My maternal grandfather was a great and powerful Muslim cleric and scholar by the name of Sheik Nurudeen Sa’ Id. He was from Ilesha. He was also a civil servant and he spent a good deal of his adult life in Lagos. His father, that is my maternal great-grandfather, was a pure Yoruba man from Ilesha. However his mother, that is my maternal great-grandmother, was a pure Fulani woman from Sokoto. My grandfather, Sheik Nurudeen Sa’ I’d, who was half Fulani and half Yoruba, got married to my grandmother, Alhaja Abeke Sa’ id (nee Williams) who was a pure Yoruba