Can Wheelchair Bound Fresh FM Chief Musician, Yinka Ayefele Rise A Second Time ?
The Oasis Reporters
August 19, 2018
Yinka Ayefele was once involved in a devastatingly fatal car crash as he was on an errand for his boss to Ekiti in 1995. Then he was an easy going journalist and part-time juju musician. He was almost abandoned for dead but public spirited Nigerians raised money for his surgery. He lived, but could no longer walk.
Pastors surrounded him praying before his surgery, and after, commanding the unconscious Yinka Ayefele to rise up and walk. Rather, he remained glued to his wheelchair.
But indeed, something rose in him. His voice.
It rose to high heavens in Praise of God, using his Yoruba genre as platform, smiling and thanking God for sparing his life. And a popular Gospel musician was born.
As his coins continued to count and drop into the bank, bank managers rushed him, begging him to collect huge loans to build a Music House cum radio station. He got 800 million naira to build the house and buy his equipment, from broadcasting equipment to musical instruments.
Residents of Ibadan where shocked on Sunday morning at six O’ Clock to watch live on television, a bulldozer demolishing Ayefele’s Music house, housing Fresh FM, a popular radio station in the heart of Ibadan.
Rather than go to Church this Sunday morning, angry Ibadan residents converged on Fresh FM 105.9 Mz premises in lamentations of the demolition of the Music House owned by popular musician, Yinka Ayefele, by the Oyo State Government.
The structure is located on the Challenge-Toll Gate dual carriageway in Ibadan.
A NAN correspondent reports that hundreds of residents had thronged the scene wielding placards with various inscriptions criticising the state government over the exercise.
Ayefele , on his Facebook page after the demolition, said: “Oyo State Government did at last…..my pains, my sweat…So help me God.”
Some of the early callers at the scene of the demolished building were Mr Seyi Makinde , a PDP governorship aspirant and Dr Wasiu Olatunbosun, the Secretary of Unity Forum, a splinter group in the state chapter of the All Progressives Congress.
Also present at the scene was Hon. Olusegun Olaleye representing Ibadan North State Constituency in the State House of Assembly.
Makinde, Olatunbosun and Olaleye, however, appealed to the irate residents at the scene of the demolished structure to remain calm, urging them not to resort to self-help.
It was understood that calls made to the Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism, Mr Toye Arulogun , could not go through as his two cell phone lines were switched off.
The state government had marked the structure for demolition, insisting that it contravened the state ’s planning laws.
But Ayefele had approached an Oyo State High Court sitting in Ibadan seeking to stop the planned demolition.
Ayefele’s counsel, Mr Olayinka Bolanle, in an ex parte motion filed before the court, sought for an order of the court restraining the state government from demolishing the property pending the determination of the suit.
Bolanle also stated that due process was followed in the construction of the structure while relevant approvals were obtained from the state’s departments and agencies associated with land and housing.
Justice I. Yerima ordered the claimant to ensure service of the court process on the respondent and adjourned the case till Monday for the hearing of the ex parte motion.
Residents of Ibadan who were interviewed by our Ibadan correspondent in Challenge district say that Ayefele’s radio station got into trouble with the government when they aired a live phone in and discussion program on the demolition of the Bodija abattoir. Butchers at the market had resisted plans to move the market to Shasha. The butchers who buy cows with cash from Fulani herdsmen are frightened of doing their meat business in Shasha, a place predominantly inhabited by Fulani migrants because according to them, Fulani herdsmen terrorists might infiltrate the market, kidnap and rob them. Majority of the butchers are Yoruba. Even though they are Muslims like the Fulani, mixing with them beyond business is not a proposition that they find alluring.
It is alleged that Governor Ajimobi, the first ever two-term serving governor was angry over the highly critical program. He simply declared through his mouth pieces that the building lacked the requisite conditions for a building of that magnitude.
Observers note that a similar scenario occurred in Kaduna State where the APC Governor, Nasir Elufai declared that his political enemy did not pay tenement rates on his building housing the offices of the Reformed-APC , a breakaway faction of the ruling party. The building owned by Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi was served the notice of payment demand of hundreds of thousands of naira at 4.00pm in the evening on a Friday to pay in the office that was already closed for the weekend. By four o’clock in the morning on Saturday, a bulldozer had gone there to flatten the building.
Meanwhile, Fresh FM radio station is said to be transmitting, using their Outside Broadcast Van. After all their license comes from the Federal National Broadcasting Corporation, NBC. Governor Ajimobi has no jurisdiction over Federal agencies.
