I begin this eulogy with that statement to underscore the point that Bandele Fashakin of Akure could easily have run for public office in Britain or America because he was one of them. He would have been considered a good candidate for president in America or prime minister in Britain based on his academic record and credentials.
I live in a country where the schools you attend can make, and has always had a profound influence on your life and career. If you don’t believe me just try and check out the profiles of many world leaders you know including prime ministers and presidents of the greatest democracies like Great Britain and the United States.
Harold Wilson who became one of the youngest prime ministers of Great Britain was a product of Oxford. You could say the same thing of late Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and the current Prime Minister, David Cameron. Most of the British members of Parliament are either products of Oxford or Cambridge.
For you to really make it as a politician in the United States, the conventional wisdom demands that you have one of those Ivy League institutions in your resume. You may not go far if you don’t have it.
It is an unwritten rule that nobody ever talks about in black and white. You are required to have seen at one point in your life and career the four walls of some of the Ivy League institutions around the world like Oxford or Cambridge University, Columbia, Connell, Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UCLA Berkeley, Emory, Chicago, Duke, Georgetown, West point and McGill in Canada to mention a few Ivy league institutions around the world.
The statement is true of many American presidents of the 21st century like George Bush senior, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George Bush Junior, and Barack Obama the first black president who secured his fast track to the White House in being a product of Columbia and Harvard.
Kofi Annan the first African Secretary General of the United Nations was a product of MIT not by accident, but by design, if you get my point. It therefore calls for celebration when you find an individual from our own neck of the woods in Africa make it to three of such institutions on one scholarship or the other and without paying a dime.
I begin this eulogy with that statement to underscore the point that Bandele Fashakin of Akure could easily have run for public office in Britain or America because he was one of them. He would have been considered a good candidate for president in America or prime minister in Britain based on his academic record and credentials.
I cannot help but wonder how the man from Akure had managed to make it to 3 of the best Universities in the world on his own merit way back in the 70s when segregation and discrimination in America were the rule and not the exception in many parts of America.
His mother and father never went to school or knew anybody who could have helped their son go to Timi Agbale Olofa Ina College at Ede talk less of the great Aquinas College, Akure at that point in their son’s life. I make that statement not to ridicule or disrespect Timi Agbale College but to express my amazement and joy at the unusual luck of Mr. Fashakin who gained entrance to Aquinas College by coming first in the entrance exam out of hundreds of candidates that sat the exam.
Rev Father McGovern, the pioneer principal of that college, picked him because he was the best candidate. Egbon “Kokumo” whose death Akure is mourning today not only went on to make a grade one in his West African School Certificate examination in 1955, he made 7 distinctions with an aggregate of 6 points which meant that he had A1 in 6 subjects which qualified him for a direct entry to any University in Nigeria on a federal scholarship at the time.
With encouragement from one of his Reverend Father lecturers, he applied for admission to McGill University, Canada and the Michigan State University in the United States. Both Universities accepted him on scholarship. He ended up reporting first at Michigan before the letter from McGill University came. McGill offered him twice the amount of cash he was offered by Michigan.
If Bandele Fashakin were born in America or Canada or Great Britain the whole world would have taken notice of this academic genius sooner. It is a different ball game in Nigeria where the man, an expert in building bridges and one of the most brilliant scholars Nigeria has produced, had to wait for more than 25 years to become a Professor.
That was a title he would have earned within 10 years of his graduation at Harvard if he had stayed put in America. He was one of the patriotic Nigerians who would rather go back to Nigeria to make a difference than remain in Canada or the United States, where he could easily have made ten times the salary he was offered in Nigeria.
He was recruited by Professor H.A Oluwasanmi another academic giant and product of Michigan State University who became the second Vice Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University. Professor Ajose of Lagos was the pioneer Vice Chancellor. The University made so much progress under Oluwasanmi that most people now think Professor Oluwasanmi was the pioneer Vice Chancelor.
Professor H. A Oluwasanmi saw the great potential of Bandele Fashakin and he brought him down to join his teaching staff at Ife on a chicken change salary compared to what the young man would have made in America. Dr. Fashakin was happy to take the job because he strongly believed that Nigeria needed him more than Canada and the United States.
