Professor Yaya Aremu Sesan Aregbesola surprised the team of The Nation reporters comprising Chief Correspondent, GBOYEGA ALAKA and photo-journalist OLUSEGUN RAPHEAL when he insisted on praying before the interview began. He surprised us even more when he prayed: ‘I’m in need of your help, let me walk in your way.’ Though a mathematician, the then University of Ife’s first First Class graduate in Mathematics’ faith and belief in the influence of God was evident throughout. He also spoke on childhood and schooling in Kutuwenji, Minna, Ile-Ife, battle with poverty, and exploits dazzling unbelieving British lecturers and supervisors at the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom.
You grew up in Kutuwenji, Niger State; your people in Southwest have always had a saying that made it look like Kutuwenji was some far place; probably the end of Nigeria. Were you born there as well?
I grew up there. My parents were traders and each time there was a new child, they took him home; or if they were born in Ilesha, in our common family house, which was J69 Ogbon Arogbo in Ilesha. Arogbo is the chieftaincy that one gets in Irogbo. All those who settled there were those who have some kind of connections with Irogbo, which is the ancestral home of our great grandfather, Sheik Aregbesola. I remember vividly, that must have been in 1946; I was four years old, when my mother, Rabiat Ashabi Bakare, gave me five shillings to give to my grandfather because we were going back to Kutuwenji. That of course meant that we must have been living in Kutuwenji up till then. My father was Yusuf Amuda Aregbesola. My grandfather, Sheik Ali Aregbesola, passed away on the 9th of April, 1946. My mother passed on June 27, 1986 while my father passed on December 18 1990. May almighty Allah put them in Aljanaah.
As a Yoruba who grew up in Kutuwenji, how did you feel when you came back down South and heard people talking of Kutuwenji as some very far place, like the end of Nigeria?
Of course, I laughed at them. It was a place that I really enjoyed. It’s a Nupe town. There was a railway line. I also enjoyed the spectacle of the military when they moved across. They had their train and the soldiers always sent us on errands to get them biscuits. All our parents were travellers and traders. We have a big uncle whom we called Baba Ikoódu (apparently because his base was Ikorodu). One of the things I looked forward to each time we came down South was buying fish to savour at Jebba; and when going back, we took the train through Osogbo.
There is this little story that you literally self-enrolled yourself in school at Kutuwenji.
Yes (smiles). I was fond of my mum and usually went with her wherever she went. It wasn’t such a big town, so we used stream water, but there was always a tap water at the railway station. So on this notable day, I followed my mum, thinking she was going to fetch water; then I saw some kids playing and I asked if I could play with them whilst she went to fetch the water and back. She agreed. This was 1947. The place wasn’t a school as such; it must have been a small church that was partitioned. The Ogbomosho and the Ijesha brought their children together there to teach them. In no time, their break was over and I joined them in the class; and then they were singing a song that fascinated me: “One-okan, two-eeji, three-eeta, four-eerin, five-aarun… ten-eewa”. They sang it repeatedly and I soon mastered it. Then the teacher said, ‘Ta leleyi’ (who is this?) And I thought he was asking who could sing the song? I also saw some pupils raising their hands, so I raised mine too. Apparently, he was surprised to see me raise my hand; so he called me and I sang the song. Then he asked my name, and I told him Yaya. I told him my mother went to fetch water and she’d soon come pick me. But my mother, seeing that I had settled with the kids, didn’t bother to pick me up on her way back. We must have left the so-called school around 11 or 12 noon; and it was the teacher who took me home. He advised my mother to let me join the school, and that was how I started. It was an informal school, and they were not even wearing a uniform. At that time, before you got into school, they had to certify that your hand touched the other ear. Anyway, they enrolled me. I always remembered that incident, and that was why my daughter, Folashade Aregbesola, she’s now in Canada, illustrated it in a painting. Painting by, the way, is a hobby to her.
You are a professor of Mathematics today; is it not interesting that the thing that attracted you to school was numerical?
