The Nation Newspaper

Tag: colossus

  • ‘Art is the colossus of our day- to- day living’

    ‘Art is the colossus of our day- to- day living’

    THE Chrisland Group  Schools, Lagos, has held an art award as part of activities markingits 40th anniversary. At the event which held Opebi, six art personalities were honoured for their contributions to the development of arts in the country.

    The awardees were professor of art Bruce Onobrakpeya; former provost of the Federal Government College, Osiele, Ogun State, Dr Kunle Filani; art editor Mr. Cossy Ajiboye; Sam Ovrait; art critic Mr. Mufu Onifade; and Mr Bernard Aina.

    They were awarded medals.

    Also four musicians – Dr Albert Oikelome; Sir Emeka Nwokodi; gospel musician Mr Kunle Ajayi, and performance poet and journalist Mr. Akeem Lasisi were given awards for their contributions to the music industry.

    According to Prof. Onobrakpeya, art does not only mirror society, it is a tool for advocacy.  “There is no world without art because it is the colossus of our day- to- day living. Just imagine a life without God creating a life without colours, how do we make life just to make it comfortable for the human race. Art is the coin of a healthy living, mixing different things you’ll have proper one because that is the Ariel of life,” he said.

    The Managing Director of the Chrisland Group of Schools, Mrs Grace Adeyemi, spoke of the importance of nurturing the talents in children, linking it with the mental development of the young. While urging parents to pay attention to talents in their children, she said nurturing the artistic and musical talents in children is one of the core values of the school. She added: “We train our children in music and art to bring out quality of art in them because some of them can sing well and very good in presentations, painting and acting.”

    The school also held an exhibition to commemorate its anniversary. The exhibition featured artworks of pupils from all Chrisland Group of Schools along with other schools, such as: Grange School, GRA Ikeja; Lara School, Gbagada; Grace Schools; Lagos, Mind Builders School; and Supreme Educational  Foundation.

    The works included tye and dye; painting, sculpting, etc.

  • Tinubu: A colossus at 65

    Tinubu: A colossus at 65

    A man of great character and deep convictions, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has evolved, over the years, as a shining phenomenon and a towering figure in the nation’s socio-political landscape.

    This is indeed a most critical time in our nation, Nigeria when burning issues of leadership are gaining more recognition given the various problems that we have had to contend with. In the light of the prevailing economic recession, excruciating poverty, mass unemployment, dilapidated infrastructure and poor social service delivery as thrown up by decades of bad leadership and chronic character deficit, Nigerian people are clearly in dire need of true and time-tested leaders with deep intellectual clarity, strong ideological conviction, consuming organizational acumen as well as a knack for national and international solidarity.

    At 65, what has continued to endear Asiwaju Tinubu to his teeming political associates, business partners and grassroots admirers is his formidable strength of character, which obviously flows from his clarity of purpose and Spartan determination to bequeath the world around him with enduring legacies of noble exploits. Convictions are deep-held beliefs based on a commitment to one’s purpose. It gives a person a sense of direction as well as a commensurate influence on people and events around him. The whole essence of having highly influential and inspirational leaders like Asiwaju Tinubu in a Country like ours is to enable them inspire, motivate and empower other people to take action and effect change.

    In the last three decades that I have had the privilege to relate with him personally as a co-traveller in the murky waters of Nigerian politics, Asiwaju has never stopped to amaze me with his charismatic energy and his profound conviction on the need to positively transform our dear nation before things are allowed to go beyond remedy. And indeed, he has always demonstrated the excellent capacity to translate this lofty dream to reality.

    Exemplary leaders like Asiwaju Tinubu are rare to come by. They are often thrown up by national challenges and the global anxieties of their time. Wherever they find themselves and at any epochal event in the course of history, their sterling leadership qualities glow radiantly as their shining traits illuminate the abounding darkness. Needless to say, Tinubu is not of the common breed. He is a resolute fighter, a highly intelligent strategist, extremely diligent grassroots mobilizer and an unrepentant lover of the people. He is of course the great avatar of our time, the national enigma whose thoughts and actions continue to show the light in our stormy sail to the shores of freedom and progress as a nation and as a people.

    As a Distinguished Senator in the short-lived Third Republic, Tinubu was the Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, Banking, Appropriation and Currency. In the twilight of the unlawful annulment of the June 12, 1993 Presidential election, where the Nigerian people gave their mandate, in a free and fair atmosphere, to Chief M.K.O Abiola, the acclaimed winner of the election, Asiwaju Tinubu emerged in the Senate as the most articulate voice against the military junta and a rallying point for pro-democracy activists within and outside of Nigeria..