He was grateful for the opportunity to train abroad but he thought Nigeria needed him more than America. He remained at Ife until he became a Professor but his professorship was delayed for years due to circumstances beyond his control. He became addicted to alcohol upon his return to Nigeria and he lost many years trying to beat that addiction. He was lucky he did not lose his life at the peak of his problem.
He got so high at one point that he nearly drove his car against a wall thinking it was the highway. His judgment was so badly impaired that many of his friends thought he was not going to make it. He eventually beat the habit with the help of God Almighty and the unconditional love of a wife who stood by him come rain or shine.
The death of Professor Fashakin on November 1st 2014 was a major blow to Akure. It was another tragedy to add to many others in Akure in the last one year. It will be recalled that the State capital lost her charismatic traditional ruler, the Chairman of Ondo State Council of Obas, Kabiyesi Afunbiowo the Second who in 3 short years on the prestigious throne has managed to reverse some of the scandals perpetrated by his immediate predecessor who got banished for domestic violence that rocked the whole country.
The scandal made Akure the butts of every joke in Nigeria. The scandal turned Akure king makers into a laughing stock for putting a hoodlum on the throne. The deposed Deji had gone to the market place to beat up his wife. It was a most difficult time for Akure as state capital and for those of us with the royal blood flowing in our veins. We all felt so embarrassed and ashamed of some of the indiscretions of the custodian of our sacred institution.
The last Deji very quickly corrected those anomalies to a point that the State Government felt comfortable enough to appoint him as the Chairman of the Ondo State Council of Obas within 2 years of his selection and coronation. Akure witnessed a full redemption or turn-around from the Deji Afunbiowo the Second who received his instrument of office on the 26th of September 2010.
The new Deji was on his way to earning a national award as Chairman of the Council of Obas when he suddenly took ill and died. In the same week that Professor Fashakin died, Akure lost another unsung hero in Dr. Sijuade, an Akure Chief and President and CEO of Sijuade Specialist Hospital in Akure. Late Dr. Sijuade, an Ife Prince and senior brother of Ooni Risa Sijuade Olubuse of Ile Ife had made Akure his permanent home for more than 50 years.
He was an institution in our town and was very much loved and respected. His death was another major blow to Akure. In the same week Akure lost Princess Aina Osegbada one of the surviving daughters of Deji Afunbiowo the First who reigned from 1897 to 1957. Professor Fashakin’s death is as painful to Akure as that of Barrister Kayode Jegede SAN, the former Director of the Nigerian Law School in Abuja and the pioneer senior Prefect of Oyemekun Grammar School and a former President of the Akure Committee of Friends.
Akure also lost, in a tragic plane crash, Deji Falae, the Honorable State Commissioner for Trade and the second son of our elder statesman, Chief Oluyemi Falae the Oluabo of Ilu Abo and the Gbobaniyi of Akure Land as well as a former Federal Minister of Finance and Secretary to the Federal Military Government under Ibrahim Babangida.
The year 2014 was therefore a very difficult year for Akure. We acknowledge that as we mourn the painful death of another illustrious son in Professor Bandele Fashakin.
The great British novelist, William Shakespeare said it better than I could ever say it that “Life is a stage” We all come to it, play our part, get our work done and get the hell out of the way leaving others to do their own. Professor Fashakin has played his part. It is now time for us to play our own.
Professor Fashakin’s brilliant odyssey began from Aquinas College, Akure from 1952 to 1955. The man at a young age of 22 made 7 distinctions in his West African School Certificate in 1955. He worked for a little while in Lagos before gaining admission on Federal Scholarship to Michigan University at Islington Campus. He had barely settled down in that University when he received another more prestigious scholarship from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, because McGill was just too impressed by his academic record in Nigeria. The young man had no other choice than to leave Michigan for McGill where he made a first class in his Bachelor’s degree.
He was literarily drafted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he earned his Master’s degree in Applied Bio Chemistry with the highest score in his class. He was immediately offered admission on merit to Harvard University. He went to Harvard on a double scholarship. He completed his Ph.D and Doctor of Science degree in Bio Chemistry taking most of the awards in his Faculty in 1979. I paid him a visit at Harvard from my alma mater at the State University of Connecticut in his final year in 1979.
