Tokunbo Awolowo-Dosunmu, daughter of the late nationalist Obafemi Awolowo, has revealed the last statement her father made to her.
Speaking with Edmund Obilo from the Awolowo family home in Ikenne in a video uploaded on YouTube on Sunday, Mrs Awolowo-Dosunmu said her father blessed her with the words “Omo a ke yin” meaning “Your child will take care of you.”
Explaining in details the last few hours before his passing in 1987, she said, “It was a traumatic day. I’ll tell you I saw him by some strange coincidence.”
According to her, she visited her father three days before his death.
“He died on Saturday. We don’t know what time it was on Saturday morning but on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I saw him on each of those days.
“On Wednesday I was at work and I just felt like giving him a call and I called him um I said I would like to come and see you? He said, Come along. So um so I just came. He was in his office above the library down there and we just simply chatted,” she added.
Awolowo-Dosunmu expressed regret for not staying overnight as he had requested.
She said, “When I was leaving they were both in that room; Papa and Ahalaji Gbadamosi. Papa had the barber’s cloth around his neck, that was my last picture of him so I went into the room to say goodbye.
“He looked crestfallen. I can never forget and I regret that I will regret that forever he sat on his bed I sat on the chair by his bed and we were chatting but he didn’t look me in the eye and then when my sister came and all of that.
“So when I was going I said I will see you on Monday and he said his last words to me he said ‘Omo a ke yin’ meaning your child will take care of you.
“I didn’t think it had any significance on that day, now I know that maybe he was just saying goodbye. Nobody thought that he was going to die. There was no sign at all that he was about to pass on.”
The morning of his passing, Awolowo-Dosunmu arrived at the family home to find her father had died suddenly.
“I simply fell on his body and lay there. They had to pull me off,” she said, describing the moment she saw him.
“It was a bad day and I knew I had lost a vital pillar in my life,” she added.
Awolowo-Dosunmu recalled how her father once told his children, “You do realise that I’m a mystic.”
