The Ibadan Elderly Drummer who went viral popularly called Ayangbenle ‘Baba Onilu’ is dead.
Ayangbenle, a special drummer for Osun during the Osun Osogbo festival is a native of Ede town, Osun State.
The drummer’s son confirmed his demise.
He said: “Baba Onilu has passed away overnight. May Almighty Allah grant him Aljanah Fidarus”.
“Baba Onilu last word is “La Ilaaha Ila lahu”.
Ayangbenle used to drum for students of the University of Ibadan during convocations, then he also drummed to entertain corps members in Ibadan.
In April 2022, the drummer went viral when Adisa Olashile, a phone photographer and a corps member serving in Ibadan, Oyo, took random pictures of ‘Baba Onilu’ and the pictures went viral on social media platform – Twitter.
Olashile minted two of the pictures as NFT and they got collected immediately on OpenSea for 0.3 eth each – around one million naira.
Adisa promised to give Baba Onilu 50 per cent of the proceeds and he did. Five hundred thousand naira with an additional 100 thousand obtained from donations was handed over to Baba who received the huge cash in shock and disbelief as he was also presented with a picture frame of his image.
Following the announcement of Baba’s demise, netizens have been paying tributes to him.
Here are a few from X formerly twitter.