    In the protracted struggle for the enthronement of democracy and demilitarization of the nation’s political space, Tinubu, a founding member of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), played a most profound role as a financier and strategic bridge among notable local and international pro-democracy formations as the demand for greater networking and campaigns emerged.

    As a consistent and unrepentant apostle of the June 12 movement, Tinubu, the great political fighter, was exposed to various forms of molestation, arrests, harassment, threats to life and brutalization in the hands of the ruthless machinery of the General Sanni Abacha regime, before he finally resolved to go into exile and lend a more articulate voice to the struggle in the foreign domain.

    As Governor of Lagos State on the platform of the Alliance of Democracy (AD), Tinubu made large investments in education, health care delivery, housing schemes, massive road construction, integrated rural development, agricultural production, construction of novel digital centres, the beautification of open spaces and loops across the State, the development of the State work force for greater productivity as well as the promotion of progressive taxation, which steadily augmented the State’s internally generated revenue from its initial N600 million in 1999 to N10 Billion in 2007 when he left office as the Chief Executive Officer of the State.

    Today, it is worthy of note that the years of Tinubu’s selfless sacrifice and foresightedness as Governor of Lagos State laid the optimum foundation for the enviable pedigree for which Lagos is now known as Africa’ model megacity, a great hub of commercial activities, a preferred investors’ destination, a haven of tourist ecstasies, a melting pot for regional and international diplomacy and, of late, an emerging corridor for commercial oil and solid mineral exploration and production.

    During his administration in Lagos State, Tinubu did not only reposition the organized private sector as the dynamo of the commanding heights of the Lagos economy, he created an enabling regulatory environment for huge local and foreign investment, with a view to ensuring that Lagosians were not at the mercy of the market forces as the private sector thrived to the delight of all. Tinubu computerized the land administration regime, introduced a centralised pay roll system for Civil servants in Lagos State, Tinubu revolutionised the justice sector through the computerisation of Court recording system as well as the establishment of the Office of Public Defender (OPD) and the novel Citizens’ Mediation Centre (CMC). These policy innovations, among others, soon became benchmarks in the nation’s public sector, to the extent that even the Federal Government and other States in the federation had to understudy and follow the Lagos examples in order to conform to global best practices in public administration.

    The most outstanding in the array of his heroic exploits so far is the prominent roles he played in galvanizing the opposition forces in the country together, which eventually culminated in the formation of the All Progressives Congress, preparatory to the 2015 Presidential election. For the first time in the nation’s chequered political history, an opposition party (APC) deposed the ruling party (PDP) at the centre in a democratic election and to the chagrin and admiration of the world. With due recognition of the noble efforts of other prominent figures who contributed to APC’s electoral victory in the 2015 presidential election, this feat would not have been attained if not for the undying conviction, selflessness, clear vision, political sagacity as well as the resolute leadership of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

    At a time when many political gladiators were not too certain that the ‘almighty’ PDP could be dislodged at the centre given the latter’s several years of romance with federal powers and control assess to Government apparatus which it had consistently used to manipulate the electoral process over the years in defiance of the popular wish of Nigerians, Asiwaju, more than anyone, was damn sure that the employment of the right strategies in an atmosphere of unity and clarity of purpose would ultimately lead to a resounding victory. Today, this has turned out to be a reality and the rest of course is history.

    Yuri Smartin (1987) argued that the success of a political leader “is determined by the accuracy with which he sizes up any situation either within his country or beyond its borders, by his ability to work out the right strategy and tactics for struggle and by his links with the masses.” The Nigerian experience over the years have shown that only visionary leaders with great intellectual viguor, profound strategy, strong influence and consuming organizational skills like Asiwaju Tinubu can rescue the Country from the crisis of economic dislocation and political miasma that it is engulfed in. Nevertheless, they need not occupy a political office, they don’t have to be great Orators; they don’t even have to be the most brilliant scholars or the wealthiest businessmen in their community, but their superior moral influence, social persuasiveness, strength of character and undiluted commitment to the common cause of humanity would stand them out in all fronts, no matter the challenges they have had to contend with.

    The Tinubu’s example had brought home the self-evident truth that leadership is all about strong, noble and honourable character and conviction. If you don’t have solid convictions, you don’t deserve to have followers. If you keep vacillating in order to please people, if you keep sacrificing your belief system in order to be accepted, you are not a leader-you are a compromiser. In the Tinubu’s school of politics, leadership is far different from manipulating people. It is about inspiring them. Leadership is not about controlling others, it is about serving them. To Asiwaju Tinubu, leadership is not about gaining power over people, it is about empowering them. Of course, it was this positive outlook and stoic philosophical principle that informed his political ideology, affiliation and actions over the years. To this extent, every conscious effort to severe his influence on the people by his detractors had consistently proved abortive. All of us may not agree with his uncompromising nature and indomitable spirit, his commitment to true federalism, good governance and democratic reconstruction. However, we cannot afford to ignore his moral superiority over the forces of retrogression as well as his profound influence on the forces of progress in Nigeria and the world at large.

