By Lasisi Olagunju
(Published in the Nigerian Tribune on Monday, 7 April, 2025)
If he had lived one more week, he would have defeated himself. When he turned 87 three years ago, I told him we would celebrate his 90th very big in 2025. He replied that it wouldn’t be necessary because he would die at 89.
“Eighty-nine? Why 89? That’s an odd number.”
“But being first is being odd. Number one is an odd number.” He reminded me.
“Yes. And good luck lies in odd numbers.” I said that quotation and looked straight into his eyes. He smiled and dragged me into Shakespeare’s ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’. Act 5 Scene 1:
‘…This is the third time;
‘I hope good luck lies in odd numbers.
‘Away I go.
‘They say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death. Away!’
We chorused the lines, laughed and then plunged into our usual discussions of mathematics, literature, music, life and death.
He was my muse. He was also a big fan of what I do here. We met in 1995 at Tribune House and bonded forever. I was a Tribune reporter, he was a Tribune columnist, a very regular face and a reliable source. I worshipped at the feet of his genius. A friend said if knowledge was a religion, Omololu Olunloyo was its high priest.
Dr Olunloyo explained to me why he believed hitting 90 years of age wouldn’t be one of his blessings. “You see, I am a scientist but I believe in superstition. I was told a long time ago by someone that I would die at 89…”
“And you believed that person?” I asked him.
“Why not?”
About this time last year, the social media announced him dead. I got a number of phone calls from people seeking to know if it was true.
I did the calculation. He was 89 just a week earlier. I asked myself if the superstitious finally triumphed over the scientist. I called his phone number and heard his voice.
“Lagunju, I am still around. Did you also believe I was dead?”
“You are 89, sir.” He laughed. I laughed. We understood each other.
He then repeated to me what he told the press: “Those breaking death news and the person presumed dead will all die one day. I’ve been lucky. My father died at 42, while my mother died at 102. I’m 89. I’ve crossed the expected life age.” It was the second time his death would be announced. The first was in June 2022. Yesterday was “the third time” as predicted by Shakespeare in our ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ quote above.
When he turned 89 last year, I told him the “ides of April are come.” His response was Julius Caesar’s “Ay, but not gone.” So, I was looking forward to April 14 this year when he would clock 90 and I would tell him how big the prophet lied. I was wrong. He would not be Omololu Olunloyo if he got the figure wrong.
He was a fine blend of Owu and Ibadan: headstrong, resilient, loving, friendly and complex. He would give you anything if he loved you. In the first week of January 2006, a Peugeot 406 car drove into my mother’s eighth day Fidau in my hometown, Eripa, Osun State. I was shocked to see Dr Olunloyo come out of the car. I didn’t bother to invite him because the notice would be too short.
“You came? But I did not invite you, sir?”
“I read it in the papers.” He said with a smile. My hometown is about 160 kilometers to his Ibadan home. He came because a friend’s home is never too far.
Just like Isaac Newton, Olunloyo’s autobiography or memoir was never written. Several years ago, I asked him to write his story. He told me he was too young to write. “My mother is still alive. I won’t die now.” He told me. When his mum, Alhaja Tejumola Abebi, died on Tuesday 22 October, 2013, I reminded him again on the urgency and necessity to write. He was silent, and sober. He told me he felt vulnerable without his mum. But he made some frantic efforts in the last two years. He was gathering stuffs. His articles, his lectures. His photos. He told me he would get it done. I was not convinced. His prodigious brain was super working but the body, confined to the wheelchair, was weak, very going.
When we both knew dusk was approaching, we discussed more frequently. I thought I could download him, everything. I once asked him if he knew from whom he got his genius. He told me his mother and his father were greater geniuses. There is a 14 July, 1979 letter to him from Chief Obafemi Awolowo addressed to “My dear Omololu” in which the sage praised the man’s heritage of genius: “I still cherish an admiring memory of your father. He was, along with late Oyesina and Lasebikan, a pioneer of higher education in Ibadan. If memory serves, he was the first man in Ibadan to tackle successfully the London Matriculation Examination which was rated very high in those days.” That was from Awo. There is also an 11 May, 1981 letter in which Chief M.K.O. Abiola lauded Olunloyo’s “outstanding career as Commissioner for Education and later Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs in the old Western State between 1967 and 1971.” Abiola said, “it was he who in 1970 solved the Alaafin of Oyo riddle.”
The Daily Times ran an editorial on him when he was reassigned on January 16, 1970 from the Western State Ministry of Education to the Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs. I find it very remarkable that he was credited with forcing the famous Ibadan International School to reduce its fees “from the incredible annual figure of £500 per pupil to about £135.” One paragraph from that editorial is worth quoting verbatim: “Perhaps what posterity will remember Dr Olunloyo longest for is the ruthless, uncompromising and fearless war he waged on unscrupulous school proprietors who established sub-standard schools in order to amass private fortunes. Most of these Shylock school proprietors in the West have been put out of business. Others who ran sub-standard schools have been compelled to raise their standards to a level acceptable to Dr Olunloyo’s Western State Ministry of Education.” You can imagine how he must have felt at his twilight seeing substandard becoming the standard everywhere.
