By Nehru Odeh
Popular Nigerian fuji musician, Alhaji Kolawole Rasaq Ilori, popularly known as Kollington Ayinla, is critically ill and has been hospitalized for days.
Reports have it that the 75-year-old, who has been ill for over a week, is currently on admisssion at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) in Ikeja, Sahara Reporters revealed.
According to the report, Ayinla’s condition had become critical and had to be placed on oxygen. However, the family has been keeping it close to their chest.
Ayinla was born Abdulrasaq Kolawole Ilori on 20 August 1949 to Chief Ayanda Ilori and Alhaja Asiawu Mofodeke Ilori. Known variously as Baba Alakita, Kebe-n- Kwara, but better known as Kollington Ayinla, he hails from Ilota, a town on the outskirts of Ilorin, Kwara State.
Ayinla and his friend and rival Ayinde Barrister, with whom he was involved in musical fights, dominated the Fuji music scene from the 70s through to the 80s and early 90s. In spite of their fights , they both ranked as leading stars of Fuji music.
Though Ayinla began recording for Nigerian EMI inn1974 and 1978, having achieved a pronounced bit temporary lead over Barrister, he set up his own label, Kollington Records, through which he released no less than 30 albums over the next five years.
As the popularity of fuji grew, and the market became big enough to support both artists, Kollington and Barrister’s enmity diminished. By 1983, both men were able to stand side by side as mourners at the funeral of apala star Haruna Ishola.
Still, a very remarkable thing about both artistes is that they were once soldiers. He joined the Nigeria Army a year before Barrister in 1967, while Barrister joined in 1968. Yet both of them resigned the same time.
“I started a year before he also joined in 1968. I joined the Army in 1967.When Sikiru Ayinde saw me in Army uniform, he admired the uniform and my cap. Anytime he comes visiting , he would wear my cap and ask if it fits him and I would said yes, he keeps doing that anytime he comes visiting until he finally joined the army. I was in Signal Department then based in Apapa barracks. But from there I was posted to Abeokuta. But when it was time to quit the Army, both of us resigned at the same time,” Ayinla maintained.
Yet a new and equally public rivalry emerged in the mid-’80s, this time with “Queen of Waka” star Salawa Abeni, who exchanged bitter personal insults with Kollington over a series of album releases and counter-releases.[
At the start of the 1980s, Ayinla started his own record company, Kollington Records, to release his music and remains to this day an extremely prolific artist, having recorded more than 100 albums.
Asked in an interview which of his songs made him popular, Ayinla said it it was “Ijo Yoyo.”