For man, for country!

BY LANRE AKINTILO

For several days, I searched for a befitting title to my eulogy for ’Baba’ as we have all come to know him. My years of writing experience failed me until I finally decided to settle for the above. Baba David Olanrewaju Akintola founding Principal of Cherubim and Seraphim College, Ilorin came, saw and conquered. He was the pioneer principal who extra-ordinarily led the school from 1969 to 1993. He was a Baba not so much for his own biological children and immediate family, but largely for many he ‘sired’ by daring to be OUR TEACHER, OUR MENTOR, OUR MOULDER, OUR FATHER, OUR ADMIRAL, OUR FORERUNNER, and COACH. Truthfully, Baba was and still is more. He started out and assumed all and more of the above at a time he himself and perhaps his lovely wife and two kids at the time never knew how life will pan out.

How does one begin to eulogize the enigma called ‘Alujannu Baba-Ibeji’, loosely translated (The Strange one and father of twins)?

My very first encounter with Baba predates my admission into the ’College’, the year was 1980, Goke Akintola, Baba’s second son and I attended Trinity Nursery and Primary School, Ilorin. Goke and my cousin; Kayode Omishakin were classmates and regularly played together. Both, however, were 3 years ahead of me then. During one of our many ‘hide and seek games’,

Goke mistakenly broke Kayode’s eyeglasses and we all went to report him at home to his dad.

The roar that bellowed out Goke name beggars description as Baba called him out. Shivering and trembling, Goke began to explain the circumstances that led to the mishap. In a jiffy, Baba lifted him with his ears and I and my cousins bolted as we all made for the door! If “this man” can so discipline his own son like this, what will he do to us ‘mere friends’, after what seemed like an eternity, he called us in and explained to us the reasons why Goke had to be so disciplined. From that time, I marked his face and dreaded appearing before him again!

It will take me a few years after I got into college to come to the conclusion that, what Baba was at home, he is outside. An excellent judge of character, transparency defines his discipline of our body and mind. What he taught us in college, he instilled at home. He would not spare the rod and spoil the child. His appearance alone straightened us, his looks sent messages that could only have been understood by the ‘deep’. The ‘deep’ that he trained and brought up.

Many people never understood some of the challenges and battles he fought as then Principal in our old college. According to the story, Baba himself told me during one of my private and last interviews with him in Ilorin earlier this year, ”There was a ‘Principality’ among one of the kitchen hands who made meals for the boarding students and who had determined to begin killing my children”. Now, as the ’PRINCIPAL’ without the ‘LITY’, he owed it a duty to ensure no evil came the way of his children, he knew also the had the host of heaven with him and gave marching orders to the woman to leave the college premises. According to Baba, “I never saw her again till she passed on after a terrible illness came upon her”. Such was the audacity, such was the passion, dedication, and commitment he brought to bear in the management of the college.

As a student in the college, I will be eternally grateful for two concessions Baba gave me; one, I asked that ‘Newswatch’, a weekly news magazine published and edited by late Dele Giwa be subscribed to for the press club and he gleefully agreed. I spent most of Tuesday’s devouring its contents every week. That largely prepared my young and feeble mind on what will later shape the events of my life. Secondly, as a science student, I wanted to take Fine-arts as a subject which invariably was alien to combined subjects. He looked at me and asked why I wanted to take the subject “Sir, I am a talented and gifted artist but my father wants to make a medical doctor of me and my being loathes the hospital, I’ll be most delighted if you will permit me to take the subject sir”. He cleared his throat and spoke “my boy, the choice is yours to make, see if the timing of classes does not clash with your other core science subjects, then take it and if it does, register for GCE, take Fine-Arts as a subject and make sure you pass it then keep that as an advantage for the future you seek to build around your passion”. A few years later, I will graduate as a Graphics major from Obáfémi Awólówò University, Ile-Ife, my home town. Thank you, Baba, for helping me to build around my passion and gift.

Baba was an absolute man in his ways and leadership styles but not a believer in ‘Absolutism’ as a concept of life. He believed no virtue exists in the extreme of ideas and that explains the circumstances surrounding my being accepted to write my exams (thus technically reinstating my studentship) after the debacle that followed the renowned letters to my school mates In 1988“Egalitarianism; the doctrine of equality” and the follow up “The Plain Truth” for which I got expelled from college only six months to WAEC (O’Level final exams)!