Was there an issue, topic or subject I broached with him which he did not discuss? None that crosses my mind this moment. During his brief stay as governor, I remember there was an urban legend that his mother was his ‘Chief Security Officer’. So, in May 2019, we interviewed him for the newspaper I edit. I asked him why, as governor, he planted his mother as a major line of defence, screening visitors, deciding who saw him and who didn’t.
“I just used her to scare people away.” He told us.
“Why would you want people scared?”
“She was very inquisitive. Look at this book for instance, ‘The Path to Play’ by Adelegan. When I had a problem which was getting intractable, she would step in. There’s one amazing episode as recorded in the book. (Reads from the book): ‘Olunloyo came to Ipetu-Ijesa accompanied by his mother to speak to my people, especially the representatives of the so-called Ibadan reactionaries.’ You can see the rest in the book…”
“So, why did you go to Ipetu with your mother?”
“The problem was very difficult. So, I took her there as a scarecrow…”
“Scarecrow? How?”
“Scarecrow. You know, when you see an unusual scenario…”
“But it’s quite unusual for a commissioner to have been accompanied by his mother on an official duty tour…”
“Yes; but a young commissioner.”
“And Mama was quite comfortable following you?”
“Yes. She was quite comfortable. Bola Ige followed me somewhere in Osogbo. He followed me to Fakunle Comprehensive High School. We had some trouble there and I asked him to follow me. He was Commissioner for Lands, I was Commissioner for Education. So, they were wondering what Bola Ige came to do. We were friends and I took him along and the teachers at Fakunle were scared to see the two of us… Two rascals in conductor dress.”
At 5.58 am yesterday (6 April, 2025), another of his mentees and former editor of the Nigerian Tribune, Dapo Ogunwusi, called to tell me what we had always dreaded. The mainframe was down. Omololu Olunloyo, richly endowed library and super computer, had gone with the winds. Lékeléke ti rè’lú ìk’efun. Never again those late night calls to discuss matters of science and the arts. No more discussions of Fagunwa, his forests and the Irunmole. No more T.S. Eliot and ‘The Waste Land’ and its “April is the cruellest month.” There are no more epics and blank verses from John Milton. There won’t again be sessions on leaders and Othello’s Iago. No more Mozart and Beethoven and their music; no more lessons in Galois, Gauss and Blaise Pascal and their geniuses in Maths. For almost 30 years, that was our routine.
In life, Olunloyo was easily attracted to excellence. In death, he carefully chose the company he would keep across the river. Like Albert Einstein, he chose the month of April to exit this plane. Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), High Renaissance’s Italian painter and architect, shared a trinity of greatness with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. He died on 6 April, 1520. Olunloyo accurately slotted himself into that good company. It is very difficult to believe that he won’t be found again in that powerhouse at Molete, Ibadan, surrounded by books, papers and books.
Omo Olówu òdùrú,
Omo ajíf’epé s’ere…
Sùn un re.
Monday Lines 2
Lugard: 80 Years After
By Lasisi Olagunju
(Published in the Nigerian Tribune on Monday, 7 April, 2025)
On 9 June, 1913, Lord Friedrick Lugard minuted on a document that Lagos “could never be made a healthy place.” It was his reaction to a proposed sewage scheme estimated to cost £186,000. He believed that that amount was too vast to expend on an unworthy Lagos. He was Governor of Southern Nigeria at that time.
On January 1, 1914, Lugard became Governor-General of the whole of Nigeria. Thomas S. Gale, who was very critical of his ways, notes that one of Lugard’s first acts “was to close the popular Ereko dispensary in Lagos. He also approved the cancellation of plans for a badly-needed Lagos maternity home” because Lagos people” insisted that it be staffed with indigenous personnel.” Lugard always referenced what he described as “the inherent racial qualities of the coast negro” as justification for the ‘apartheid’ he prescribed for Lagos.
The soil is the crop; the planter the yield. That is why I am writing this. This week marks the 80th anniversary of the death of Lord Lugard. He was the British colonial administrator variously blamed – or praised – for ‘creating’ Nigeria and its principal structural problems. I read him each time I get exasperated by Nigeria; whenever I wonder why we are where we are.
From 1900 to 1906, Lugard was High Commissioner of the Northern Nigeria Protectorate. His blitzkrieg conquered the North but the North counter-conquered him with bewitching love. He was pleased with northern Nigeria and never hid his love for the region and his appreciation for its loyalty to him and to the British crown.
The southern part, particularly Lagos and its environs which he later added to his portfolio, Lugard found very insufferable. His words for the people there share meaning with savagery and its synonyms. Probably if we understand our leaders, past and present, we can design our escape route out of their failure and foibles.
What were Lugard’s legacies in the North? His North had no western schools when he got there and he did very little to alter that situation throughout his years there. Check paragraph 161 of his ‘Report on Amalgamation’ published in December 1919. He later established two schools for the Muslim area of the North. There were 43 mission schools which Lugard wrote were “confined to the non-Muslim districts.” These mission schools, he wrote, enjoyed neither government’s financial assistance nor inspection and control. Lugard did so ‘well’ here for the North such that “at the time of amalgamation, the total number of pupils in government or mission schools was between 700 or 800 out of a population of some nine million.” Those were his words.