    • Bamidele is former Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy.

  • Oga Dele Falegan: The colossus at 80

    ‘The thorough man knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment to ends’.

    – Andrew Carnegie

     

    Chief Dele Falegan’s life has been divinely choreographed

     

    Not a few would wonder as to how this toddler can address Baba Falegan, 80 years plus two days today, as oga, an appellation normally applicable to those older only by some light years .The reason is simple: I am privileged to have shared Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti – UP SCHOOL! -with the baffday ‘boy’, and it so happens that THE SCHOOL has patented that appellation for all those older, whether ancient or modern, and Baba happens to be ancient while I am modern.

    Encomiums would pour ceaselessly at the formal celebration on Friday, 10 May, 2013, as Baba turns 80 and all will gather to celebrate a man whose entire life has been dedicated to service to humanity. In recognition of this, the Ekiti state governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, ever so appreciative of integrity, has requested his party leaders and brother governors to please join him in celebrating Baba, who continues to avail the state of his prodigious expertise and experience in Economics and Banking. He is, incidentally, the Chairman of the State Sure-P Committee.

    Chief Dele Falegan may be thorough, he may have deployed unremitting attention to all he ever did and he just might have programmed his life the best he can but without a scintilla of doubt, his life has been divinely choreographed. Witness the following, for instance, and see the uniqueness of figure 3: Born in 1933, baptized in ’43 and confirmed in ’53 he attended the IMF Training School, Washington D.C, in ’63 and was with the World Bank IFC in ’83. In 1993, he authored his second book on the Nigerian Foreign Exchange mechanism and in 2003, mooted the idea of a group buying an organ for the Emmanuel Church, Ado-Ekiti. Two days ago, on Friday, 10 May 2013, as he turned 80, the Holy Spirit led him to singlehandedly donate, a N20 Million Pipe Organ to the Cathedral Church of Emmanuel, Ado-Ekiti thus fulfilling that which he had proposed to a group ten years earlier

    That he is this passionate about a pipe organ cannot surprise anybody who knows Baba well. Born and raised in an Anglican home, it was compulsory for him, as a young boy, to attend all church events which in those days bore strict adherence to the church calendar. His greatest interest was, however, in singing having been picked to join the choir in 1944 by Baba E. S. Ajibade, a very powerful soloist. He has never looked back since.

    I have been spectacularly blessed to be mentored by some of the most illustrious of Ado-Ekiti sons, both as teachers and as life- long mentors. They include Chief Fajana, my primary school teacher, Professor Banji Akintoye who taught me both at Christ’s School and at the University, Chief Alex Olu Ajayi and Chief (Dr) JGO Adegbite under who, with late Chief S.J Okudu, I learnt all I ever knew about Higher Education Administration and the Prince, Juli Adelusi Faluyi who remains my constant source of encouragement and admonition.

    Add the celebrant to this list and you would have captured about half the men and women the good Lord has used in shaping me. But Chief Falegan caught me darn early; he, the tall, elegant and sartorial top Economist at the Central Bank of Nigeria in the mid-60’s, and I , the young, dashing bank clerk at the Bank of West Africa Ltd.

    But boy, didn’t he send me errands on Apapa Road!

    I have thus been privileged, for nearly half a century, to learn at Baba’s feet and both he and Mummy, his graceful better half, have taken my wife and I so passionately that he, in fact, calls me – to my shame – more than I call him and the first thing he will say in Ekiti is: oni ayiye ni si ko? – The good one is who I want to greet o.

    Another of the highlights of the celebrations will be the unveiling of his magnum opus –MY YESTER YEARS – his Autobiography. An author of no mean repute, Chief Falegan had to be prevailed upon, especially by Mummy and I , to put pen to paper. Why, the reader may ask? Baba’s most distinguishing characteristic is candour –the ability to say it exactly as it is – whether at work or in communal affairs. Knowing how wicked the ‘soul of man’ is, he was being careful not to recall some sensitive issues where his seemingly hard views, most often the road finally taken, were always first met with serious altercations. We prevailed because he agreed with us that truth will always thump falsity. And let me claim some bragging rights here: I was privileged to be one of the three persons who edited the book. We had to be that number because he will simply tolerate no mistakes; whether of spelling or syntax. He is that meticulous.

