You were an Igbobi boy, having attended Igbo College, Yaba. How would you describe your experience there?
It is the most important thing in my life because in the first instance, becoming an Igbobi boy was very tough at that time I sat for the entrance exam. To get a form for the entrance examination, you had to be one of the best students in your school. I attended St Patrick’s Catholic School, Yaba. I was in Standard V, which meant I didn’t even know when the form was put out for sale. Only four copies of the form were sent to our school. The first thing was getting the form and it was a tradition that you don’t go to the principal’s office to buy the form.
But for a chance encounter which my mother had with the principal, I wouldn’t have even been able to get the form. Igbobi College was in Yaba and our mailbox was also in Yaba. My mother used to go there to check the mailbox every day. She was at the post office one day when a man, who happened to be the principal of my school, came in and opened his box which contained many letters. After he opened, some letters fell down and my mother helped him to pick them and see one of the letters addressed to the principal of Igbobi. My mother then told the man that he had a son who she would like to attend Igbobi but she couldn’t get the form. At that time, the sale of the form was about to end. The man took my name and sent two forms to the school and that was how I got the form. In the end, we were only three that qualified to enter Igbobi which was a record for my school that year.
Igbobi College brought you up to appreciate the good things of life. It was a very great educational experience which will prepare you for life, punctuality, rules and appreciate the rule of law. That time, there were about 40 school rules printed out and there were others that were not existing in the rule that were Igbobi College rules. Within that structure, you are free to be whatever you like. I enjoyed myself because I was ready to face the consequences. What I learnt from the school is the importance of elitism. But it was a responsible elite, an elite that is going to work for the interest of those who are not elite who did not have the same privilege that we had. If you got into trouble, no Igbobi Boy would come and use any influence to bail you out. You owned up, served your punishment and learnt from it. These are some of the principles that run in my life till today. It even helps my family structure
Did your parents play any role in your decision to study Pharmacy?
That is a very interesting point. In my first three years at secondary school, nobody even knew I was there because my focus was on sports. Sports made me popular but in Form four, things changed for me academically which I don’t have an explanation for up till now. I have always been an art-oriented person and liked subjects like English, history and so on. When the time came to choose between arts and sciences, I was doing very well in the sciences and Arts. But in those days, doing well in the sciences made you well-recognised as a scholar. So without knowing what I was going to do, I chose to do science. But at Igbobi College, everybody had to do literature and for my father, who was unable to do science, science was the ultimate. So my father suggested I should study Pharmacy. That was how I became a pharmacist. Even when I was studying Pharmacy, I was reading a lot of literature texts.
How did your love for literature start?
From birth! I have always loved reading books. While I was at Igbobi College, I had a reputation which I did not know how to build. I used to borrow a book everyday from the school library, which meant that between 3:30pm of a day and the next day, I would read the book I borrowed and return it. That was why I was not part of the eggheads in the class. I was not interested in reading anything that had ‘school’ written on it. But when it came to literature classes, I would have read what was suggested to us. The first adult novel I read, ‘No longer at Ease’, I read at the age of 11. So when they talked about (Chinua) Achebe, I had read his work long before we were taught. At some point, I started reading all my subjects like they were literature books. It was then, I think, the transformation happened. When you are reading a book you are conversing with the author of the book, you are gaining access to the mind of the author. I developed interest in writing by reading. I don’t care if you don’t read my books now, but I am sure that a time will come when somebody will pick it up and read. The human condition is everlasting, so nothing goes out of fashion.
You were at the Ministry of Finance when the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo was there during the Civil War. Did you have any encounters with him?
That is an interesting story. After high school, I was sitting down at home doing nothing. My father’s friend, called Adeyeye, was the deputy permanent secretary of the Ministry of Finance. One day, he told my dad that I should come and start work after he noticed that I had nothing to do at home. I entered the civil service at the lowest level. I was employed as a Level 2 clerk and our salary was 16 pounds. After the first week of my working at the ministry, my father’s friend knew that I won’t stay for long with the job. I met Awolowo on the lift once or twice. Nigeria has changed too much. You will not believe that we didn’t have a single official car in the Ministry of Finance at that time. Chief Awolowo was the only one that was transported to that ministry. We had fleets of cars that had been seized from people who owed government taxes, levies or dues. At times, those were the official cars we used and they were strictly for overseas officials that were visiting Nigeria. Some of those cars were very old. During that time that we fought the Civil War, we did not borrow a penny to buy arms and all those purchases were going through the Ministry of Finance, which I was part of.
What was your personal experience during the Civil War?
It didn’t make any difference in my life. The war started in July 1967, but the rumbling had started in 1966. I did not know that any war was going on. The only time I observed that Nigeria was involved in war was the period Biafra got into the Midwest region, which was an open day. I lived in Anthony Village. I saw jeeps full of soldiers, sitting with their rifles going to Ore, Ondo State. At a time, they came to Lagos to throw bombs, which I will describe as ineffectual. So personally, I did not feel anything. I was busy at the ministry as a low-level clerk. Everything was normal in Lagos just as if nothing was going on. But we knew that there was something going on because sitting by the television, you would hear the news.
Do you consider yourself to have come from a privileged background as your father was comfortable?