There is a clear-cut difference between ‘Emotions and Decisions’, while it was an ‘Emotive Baba’ that had to let me go for daring to ‘become’, the decision had to be made lest I become cancerous as ‘one of then ‘Vice-Principal Administration’ put it. The intent being to euthanize my educational pursuit but which eventually will canonize my existence and bring me into the fulfillment of my purpose on earth. We are born for different purposes and it is my considered opinion that death, is not the worst thing in life, living a lie is. Baba lived the truth and so death has lost its victory over him.

Baba was firm but not finite on me, only he saw through the burning desire to right wrongs of the society and accepted compromise against the advice of his other administrators who were hell-bent on preventing me from writing my final exams on the college premises. “He must be allowed to write his final exams, he has paid and the school belongs to the government, if he heads to court, we will lose, and the outcome might be catastrophic”. For this and many more, I remain eternally grateful to him. He taught me and all of us to love not just ourselves but to be fair in our dealings with people.

“A lazy Nigerian is a dangerous Nigerian”. Baba lived for Man and Nation. Very early and even before our country began to preach the values of nationhood, he had begun to ingrain in us deeply the values that build a Nation and how to be productive in life. “Don’t cheat and don’t allow others to cheat you”, in other words, he expected us to live above board all the time. We are all products of his productive thinking. Baba, safe be your passage.

Baba was a deeply ‘spiritual man’ but not ‘religious’, he practiced his faith and allowed others to connect to God the way it pleases them. Running a mission and faith-based college of the Christian faith did not blind him to allow a ‘Muslim’ lead as his first head boy when ‘eyes were still black’. In his words, “Suleiman Baba was way matured than most of my students and I chose him to lead them as the first head boy in 1969, I have no regrets”. His desire and passion were to get the best hands to deliver assignments and not just people who are related to him. Sadly, our country has lost that virtue as Nepotism has eaten into the moral fiber and national psyche, failing in this, we’ve failed in all!

Talking about Nepotism which was anathema in the thinking of our departed sage, it is the reason corruption permeates our national life, the reason we build around people rather institutions, it’s the reason elections are rigged and the worst of us sadly leads the best of us. It is the reason our public schools are what they are today; decrepit and abandoned. When Nepotism is espoused to self-Centeredness, the only offshoot and offspring will be corruption and the people, our people will suffer untold hardship. These and many more did Baba preach vehemently against.

The Muslims had provisions made especially for their meals during the holy month of Ramadan and often, Baba was available to wake them up for early morning ablution and prayers. And wait for it, he approved a space for a Mosque to be built right in the middle of the college as a praying spot for the Muslims until events and need to rearrange buildings required a relocation of the mosque to another place still within the school. I am doubtful this gesture has a replication in any Moslem controlled school in Kwara State. On many fronts, Baba scored first!

Loyalty in my estimation is consequential to leadership, and leadership itself is a touchstone of competence. Baba’s knack for the above is unquestionable. He was loyal to his calling as a teacher and that marked him out as a great leader, and of course, his competence showed him out too. This, in my estimation, explains why many years after leaving school, we still answer his call and here now to honor his passing.

Baba’s lifelong philology is clearly embedded in his glaring understanding of the philosophy of where he had his university education; the United States. (Words like “Double up my boy” meant a lot to us then and still does now) The concept of one man can make a difference underlies the country’s belief and explains why it will go to war to protect ‘one-man’. In each of us, Baba saw ‘a man’ and went out of his way to attend almost to our individual needs. I am a living example of this.

With every stroke of his cane, he has helped to straighten the course of many lives, (mine inclusive) the conquest of our troubled minds, the majesty of human development, with every stroke of his pen, he’s helped to steer the course of our progress through his massive investment of time, treasure and talent. He will be sorely missed.

As the lyrics of our old college song says, “we shall run and not be weary” Baba has finished “Running his own race”, the best we can do as his children will be to apply and reapply the trainings he gave, the lessons he taught, the examples he left and the legacies he bestowed. His life was a like an open canvass, filled up with beautiful paintings of fulfillment, achievements he painstakingly earned while he labored to write his name on the palette of our lives.

Adieu Baba, safe be your passage, and let me make it clear, we will avenge your death and fiercely too; by living, and reliving your legacies daily as enshrined in the lessons you taught us while you lived. Please, accept our profound gratitude for a life well spent in the service of Man and Country!

Good night sir.

Olanrewaju Akintilo, a member of 1987 set of the school, wrote from Atlanta, Georgia