By Bolanle Bolawole
[email protected] 0705 263 1058
The Olunloyo family of Ibadan needs no elaborate introduction. Who does not know Dr. Victor Omololu Sowemimo Olunloyo: For his brilliance, especially his globally established wizardry in Mathematics; his eccentrism, his wits, his humour, his politics, and his many controversies? His disciplinarian streak is another side of his I got to know when I spoke with a family member. And, of course, social media buffs will also be familiar with his daughter, Kemi; perhaps, no less controversial (even eccentric, to some)!
Last Thursday, I was at the Olunloyos’ Bodija, Ibadan home in the entourage of Professor Olumuyiwa Favour Ayodele, a Nigerian newbreed politician with a mission to salvage the country. He has twice run for the highest office of the land and is preparing for a third, according to him, on God’s leading. We were received by one of the Olunloyo daughters, Olufunke, while Mama herself, who was out when we arrived, later came in.
Oldbreed versus newbreed Yoruba leaders
One striking feature of the older generations of Yoruba leaders is not just their grit, but also their love for modest, even austere, living. Their taste for the ordinary, and comfort in the ambience of nature is humbling. I witnessed it with Pa Michael Adekunle Ajasin and his family. I also saw it at Pa Reuben Fasoranti’s Akure home. It stared at me at the Olunloyos. Catching me staring at one of the family photographs hanging on the wall in the sparsely-furnished living room (with ‘old school’ furniture), Olufunke said: “You should be able to pick her out there!” Yes, of course, I could pick “her” out! ! Light-skinned Kemi sat at the extreme left hand side on the front roll of a family photograph that must have been decades old!
Who killed Dele Giwa?
My one-on-one with Dr. Olunloyo was in 2007, I think, on the set of OGBC, Abeokuta. As we sat in the reception waiting to be ushered into the studio, he suddenly changed the topic of discussion, leaned towards me and said, “Did you know that your Oga carried the bomb that killed Dele Giwa?” Mischief was clearly written on his face! Thank God I am not what my Ogho (Owo) people call “oma-a-yu’li-ya-gbe’si-wa”: Someone who first runs home to consult before knowing what response to give when the matter is still very hot. I gave it back to him without wasting time! I said, “But, Your Excellency, how many people carried that bomb? I understand that your own brother, an Ibadan army officer, a two-time military administrator, was the one who carried the bomb!” He froze! And then quickly changed the topic again.
My grouse against Olunloyo
Then I told him I harboured a deep-seated grudge against him. He asked what it was. I told him as I was leaving Owo High School in 1974, my intention was to proceed immediately to the Higher School Certificate class at the nearby Imade College, but that he, as the Commissioner for Education in the then Western State Government scrapped Imade College’s HSC course, leading me marooned for at least three years before gaining admission to the university in 1978. He simply said it was government policy. I snarled back that he announced it and that I held him personally responsible. As they say in boxing parlance, the bell saved him as we were ushered into the studio at that point!
Quintessential, precocious, genius!
Making our way out of Olunloyo’s home last Thursday, I fortuitously came across a must-read piece on social media. Space constraints will not allow a full recap here but I advise that you Google it and read. Written by Dr. Kolade Mosuro (1964 Carr) and titled “Victor Omololu Olunloyo (1948 Grier) aka ‘Mark Any Three’: Uncommon brilliance”, it runs thus:
“On at least two different occasions, the rumour was rife on social media that he was dead. To be falsely deceased, I teased that he, like Alfred Nobel, had had the chance to read his own obituary. In a particular instance, a family rebuttal revealed that he was in intensive care at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan. I made for the Intensive Care Unit, UCH, the next day, a Saturday morning. I was not going to disturb their care or protocol. I just had to be there in case he needed me. Expectedly, and rightfully so, the nurses barred visitors from seeing him. I wrote my name on a sheet of paper and gave it to a nurse to hand over to him, just for him to know I was outside in case he needed anything. The nurse came rushing back and said that he wanted to see me immediately.
“As I got to his bedside, he held my hand tightly and, to the amazement of the medical staff around, quoted the melancholy words of Jacques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts…” Right there, I stopped him in his tracks that he should quote no further. Instead, to his smile, we both said in unison that the exit was not now. He lived another three years after, but poorly. Finally, with every man inevitably to his exit, death, not wholly unexpected, came calling on April 6, 2025, after he had played many parts following an innings of eighty-nine.
“The preparation for these many parts began from Government College, Ibadan (GCI) in 1948, although he was scion to an illustrious family, the first educated elite and early Christians in Ibadan. When David and Anna Hinderer, the first CMS missionaries, came to Ibadan in 1853, they were placed in the care of Balogun Olunloyo, a warlord and high chief of Ibadan. Balogun Olunloyo’s children, Akinyele, male, and Yejide, female, found play and school with the Hinderers. Akinyele became the first male literate of Ibadan, while Yejide became the first female literate. Yejide Girls Grammar School, Ibadan, is named after her. The Olunloyos prominently took up early church, civil, and administrative roles in Ibadan. The Akinyele line produced Horatio Vincent Olunloyo, who was Victor Omololu’s father.
