Oladejo Okediji was born in Oyo, Nigeria, in 1929 to a father who was a Methodist catechist and a homemaker, both remaining in a monogamous marriage throughout their lives, a perfect rarity at the time in the town. The exact date of his birth remains a mystery, though his father remembered clearly the year of his birth. He had only two other siblings, which was also rare at that time to grow up in such a tiny nuclear family unit. He did not meet his grandfather who died before he was born, though he had strong connections with his grandmother, a pillar within the Orisa community in the neighborhood. The cultural balance of Christianity and indigenous Yoruba spirituality shaped his childhood, though he tried, as a young man to distance himself from his grandmother's belief system, because of his father's Methodist principles.
At the age of 10, he started his primary education in Oyo. During the registration process at the school, when the headmaster asked him to indicate a specific date of birth, he adopted October 25 as his official birthday. Upon the completion of the standard six education in 1943, he started working as a pupil teacher in Fidity, thus beginning a career as an instructor in public education that he continued at various schools and locations until his retirement more than thirty years later.
In 1945, he gained admission to the Wesley College, Ibadan, and recalled trekking the 30 miles from Oyo to Ibadan several times a year, in the company of a couple of classmates who lived in the Oyo area. He competed his education in 1948 and was awarded the Grade Two teacher's certificate, after which he started teaching at the primary school level at various parts of the then western region in Nigeria, including Ijebu, Itapa, Owo, Iju-Ita Ogbolu, Iseyin, and Lagos.
In 1958 he left Lagos and started teaching at the Divisional Teacher Training College, Ile Ife, the city in which his creative writing career began, and in which he wrote most of his novels, plays, poems and evocative essay. His first work, Àjà Ló Lẹrù published in 1969, is a an adventure novel featuring a private investigator, Lapade, a character that featured in two additional novels, Agbalagba Akan (1971) and Karin Kapo (2007). His first play, Rere Run, published in 1973, was an instant hit and has been performed scores of times by the Ori Olokun Theatre of the Obafemi Awolowo University, featuring ace actor, Jimi Solanke in the leading role of Lawuwo, a tragic character. His collection of Poems, Oro Enu Agba (2017), contains old and new compositions spanning his entire writing career.
Okediji moved from Ile Ife to his home town of Oyo in 2006 after becoming the Ọ̀tún Baálẹ̀ of Ilée Baálẹ̀, in Apaara, largely to be near his community. He continues to write in his Oyo residence, and spends much of his time reading and presiding over community activities as practically the oldest member, sharing his encyclopedic experiences and recollections with younger people.
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
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