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I start this tribute with a confession. My initial motivation to be close to Kunle Salami was patently selfish. I had assumed that cultivating his friendship with the concomitant proximity would afford me leverage as I sought to woo his course mate who I’d fallen for.
I was studying Architecture and he, Zoology: two disciplines as alphabetically removed from each other as any that were on offer in the University of Ife of 1981.
As if time and chance were colluding to advance my amorous fortunes, Kunle and I wound up in the leadership of the Evangelical Christian Union fittingly called executives. He was Bible Study Secretary while I superintended over an obscure sub-group.
With enhanced impetus, I deployed every tactic in furtherance of my amorous objective, but twelve months along, matters had gone completely awry.
Firstly, I was booted out of the ECU executives – and deservedly so. I had questioned the propriety of a certain novel practice with a measure of juvenile defiance. No one tramples on the traditions of such an august association without attracting dire consequences.
And just when I was coming to terms with my ignominious excommunication, my amorous adventure hit the rocks. The Ondo-born Zoology lass obviously had other designs unknown to Architecture.
Humbled and heartbroken, I staggered off to rue how differently things could have turned out. In spite of my best efforts at pretence and cover-up, those experiences did get to me. The immediate effect was apathy towards fellowship in general and ECU specifically.
It was in this period I embraced music as a coping measure, choosing rather to become a part of The Redemption Singers – a sub-group of the Students Christian Movement rather than the other groups much more aligned to the ECU.
In the long term, I was always going to harbour this deep-seated animosity towards the executives because I was convinced they wielded the big stick because they didn’t like me. As a consequence, my relationship with most of them was barely cordial, and that wasn’t a good thing.
One remarkable event that was a watershed in my ordeal was the replacement for the bishopric I had vacated. Tokunbo Salami is Kunle’s kid brother who even at that tender age was already manifesting the spiritual sagacity the Salamis would come to be known for.
Three individuals among the executives would reach out to me personally in a bid to ease my recovery. The first was the one who owned the unedifying responsibility of communicating the executives’ terse testament.
Wole Martins was General Secretary and after we had talked, I was ready to jettison the idea of a gang-up against me.
Then came the Prayer Secretary, Julie Ighere who in the short period we were together had become like a mother to me. I possessed no skills whatsoever to refuse her honest efforts at rapprochement. The last and unarguably the most comprehensive intervention was Kunle Salami’s.
Despite my ill-fated love odyssey, Kunle and I remained friends. We both loved music but unlike me, he couldn’t afford the time to develop it, but he continued to offer me massive encouragement. Kunle was also part of an elite group of Christians known by the fitting moniker: WORD MEN.
Most of them – Lanre Adeboye, Femi Adesanya, John Idowu, Dan Adeniyi, the terribly handsome Hovana Ettarh, that masquerade of a man; Tunji Akintayo – were my very good friends. Not only were they known for their uncommon zeal and focus, they remain, to this day, on the cutting edge of the gospel enterprise.
By the time Kunle graduated in 1984, the unsavoury events of two years earlier were well behind me – or so I thought. From 1984 to 1987 when I was to finally graduate, even though I remained nominally part of ECU, I became increasingly aloof.
This was indubitable proof that, deep down, I still harboured grudges. Did Kunle know this? What happened in November 1987 put him under serious suspicion, but as it stands now, that can never be confirmed.
Because the defence of my M.Sc. dissertation was severally postponed, I was still on campus when I received the invite for Kunle’s wedding billed for Ibadan. And he requested I render a special song at the reception.
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That fateful day, with a borrowed acoustic guitar and an uncertain and trembling voice, I sang a newly-written song in pidgin titled, EVERYBODY COME O!
I can’t quite recall whether my rendition attracted applause but I do vividly remember that someone ‘sprayed’ me with N20: the highest currency denomination at the time. Two significant things happened to me that day.
Even though many of the dramatis personae of 1982 weren’t in attendance, I was finally able to achieve complete closure: forgiving and releasing everybody including the head honcho himself, Hilary Abiagom.
One man’s love, compassion, sensitivity and doggedness had brought the unyielding yoke to irreparable ruination. And it was equally at this point that my song writing ministry formally took off.
That would be the very last time I see Kunle on this side of eternity. Rid of the burden of the past, I was finally able to face the future with renewed joy and vigour.
That’s a tiny narrative of Kunle Salami the WORD MAN: dating back over thirty years. He hobnobbed with the high and mighty without losing that peculiar touch that endeared him to the weak and lowly.
If the Holy Spirit ever had a gift of follow-up, Kunle was full of it. He never abandoned any task until it was done. I should know.
Kunle would stoop to lift the fallen, faltering soldier from the dust: nurturing him back to health and retooling him for the bitter battles ahead.
This is how the ranks of Calvary’s indomitable cavalry are swelled: one reinvigorated warrior at a time. All those cross-wielding militant crusaders primed to fight to the death: that is how they are fashioned.
In these days of the gospel of ease and sleaze, when merchants of mammon have seized many a pulpit, sons of God must beware. It is too late in the day for political correctness.
Why should you be afraid to step on toes, yet you trample irreverently on the blood of the eternal covenant?
Why would you rather please man than God?
It is time to review the company we keep if we still intend to execute this race by the rules.
It is time to ask those hard questions that might infuriate and unsettle; questions that reveal truth and true character.
I have since decided what question I’ll ask if and when in doubt.
“Jesus I know, Kunle I know: who exactly are you?”
