Few people will dispute the fact that ,Abayomi Olajide aka Royal Umbrella is as loyal as a lion that sticks with his Coalition mates all through. Throw tantrums, spit out venom , his loyalty is unshaken as in a tempest. Loyal people , our elders say,are rare ,one should hold them dear .
He exhibits this traits unstintingly to however rows with him in the same boat and always a boon. When Governor Seyi Makinde was campaigning , many people doled out heaps of abuses and threw aspersions on him for promoting the course he believes in , lol, the ” loyal Royal ” as I call him ,sent them to the Coventry and stood firm . This time , the maligners apparently forgot to paint him the ethnic tar of not hailing from Ibadan.
In the middle of the elections, when I briefed him reasons why the party might be torn apart because of its internal locust , he remained focus and he told me he would waive goodbye to partisan politics only when he might have completed the assignments to the Governor, whom people knew as his friend, ” kenny ,don’t you know being addressed as Ore Gomina comes with a price ” he would say.
At the wake of the second coming of the Governor, he told me how he suffered silently having reduced both in frame and fortune to the course of ” carrying the party on his head like an Atlas” without having anything to show for it . He was pure Ibadan man then?
He was ridiculed, called unprintable names and the emergency fortune tellers even saw no future for him in aligning with the Governor. But their gods can’t be blame for not revealing Royal ‘ s identity then , they didn’t ask.
Years back ,when our path crossed at Lagelu Grammar School and we literally ate from the same plate , not only that I knew him to be Royal , I was certain of him being an Ibadan man.
Just recently, he called to appraise me how GSM has made him a happy man by elevating his status in many ways through handsome gifts, I never knew a price tag of character assassination will follow this?
Now that Royal Umbrella is aspiring for political office to be Chairman of Ibadan North , it now dawn on his traducers that he ” landed in Ibadan from another Galaxy ” . Like a ravenous ghost in Burke Kealan Patrick ‘ s work, that can emerge from the blues, they ascribe that powers to ROYAL, they say, his complexion makes him an ibo man , some say he is tall, only Hausas are, His ascent sounds like Ibadan man etc What a funny lots !
For those who care to know, Lukman Abayomi Olajide, Royal is from NW3/340A Ogodu Compound, Abebi in Ibadan North West. He attended St Patrick primary school, Abebi and IMG primary school, Orita Aperin. He attended Lagelu Grammar school from where he proceeded to read Quantity Surveyng at The Polytechnic, Ibadan for both his OND and HND .
