People often ask these nebulous questions as to what is in a name and what is in a number. My answer to the first question came sometimes in April, this year, when I read the story of a family blessed with a set of triplets after waiting for 10 years.
Through the sheer length and meaning of the names given to each of the triplets, with the longest one having 26 letters followed by 25 and the shortest, 19: TanitoOlorunobatoseyitan,MosinmileileriOluwatikiiye, Oluwaseohunarafunmi, this family has shown its immeasurable joy and gratitude to God.
Surely, there is so much to and in a name. So, we can say it with names.
As for numbers, we are told, in number theory, that a lucky number is a natural number in a set which is generated by a “sieve” similar to the Sieve of Eratosthenes that generates the primes, with number 21 (under reference) being a member of the surviving sequence.
The term, introduced in 1956 in a paper by Gardiner, Lazarus, Metropolis and Ulam, also suggests calling its defining sieve, “the sieve of Josephus Flavius” because of its similarity with the counting-out game in the Josephus problem.
Lucky numbers, we are equally made to understand, share some properties with primes, such as asymptotic behaviour according to the prime number theorem. Needless to say, there are infinitely many lucky numbers.
Juxtaposing the lucky number theorem with Aare Afe Babalola, SAN, and his new baby, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, ABUAD, one is tempted to remember Juju music maestro, King Sunny Ade, who sang in one of his records in the 80’s that “Ori to mi a d’ade, o pe o ya, o ni lati d’ade”, meaning no matter how long it may take, a man destined to be king and lead his people, will surely be crowned a king sooner or later.
Sunny Ade sang this song in commemoration of the ascension to the throne of Oyo by the incumbent Alaafin, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi, Bablola’s intimidate friend and client. If Sunny Ade’s song was apposite to Oba Adeyemi then, it is no less apposite to Babalola, the Founder and Chancellor of the wave-making ABUAD, even when Babalola’s formal education ended at the elementary school level.
Many things stand out the less than four years old university, which is graduating its first set of 120 students in the College of Sciences and College of Social and Management Sciences on October 21 after only three and half years of intensive, strike-free academic works, an uncommon accomplishment in a country where their colleagues are still battling and sweating to complete first or second sessions in other universities where four year courses take between six and eight years. No thanks to all manners of strike actions by all manners of unions in the universities.
Looking at Babalola’s antecedents and rustic background, perhaps Sigmund Freud, the primogenitor of dreams, could not have dreamt that Babalola who suffered grinding poverty and deprivation during his early life, but triumphed to be what he is today, could rise up to establish a university which has been rated by the World Universities Webometric as number 2 Best private university and Number 13 of the totality of 157 Universities in Nigeria in barely three and half years of existence.
Truly, like Sunny Ade sang, ori to mi a d’ade, o pe, o ya, o ni lati d’ade.
But what informed the establishment of ABUAD?
Babalola, who providence saved three times from being consumed by rampaging tigers when he was growing up, is always quick to point to his eight years stint as Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council of the University of Lagos, during which time he was able to see, bare-facedly, the rot and decay that characterized public universities in Nigeria and his burning determination to stem the ugly tide by establishing a university that will reform functional education by providing and leading others in quality education, service, industry and character as well as discipline.
A man given to great dreams and their actualization, Babalola quickly pumped everything he had, time, money, energy and the goodwill he had cultivated in his several decades of legal practice, into this dream project, so much so that the model modern university which was established in 2009 commenced uninterrupted academic works on January 4, 2010.
The monumental investment in ambulatory and non-ambulatory matters remind one of the mercurial words of Georges Sada, the Iraqi Air Force General, in his book, Saddam’s Secrets wherein he said “if you want to understand what is important to a man, look at where he spends his money”.
Whereas Saddam, in his warped and twisted ambition to control the Arab world, busied himself spending the wealth of Iraq and its oil money to acquire tanks, missiles, bombs, guns and explosives as well as Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), which he consistently denied, Babalola, a self-made man, is deploying billions of Naira and other resources to run a university primed to produce world leaders and achievers who can stand on their own anywhere they find themselves after graduation.
No wonder an appreciative parent recently described him as a missionary and not a ‘mere’ Founder of Afe Babalola University because this particular parent sees him in the mould of great and selfless Christian Missionaries of old like Henry Venn, who founded CMS Grammar School, Lagos, the first secondary school in Nigeria, on June 6, 1859 and Archdeacon Henry Dallimore who established Christ School, Ado-Ekiti in 1933 to shape destinies and light the lamp on the country’s educational path.
Having said so much about the university, let’s then address the point in issue: the place and significance of figure 21 to Babalola. Although there is no law saying convocation ceremonies should of necessity be held on particular days, but as far as one’s memory and experience could attest, convocation ceremonies have always been week-long activities, with the grand finale coming up either on Fridays or Saturdays.
But here we are, ABUAD’s first convocation ceremonies, which will flag off next Thursday, October 17, with a Press Conference will climax on Monday, October 21, perhaps the first of its kind. This got one curious to the extent of asking the multiple chief if he was born on 21 of any particular month.
A pleasantly unusual man, Babalola said:”my brother, I don’t know when I was born” an assertion further corroborated in his entrancing book Impossibility made possible where he wrote inter alia “…My parents could not tell me the exact date when I was born. This was because both parents could neither read nor write. It was not a disgrace or strange that they could not. Indeed nobody in the family or that quarter of the town could read or write (then)”.
If he was not born on 21, the question still arises as to whether figure 21 has any significance in his life, bearing in mind that his first car, from Stuttgart, Germany, was registered WP 2121 while yet another one in subsequent years (a white Mercedes Benz 200) was registered OD 2121 E and now the grand finale of ABUAD’s first convocation ceremonies is on October 21, 2013.
Babalola did not give a direct answer, but he quipped: “Figure 21 could really be my lucky number. I recall in those days, if I had a judgment fixed for 21st day of any month, I was almost sure to win such a case. Besides, I have since discovered that anything I do on 21 always come out to be very successful and I believe this first convocation of our university will not be an exception. It will follow the same pattern. It will be successful”.
But in the same book, Impossibility made possible, Babalola revealed more about figure 21 when he said: “Almost all my children were born on the 21st of the month…So those who say there is nothing in a number are mistaken”.
There may be a universal dimension to the phenomenon of lucky number after all. For example, Americans attach importance to particular numbers, the more reason number 13 is omitted in most elevators in America because 13 is seen as unlucky number.
It is on record that the 13th Rocket that fired Astronauts into space caught fire, killing all the Astronauts, which was explained off with the belief that 13 is not only an unlucky number, but an ‘evil’ one at that. But that is neither here nor there.
Whatever might be the nexus between Babalola and figure 21, the fact remains that he associates a high dosage of success to the number. It has worked for him before. May it continue to work for him now and in the future.
•Olofintila writes from Ado-Ekiti.