The man was lucky. With no western educated elite, he had no opposition, and he did not have to worry about the emirs. They cooperated with him on everything and he reciprocated their good behaviour by not allowing western culture and its Christian missionaries to disturb their region and religion. Earlier in 1903, after he conquered Sokoto, his speech to the new Sultan and his people ended with a charge that he had no issues with Islam. When he conquered Bida “a walled town that had been giving trouble”, his final words were to the effect that “every man was free to worship God in his own way.” He was wise. He later empowered the emirs with indirect rule which came with lucrative salaries and other inducements.
He was wise. He had superior weapons but he didn’t use them after defeating the north in battle. For these, he was respected in palaces and on the streets. He became the lord of the north, his word was law. Then, he was made governor of southern Nigeria in 1912; he came down to Lagos and encountered a set of Africans – negroes who argued with him. He did not find it funny and he acted and reacted so throughout his years in power.
On 28 March, 1913, Lugard, apparently after encountering the educated elite of Lagos, strongly counselled against giving western education to Africans outside Africa. He wrote in a memo: “It appears to me that residence in Europe is bad for the African. He returns at best an insufferable prig; at worst he is a very objectionable person.”
The amalgamation he midwifed was not for any negro to enjoy. It was for his country’s treasury to breathe and for it to use one slave to sustain another in perpetuity. And he said so. In an August 16, 1915 memo, Lugard wrote that “a great native city lives its life as its forebears did and is little affected by progress. Such a community has no desire for municipal improvement. It neither appreciates nor desires clean water, sanitation, or good roads or streets.” He said more than this. You can read it and other things he said and did in Thomas S. Gale’s ‘Segregation in British West Africa’, page 502. That was the man who led northern Nigeria into today’s Nigeria.
If anyone thought the white man came to Africa to civilise the uncivilised and show the heathen the way to heaven, Lugard, as early as 1893 knew it was not so and he said so in black and white. He wrote: “It is in order to foster the growth of the trade of this country (Britain) and to find an outlet for our manufacturers and our surplus energy, that our far-seeing statesmen and our commercial men advocate colonial expansion… If our advent in Africa introduced civilisation, peace and good government, abolishes the slave trade, and effects other advantages for Africa, it must not be therefore supposed that this was our sole and only aim in going there. However greatly such objects may weigh with a large and powerful section of the nation, I do not believe that in these days our national policy is based on motives of philanthropy only.” You can read him in his ‘The Rise of Our East Africa Empire’ published in 1893, page 381-382. If that work is too far out of reach, go read Toyin Falola’s ‘Ibadan: Foundation, Growth and Change, 1830-1960’, page 290.
Before Nigeria, Lugard was in several places, doing things his own way. He was in Kenya; then he crossed into Uganda. He chose Kampala as the capital of Uganda and that was after he arrogantly turned down an offer of a camp site from Mwanga, king of the country. That was on the 13th December, 1890. Lugard’s own words best describe his action on this critical occasion: “I declined to accept it nor yet another place shown to me. Eventually I went to the top of a low, gravely knot of waste land and said I would camp there. Its name was Kampala. I got message after message from the king urging me not to use this spot, but I was obstinate and declined to move. Not only was it the only clean and healthy spot around, but I intuitively saw that if I was to do any good in this country it was essential that I should assert my independence from the first, and it appeared to me that Mwanga was even now already engaged solely in finding out to what extent he could order me about, and whether I was afraid of him. Later experience showed me that I had gauged his motives right, nor did he cease thus to endeavour to badger me and pit himself against me in matters of trivial importance, as well as in greater until he learned to his cost that his policy was a mistake.”
Lord Lugard is sorely hated in the South and, I think, very celebrated in the North. The man died on 11 April, 1945. He was 87 years old. When he died, a flurry of reactions and reviews followed his transition. His official biographer, Margery Perham, who wrote in 1945 that Lugard “stands out too far above human stature” denounced some liberals who denounced Lugard “as a dangerous buccaneer.” I saw that in Perham’s ‘Lord Lugard: A General Appreciation’ published in July 1945. The man’s other friends wrote beautiful tributes on him. I read ‘Lugard’ by H. R. Tate, John Eaglesome and Selwyn Grier; published in the July 1945 edition of ‘African Affairs’. If you are interested in what his critics thought of him, you should read ‘Lord F. D. Lugard: An Assessment of His Contribution to Medical Policy in Nigeria’ by Thomas S. Gale. It was published in 1976. For a deeper read of the man and his service to slaves, slavery and slave trade in Nigeria, read ‘Slow Death for Slavery: The Course of Abolition in Northern Nigeria, 1897–1936’ written by historian Paul E. Lovejoy and economist Jan S. Hogendorn. Or read the review ‘Lugard: the Devious Years’ by Barbara M. Cooper. When you read the last two here you can then imagine what sort of leader outlaws slavery without freeing slaves. What kind of man does that?
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