    Chief Falegan was born, the 6th of 20 siblings into the Fatufede warrior family of Ado –Ekiti on 10 May 1933. His father, Chief Daniel Falegan, a big time yam farmer, was a disciplinarian and a lover of Education. He attended Emmanuel School, and Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti, which he says was so named on 10th September, 1936, by Sir Bourdilion, then Nigeria’s Governor-General, on a visit to Ondo Province. Baba would later obtain his first degree in Economics at the Fourah Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone, and a Master’s in the same discipline from the University of Oregon U.S.A.

    He joined the Central Bank of Nigeria on July 1, 1961 and by sheer hard work, quickly distinguished himself so much that to his pleasant surprise, he became, in February 1963, the first staff of the Bank to be sent to the IMF Institute in Washington DC to train on monetary policy.

    He will be twice lucky as he was, in 1965, again sponsored to the University of Oregon, USA, for a two-year Master’s programme in Economics. He was, this time around, accompanied by his wife, Olufunke, and his one-year old son, Oludare. It was there he had his near fatal operation for pneumonia which cost him the lower lobe of his right lung and to the glory of God he has survived on one and a half lungs since 1967.

    At the Central Bank he saw bare faced ethnicity at play. However, the attempt, by Dr Clement Isong, to make his kinsman supersede Chief Falegan as Director of Research was thwarted only an hour before the deed when the Finance Minister, his former boss, Mr A. E Ekukinam, came in to inform Dr Isong of his removal from office as CBN governor once more confirming God’s benevolence on the life of the celebrant. He would later be seconded to the Nigerian Mortgage Bank as its pioneer Managing Director. Again it was by the grace of God that he overcame the ethnic-motivated intrigues in this new place that he had no qualms, whatever, in describing his time there, in his autobiography, as MY THREE WASTED YEARS.

    Baba has always, and continues to touch life. Suffice it to mention the case of three of his junior staff who all had grade 1 in their school certificate examination. Because he was a tough act to follow, many of his department’s staff usually seek transfer to others but he just would not approve of these three whom he insisted would not leave the department until they got admission to universities. The three are today, Professor Bode Leigh, former Vice Chancellor, Lagos State University, Dr. Aderungboye, former General Manager, Okitipupa Oil Palm Company and Mrs. Ajoke Oluwasanmi, a retired Permanent Secretary of the Ekiti Public Service commission.

    Chief Falegan has served on various boards and consulted for various national and international agencies. Amongst these are: Standard, now First Bank, NISER and the Ondo State Economic Advisory Council, 1976-1979. He served on the Working Party on the establishment of the West African Clearing House and that on the establishment of African Centre for Monetary Studies, Dakar, among many others.

    A prolific writer and commentator on national affairs, Chief Falegan is the Atoye of Ado-Ekiti.

  • Obadare: Exit of a religious colossus

    The Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) worldwide is bereaved. Death sneaked into the vineyard of God, snatching a legendary labourer, Prophet Timothy Obadare. The Ijesa-born founder of the World Soul Winning Evangelistic Ministry (WOSEM) and disciple of the late foremost evangelist, Apostle Joseph Ayodele Babalola, died yesterday He was 85. The late prophet was a renowned radio and television preacher, revivalist and spiritually fulfilled priest.

    Prophet Obadare left without a legacy of scandals. For over 60 years, he was a travelling evangelist; winning souls for Christ, feeding the faithful with the bread of life, preaching the word of God, baptising people and founding churches in the nooks and crannies of Yorubaland. Throughout his life time, he lived by example, shunning ostentatious lifestyles, opulence and pursuits of transient worldliness.

    Every Sunday night, at 7.30 pm, people usually gather around the radio sets to listen to his weekly sermon. The late Obadare was a blind man, but he knew the Bible chapters and verses, and if a wrong chapter or verse is read, he would instantly correct the reader, to the amusement of the listeners.

    The man God usually hosted a huge congregation for the monthly Ipade Oluwa Olorun Koseunti at the WOSEM Headquarter, Agbala Itura, Akure. Nigerians from the 36 states, and with different ailments and problems, would throng the revival centre for three days, before returning home with their faces lit up with smiles.

    Unlike modern aristocrat-churchmen and spiritual entrepreneurs, who perceive the pulpit as another avenue for private accumulation, the great pastor never departed from the path of his mentor and role model, Apostle Babalola. It is a common saying in the C.A.C circle that Apostle Babalola literarily handed the evangelistic baton to Prophet Obadare, shortly before he died in 1959 at the age of 55 years. During the great apostle’s last outing, he was said to have directed Obadare to sit on his seat when he rose up to deliver the sermon and conduct the prayers. He never returned to the seat.

