Lawrence Ayo Ladigbolu is a retired Archbishop of Methodist Church of Nigeria , a Prince of Oyo dynasty who has devoted his entire life to the service of the people through philanthropy, charity, community development and ministering to the needy. In this interview with OSEHEYE OKWUOFU in his Oyo residence, the minister of God spoke on his early childhood , life in the palace and how he was sent on exile from Alaafin’s palace for embracing Christianity.
Can we know you sir?
My name is Lawrence Ayo Ladigbolu. I am a retired Methodist minister and my last position was that of Bishop of Ilesa and Archbishop of Ilesa Diocese Methodist Church of Nigeria.
As a young prince, what motivated you into the ministry as a career?
Well, I grew up in the palace of the Alaafin of Oyo. And there was really nothing in my beginning that could have given anybody an idea that I would end up as a clergy. When I was growing up, I was sent to the Arabic/Islamic training school.
I was tutored in the traditions and culture of the royal court. So, that was really my foundation. I could not have imagined that I could one day be a Methodist minister, talk less of becoming a Bishop or Arch-bishop.
My growing up was fun in those days, especially in the palace because of the colour, grandeur, beauty and fan-fare that attended life within the royal court of the Alaafin of Oyo. It was a play ground for making friends, for meeting people of various tribes and cultures and of course, for the children then, it was a good place to grow up because it was a melting point of the richest of the Yoruba and other Nigerian cultures. So, I still have very good memories of my growing up in the palace.
How would you describe your years in the primary school?
Oh! they were very good years because the up-bringing in the palace did not allow anybody to feel important and as a child of the king, we were subjected to all kinds of manual labour that ordinary people performed. We would join the horse tenderers to get grass for the horses. We would join the labourers to work within the precinct of the palace. We were subjected to normal ordinary life of an average Oyo person. And so, going to school, we did not get any preferential treatment.
We were treated like all other children. We were beaten when we deserved to be beaten. We were scolded when we deserved scolding. And we were not spared any discipline that normal school child should get. But then, going to school too was very good, myself and others with whom we grew up together were never lacking behind in our education. Most of the time I took first position. I can’t remember anytime I was second or third throughout my primary education, and indeed, I had then what they called automatic promotion from primary one to standard one. And that meant that I skipped primary two because they thought I knew enough to move up to the standard classes as they were called then. That was when education was education and teaching were devoted, teaching as if they wanted you to succeed.
They taught you as if they were determined to make something out of your life. And so, I still remember with great nostalgia my teachers, although late because they were truly teachers, molders of characters, determinants of destinies.
While in these classes, what subject did you love most?
I don’t think I had any favorite subject because I did well in all my subjects. But looking back, I think, apart from General Knowledge, Arithmetic, Hygiene and the Physical and Health Education, I had a liking for English Language; Literature and Writing. In my fourth year in primary school, I was made the editor of the school Magazine. And so, from about 1954, I had been involved, one way or the other, in the business of writing and editing and so on. And later in my fifth year and final year in the primary school, I was leading the campaign for free education because free education was then being introduced in the Western Region. And I was leading the campaign and speaking at forums where parents and stakeholders were assembled to explain to them the value of education. They (parents) were encouraged to let their children come and enjoy the benefit of free and compulsory education that the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo was introducing during that time. So I think that writing and speaking were my favorite subjects from that time on and I think it has stucked.
Was there any day you played truant in the school ?
Indeed, I remembered one occasion when I tried to play truant. I think I feigned illness and didn’t want to go to school because there was an event coming up in our area that I wanted to watch. And it was discovered that I was feigning ill. So, they delegated somebody to take me on a bicycle to school and when we got there, the headmaster was informed that the reason somebody had to bring me to school was that I didn’t want to come. And so, they assembled all the pupils and asked two of them to hold me and one strong old student to cane me. He gave me 12 lashes of the cane just because I didn’t want to come to school. And you could see that there was no preferential treatment because you were nobody because students were students, teachers were teachers and discipline was enforced in those days.
Can you still remember some of your classmates back then at school?
Oh yes, I still remember my mates in primary and secondary schools. I went to what they called then Secondary Modern, which was not a regular secondary school at that time. I remember names but I am not sure of many who are still alive. Probably two or three names that I have not heard of. And it’s been sometime because we are talking of between 1951, 1952. So, it is some distance in time. And of course, in the post primary, there are still a number of my classmates and colleagues who are still alive till today. In fact, I heard of one of them about two weeks ago who lives in Ibadan and he was one of my closest friends. Not long ago, someone gave me a message from Adewole Owobamirin. There is another Oyeniyi who I saw about a forthnight ago and of course, a number of them have passed on including Rev. Dr. Julius Olayode who became a distinguished Baptist Minister and has since passed on.
