41: On Christmas Day, we go to our Governor’s house to party.

In December, there was no Christmas Cantata. Some people said it held, but there were just not many people there. Others said it didn’t hold. We weren’t sure.

On May 29, 2007, Adebayo Alao-Akala became the governor of Oyo State. In Ogbomoso, there was endless celebration. My mother, who had publicly supported the man, sang worship songs every hour in the small three-bedroom flat we rented in Oke Anu, a quiet area in Ogbomoso. She was not alone in her celebration. Akala was from Ogbomoso. He was born here and now he was the governor of the entire state. It felt personal for us all. One of us, born in this small town, had risen to attain the highest public office in the entire state. He had become governor. He would now go to Ibadan to rule the state. And it all started in our small town.

In Baptist churches across Ogbomoso, there were thanksgiving services to celebrate his victory. And why not? Akala was born into a Christian home—a Baptist church, to be precise—and he never failed to acknowledge this publicly, often visiting various Baptist churches in Ogbomoso whenever he was in town.

Although Akala belonged to the Peoples Democratic Party, a party notorious for embezzling money, it did not matter to us. The only thing that mattered in Ogbomoso was that one of us had become governor. My mother even bought an Alao-Akala cap and wore it to work, the market—everywhere. She joined women’s groups celebrating the governor’s rise and even nursed the idea of going into politics, an idea that made my father pout.

For my mother, it was more than just the pride of one of us becoming governor—it was personal. If you ask an elder in my extended family about Alao-Akala, they will tell you our family had some connection to him. It’s true that Alao-Akala spent time as a child in Ghana studying. It’s also true that my late grandfather spent time in Ghana as a child. Alao-Akala spent time in Jos as a police officer; my great-grandmother, whom we called Mummy Jos, spent most of her life in Jos. I once witnessed my grandmother meet the governor, and he bent to greet her—the kind of respectful bow you give someone you would have prostrated to if you were much younger. There were these tiny dots of connection, but if you presented these facts in court, you probably wouldn’t win your case. That didn’t matter to my mother. To her, we knew the governor, and the governor knew us.

So, in 2008, when the governor announced a Christmas Cantata at his residence in Randa, Ogbomoso, and invited Baptist church choirs to perform Christmas carols, my mother loaded me and my three sisters into the back of our BMW E3 and drove us to the governor’s residence.

The governor’s Christmas party often happened a day or two before Christmas. As a child, I looked forward to it every December. I loved Christmas—the way the weather changed, the air grew thinner, and the nights colder. I loved how the intense Harmattan signaled the year’s end. Schools closed, companies shut their doors, and in those pre-remote work days, people truly left work behind.

Early in December, my mother would call our family tailor to measure us for Christmas clothes. As the only boy in my family, I relished standing before the tailor while he measured me, saying, “Ini, you’re growing taller o.” I would stand taller, smile sheepishly, and enjoy the rare compliment. After measuring me, he’d move to my sisters. Then my mother, ever stylish, would bring out an Ovation or City People magazine, featuring Genevieve Nnaji, Ini Edo, or another actress on the cover with outrageous headlines. My sisters and I watched as she and the tailor debated styles, skipping the few fashionable styles to finally settle for the ugly designs with puffy shoulder pads and a ridiculous pattern on the chest. As always, my sisters would protest the design, with my sister T trying to even reason with my mother to see how there were better options but my mother would persist and like a loyal co-conspirator, the tailor would always agree with my mother’s ugly choices. For me, they would pick anything they saw. Men’s fashion was not a priority in these magazines so there were only a few styles to pick from. I never really cared what they picked for me. I was happy to wear anything.

Christmas meant my siblings and I spent time debating which style our mother should have chosen. Christmas also meant my mother driving to meet the tailor and calling her on the phone multiple times only for the woman to deliver the clothes two days to christmas with an excuse about how her albino cat did not see well in the sun and knocked the candle off which burned the Butterfly machine she was using to sew and she had to dig out another machine. Christmas meant my mother feeling sorry for the tailor and then asking her to please add some organza to the clothes for my sisters while for me, she would say the trousers were too short so they would make it longer so I would “meet it there.”