You may be right at that. It has always been. I spent about five years in that school. It became Baptist Primary School. Then we read King’s Primer; I did Standard 1 to Standard 3 there, then I left in 1950 for Ilesha. I was good in Arithmetic, but my writing was bad and I didn’t write notes until I was beaten.
Mathematics is a subject most pupils love to hate; how did your journey into the world of mathematics proper begin?
In Ilesha, I was to go to a Muslim school, Nawar-ud-Deen School; unfortunately, I joined them in Standard four, and the teachers, especially in the Arabic class carried on as if I had been with them from Standard 1 and I didn’t find it funny. Eventually, I had to leave; I went back up North; but this time, to Minna. That was in 1953. I was helping my dad, a carpenter and trader; I think carpentry was our family business. Baba Ikare, who happened to be the father of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, was also a carpenter. He graduated from my dad, but went to Ikare and modified his own carpentry. He was building vehicles and stuff. One day, while I was assisting my dad in carpentry, a customer came and my father said to me: ‘Why don’t you speak to him in the language he understands?’ which was English; and as I was speaking to him, the man asked, ‘Why don’t you allow your son to go to school?’ But my father dismissively told him that I’d been out of school for some time. In any case, dad took the advice and I started school again, Baptist Day School in Minna. Now in that school, the system was, fail in Bible Studies, fail in all. They would write that you passed in this, this, this and this subject, but you failed over all. Thankfully, I was very good in Bible Studies.
Now to your question about Mathematics, we were using Durrell; you may not know it. To pass GCE Mathematics, you had to take Algebra as a subject, Arithmetic and Trigonometry as a subject; then Geometry as a subject. So we had three papers for Mathematics alone, and I was very good in all three. We were also using Shilling Pendlebury; and there was Lacomb. I can also tell you that we were well taught in that school. I graduated from there in 1957. I learnt they still have Primary 7 in the North up till now. At that time, there were four primary schools in the whole of Minna: Baptist Day School (now Ahmadu Bahago Secondary School), CMS, Roman Catholic and the LA School (Local Authority). I can still remember some of my mates; I was Yaya Yusuf at the time; there was Yisa Yusuf, there was Isaac Adekunjo, Victor Mosadomi; there was also my late good friend, Ojo Adewuyi. They were equally very good; so there was good competition. On leaving Baptist Day, some of them came down to the South for secondary school, but it seemed like I was going to be stuck with carpentry. So each time they came back to Minna, they would tell me, ‘Yaya, is this how you will end all that brilliance?’ That, of course, worried me and I had to move down to the South.
As a Southern Muslim, was there any time you felt like they were forcing you to take up the Christian faith?
At that time, to us, there was no discrimination. During Christmas, people didn’t even celebrate Christmas much then, it was the New Year; and we were given chicken from all directions. And during Ileya, we Muslims also killed rams and it was fun. We were young and happy. The only time they tried something close to that was when I finished and they came to me and said, ‘Had it been you were a Christian, we would have given you a scholarship to Grade III Teachers Training College.’ And I didn’t like that ‘type of statement. I didn’t want anybody to give me conditions.
You are a professor of Computational Mathematics; what does that entail? Anything to do with modern day computer?
Yes there are relations. But I will want to start from my secondary school. I went to Oranmiyan Grammar School, Ile-Ife. At that time, it was a private school and we were offering up to 16 subjects. Being a fee-paying private school, you were always expected to perform well and you have to spend six years before you can be allowed to write WAEC. We were paying around 80pounds per annum day students; it was more if you were a boarder. I performed excellently well in the first year, the second year; my exposure at that Baptist Day School in Minna gave me some edge. Also they were yet to start using the books we were using.
That means the standard was higher over there than here?