And there are still a number of them but because of distance and everything else, we have not been in communication for a long time.
What was your experience when you made the decision to become a Methodist priest, I mean, how did your parents react to your decision?
That is a fairly long story. First was when I became a Christian and that really came before the issue of becoming a minister and there was a very strong opposition from the family. Serious and severe opposition because as I told you earlier I had gone to Arabic school to learn and I had gone through the process of initial graduation. And I had even gone beyond learning the Quran to the point of learning the interpretation. And because of my activities in the community, whenever a Christian evangelist came to Oyo to preach, I was the one who would go out and confront them. We would argue with them in order to look for a weak point in the Christian faith and seek to exploit them. We tried to denigrate the religion and its adherents. So, it made me a bit more popular among the young people of my age and even among some adults then. And so, when suddenly I encountered Jesus Christ and surrendered my life to Him, people thought I had gone crazy. They assumed that I had gone mad actually.
And when they assembled my family, my mother was crying believing that somebody had bewitched me and that in my right mind, I could not have suddenly turned from what I was to what I then became. And so, it was an uproar and the entire community joined to the point that I was ostracised by the community. Some people took me in and and hid me for about three to four years. But finally, I didn’t know the family was monitoring, they had a network of monitors.
They were monitoring my movement, my pronouncements and my utterances. And suddenly, after about four years, I got a message to come home, to the same palace. I was told that ‘all the comments about you and your behaviour in all these years of your exile have been positive and so we know that what you are doing is what God designed for you to do. Though it is against our wish but we cannot argue with God. So, you can go ahead and carry on from there.’
And all these four years that I was in exile, I was learning more about the Bible. I went to the United Missionary Theological College in Ilorin and got a Diploma in Theology, which equipped me to be a better teacher of the Bible and evangelist. My family told me ‘you could return home and rejoin us because we believe that you are not fanatic or so to say but you are a convinced believer in what you are doing, we will let you come back.’
And so, I did come back and later on became an ordained minister when I received God’s call to become a minister and eventually I became a bishop.
The Alaafin of Oyo sent his staff of office and through his queens, to witness that event at Methodist Church, Tinubu, Lagos. And that was the greatest sign of the family acceptance of me and of my conviction of faith and of my choice of vocation. So that is the long story that I sought to tell you in a nutshell.
Throughout your years of service as a minister, do you have any regret?
Certainly. Not because coming from such a very humbl beginning, humble in the sense that before the Lord all of us are equal whether you are a prince or a pumper, we were all created equal and we will be judged equally. Of course, the judgment of some will be more severe because of their knowledge and their privilege. Being called by God and being given all the opportunities of good training, the church still insisted that I had to go to Ibadan Emmanuel College for some further training because that was their own prescribed training, regardless of what training I have had before.
The church also gave me a scholarship to go to United States of America to attend a seminary as well as to study Mass Communication degree programme in a University because they knew of my flair for journalism and communication. There was the benefit that would be to the church.
I also had the opportunity to head a training institution for ministers, male and female workers in the vineyard, Sagamu. It is called the Methodist Theological Institute.
For about seven years, I was the principal and I laid the foundation for the training programme in Methodist Church. I helped in some way to establish the communication unit of the church, its publishing organ and so on. I rose to the position of a bishop and became the Archbishop. There were challenges alright, but all said and done, the Lord has been good, He has been extremely good to us, to me as a person, to our family. So, no regrets at all because God has just been good.
You talk of challenges, what were these challenges in the course of your labour in the vineyard?
You know, in the ministry, if one is truly called, if you planned to be a rich man, rich man in terms of fame, luxury, opulence, you are out of the mission.
So, our needs have also been supplied. There had been times when from morning till night, you wonder where will the next meal come from?
But the Lord, in His mercy, will open doors and more than enough food will come, if you learn to trust in Him and look up to Him always. Challenges like, how do I pay my child’s school fees with the little salaries that a minister receives, will always come, but then you will find the Lord, in His mercy will send you help from heaven and you will meet those kind of needs and you will still have little left to take care of other needs.
Even health challenges, you feel like oh, in case of incapacitation, how do I continue to serve the Lord? But the Lord will renew your strength. These are the kinds of challenges that I believe are normal for human beings and we have not been excluded from them. But in all of these, we have found the Lord faithful and good.
Before your voluntary retirement, what did you plan to do in your post-retirement?
