He was a childhood hero of this columnist; a figure of legendary brilliance whose capacity for crunching figures and abstruse mathematical formulations was adjudged as being second only to Omololu Olunloyo, an adopted local luminary who had briefly attended the iconic St Paul’s Primary School in the junction town.
It was said that together with his best friend, Dapo Akinrefon who was later to die in a car crash on the notorious Ife-Ibadan road, the duo of Olunloyo and Akinrefon permanently locked up the first and second positions in their class with nobody approaching their stratospheric heights. Dr Akinrefon was returning home after a glorious academic career abroad when the car somersaulted.
Arguably because he was closer to one in age bracket than both Olunloyo and Akinrefon, it was the legend of Adeboye that held enduring fascination for yours sincerely. As a star-struck youth, one fleetingly recalls Adeboye waltzing away at a local ball in the old Customary Court which doubled as the Town Hall.
The once shoeless local hero, now a proud student of the prestigious Government College, Ibadan, was nattily turned out with a neatly folded jacket clasped in his left arm in the manner of a dandy of the early sixties. It was later on that one’s older brother explained that what was hanging from the great man’s left arm was in fact not a coat but his mother’s native shawl which he was carrying in lieu. Such brilliant, in your face effrontery! As they say in local parlance, it remains to be seen who is foolhardy enough to ask a female apparition why she was piggybacking her infant upside down.
One had been on the trail of the schoolboy prodigy ever since. Occasionally, reports wafted in of the academic laurels he was accumulating in faraway America. The quarry remained as elusive as ever. But several decades later in 2011 at a conference organized by the Oodua Foundation in faraway Philadelphia to examine the Yoruba conundrum in the postcolonial hell that Nigeria is turning into one ran into Professor Adeboye who was one of the moving spirits behind the gathering.
In the intervening decades, the Gbongan homeboy had transformed into an academic star in America, becoming a distinguished professor of Mathematics at Howard University. Not only that, he was also the proud father of a budding professor of Mathematics. But in a fifty three year sojourn in America, Adeboye has never lost his passion for Nigeria and his umbilical attachment to all things Yoruba.
That morning in Philadelphia, one had been attracted by a booming voice in the Coffee Room with the unmistakable inflection of the Gbonganian dialect, a variant of Oyo with the influence of Ife and old Owu sub-cultures. Lo! It was the elusive professor resplendently turned out in Gbariye traditional costume with beads and abeti-aja cap to match. He was like a figure torn out of the pages of history. Even in America, the man looked like an ancient Yoruba savant presiding over a conclave of elders.
In the event, it proved impossible to have a private moment with the famed professor. But there was a moment of outstanding hilarity when he called out one to remind the columnist that at the turn of the fifties, his own father, a noted chief and political practitioner, with the columnist’s father together with a man called Sansi Jo’ewe (Sanusi Ijoewe) were all arraigned on trumped up charges. Their real offence was that they were ardent supports of Zik. One can still recall how the professor almost brought the table down as he kicked the air in a show of mirth.
Our next encounter didn’t yield much fruit either. This was several years after at the wedding of Chief Ajibola Ogunsola’s son in Atlanta. This time around, our man turned up with his spouse, a completely acculturated Black America who had taken to Yoruba habits without having lived in Nigeria. The couple looked quite regal in their richly textured adire dress. This time around, the professor’s time was completely taken up by a classmate he would be seeing for the first time since they left secondary school almost sixty years earlier.
Professor Adeniran Adeboye’s story is rich in inspiration for younger Nigerians demanding for a place to stand in the sun. It is a heroic saga of indomitable will and an inextinguishable thirst for knowledge and self-empowerment, a remarkable trope for the possibility of redemption in even the most adversarial and unoptimistic of circumstances.
So, when the opportunity for a transatlantic conversation presented itself last week, yours sincerely snapped it up with both hands. Professor had called to find out how one was coping amidst the turmoil and turbulence as the remaining scaffolding of the postcolonial state in Nigeria appears to succumb to unremitting adversity.
After the inevitable lamentation about the plight of the nation, the columnist wasted no time in opening up proceedings. The myth-encrusted story in town was that after struggling to finish Primary School and with no possibility of parental support to further his education, Sunday, as he was popularly known in town, took to full time bread selling, a trade he had picked up to augment his lean resources while in school.
It was not a bad trade since the main arterial route that linked the old west to the east passed through the ancient town. This was the situation until fate came calling in the guise of a British gentleman called Reverend Bullock who pulled over his car to buy bread.
The white man was said to have been completely bowled over by the wonder bread seller who spoke excellent English. One thing led to the other and the youth was encouraged to sit for the entrance examination of Government College which he was to pass in flying colours. Reverend Bullock happened to have been the principal.