Yes, I remember when we went for common entrance; we always did arithmetic first, and the teachers would be around to mark the papers; and suddenly they’d be asking, ‘Who is Yaya Yusuf? Then I would raise my hands, and then they would ask from what school, what class? And I answer, ‘Primary 7; everyone would burst into laughter, asking which one is Primary 7? Fortunately, I was given a scholarship in my second year. But the scholarship was not enough, so my mother followed me to the founder and proprietor of the school, the late Johnson Omisore to have a discussion with him. My mother, who was responsible for my upkeep, had been involved in an auto accident along Mokwa road on her way to Zaria, where she was going to sell kolanut. Her vehicle and another collided and got burnt. According to her, she had been sitting in front of the vehicle, when some Fulani men insisted on sitting in the front and she gave up her seat for them. That saved her because the Fulani people died. Luckily, the people who rescued her, took her to the hospital, treated her and gave her money to go to Zaria rather than send her back to Ilesha; so things were a bit tough for her at the time. Long story short, Omisore agreed that me and another boy should come and be staying in his house; so I enjoyed free education throughout. Because I was very good, he said there was no way he would allow me to go. They were banking on the fact that I would make a very good result when I eventually write the WAEC. I became very popular in the school; my teachers also liked me and continued to advise me. So in Form IV, I went for my GCE O’ level and passed. That was the beginning. I did Mathematics, Literature, English Language, History…. I was ordering past question papers, up to ten years, from London. However, even though I had passed, I was still in the school. I could not leave Omisore’s house. Now, what would I be doing if what I should be doing two years, I’d already achieved? The next song with my teachers was, ‘Yaya, you can make A’ levels, continue to study. They were advising me to take English Literature, History and Bible Knowledge; but where then would I put Mathematics?
Had it become your area of passion at the time?
Oh yes. I made a credit in it and in all the other papers. By the way, I was also good in the arts; I even engaged myself in drama in the school; I acted Brutus in Julius Ceaser, the play by Shakespeare; we went for a Western Region competition and we came first. Eventually, I decided to try Mathematics alongside Geography, because there were Mathematics in Geography at A’ level, which was why people were not passing it. I did Maths (Pure), Maths (Applied), Geography and passed. That was in 1965. I was retained in the school. Many schools were asking me over but Omisore insisted I wasn’t going anywhere. By that time, it was clear I could not wait for WAEC, but he insisted I used that knowledge to teach in the school. I applied and was given admission to read Mathematics in 1966 at the University of Ife, then sited at where we now have The Polytechnic, Ibadan. The now Redeemed Christian Church overseer, Enoch Adeboye, was two years ahead of me. My mother of course wanted me to get married because I was already working. I was getting 20 pounds per month as an A’ level teacher. I didn’t tell her I was going to the university; I didn’t tell anybody; I just saved some money and moved on. At that time, once you were in for the prelim as a Maths or Agric student, they would just come to the class and enrol you for scholarship; however, I had passed that stage because I entered as a direct student. Meanwhile, some of my fellow students were looking at me like I was mad, but I told them, Maths was the only subject I could handle very well. It didn’t cost me much; I didn’t have to go for practicals. Now there was this lecturer, he graduated from Julius Nyerere University, Tanzania, who would say to us, ‘You cannot know mathematics.’ And he would hold the chalk at the tip and tell us he was teaching us Real Analysis. So I started asking myself, ‘Am I not in trouble?’
