General Ayinla Kollington is a Fuji musician from Ilota, a village on the outskirt of Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria. He is also called Baba Alatika, Kebe-n-Kwara, Baba Alagbado.  He was born in 1953 in Ibadan, Nigeria. He was recruited by the Nigerian Army during the Civil War and this was where he learned the rudimentary of music. Kollington's music career started in 1965 when he won a competition organized by the late President of Nigeria, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. His music style is fuji music - like apala and waka, a Muslim-dominated relation of juju, retaining that style’s vocal and percussion ingredients but abandoning its use of electric guitars in order to obtain a more traditional, roots-based sound.

Kollington Ayinla ranks alongside his friend and competitor Ayinde Barrister as the two most important artists to dominate Fuji music from its inception in the 1970s through to the 1990s by which time it had grown to become one of the most popular dance genres in Nigeria. He began recording for Nigerian EMI in 1974, and in 1978 achieved a pronounced, but temporary, lead over Barrister when his introduction of the powerful bata drum (fuji had until that time relied almost exclusively on talking, or ‘squeeze’, drums) caught the imagination of record buyers. In 1982, when fuji was beginning to seriously rival juju as Nigeria’s most popular contemporary roots music, 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. A new and equally public rivalry emerged in the mid-80s, this time with waka star Queen Salawa Abeni after they got married in the 1980s, and their marriage spectacularly crashed leading to name-calling on songs. They exchanged bitter personal insults with each other over a series of album releases and counter-releases. Sadly, for non-Yoruba speakers, the verbal fisticuffs remain unintelligible, though the drum-heavy, hypnotic music was universal in its appeal.

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 over 50 albums, most of which have never been released outside of Nigeria. He is married to many wives and has many children one of whom is Salawa Abeni and they have three children, one, a son, Sheriff who is also into music. Ayinla Kollington went on to be one of the most prolific fuji artists out there in Nigeria.

His big break came in 1978 when he introduced Bata drum into fuji music, giving it a whole new feel and capturing the hearts of music industry heads and fans.

Did you know that Ayinla got married to Salawa Abeni and the two later went their separate ways? This led to their short stint of musical beef between them.