When Adeboye was asked about this, he responded with much solemnity. “Let me place this on record. It was your father who made it possible for me to attend Government College. My father had gone to him with the admission letter and a bill of twenty pounds for the first term. After reading the letter, your father asked him whether he knew that his son had achieved the impossible feat of gaining entrance to the same school attended by Adelabu, their political idol and leader of their party. Baba, we must find the money wherever it is”.
According to the professor, his father responded with spontaneous gaiety and much celebration. He had gone home to raise hell telling his mother that the boy was going to Adelabu’s former school and the money must be found by all means. It was the equivalent of a declaration of national emergency.
Luckily, the enterprising bread seller had already saved enough money from his profitable venture. But an attempt to invest his earnings in a cocoa buying venture with some relations ended in a fiscal fiasco. The money disappeared.
Thereafter began the arduous slog of adding up fresh earnings, selling all the sellables in the household and pawning all the pawnables. By the end of the year, the figures had added up and in January, 1958 Adeboye headed for Ibadan as a fresh intake of the famous and prestigious Government College.
“Let me tell you”, Adeboye began on a joyous note. “It was a history-making event. That year, three boys from the town gained admission to Government College. Kola Akinbami ,Dele Ajayi and myself and it was reported in the Daily Times”. But despite all the hoopla and congratulations, the actual reality on ground kept jolting the young Adeboye. He knew it was not yet uhuru.
Somehow he was aware that the feat of money gathering that got him into Government College could not be repeated, more so since he had been forced to abandon his lucrative bread selling business. After the first term, Adeboye packed all his stuff convinced that he was destined to be remembered as the fellow who spent one term in Adelabu’s alma mater.
But here fate intervened again. Having been forced back to school by his adamant father who ordered him to go and slog it out until he fell fighting, the future professor went back without his fees. He stalled and stonewalled for six weeks before he was expelled from class like other defaulters and restricted to the dormitory.
Thereafter, Adeboye resorted to borrowing class notes from his more fortunate colleagues and cramming them. He was only allowed to sit for the end of term examination because his father mysteriously materialized in Ibadan with the requisite fees a week to go. Astonishingly enough, the young man came top of the class and was promptly awarded a scholarship. Thereafter, it was smooth sailing all the way and on to the nation’s premier university where he took a degree in Mathematics in flying colours in 1967.
The homeboy had made good. But even here, there was going to be a snag. The UI authorities threatened to withhold his result unless he came up with the outstanding balance of ten pounds he was owing the university. It was the then Dr Rufus Adegboye, aka Baale, who came to his rescue. Before then, he had been told that the late Justice Bolarinwa Babalakin wanted to see him urgently.
Upon getting to the Ago Taylor residence of the late jurist, he was offered another ten pounds which he declined on the ground that he had already paid his fees. But the fiery, no-nonsense mother of the jurist who was staying with him would have none of that nonsense. “Oko mi, gba lowo e. Owo e ni. Kii poju”. (My husband, take it from him. It is your money. It is never too much), the old princess from the Ogunsua royal family ordered her justice son to release the money.
So it was that the former impecunious boy in straitened circumstances ended up a graduate student with surplus funds. For the next two years before he left for America in search of greener pasture, Adeboye traversed almost the entire gamut of the graduate work force, starting out as a graduate teacher on sixty pounds per month, switching to old ECN which offered sixty two pounds and ten shillings, then to WAEC which slightly raised the ante and finally to Unilag as a junior lecturer where he was offered a whopping eighty four pounds and ten shillings as entry level salary.
Not even army officers, or judges or civil servants were paid that much then. But it was linked to productivity and originality of research. This point must be emphasized in the face of the current paradoxical plight of ASUU. At this point, the transatlantic exchange with the professor succumbed to an irreversible transmission failure.
When the conversation resumed the following day, it was a more sombre Professor Adeniran Adeboye lamenting dire circumstances of the nation and how Nigerians have ruined Nigeria. What irked the professor so grievously? Apparently in a Diaspora Forum he belonged to, an irate compatriot had posted some unpalatable diatribe asking for military intervention rather than allow either of the presidential candidates of the PDP or APC to take over the country.
“Do you remember in 1956 how my father’s house was sacked and how many people were killed by Action Group stalwarts in front of your father’s house, all because of Zik?” he demanded.
“Yes, even though a youth then I remember very well. Four people died in front of our house. When the thugs came back in the dead of the night, my father ordered a general evacuation of the house. I still remember him in purple shirt and trousers clutching his double-barrel gun as we left. His mother, my paternal grandmother, vowed that night that she will not live to bury her only son. She died about two weeks later in August 1956”, yours sincerely responded.
“Now, see the mess they have made of the country, despite the huge sacrifices. I am afraid I can no longer be part of such a country!” the professor sighed and the line went off again. This time around, one did not have the courage or the spirit to resume the conversation. It has been an engrossing excursion into history with the distinguished professor of Mathematics.