    However, the C.A.C of old was a conservative church nurtured on the code of succession based on seniority. Thus, following the death of the pioneer C.A.C General Evangelist, Babalola, the church founder who had refused to become the church’s President, Pastor D.O. Babajide became the second General Evangelist. In the evangelical wing, the late Pastor S.O. Akande (Baba Abiye of Ede), Obadare, and the late Pastor Olukayode, were next in rank to Babajide as the Assistant General Evangelist.

    Prophet Obadare was not a nominal pastor in the C.A.C from the onset. He had a calling. A vocal Bible teacher and orator on the pulpit, he was destined to be a roving evangelist. He fulfilled his spiritual destiny when, through God’s inspiration, he founded WOSEM for the sole purpose of expanding the horizon of evangelism in the C.A.C. Obadare was endowed with the gifts of the spirit. In various towns and villages, after preaching and prayers, witches and wizards would voluntarily step out to confess their sins and embrace Jesus publicly. Idol worshippers would dump their idols and join the fold in holy communion.

    The late evangelist achieved fame through the dint of hard work in God’s House. In the eighties, he founded the WOSEM braches in United States, Canada and United Kingdom. Europeans and Americans marveled at the rare gifts bestowed on a blind man quoting the Bible copiously and healing the sick at revivals. In numerous interviews to both local and foreign media, he also used the media as a platform for evangelism.

    WOSEM, his initiative, is a registered entity, although Obadare submitted to the C.A.C rules as one of its leaders. The church hierarchy could not perceive any tension between the mother C.A.C and its evangelical extension, WOSEM, under Obadare when Pastor Elijah Latunde and Pastor J.B. Orogun were the Presidents of the church. However, when Orogun was shoved aside as the President, there arose an inexplicable feud between the Supreme Council of the C.A.C and WOSEM over the basis for its corporate existence and financial status.

    Pastor Orogun, his deputy, the C.A.C. General Superintendent, Pastor Joseph Olutimehin, the National Secretary, Pastor N. Udofia, Pastor Babajide, Pastor Joseph Olu Asaju, Pastor Adegoroye, and Obadare were men of the old order who objected to the move to ease them out of office as members of the C.A.C Supreme Council and Executive Council. To them, retirement for priests was alien. They believed that the non-profit missionary work, which they had embraced since the days of Babalola, must continue, until they die. Orogun, Olutimehin, Asaju and Babajide later accepted their fate when they were retired.

    When Pastor Elijah, a reformist, became the C.A.C President, Obadare’s juniors in the church hierarchy, Pastor Alokan and Pastor S.O. Abiara, who became the General Evangelist, still paid respect to him.

    However, Udofia, Adegoroye and Obadare resisted the move to impose retirement on them. They insisted on the succession patter, urging younger elements to wait for their turn. This disagreement led to the split in the C.A.C and protracted litigation that followed. Until the resolution of the court case, C.A.C had two factions.

    The crisis that engulfed the church did not slow down Obadare. Although he did not accept the leadership of Pastor Elijah Oluseye, who recently stepped down as the church President, he did nothing to pull down the edifice erected by the patriarch, Babalola. Before his demise, he took the title of an apostle, which the church did not dispute because of his contributions to the growth of the organisation.

    Obadare’s death will, no doubt, create a vacuum that will be difficult to fill. With his death, Nigeria has lost a pious priest, a charismatic church leader and great revivalist who left his footprints on the sand of time.

  • Southwest ACN: he was a colossus

    THE Southwest caucus of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has described the death of the former governor of Oyo State and ACN leader, Alhaji Lam Adesina, as the passing on of a colossus.

    It said the vacuum created by his death would be difficult to fill not only in the ACN but also in the Oyo State political firmament and Nigeria.

    Caucus Director of Publicity Ayo Afolabi said: “Lam Adesina was a political son of the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. It is on record that he was a progressive all his life. He never sought political convenience.

    “In the camp of the progressives, he was in the forefront, even when his life was in danger.

    “Lam Adesina was a leading light, a colossus, a nationalist and a true federalist. Besides, he was a model. He was a conscience-driven politician, a thinker and a bridge builder. The vacuum created by his death will be difficult to fill.

    “The Southwest caucus of the ACN commiserates with the immediate family of the departed leader, Governor Abiola Ajimobi, Oyo State Government, the people of the state and members of the ACN.

    “The leadership of the party in the Southwest prays for the repose of his gentle soul. May the Almighty God grant his family and the political class the fortitude to bear the loss.”