Akeem Lasisi

Seasoned fuji artiste, Kolawole Ayinla, popularly called Kollington Ayinla, has said that he is no more inspired to sing about Nigeria.

According to him, Nigerians, especially their leaders, have not made use of all he has sung in the past.

Ayinla told our correspondent in a telephone interview on Thursday that with the level of corruption in the country, there was hardly anything that anyone could do to turn things around.

He said, “I believe that President Muhammadu Buhari is trying his best as far as corruption is concerned. But as he is building the house, some people are pulling it down. If we have to say the truth, corruption is widespread in the country. Even the unborn child is corrupt”

Decades ago, whenever there were major changes on the socio-political scene, Kollington would be among the first musicians to sing about it. The Ilota, Kwara State-born artiste would move into the studio and eventually release an album on such.

This distinguished his music and that of his contemporary, Sikiru Ayinde Barrister. Believing that an artiste has the duty to enlighten the masses on happenings in government, it was this tradition that gave birth to Kollington’s albums such as Esin o F’aja, which condemned the religious crisis that engulfed Kano in 1981; Austerity Measure, released the same year; and Oro Idibo Nigeria, a prelude to the 1983 general election.

But the Nigerian situation seems to have broken the man’s spirit. As he also noted in an interview last week, all efforts to inspire the country into greatness had failed.

He recalled that in Nigeria ko le Ku, he sang jocularly that Nigerians could now have fun and procreate freely, as the prices of babies’ foods had gone down, following the coming of the military government. But he regretted that over time, every government had failed the people.

He said continued onslaught by pirates had also killed his interest in releasing new albums.

“Before I leave the studio, they would have started selling my work on the street,” he said.