“As a lad, I believably thought he was Nigerian, if at all he wasn’t from Fiditi- just by the sheer enormity of his fame and the power of its pervasiveness. And because there were about four or five “Muhammeds” on my block who were either my bosom buddies, or simply neighborhood acquaintances. And I knew quite a few Ali too. I deliberately didn’t pay attention to the variances, or the environmental spin adopted by phonetics, to subtly distinguish ‘Mohammed’ from ‘Momodu.’ Quite typical in the usual infinite ignorance of a kid peering at the world from a localized perspective. It’s very necessary he was Nigerian! He couldn’t have been from anywhere else! Not with the way the adults around me- including my own dad rabidly celebrated his wins! Ali indeed was a bonafide Citizen of the world, period! He was like a River with no boundary. He was a tailored material with no folded seams or bended corners. He was the wind that was gentle on the candlelight and the paradoxically, poetic Butterfly that stung like a bee. He was truly a wonderful Beast of No Nation. A man we all could claim we knew just as well as his wives and kids knew him!” – Odolaye Aremu, telling Waki and Joko, his two kids about Muhammed Ali- The Greatest.
Goodnight Momodu!
