OBITUARY: Adebayo, the man who joined the army long before Obasanjo but got sacked by Jonathan

We would find them in dreams, we would cast them in the castles of our imaginations, their prints will forever be in our memories. Victor or villain, men like Robert Adeyinka Adebayo, may never walk our streets again!

Made from the finest brewery of men, washed  in the purest rivers of character, Adebayo is proof that the bravest and weakest of us all, fall to the sad fate called death.

Less than 24 hours to his 89th birthday, one of the finest men to have donned the regalia of the Nigerian army took his last breath, and waved the world goodbye.

FROM ALL SAINTS TO ROYAL MILITARY

Born in 1928, he was fortunate to attend All Saints School, Iyin-Ekiti, at a time when education not the order of the day.

He later attended Eko Boys High School, Lagos, and Christ’s School, Ado Ekiti. He joined the West African Frontier Force in 1948 as a regiment signaler and later completed the officer cadet training course in Teshie, Ghana, from 1950 to 1952.

He was commissioned as an officer in the Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF); the 23rd West African military officer with number WA23 and 7th Nigerian military officer with number N7 after completing the War Office Cadet Training in Eaton Hall, England.

He later attended the Staff College course in Camberley (Surrey) in 1960 and the prestigious Imperial Defence College, London, where he was the only African officer.

THE MASTER WHO DRIBBLED DEATH

At 89, it is a good time to retire from dribbling death, but why his boots were still on, Adebayo capitalised on his good fortune.

His first public encounter with death would have been during the January 15, 1966 coup. As the the first chief of staff in the army headquarters, Adebayo said he would have been killed. Through fortune, he was in England for  a course.

“Unfortunately, the chap that took over from me as chief of staff was killed in the January coup. Possibly, if I were to be home then, I could have been killed too,” Adebayo said in an interview in 2008.

His second encounter was only a few months later. In July, 1966, the officer was back in Nigeria, and was hosted in a guest house in Lagos. But on July 29, he went to visit an uncle at Ikoyi, and agreed to pass the night after his uncle convinced him.

In the morning, the second coup had taken place and soldiers had visited his guest house, probably with a mind to kill him, but again he was saved. This could not happen again on Wednesday, as hung his boots.

PAVED WAY FOR GOWON, LAID FAJUYI, IRONSI TO REST

After he survived the July 1966 coup, Adebayo was clearly the most senior military officer, and was in line to become the head of state, but he declined and gave Gowon the opportunity, saying it was a northern coup.

“So even when there was pressure on me to take power, I refused even though I knew that the north was sponsoring Gowon, who was my junior in the army,” he said in his lifetime.

“So as a full colonel, I decided to step down and go to the West, on the 4th of August 1966. When I got to the West as governor, the first thing I did was find the bodies of both Ironsi and Fajuyi and give then proper burials.”

LURED OJUKWU INTO THE ARMY

After the death of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Adebayo wrote a moving tribute about the late Biafran leader.

In this tribute, Adebayo said he first met Ojukwu as the assistant district officer in Umuahia, Abia when he (Adebayo) was ADC to the governor general. He said he had a long conversation with Ojukwu and got to like him, and encouraged him to join the army.

OBASANJO WAS HIS BOY, BUT JONATHAN SACKED HIM

Having joined the Nigerian Army long before former President Olusegun Obasanjo came on stream, Adebayo was senior to Obasanjo, TY Danjuma, and a number of popular military leaders.

In the early 2000s, there was a clash between Obasanjo and Danjuma, the minister of defence from 1999 to 2003, and when Adebayo was asked why he did not intervene, he said: “It would be unfair of me to interfere with these kinds of situations in the military because I was senior to all of them”.

Sadly, former President Goodluck Jonathan named him pro-chancellor of the University of Ibadan, but after losing his re-election bid in 2015, Jonathan fired him. Adebayo was just two years into a four-year tenure.

“My prayer for you is that you imbibe the culture of civility in your future endeavours,” Adebayo said in response to Jonathan’s sack.

GENTLEMAN GENERAL WHO APOLOGISED FOR MILITARY RULE

In 2001, Adebayo, as a “gentleman general”, apologised for the role he played in the military coups that did not allow civil rule in the better part of Nigeria’s first four decades.

He said the 1966 coup plunged Nigeria into the 1967-1970 civil war.

“In the spirit of national reconciliation, I Major-General Robert Adeyinka Adebayo unreservedly tender my profound apology to Nigeria and Nigerians for the parts I played in the military rulership of Nigeria from July 1966 to 1971,” he said at a memorial in honour of Adekunle Fajuyi.

Adebayo, who was also the father of Niyi, former Ekiti state governor, asked the nation to “try to forgive” the military.

Today, he joins his comrades — Fajuyi, Ojukwu, Aguiyi-Ironsi and a host of others — in the world beyond.