I did not pursue a career. I understood fairly in life that I was a very privileged person and I did not have to struggle unless I imposed that struggle on myself. I was extremely fortunate. My parents were teachers. That discipline was part of my life from the beginning. My father left his teaching job, other avenues opened up. As a teacher, he did not earn much. But when he was appointed as oil executive, he was not earning much but I knew that I didn’t have to think about my school fees and which work I would do in the future. I see the privilege as a responsibility because I study so hard to pay back to my parents the unearned privilege. I live in my father’s house. It was well-built and it will still be good for another 50 years. I consider the privilege I have as responsibility.
You were in university when Kunle Adepeju, a fellow student was killed by a stray bullet. What was the experience like?
It was not a stray bullet, he was actually shot. It happened on February 1, 1971. It is a day I remember distinctively. It was the heaviest day of my life. Everybody was shocked that day.General (Yakubu) Gowon (retd.), who was the Head of State was shocked. They set up a panel of enquiry. At that point in time, we were still sane as a country. Life still meant something. I remember the day we went to bury him at Saint Ann’s Cemetery, Challenge, Ibadan. There was everybody who was anybody there that day. Students all over the country were present. We were all crying, not just for the student that was killed but for this country. We knew at that time that we were in a serious problem. To borrow another word, at that time, Nigeria was another country.
You met Prof Wole Soyinka at the burial. How did that go?
I did not meet Prof Wole Soyinka, I saw him. The first time Soyinka crashed into my consciousness was in 1966 when I was preparing for the school certificate exam. My set was the first set that had African literature. So we had ‘Things Fall Apart’ as part of the textbooks and Wole Soyinka’s poem was part of what we read for the exam. He wrote a particular poem called ‘Requiem’. We just could not crack the poem. We wrote a letter to him, asking him to explain the poem, but he just told us that he could not explain it himself. But I love one of his works, ‘Telephone Conversation.’ People with social consciousness were brutalised by the killing of the student of UI and Wole Soyinka had just left detention at that time and, probably, he left the manuscripts of ‘The Man Died,’ to attend the funeral. That moment was a defining one in Nigeria’s history. I did not have any subsequent interaction with him and my love for literature did not connect us. I was more in tune with Ola Rotimi than Wole Soyinka.
If you have to choose between Literature and Pharmacy, what would it be?
They are Siamese twins. They satisfy different parts of my personae. The literature people of my life wanted me to sway to their side. Many pharmacists just see me as a writer. I am better known outside Ile-Ife as a writer and inside OAU as a pharmacist. One is my bread and butter and the other is water for my soul. Every year, I have always had my festival of poetry for 20 years now. Every first Saturday in December I do that. I just like self-expression. I became a professor when I started to write literature and in the end, it saved me.
You were a member of the University of Manchester staff cricket club during your time there. Do you still play cricket?
I played cricket last year at Ile-Ife! It was organised to mark my 70th birthday. I was about to retire from the school, so the cricketers had a program in my honour. Not that I played much, but I did play a few balls and everybody could see that I played a little.
Did you believe in socialism at some point as you believed in it while you were in the UK?
In my opinion, socialism is a human right issue. You have a right, for example, inalienable rights to the pursuit of happiness and all sorts. I have got to have some basic means of being somebody. I believe every one of us has our own selfish interest. What is clear to me is that the world is at a stage now that everybody should meet a minimum standard of living and if you are not meeting that, then you are not qualified to be a human. Poverty is not a human condition; it is an economic and political condition. So to me, socialism makes perfect sense. It is a consistent human right. I have not read about (Carl) Marx and other great people in that area, but I know what they said. I believe very sincerely that without socialism, the world will not evolve or society would not have evolved. About 150 years ago, there was no poverty in our traditional system because the poorest man and richest man had meeting points. In Ilesha here, the traditional system is the compound. They had about 50 of them and each compound would have a tree where the head of each family would meet to deliberate on issues and agree before they told the chief who was representing them at the palace.
It seems you and a former vice-chancellor of OAU, Prof Wale Omole, didn’t always agree. Why?
Like I told you, I am unashamedly elitist. Some people, through no effort of their own, are privileged. I wanted OAU to be the best that it could be and I didn’t think Prof Wale Omole had the same vision. I think he was elitist in his own way too, but his elitism is that of working for himself and not others. Prof Wale Omole was one of the smartest people I knew and ever worked with, but maybe we don’t have the same political lines because what I strongly believe in is that the university is bigger than any personality. I think my problem with him was that I was too confrontational. He tried very hard for me to come close to him and be part of what he was doing, but I am so indoctrinated and so much of a purist. I decided I was not going to have anything to do with him.
Whatsoever that happened within us was not personal. If opportunity provides itself again, I will still do the same thing to him. When you do things for the right reasons, it is forever and if you do it for the wrong reasons, you will be exposed somewhere along the line. The way he left OAU would not have been the way he would have loved to leave the school. I think it is unfortunate. I once led a committee that looked into students’ crises in OAU. That was the only time that a committee would be set up that comprises lecturers and students of the institution. They (students) told us lots of things that were buried in their hearts. I told Omole that the students did not trust him and, in fact, those working with him were not the kind of people he could trust
How would you describe meeting your wife?
I have had two wives. My first wife, I met her when I was a student in Manchester. All of these businesses of wife, I keep them very separate. I had a wife and it didn’t work out and I had to move on. It was a case of incompatibility. She is a good woman and it is unfortunate that it didn’t work out. I married again and I have children.