*The brilliant signs of Horatio’s first son, Victor Omololu Olunloyo, were there even (as a precocious child) from primary school. He took the common entrance examination, which was a global examination for all leaving primary school students, and he was first in 1946 and 1947 in the whole of the Ibadan District Church Council schools from Ibadan to Gbongan, Ikirun, and Osogbo. It was while at St. Peter’s Aremo Primary School that he was introduced to mathematics by an impressionable teacher, J.A.F Sokoya, in a remarkable and inspiring way. He saw early and clearly the relations of integers and that there was a concrete connection between mathematics and real life. Here, foundational mathematics was planted to flourish in him for the rest of his life.
“In 1948, he entered Government College, Ibadan (GCI) from Standard Five, as the youngest in his class, when most of his classmates came in from Standard Six. It took him some time to rally. Once he found his stride in the second year, he never let go of the first position in Mathematics. To be first meant not just to score high but to get everything. Two illustrations will suffice. 1. A mathematics examination was going to be served by the teacher, Mr W.H. Browne. The teacher aimed to write the questions on the board, exit to have tea in the staff room, and come back to collect the students’ scripts. As he wrote the first question, he asked the students to commence.
“There were five questions, and they were to answer all of them. As he finished writing the fifth question and just as he was gathering his papers to go for tea, Olunloyo raised his hand. ‘What is it, Olunloyo?’ the teacher queried. ‘I have finished, sir,’ Olunloyo replied. The teacher first thought it was a prank, remonstrated Olunloyo and then collected his papers for marking to see that, indeed, he had finished and got everything!
“There (also) was an ‘unsolvable’ problem in the Mathematics textbook by C.V. Durrell. It was common in those days to tackle all the problems in a text to gain proficiency in the subject. There was a generational problem because nobody in the annals of GCI that used Durell’s textbook had solved it. It was a problem built around a billiard table. It was such a knotty problem because it fell outside the imagination of the boys. They had never seen a billiard table before. And then Mr. A. Long, the principal, was going to be visiting a friend at the University College, Ibadan, and he took some boys along. One of them was Olunloyo. Following the visit, they called at the Senior Staff Dining Hall and Recreation Centre, and before their very eyes, for the first time ever, was a billiard table, and a game was on.
“Olunloyo took a careful look and was in a conjectural mood. He could hardly wait to return to school to tackle the intractable Durrell problem—the one that had baffled his class and the seniors before him. He settled on the problem and finally solved it. In that eureka moment, he threw off his uniform; some said he went nude, running wildly around his house, Grier, shouting: “I have solved it! I have solved it!! I have solved it!!!” It was a momentous occasion for schoolboy mathematics. His brilliance and escapades at GCI became a lore. He went on to record a Grade 1 in his final year at GCI and A1 in Mathematics.
“Following GCI, he dazzled with some academic performances. He spent some seven months preparing for his HSC Examinations, a programme that would ordinarily take two years, and passed by scoring AAAC. He spent three months at the University College, Ibadan (UCI) and passed the Intermediate BSc, a programme that would ordinarily take two years. His stay at UCI was brief, but the records he set were renowned. At tests and examinations, when given mathematical questions to solve, for the student to attempt three out of five, Olunloyo would do four within the allotted time, and write on the script for the lecturer to mark any three he chose. He got them all. He was fittingly nicknamed by his fellow classmates, ‘Mark Any Three.’
“Of his brilliance, everybody took notice; some took a special interest. Adegoke Adelabu and Emmanuel Alayande saw in him a very special Ibadan poster boy, a pride. M.S. Sowole, Ambassador and Agent-General for Western Nigeria in the UK, his father’s contemporary and bosom friend, Lady Kofo Ademola and others saw in him a national academic prodigy. They leaned on an overseas university training. For overseas universities, Olunloyo’s heart was really in Manchester University…”
Oluloyo, however, ended up at the St. Andrew’s College (or University of Saint Andrews), Scotland, founded in 1413. Find out why and how. Sis. Olufunke handed us a package containing two books as we bade her and Mama farewell. It was after reading the little books or monographs – Iwa, Omuluabi, and Etiquette – that I was able to connect with the stories of the strict and uncompromising lifestyle she had told us about her sojourn in government as a Special Adviser in the Oyo State Government. Why have the Yoruba had, and may continue to have, problems within the entity called Nigeria for as long as it remains as it is? The books provide an answer! Published by CINUA and available on SELAR, I enjoin everyone to get hold of them and read.
The first consciousness I gained reading the books is how we have been diverted from the virtues and values that underpinned, guided and guarded our Yoruba society. At their morning devotion, the students of a school near my home sing songs alien to them; no more those didactic, transformative, instructive, society-building, and character-moulding songs of yore like “Ise l’oogun ise/Mura si’se ore mi”; ‘Bata re a dun ko-ko-ka/Ti o ba ka’we re”; “Omo to mo’ya re l’oju o”; etc.
The second is why Yoruba leaders of old failed in their quest to rule Nigeria and stamp on it the imprimatur of the Yoruba Omoluabi ethos – until now that they seem to have broken the jinx! But everywhere these days, it would appear as if the Omoluabi ethos that have been the bedrock of Yoruba society and the inner strength that sustained the people in the face of uncommon adversity and orchestrated antagonism have been watered down; nay, broken and abandoned! The day of reckoning surely lies ahead! .
NB: Former editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-chief, BOLAWOLE was also the Managing Director/Editor-in-chief of The Westerner news magazine. He writes the ON THE LORD’S DAY column in the Sunday Tribune and TREASURES column in New Telegraph newspaper on Wednesdays. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.