Fortunately for me, I went to Zaria to meet my mother and seized the opportunity to visit a secondary school colleague who was working in the Ahmadu Bello University Library. I asked to see their books on Mathematics, and I saw this book. It was recommended but you could not get it to buy. Even if it were available, I didn’t have the money. The book was Eggleston, Real Analysis; I borrowed it, bought some biro, bought official paper and sat down and copied everything. The whole textbook. At that time, there was no photocopying machine in the country. I saw how this lecturer was teaching us and asking questions and so on. On my return to class, he gave us a test and I got 7/10. Meanwhile, I had showed the book to my friends that I had got the secrets of this man, but their response was dismissive. Eventually, we wrote the exam; I must have gotten an A in this paper. The second year, I sat for a scholarship interview, once, twice; I was not lucky. My first year was a bit easy but the second year was not and I was dejected. Things were getting terrible for me. If you had not paid, you’d be sent out from the hostels; so we had to plead with and cajole the porters. Then Chief Obafemi Awolowo was released from prison. He was to be the second in command to General Yakubu Gowon and Minister of Finance. But he said he was going to accept only subject to the condition that no star student in the university would be sent packing on account of not being able to pay fees. Then we had five universities: University of Ibadan, University of Lagos, Ahmadu Bello University, University of Nigeria, Nsukka and University of Ife. So that was how I became one of the indigent students and all what I was owing was written off and academic work continued. Third year went without hitches and principals started coming from different schools. Then Baba Ajasin of the Action Group party from Owo was looking desperately for a mathematics teacher for his Owo High School; he sent some people to come and interview me, and I used the opportunity to set up a meeting with him. Then he sent back that he was ready if I wanted to be paid while in the school. Eventually I finished my papers on the 28th May 1969. I got to Owo on the 1st of June 1969 and met the man. He wanted to give me two weeks to go and rest, but I told him, no. I wanted to see what they had on ground. I offered some advice, recommended some books, which they bought and we started.
You were the first First Class Mathematics graduate in the history of the University of Ife. Were you deliberate about or did it come to you naturally because you were gifted?
How do you define ‘gifted’? I liked doing it; I prepared for it and I’ve always said Mathematics is the simplest subject that one can pass (General laughter). That has always been my preaching, even in the class. I would ask for ten years question papers and I would make sure I solved all of them. That led me to passing A’ level with ease. And when I got into the university, I used the same method. I even set harder questions for myself, such that I didn’t have to bother myself two days to exams like other students did. I could have about 40 to 50 questions, meanwhile in the exam, they were going to ask me eight questions to answer five. If you can solve one Mathematics question, you should be able to solve 1,000 similar questions. So each time we are given eight questions, I could conveniently solve six. I wasn’t the type that would go and ask the lecturer, ‘how did I perform?’ That was why even when my final results were announced through the radio throughout the Western Region on rediffusion, I didn’t know until somebody came to tell me, ‘Yaya, have you heard your results? They have been calling your results since yesterday.’ I made a First Class. Only three of us made first class in the university, the other two were in Chemistry: Late Professor Olubuyide and Professor Jide Ige.
Tell us about the convocation day.
By the way, Prof. Ige was with me at Owo High School; it was while teaching there that we got a telegram from Ife that: ‘Assistant Lecturer Appointed. 950 pounds per annum. Letter follows’. On the day of our convocation, late Pa Obafemi Awolowo was the chancellor and when they called my name as first First Class graduate in Mathematics, everybody in the hall stood up in awe. Standing ovation. And as I shook his hands repeatedly, I thought in my mind that if this man knew what he did to make me make this first class … That was a Christian-Christian leadership. So all these noise of Muslim-Muslim ticket is irrelevant. That policy worked in my favour, although I was not the only indigent student. That day, the late Olubuyide and I were given a scholarship to go study in the US; but you know what happened? I had a fever and ended up at Wesley Hospital, Ilesha. I was telling them ‘that the student you have been hearing his name on the radio? It is me! Please, don’t let me die.’ Anyway, I could not use that scholarship. I came back to the university and applied for the Commonwealth Scholarship.
Meanwhile, there was a bit of drama when I was about to leave Owo High School. I had only stayed four months, and a parent came to challenge me, so much that I was frightened. He asked why we were so fond of money. He even refused to sit down. He told me the changes I had been able to instil in his three children in the school; how they always talked about one Mr Aregbesola and now on their own take up their books and study.
What did you do differently?
What used to happen is that when they gave students assignment, the teacher would just ask them to exchange notebooks and then start calling the answers. That is very wrong. There are some students who are very good in Mathematics but who are careless. They may want to add two to 18 and then get 21. Meanwhile, they have been working right from the top, and then the teacher would say they are wrong. Meanwhile, somebody with the right answer but wrong working might be marked right. There is what we call follow through; a student who followed through but got the wrong answer should not be given zero. I had this experience when I helped them to mark WAEC. There is method mark, there is accuracy mark and there is follow-through mark.
