On at least two different occasions, the rumour was rife on social media that he was dead. To be falsely deceased, I teased that he, like Alfred Nobel, had had the chance to read his own obituary. In a particular instance, a family rebuttal revealed that he was in intensive care at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan. I made for the Intensive Care Unit, UCH, the next day, a Saturday morning. I was not going to disturb their care or protocol. I just had to be there in case he needed me. Expectedly, and rightfully so, the nurses barred visitors from seeing him. I wrote my name on a sheet of paper and gave it to a nurse to hand over to him, just for him to know I was outside in case he needed anything. The nurse came rushing back and said that he wanted to see me immediately.
As I got to his bedside, he held my hand tightly and, to the amazement of the medical staff around, quoted the melancholy words of Jacques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts…”
Right there, I stopped him in his tracks that he should quote no further. Instead, to his smile, we both said in unison that the exit was not now. He lived another three years after, but poorly. Finally, with every man inevitably to his exit, death, not wholly unexpected, came calling on April 6, after he had played many parts following an innings of 89.
The preparation for these many parts began from Government College, Ibadan (GCI) in 1948, although he was scion to an illustrious family, the first educated elite and early Christians in Ibadan. When David and Anna Hinderer, the first CMS missionaries, came to Ibadan in 1853, they were placed in the care of Balogun Olunloyo, a warlord and high chief of Ibadan. Balogun Olunloyo’s children, Akinyele, male, and Yejide, female, found play and school with the Hinderers. Akinyele became the first male literate of Ibadan, while Yejide became the first female literate. Yejide Girls Grammar School, Ibadan, is named after her. The Olunloyos prominently took up early church, civil, and administrative roles in Ibadan. The Akinyele line produced Horatio Vincent Olunloyo, who was Victor Omololu’s father.
The brilliant signs of Horatio’s first son, Victor Omololu Olunloyo, were there even precociously from primary school. He took the common entrance examination, which was a global examination for all leaving primary school students, and he was first in 1946 and 1947 in the whole of the Ibadan District Church Council schools from Ibadan to Gbongan, Ikirun, and Osogbo. It was while at St. Peter’s Aremo Primary School that he was introduced to mathematics by an impressionable teacher, J.A.F Sokoya, in a remarkable and inspiring way. He saw early and clearly the relations of integers and that there was a concrete connection between mathematics and real life. Here, foundational mathematics was planted to flourish in him for the rest of his life.
In 1948, he entered Government College, Ibadan (GCI) from Standard Five, as the youngest in his class, when most of his classmates came in from Standard Six. It took him some time to rally. Once he found his stride in the second year, he never let go of the first position in Mathematics. To be first meant not just to score high but to get everything. An illustration will suffice.
A mathematics examination was going to be served by the teacher, W.H. Browne. The teacher aimed to write the questions on the board, exit to have tea in the staff room, and come back to collect the students’ scripts. As he wrote the first question, he asked the students to commence. There were five questions, and they were to answer all of them. As he finished writing the fifth question and just as he was gathering his papers to go for tea, Olunloyo raised his hand. ‘What is it Olunloyo?’ the teacher queried. ‘I have finished, sir,’ Olunloyo replied. The teacher first thought it was a prank, remonstrated Olunloyo and then collected his papers for marking to see that, indeed, he had finished and got everything!
Of his brilliance, everybody took notice; some took a special interest. Adegoke Adelabu and Emmanuel Alayande saw in him a very special Ibadan poster boy, a pride. M.S. Sowole, Ambassador and Agent-General for Western Nigeria in the UK, his father’s contemporary and bosom friend, and Lady Kofo Ademola and others saw in him a national academic prodigy. They leaned to an overseas university training. For overseas universities, Olunloyo’s heart was really in Manchester University. Manchester then was one of the leading universities in the UK offering Technology. But Kofo Ademola was pushing differently. She wanted Olunloyo to go to Cambridge to be a part of that reputational institution that had graduated some of the best minds in Mathematics—Isaac Newton, Alan Turing, Carl Gauss, etc. and to go to Cambridge just as did her husband, Sir Adetokunbo Ademola. But Cambridge offered a one-year deferred admission because the session was already on. Olunloyo was not in any mood to wait idly for one year. Kofo Ademola was challenged to find another great university which offered immediate admission, which was what led him to St. Andrews College.
At graduation in 1957, six academic medals were available in his department; Olunloyo won five, and the sixth was won by Ifedayo Oladapo, both Nigerians, both old boys of Government College, Ibadan, and both classmates at GCI. Olunloyo recorded, of course, a first class in Mechanical Engineering. So did Ifedayo Oladapo, who went on to do his PhD at Cambridge.
Olunloyo was exempted from a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Mathematics and instead went straight on to do a PhD, a four to seven-year programme. He did it in a record time of two years with outstanding merit, finishing in 1959. He was 24. He was one of Nigeria’s most brilliant men. His brilliance was proudly extolled both overseas and in Nigeria.
When Lekan Are, his friend and classmate was going to be 80, I teased him that Lekan’s GCI school number was 514 ahead of his at 546, making Lekan a quasi-senior boy. His mind went in a different direction. He said to me, ‘Lekan’s number at 514 is very interesting. That is, two to power nine (512) plus two to power one (2), making 514, which in binary language is 1,000,000,010 for the computer’. Anyone who thinks like that must be crazy. Olunloyo was crazy about mathematics.
For his work life, he took up an academic position as a lecturer at the University of Ibadan, then the University of Ife; he was later Rector, Polytechnic Ibadan and briefly Polytechnic, Kwara; he held variegated positions with government and academic institutions—55 in total spanning 45 years of service.
He served as Commissioner for Economic Planning and Community Development, and Commissioner for Education in Western State. At some point, he held two portfolios at the same time as Commissioner of Education and Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs. In a number of these institutions, never mind his title, he served as a trouble-shooter, an ombudsman, a cracker to solve any and every problem, and an interventionist minister.
It was against this background that he set his sight on politics and was sucked into serving fleetingly as the governor of Oyo State.
For all his brilliance, he lacked financial intelligence. This dogged him in his twilight because of the huge expense over many years for his medical care. His family’s medical care was also, for many more years, quite exorbitant. People like him ought to have been kept in the financial court of the government or academic institution. They were not to be disturbed by mundane matters such as finances. Their focus had to be entirely scholarship—morning, day and night. He was on scholarship throughout his academic career. He could have been a national scholar for life.
I am sure Olunloyo would not mind me mentioning his debt to his family and to the late Abiola Ajimobi, late Lekan Are, late Alafin Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, Enoch Adeboye, Rasheed Ladoja, Seyi Makinde, Bode George, Wale Babalakin, William Kumuyi, Olusegun Obasanjo, Gabriel Ogunmola, Kola Daisi, Lekan Ademosu, and Ibrahim Babaginda. Friends do not often reveal what friends do. He repeatedly sang their praises because they extended to him.
I will miss his endless stream of conversation from Beethoven to Newton, Einstein to Awolowo and Akintola and, of course, Euler, Ramanujan, Hawkins and Archimedes—his fellow mathematicians. He was a polyglot, a polymath, an iconic, itinerant teacher, a maverick, and a restless politician. Such was the ease with which he could move from Pythagoras through Aristotle and Dante to Nietzsche and Shakespeare with relative ease. He was truly well-cultured.
When death finally came, even though previous rumours and hospitalizations had prepared me, I shed a tear.
- Dr Mosuro is a publisher, bookseller, and trustee of Government College Ibadan Old Boys Association.