He took me to visit the white professor who supervised his Ph.D. dissertation. I have never seen a white Professor talk of a black student the way the old professor spoke about Dr. Bandele Fashakin. The man begged me to help him appeal to Dr. Fashakin not to waste his time going back to Africa because Harvard had been begging him to stay. Because I did not know any better at the time, I totally ignored the appeal. I thought Dr. Fashakin had made the right decision but as I reflect on his death today, I realize that his entire life and career would probably have been totally different had he taken the job in Harvard.
Like I hinted earlier on, the brilliant man returned to Nigeria to join the academic staff of the great Obafemi Awolowo University, where he quickly rose to the rank of Senior Lecturer within a few years of his arrival. His colleagues in the ivory tower as the “primus inter pares” highly regarded him because his records in MIT and Harvard were head and shoulders above those of his colleagues who graduated from less known Universities.
As I researched for information to do this eulogy, it just occurred to me to go back to his family root at Akure to fully appreciate all of the adversities he had to overcome to break out of the crowd to be the first in his family and the first in Akure and the first among his classmates at Aquinas College to make it to Harvard.
I discovered that “Sam Oge”, the notorious gangster who used to terrorize Akure in the late 50s and 60s was the paternal uncle of Professor Fashakin. The Professor and I used to joke about the man and his notoriety in Akure. Kokumo Fashakin decided to chart a completely different life from that of his notorious uncle. He went to Aquinas College, which opened the gateway for him to go study abroad.
He ascribed his going to those great schools to the special grace of God and the generosity of the Catholic Church. The man never shied away from talking about how God had virtually picked him up from the gutters to make him the corner stone in his family and one of the leading intellectuals in Nigeria.
His great devotion to the Catholic Church as a member of the class of 1952 at Aquinas College came from that awareness. He told me he was born to be a Catholic and would always be grateful to the Catholic Church for the rest of his life. He kept that promise with the persistence of a demon.
He remained a devout Catholic to the very end. He and the wife hosted me during a few of my visits to Nigeria. I therefore came to know him better that those who merely observe him from a distance. He and his wife woke up every day at 5 am in the morning to go attend Mass at the Catholic Seminary at Araromi in Akure. I have never met a more loving couple. They were like brother and sister who loved and trusted each other. They were both as clean as a whistle in a country where corruption and dishonesty have become an incurable Cancer.
The couple encouraged me to write the biography of my grandfather Kabiyesi Deji Afunbiowo Adesida, the pioneer architect of the golden century of Akure History from 1897 to 1997. The professor personally proof-read my manuscripts and he offered me useful suggestions on how to market the book. Even though the man was a scientist by training, he was a prolific writer and thinker who could pick a needle from a haystack of ideas in a heartbeat. His analytical mind was truly amazing. His mind remained very sharp to the very end.
I have never met a more dependable Nigerian. He would go out of his way to help people without expecting any gratification. He was a quintessential bridge builder who knew how to connect the dots and what buttons to press in finding a solution to every major problem. You can take his word to the bank because the man did not lie and would always tell you like it is without mincing words.
He was not judgmental and he did not believe in seeking vengeance. He was always willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that you probably have a compelling reason to do what you have been accused of. He would wait patiently to hear your own side before rushing to judgment. He was very forgiving and did not go out of his way to impose his values on others.
He knew his weaknesses as a man and was always the first to admit he was wrong. He was that way because he believed that the closest a man could ever get to perfection was to admit his mistakes and to make deliberate efforts to correct them before it was too late. He lived by that principle and the principle served him well to the end of his life.
He once confessed to me that he got over his problem of alcohol addiction thru the special grace of God and the moral support of his wife, Janet Adenike Fashakin. He confessed to me that healing begins with self-awareness. That was why psychologists and social workers always talk about “starting where the client is”.
Healing and sobriety cannot begin until the drug or alcohol addict is fully aware he has a problem. Anything done to help him or her before reaching that milestone in treatment is considered a complete waste of time as far as Professor Fashakin was concerned. He was absolutely right on that.
He talked of his wife in superlatives all the time calling her “his sister from another mother”. I saw a clear proof of that on the few occasions they hosted me in Akure. Madam was always the decider-in-chief in the family. If Madam said yes, 9 out of 10 chances the Professor was going to say yes even if he was not there when you spoke to mommy.
They were two of a kind. My greatest worry today is how madam is going to survive without the nurturing support of her brother and husband. Theirs was a marriage made in heaven. Many of us come to this world to marry another man’s wife or another woman’s husband. Not so for mommy and Prof.