On Christmas Eve, we attended Antioch Baptist Church’s carol service. The church shimmered with lights

from the entrance steps to the pulpit, where an elaborate nativity display dominated. Our choir, led by the remarkable Pastor Odiase, performed beautifully, filling the air with renditions of The First Noel, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, and We Three Kings of Orient Are. For our family, coming from a more hardened church like MFM where most of our worship was focused on warfare, coming to Antioch Baptist Church was a relief. It was in this church that I fell in love with Christmas songs. In these songs, in the highs and lows of voices and the lifted eyes of the congregation, I fell in love with Christ all over again, with his church and with the very concept of Christmas. I fell in love with the birth of Jesus.

So when, in 2008, the governor announced that there would be a Christmas Cantata in his residence at Randa, Ogbomoso and he invited Baptist church choir to perform a Christmas carol, it was only expected that my mother loaded me and my sisters to the back of our BMW E3 and drove us to the governor’s residence.

From Oke Anu, we would drive through small dusty roads because my mother was afraid to drive on the main Takie Road. She would take us through Anglican Road, past the Bend-Down-Select market, and then join the main road just before we reached Apake, where most of the banks in Ogbomoso were located. In a city like Lagos, Apake would be called Bank Road, but for some reason, it was called Apake. From Apake, we would drive the length of Takie Road, the same road which, if you stick to it, will take you straight to Ibadan, where Akala was representing us as the governor. From Takie Road, we would turn right just between the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary and the Baptist Medical Centre, which has now been renamed Bowen University Teaching Hospital. The narrow road between the seminary and the hospital led us towards the Blind Center in Adeniran, but we would not get that far. We would stop at Randa, from where we would make our way to the governor’s residence.

Crowds gathered at the gates, but my mother always found a way to get us inside, invoking one of her tenuous connections. Once in, we joined rows of white plastic chairs, enjoying Christmas carols performed by various choirs. The highlight was the governor’s goody bags, emblazoned with his face. It didn’t matter what was inside—what mattered was having that bag. Afterward, my mother often tried to meet the governor, wading through crowds and occasionally succeeding. We’d return home late but content. This routine continued every December during Alao-Akala’s tenure.

When Alao-Akala lost the 2011 gubernatorial election to Abiola Ajimobi, my mother sat crying in our living room, glued to the radio, lamenting with her fellow Women for Alao-Akala members. I was in JS 3 then and did not know what this meant for our state but I could see from the way my mother sat still sobbing, confirming from various people on the phone if it was really true that we had lost the election; I knew something had shifted.

On Sunday, pastors preached about God’s will and faith in the will of God. People spoke in hushed tones after the service about how the election had been rigged by the Action Congress of Nigeria. A few others said the PDP government was too corrupt and that Akala and his colleagues squandered money anyhow. They believed that with Ajimobi in power, some form of structure would return to Oyo State. They said we were too blind to see it because we were focused on the stomach infrastructure Ogbomoso people got from the governorship of Alao Akala. I did not know what all this meant until December.

In December, there was no Christmas Cantata. Some people said it held, but there were just not many people there. Others said it didn’t hold. We weren’t sure. How could something that was always so definite and clear become so hazy and uncertain? How could the very thing that symbolised Christmas for me not exist? That year, there were no jokes about how we would find our way through the crowd in front of the governor’s residence. That year, our tailor came around as usual, measured us as usual, and delivered our Christmas clothes in the same manner. Everything happened as it always did, but nothing was the same.

In January 2022, Governor Alao Akala died. I was taking a walk around Ikeja GRA in the dusty Harmattan season when I saw the tweet announcing his death. Even in that moment, all I could think about was Christmas and what it meant to me.

It’s been seventeen years since that first Christmas Cantata when my mother loaded us in the back of our BMW E3 and drove us through dusty, crooked roads to Randa. Seventeen years since we opened the Ovation and City People magazines to pick ugly Christmas designs for our Ankara and Lace. Seventeen years since my mother parked in some bush near Adeniran so we could walk to the governor’s residence and mention the names of family members to get through the crowd at the gate. Seventeen years since we collected Christmas goody bags with the governor’s face on them. Seventeen years since that first Christmas Cantata.

Seventeen years, and it’s another Christmas today.

Everything is different now.

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Thanks to Oyindrop for reading drafts of this.