Well, there was some unique aspect to my own retirement because I took voluntary retirement. Just about three years ahead of the statutory time for me to retire, I felt God was prompting me to retire before I was to retire. And it took me some time to convince both the authorities of the church and even some members of my own family. When I became a minister, God spoke to me. I felt His hand, His touch, and so, when this prompting from God came saying: ‘Hey, Ayo, three years ahead of your retirement, you should retire.
And he kept saying it and showing it and drumming it, I could not resist. And so, people could not understand, considering the condition of service in the church that was being improved. Maybe I should have gained some material benefits but the call of God and His message to me was stronger. And I chose to obey. So, I retired seven years ago and decided to come home to Oyo . I had a choice of settling in any part of Nigeria, but I felt the spirit was leading me to come to Oyo to help this community, because having been gone for more than 40 years, travelling all over the world, I had Him saying: ‘when you retire, go to your people and serve me through them in the areas of community development in the areas of wholislic healthcare and in the area of ministering to the needy.
In fact, that really brings us back to the issue of what is going to happen on Tuesday (December 4) because all along, in all the years of my service I have been connected with philanthropy and charity. When I was bishop of Ibadan, the late former Governor Lam Adesina and I and a certain Victor Taiwo started an organization called New Generation Foundation for the disabled and I was chairman. Governor Adesina was my deputy and Victor Taiwo was our secretary.
We tried to help the disabled people find solace. Before that, I had worked with various development agencies for the poor and the needy and that really also led me to becoming involved in the work of Bode Akindele Foundation because it was that Foundation that built the Ayo Ladigbolu house as a donation to the Methodist Church, Ibadan Diocese. They chose to name it after me because from my years of connection with that foundation, I was rendering services to other organizations and various entities all over the country free of charge.
So, the Lord was saying to me go back home when you retire and help your people; serve them the way you have been serving people of different climes while you were in active service. And so, when I came back , we started New Hope Global Associate Family Care Services, which was looking for people living with HIV/AIDS. We have a support group of more than 2,000 coming from different parts of Oyo State to receive help and counseling and we are glad.
And I can go on and tell you several things that had happened including the recent Oranyan Festival celebrated by all of the Yoruba nation which our people, our brothers and sisters in diaspora also joined us. I have also been involved in cultural issues. I’m a member of Yoruba cultural groups and associations and I have been very very busy in my retirement still serving the Lord, still serving the people, still seeking to be useful to the very end of my life.
Throughout your service in the vineyard, can you recall an event that caused you sadness and the greatest happiness?
Well, its very difficult to pin-point any at the professional level, but perhaps the death of my mother. My greatest joy and my greatest sadness will all be related to my mother. My greatest joy was when she openly confessed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior voluntarily and that was about two years before she died and she became a Christian. Throughout the years I left her to her own conviction. We kept lifting Jesus before her, in the things we did, in the things we said, in the ways we carried on, until she came to a point where she said I want to belong to Jesus and that was my greatest and happiest day. And then of course, I wish she had lived longer and seen me move up in the ministry and maybe get to see a bit more of the world and enjoy the benefit of caring for her only son and loving me so much. So, I will say my happiest and saddest moment will be related to my dear mother.
On the national scene, many are of the opinion that Nigeria will be better off if it breaks, do you share this sentiment?
I don’t share that sentiment and it will take some persuading for me to change that position, not because I am happy with the way things are, not because I see any bright prospect of change in the nearest future but simply because we know and we are aware of the history of nations that have been pushed together like us that have found themselves in uncomfortable partnerships like ours but which, in the process of wanting to go their separate ways ended up creating more problems within their own smaller entities than the ones they were running away from. And so for me, I think the best thing we can do is to keep talking, leave the doors open for talks, leave room for ideas that can help us to further cement this fragmenting structure that the British have established for us because there will be more benefits in having one Nigeria than having for example a South West zonal country. Before you know it, the Ekiti will now see more of how the Oyo people are cheating them, the Itsekiri will see more of how the Egba are ‘chopping’ everything and leaving nothing for them. And before long, there will be internal strife and disintegration will come again.
So, I feel like if we have a constitution in this country that allows each of the zones to develop at their own pace, to manage their own resources, to make adequate contributions to the centre so as to sustain the centre and strengthen the units and weaken the centre, without making the centre subservient to the federating units, we can live together as a nation where no man is suppressed. It is the issue of suppression, it is the issue of marginalisation that usually pushes people to want to go their own ways. But I think we are better off going it together, than going it our separate ways. That is my own position. We will be happy to have a more humane Nigeria than a regional or zonal set up called zonal country or whatever name it will be called, where, before you know it, people will begin to disturb each other and beginan to destroy one another.
