By Kayode Ajulo, OON, SAN
Bashorun Dele Momodu, the compass from Ile-Ife whose quiet calls in the my earlier days first taught me that a true elder does not merely advise but lights the path, and
Sadauna Femi Fani-Kayode, the indomitable lion whose fire I once had the solemn honour of defending, emerging victorious not by force but by the quiet architecture of justice,
I write to you not as a junior, but as one who has drunk deeply from the wells you dug.
I have watched and read with the ache of a son who loves two fathers. Your minds have met in battle like thunderclouds on the horizon; brilliant, electric, impossible to ignore. Yet an old Yoruba saying sits between us like a patient elder: Bi erin meji ba ji, koriko a gbagbe oruko Igbo: when two elephants fight, the grass does more than suffer; it forgets the name of the forest that gave it life.
There is truth here that cuts deeper than rhetoric: the people, our people, are the forest, and their remembering is what binds us.
Conflict between kindred spirits is not always sin; it can be the kiln in which truth is hardened. Heraclitus taught that strife shapes being, and our own Yoruba orunmila whispers that wisdom is found where questions meet. But strife without resolution is a wound left to fester. The logos, the balance that binds, must be sought, or the very fabric of our shared life frays.
You are both Egbons to me; elders in years and in the scars of nation-building. From Bob Dee, I learned the sacred art of patience: that restraint is not cowardice but courage refined. From FFK I learned the incandescent truth that courage without compromise can wake a people from slumber. I have taken both lessons into my life; they have made me whole.
Today I ask you to do what great men, and great cultures; have always had the capacity to do: to turn dialectic into covenant. Let this moment be more than a clash of titans. Let it be the hour when two men who have tested each other’s steel choose to forge together a blade worthy of the task ahead.
The Yoruba speak of oju Otito; the face of truth and the axiom of omoluabi: character measured by how one treats the community. I call on you to show that same omoluabi now. Not for applause, not for convenience, but because Nigeria, because Yorubaland, because the generations who will inherit our mistakes and our triumphs, deserve leaders who can rise above ego and choose legacy.
Make peace, not as surrender, but as transcendence. Make reconciliation not as a pause in the war, but as a promise of new work. Let March 2026 be remembered not as the month when titans traded blows, but as the month when two of our brightest sons chose to be a single light for the nation; one the keeper of memory, the other the guardian of conscience; and together made history.
I offer myself to that work; not merely as mediator with words and legal instruments you once trusted me with, but as a fellow traveller committed to the slow, patient labour of rebuilding trust. Call me, and I will come; speak, and I will listen; act, and I will stand with you.
May the spirits of our ancestors; the wise ones of Ile-Ife, the teachers of Ori and Iwa; bear witness to this choice. May your names be spoken in future houses not with rancour but with gratitude: two men who, having known the thunder, learned how to bring rain.
With deepest respect, abiding affection, and the unshakeable conviction that greater men have always chosen peace after the storm.
Dr. Kayode Ajulo, OON, SAN
…for the people.