To answer your question, let me begin with what happened at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, because that was a continuation of how I believe Mathematics should be handled. I told you I got commonwealth scholarship. So on September 21, 1970, we were in the UK. After all the special treatment at Birmingham palace as Special Students, I was taken to my school, to my department. At Ife, we had only one department for Mathematics, which comprised Statistics, Pure Mathematics, and what one might call Applied Mathematics; but when I got to Sheffield, there was Dept of Pure Mathematics, Dept of Statistics and Dept Applied and Computational Mathematics. I decided I was going for M.Sc with exams and I chose Applied Mathematics, so they put me in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics.
The first day I got there, they gave me a chair and said ‘Yaya Areg-besola, (they could not pronounce the gb sound), let us know how much Mathematics you know, and they started throwing questions at me. And then they advised me to go in for MPhil, which is supposed to be two years research, no exam. However, I had come in for MSc in Exams and Dissertation, so I told them I chose exams. And that was because I knew at the back of my mind that if it was exams, I would pass. If it were M.Phil, they may even say my English was not good enough or my presentation was poor, because I would have to defend it. They told me no Black African, Caribbean or Indian had passed the exams, I said no problem. They said if I failed they would send me home, I said ‘no problem.’ Then I said, can I have a copy of the lecture note that you give your students? They said yes and gave it to me. Can I have some past question papers? They said yes, see the secretary. Then I said ‘how can I get to the library? They described it. When they gave us assignment, they would mark and my answers were not poor. Then they started asking the English boys, ‘Are you the ones teaching Yaya?’ and they would answer ‘no, no’. Of course I was already a staff of the University of Ife, and even though they wrote to inquire about my performance, they never bothered to look at it.
Then we had another advantage; the PG (post-graduate) students were attached to lecturers when they were going for tutorials. You were asking the other time how people improved on the teaching of Mathematics; it was compulsory that we followed the lecturers to the tutorial classes. You would have been given some tutorial sheets. These students would be in the room and you would ask them to raise their hands if they had any questions. In my own case, they would always raise their hands to see if I would be able to answer their questions. So we went through all that. I was following one of the lecturers to the tutorial class and he said, ‘By the way, Yaya, have you asked for your result? I said no. He said go and ask the man in charge. I said okay. The moment I got into his office, even before I opened my mouth, he said, ‘Yes, congratulations Yaya, you surprised us. Then he went through the drawer, showed me the letters they had been receiving asking for my report and said, ‘yes, now I can write to your school, I can write to anybody telling them that you are very good.’
Professor Candell, who was the head of the department, also said to me, ‘Yaya, you really surprised us’. He also said, ‘yes you can even abandon the MSc and go straight for the PhD’; but I said ‘no, let me finish the masters first’. Before I left Nigeria, I never saw a computer. In any case, I had to be doing the typing myself, because if you made a mistake with the typing, the whole block would fail. After my MSc, Dr Burley, was my supervisor, and we were using Algor or Fortran, which I managed to understand. The department, at the time, was solving problems either in one dimension or two dimensions. I had to look for a way of doing something different. Let me also say that it was in my last year as a PhD research student that I saw a calculator, it was sold for 80 pounds. So I got one and sent back to Ife. Then my late VC, Hezekiah Oluwasanmi, wrote back and said why was I worried? You are about to finish, when you get back, we would buy. Eventually they bought three. We started with three dimensional problem and the computer in Sheffield could no longer handle my problem, so they had to attach me to Manchester City, where they had bigger facilities. My supervisor was also very happy because it was something new. At the end of the day, I finished and he sent the thesis to the external examiner who read it and then came for the oral exam. Myself, the supervisor and the external examiner were there; and he was asking so many questions. Don’t forget, the thesis was being typed by somebody I employed, and though she was already working in the Mathematics department, she was not a mathematician. I actually used some Maxwell Equation because I needed it, I twisted the thing to agree with what I wanted, which I did successfully. He had been interviewing me for more than one hour; now there was a page with the suffix IJK, so you can vary I, J and k, depending on the side. If you meant 1 2 1, for example, and it’s not the correct thing, somebody who knows would correct that. So the man said, ‘Yes Yaya, I have gone through your work, you have to convince me that you wrote this thing. This is a page where I couldn’t agree with what is there. If you can explain this page, you have passed; if you cannot, then something is wrong somewhere.’ So I opened it and look through. My head was going from top to bottom of the paper, trying to see what was wrong; then I discovered there was a typographical error. Then I told him, ‘Yes, there is a typographical error here’. That moment, he himself jumped up and said ‘yes, congratulations.’ (General applause)
That was how it went. I came back in June 1974, which was less than four years for my PhD. That was a record then. Some spent seven years.
