Meeting a Muslim Jegede Sokoya By Pius Adesanmi.

Airlines in Nigeria will announce that it’s time for boarding. Never mind. You are still at least 3 hours away from boarding the aircraft. What they mean is that they want to do another round of passport scrutiny, luggage check and pat down before hoarding you all into one of those partitioned sections of the terminal.

This is where you will spend the next two hours of your life sardined with neighbours who waive Nigeria’s ways of being very loudly in your face.

Depending on who your Nigerian neighbour is in the sardine box, you will never be bored if you are a permanent student of culture like me. It is always an opportunity for shobolation extravaganza. I have already done shobolation about the airport telephone culture of the Nigerian – especially if he has just made some money. He will make sure that somebody in Ikorodu can hear the conversation he is having over the phone at the airport. We need not revisit that territory.

 All we need to add is that the nature and content of this garrulous telephone conversation is not only determined by a Nigerian’s socio-economic standing and class, it is also determined by his ethnicity.

- If he is Yoruba, use your imagination and picture this conversation…

- If he is Igbo, use your imagination and picture this conversation…

- If he is Hausa-Fulani, use your imagination and picture this conversation…

The only territory I have never covered is the territory of the Yoruba Muslim. This specimen is the gift that God gave me as a neighbour yesterday evening as we were sardined into the last box for the next two hours of our life before boarding the Turkish airlines flight from Lagos to Istanbul.

My friend, Kadaria Ahmed, had convinced me to break away from my cocoon of Western airlines and give Turkish a try. My other friend, Kelechi Deca, had also had to tell me that the real 21st-century airlines are those from the eastern axis – Emirates, Qatar Air, Turkish, etc. Kelechi insists that the Lufthansas, British Airwayses, Air Frances, and Deltas of this world are completely overrated and cannot clean the shoes of our friends from the east. Kelechi had even ventured as far as telling me that airlines from the east are safer for reasons we shall not get into here.

What Kadaria and Kelechi could not have known is that they would give a pathological minder of his own business like me the gift of the man who breezed into my world yesterday and asked if the seat beside me was taken. I smiled and invited him to sit down. I was still trying to make up my mind if Turkish Airlines staff in Lagos were better than the usual suspects working for the regular Western Airlines so as to determine whether to praise Kelechi and Kadaria for taking me eastward or to take my koboko and go after them. I therefore did not pay the man too much immediate attention.

That was until he started that inevitable Nigerian telephone conversation…

“Elo” (on top of his voice), “elo, elo, elo” (the Yoruba will always drop the “h” where it is wanted and put it where it is not wanted). “Elo, Iya Amisu, ehen, o ku die ka wo plane. We have almost boarded.”

With that sentence, the sociology of the Yoruba Muslim crashed into my world. I am not talking about the urbane, cosmopolitan Yoruba Muslim with a swag. I am talking about his ijinle local kinsman, the type you see in Ibadan, Oyo, Ogbomoso, Osogbo, Iwo, etc, who is constantly talking about “esin” (faith) and “waasin” (worship).

He never leaves home without wearing the perforated white cap you always see on Ogbeni’s head in Osogbo. He is also constantly waving his tira (Islamic prayer beads). Just like my father punctuated every sentence with Latinisms, this Yoruba Muslim speaks Yoruba with a tone and cadence that have been so heavily arabicized he always appears to be doing Qur’anic recitation when speaking.

If he starts to speak English, his verbal Arabism, sitting on a foundation of an unforgivingly deep Yoruba accent, gives you a cultural product that is really rich and beautiful. It is like Jegede Sokoya punctuating every sentence with “esin” and “waasin” and “mosalasi”. He is the type who says “amola” and not “amala”.

Take this local edition of the Yoruba Muslim and put him in Europe or America for 20 years, he will always sound like he just left the bush hamlets of Ibadan yesterday.

Such was my neighbour yesterday. I struggled not to listen in on his conversation. I really tried to mind my business.

“Ehen, Iya Bilikisu, please remember to tell Lukumon and Wasiu that… ehen…ok. E ma gbagbe o. What about the other matter with Waidi and Lamidi…?”

He has network issues and hisses. He fetches his second phone and calls another person. “Elo, elo, Rasaki, emi ni. How are Jelili and Kamilu? We are at the airport. No, I am flying to Istanbul and from there to Dublin. Please tell Musikilu and Sumoila to go and see Iya Amisu. Also tell Rasheedat and Mulikatu that I tried to call them but no network.”

In the space of one hour, I must have been taken through at least fifty Yorubanized Arabic names. The man was just pouring them out in phone call after phone call, dishing out instructions, organizing life in some village back in Yorubaland and simultaneously in Dublin.

By the time he was done talking to at least 15 people at his full decibel level (many other Nigerians in the room were making phone calls at the same decibel level), I nearly felt like introducing myself to him as Alagba Payoosideen oni waasin...