with Governor Alao-Akala and the contractor assigned to the project, adding that Chief Lamidi Adedibu and Governor Akala, visited Osoogun during the last election campaign with a promise to look into the problems of the villagers. Also were it not for the magnanimity of the late Dr. Simi Johnson, a grandson of Bishop Crowther, who provided a borehole facility, one of our hosts said, the community of over 10,000 people would have still been depending on well or stream water or both for their day to day activities. Chief Bambi who took the Sunday Tribune crew round Osoogun community said the second borehole, sunk for them by the DFFRI, was faulty, while he explained that the functional borehole was initially powered by solar energy before the local government got it repaired and changed it to manual. He also informed the crew on what prompted the DFFRI boss to donate a borehole to the community. The Senior Chief said when the market, which now holds at Maya village, used to hold at Osoogun, the DFFRI boss had a stopover on a market day and he, Chief Bambi entertained him. The DFFRI boss then, perhaps as a result of the hospitality, asked if there was a borehole facility in the village, to which the Basorun replied in the negative. The DFFRI boss then promised that the following Monday, a borehole would be sunk in the village. That was how the community got the borehole which is now faulty.
Chief Bambi said but for the community's bad and untarred road, the market, which holds every five days and boasts of traders from all over the nation, would still be holding in Osoogun. Going down memory lane, Chief Bola Bambi said it was Papa Alabi Olakoilo, who reestablished Osoogun village on 16th January, 1912 with the permission of the Alaafin of Oyo. That was after the war in which Bishop Ajayi Crowther was captured as a slave. Osoogun, the historical community, which is four miles in circumference is 45 kilometres to Iseyin, the seat of the Anglican Diocese and the local government headquarters. It is bordered by about 70 other villages like Igbo-Ilasa, Araromi, Akinlabi, Onikainkain, Akipopo, Adegbola and Moyaoke among others. The major occupation of Osoogun male indigenes is farming. They deal in produce like cocoa, cassava, oranges, pepper, yam and tomatoes. The women, however, delight in making garri and also breed sheep and goats.
There is no gainsaying that Bishop Crowther's values are firmly entrenched in Osoogun as the village boasts of only two religions—Christianity and Islam, with the former in the larger percentage. The Christian denomination in the village include the Anglican Church, Christ Apostolic Church, Cherubim and Seraphim Church and the Gospel Church. Although it has no central palace, the community has a king, who rules from his personal building. The king, Chief M. Oyebamiji Olalere, the Olosoogun of Osoogun, was installed on 13th September, 2003. Chief Olalere, who said he was working in Lagos before he was brought home to be made king, appealed to the government to provide all necessary facilities in Osoogun, in order to enable investors site their companies in the village. "Immediately after their secondary education, our children leave the village for Ibadan and Lagos but if there is a higher institution here and a company where they can work, they will stay around and contribute to the development of their birthplace," the monarch stated.
He also used the opportunity to appeal to the Anglican Communion, which he commended so much for its interest in the development of Osoogun, to site satellite campus of the Bishop Ajayi Crowther University in Osoogun. "We have accommodation for the students and we also have spacious land," the king added. To the Oyo State government, the monarch appealed that a new local government be carved out of the present Iseyin local government, to comprise Ado-Awaye and her 40 neighbouring villages and Osoogun and her 70 neighbouring villages, with Osoogun as the headquarters of the local government.
While proposing Bishop Ajayi Crowther Local Government as the name of the council, the monarch posited that that gesture would help to hasten the development of the village. Corroborating the king, Basorun Bambi said, it was a pity that the Western people of the country do not honour Crowther as the Easterners. "Well, a king is without honour in his hometown," he added. "If you go to Onitsha and Lokoja, you will see the big Cathedral named after him with his photographs placed there, while another Anglican Theological College is named after him at Lokoja," he said. While moving round the village, Chief Bambi pointed out to the crew the first house built with corrugated iron sheet in 1959; the spot on which the first house in the village, which has since been demolished, was also built.
Another important place was the Pastor Samuel Ajayi Crowther Memorial Tourist Centre, Osoogun. There one unexpetedly need to squint his or her eyes to be able to read the sign post which inscriptions have faded out. The spot contained the house Crowther lived with his siblings and parents before he was captured and sold to slavery. Sunday Tribune crew was also shown the giant Ose tree, to which Crowther was tied after he was captured. If Osoogun is developed to a standard tourist centre with all enabling facilities, Sunday Tribune crew noted that the lives of the people and the purse of the government would be the better for it. And if not that the crew went on the journey in a car, it would have had to sleep at Osoogun till 8.a.m the following morning when the vehicle which plies Ibadan to the village gets there.
Sunday Tribune gathered that on a daily basis, the vehicle leaves Oritamerin in Ibadan at 6 a.m and gets to Osoogun at 8 a.m
Bishop Ajayi Crowther
12-year-old Ajayi was captured in the same war in which his father, was captured and nothing has been heard about his father since then. At Badagry, where the slaves were taken enroute their destination, the elderly man looking after them was said to have been favourably disposed to Ajayi. He sent him on errands and had wanted to keep him in Badagry but for the sudden arrival of the Portuguese slave traders.
BISHOP Samuel Adjai (Ajayi) Crowther (C. 1809 - December 31, 1891) was a linguist and the first African Anglican Bishop in Nigeria. Born in Osoogun, Yorubaland, in today's Iseyin Local Government, Oyo State, Nigeria, Rev, Dr. Samuel Ajayi Crowther was a member of the Yoruba ethnic group but was also a Sierra Leone Liberated African.
Ajayi was captured by Fulani slave raiders in 1821 and sold to Portuguese slave traders. Before leaving port, his ship was borded by the British Navy, and Crowther was taken to Freetown, Sierra Leone and released. While there, Crowther was cared for by the Anglican Church Missionary Society, who taught him English.
He converted to Christianity, was baptized by Rev. John Raban, and took the name Samuel Crowther in 1825 after his master. While in Freetown, Crowther became interested in languages. In 1826 he was taken to England to attend Islington Parish School. He returned to Freetown in 1827 and attended the newly opened Fourah Bay College, an Anglican missionary school, where his interest in language found him studying Latin and Greek but also Temne.
After completing his studies he began teaching at the school. He also married Asano Susan, a school mistress, who was also on the Portuguese slave ship that originally brought Crowther to Sierra Leone and the union was blessed with three children, two females and male.
In 1841, Crowther was selected to accompany the missionary J.J. Schon, on an expedition along the Niger River. Together with Schon, he was expected to learn Hausa for use on the expedition. The goal of the expedition was to spread commerce, teach agricultural techniques, spread Christianity, and help end the slave trade. Following the expedition, Crowther was recalled to England, where he was trained as a minister and ordained by the Bishop of London.
Rev. Dr. Crowther began translating the Bible into the Yoruba language and compiling a Yoruba dictionary. In 1843, a grammar book which he started working on during the Niger expedition was published, and a Yoruba version of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer followed later. H also began codifying other language. Following the British Niger Expeditions of 1854 and 1857, Crowther produced a primer for the Igbo language in 1857, another for the Nupe language in 1860, and a full grammar and vocabulary of Nupe in 1864. In 1864, Crowther was ordained as the first African Bishop of the Anglican Church.
That same year he also received a Doctor of Divinity from Oxford University, Bishop Dr. Crowther's attention was directed more and more to languages other than Yoruba, but he continued to supervise the translation of the Yoruba Bible (Bibeli Mimo), which was completed in the mid 1880's, a few year before he death in 1891, Crowther suffered a stroke and died the last day of that yea
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