Now to go back to your question, when you are teaching Mathematics, you must take them tutorials just to see how they are responding. Many people don’t do it, and that is one of the major things that are causing problems even in ASUU right now.
Some classes in our universities have up to 5,000 students, even when you break such classes down to 1,000, it’s still massive. How do you mark 1,000 scripts?
What we were doing in Ife was to break these classes into smaller groups. Not doing that is what is causing excess workload, which is causing problems now. We even employed MSc students to help out, and in each programme, we had 2-0-1, that is 2-hour lecture, zero practical and one tutorial. In Ife, everybody is supposed to do the grading, be you a professor or graduate assistant. We used to have conference marking too. When I retired and went as a visiting professor to LAUTECH; I came across these same problems, so I gave them tutorials, assignments, and they won’t do it. It was then I learnt that people could employ somebody to write tutorial questions and so on. But I know how I handled that. At Osun State University, where I also taught as a visiting professor, I used tell them ‘Look, I studied this thing 30 years ago; your own brain is better than mine… You cannot run away, so your best bet is to come to the class, so we can discuss bla bla… Even at OAU, I allowed students to ask me questions even right in the class, because I could make a mistake. I always told them they were better than me, but they would laugh. I told them I would give them benefit of the doubt if they made any mistake, and that I would be happier if they used another method than the one I taught them.
However, if they choose to cheat or copy one another, the fellow with the first correct answer gets 10/10; then if I see a similar one, I start deducting marks, and I would make reference to where I thought he copied. There was a case where the author of the answer scored 2/10. So he learnt his lesson.
In one of your several publications, you were talking about girls in early puberty, menstruation and all that. What has Mathematics got to do with that?
That was by Sogbamu and Aregbesola. Sogbamu, now late, was a gynaecologist at the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital. What happened was that when patients came and they asked them these questions, which sometimes annoyed them, they kept the record. So he approached me and said he wanted to do an analysis of all what he had collected. I said no problem, I will do it. But he said it was not just about me doing it, but that he wanted to include my name to show that a mathematician did the analysis. I actually applied statistics. It had something to do with weight, height and the girls’ period cycles. We went further to determine time of ovulation and so on and so forth. What that does is help them predict their ovulation period accurately. This was one of the many works we did together. Statistics is also Applied Mathematics. You can apply Mathematics to almost everything.
What’s your take on the ongoing ASUU strike?
It is jealousy, hatred and apartheid. Generally, when I say hatred, what I mean is that those who would become lecturers are those who had First Class or Second Class Upper (2.1). Let me give you a simple example; there were people who had 2.2 and third class, who went straight for administrative work. Meanwhile, those of us with First Class went abroad. I came back very early, four years after; some came back after five years. When they came back, they were renting houses from those in administration in the same university. They already got promoted. As an administrator, you get promoted every three years; as a lecturer, you have to have some publications. If you look at the offices of the lecturers, it’s nothing to write home about. Go to the office of the administrators, before you can get to their office proper, you have to go through one or two people.