They were made for each other. If there is an after -life, I can say with some confidence that they would certainly come back as husband and wife or brother and sister.
I call their marriage a near perfect union. They were blessed with few adorable children namely Babatunde, Ade, Penileola, Fayemi Dayo and Kunle Canada. The Professor was a great father, a wonderful husband, and a patriot. He was a distinguished member of the Akure Inner Circle and he held very important positions in the Circle first as General Secretary for a many years, and later on as Treasurer and President.
He held all of those positions with distinction like all of his predecessors which included Elder Akinrin Elegbe, Engineer Z.A Bello, Professor Mason Falaiye, late Ralph Adeola Alabi, the MD and Chairman of Nigerian Guinness Brewery PLC,, Mr. Daodu and Mr. Dayo Faloye.
The man who was born to never die again “Kokumo” has finally died after beating the odds for 77 years. We all missed him today because he is no longer around to support his wife of 50 years or more. The wife has spent her entire life looking after him in sickness and in health and for better and for worse. We shed tears today because the Professor is no longer available to look after his children and his increasing number of grandchildren.
We now realize that no sea of tears would bring him back to us. The man has lived a good life. He has accomplished most of his missions in this world and would long be remembered as an achiever and as one of the most brilliant academicians of his era and generation. We therefore celebrate his life because the man is definitely in a better place today as he rests in the right hand of God.
The Board of Trustees of the Catholic Seminary of Araromi, Akure, would forever cherish his memory as the “Baba isale”of the Church and one of its founding pillars. The Federal University of Technology, Akure mourned the death of its Harvard-trained Professor who has not only excel led in academics but was also the brain behind the establishment of the University Bakery he floated in collaboration with the University.
The bakery has helped to reduce the problem of starvation in the state capital. Professor Fashakin personally ordered the machines from overseas and he invested a whole lot of his time and money to get the bakery up and running making huge profits for himself and the University.
Professor Fashakin’s inaugural lecture a few years ago was the talk of the town. The Professor showed he was a class by himself and he showed an insight in that lecture that many of his peers in the University could only dream of. The man was long overdue for appointment as a Vice Chancellor in one of the Nigerian Universities. He was a shoo-in for such job in a less corrupt country where merit and performance count for something.
His name probably never came up on their radar because he was not a politician and was never in the business of kissing anybody’s ass.
The Professor’s life was dedicated to doing research and advancing human knowledge in his area of specialization. He built for himself a little Taj Mahal at Okuta Elerinla Estate in the State capital after moving from his first private house, which he converted into a hotel named “Hotel Diplomat” at Araromi. Akure. He established that Hotel in 1974 while he was a Senior Lecturer at the Obafemi Awolowo University. The hotel is one of the few good hotels in Akure when Ondo State was created in 1976.
Professor Fashakin created that business for his wife while he shuttled from Ife to Akure every weekend to audit the books and to give a helping hand to his wife. He was a rich and comfortable man by any standard. Two weeks ago he flew down to Montreal Canada to participate in the home coming ceremony of McGill University where he renewed acquaintances with many of his former classmates in that University.
Little did he know that that the trip was going to be his last abroad. On his return to Lagos he complained of a pain in the chest as his driver drove him on a 4 hour journey from Lagos to Akure. The situation got worse later that night and the Professor had to be rushed to the nearest hospital where he died before any doctor saw him. I guess his time had come. Unto God be the glory for a life well lived.
“O darinako o doju ala Omo Akure Oloyemekun, Omo a m’uda si le m’ogun erun yin Ni. Omokunrin Akure t’oko bo o m’Obe osilo p’E kun, Omobinrin Akure t’oko bo o m’Agada p’Erin. Aiye s’Akure ki mo l’ala, ala tere be ninu Oke. Koko yere, Omo eyin moran ariwe. O t’Umupon jayan Ola. Iwerepe gba ra re gbagi Oko O du mosa luku aiyegbe. Egun Mogaji, Oko Adenike Omo Elekole Obalaya Aso. Ikole o rohum m’aso se Ikole tala b’ose. Ma j’okun ma j’ekolo, Ohun ton ba nje l’Ajule Orun ni ko bawon je. O digbose Ojogbon Bandele Fashakin”
Sleep in the Lord Uncle till we meet to part no more.