You have lived quite an enviable life worth emulating, growing up from a boy to 83 years next month. What pranks dominated the boy part?
I grew up on the Lagos Island with my father who later became a policeman. In those colonial days, policemen were recruited to keep animals away from the roads in order to protect them from being hit by the few cars that were using those roads. Then there weren’t many cars on Nigerian roads; only a few rich men like Da Rocha had cars. Then, when you see a car this minute, another may not come in the next one hour.
But that scantiness was actually a danger because it was easy for a child to be hit by a car as children playing on the roads were likely to be oblivious of when a vehicle would suddenly appear. Nigeria itself was scanty at that time. There were few houses. Business wasn’t heavy. There was no congestion anywhere. Everywhere was not occupied by schools, centres of business and religious houses like we presently have.
My parents were first living at 41, Taiwo Street, Lagos Island, in a rented apartment very close to the old National Bank in Lagos Island. Then, the communal spirit was strong. The scantiness of houses turned neighbours into families. Parents from anywhere would freely discipline another’s children. In our own case, there used to be a gentleman called Mr. Layinka who was detailed to beat us in our own home anytime we did something wrong.
When my father was recruited as a policeman, we moved from Lagos to Ibadan. Between 1939 and 1941, we were all staying at Ibadan in the barracks with our father. At that time, there was scarcity of salt from time to time. But policemen were being supplied with salt, so my father always had uninvited guests who came to visit him knowing full well they would get salt when leaving. So people began referring to him as “baba alaanu”, meaning the generous father, as he was well known for giving salt.
When our father thought we were old enough for schooling, he enrolled three of his sons in school. In those days, the gender issue was a serious consideration. A female child was not really regarded as important because the thinking was that she would eventually leave the home to become someone else’s wife and change her father’s name to be bearing that of her husband. The father’s name would be forgotten. So it used to be a taboo for a wife to have only females and no male.
In our household, my father had many wives. The first wife was always having only male children, while others, including my mother, were having only females, so people started saying at a point that the policeman had only one wife, while referring to the rest of the wives as mere onlookers. My mother was the third wife, who incidentally kept having females.
As the other wives kept having females, they were regarded as unproductive. The stigma spurred them to become desperate to have male children and it became a do-or-die affair. So my mother took her case to Odebunmi, her father, who, after leaving her ordeal, asked her to bring her husband. The Odebunmi name connotes the lineage of a great hunter. My mother merely told her husband that her father wanted to meet him in Ibara, Abeokuta.
So off they went to meet Odebunmi, my maternal grandfather. There, my father was told that my mother wanted a male child at all cost and all that was required of them was to jointly eat a concoction. My father was shocked but only wisely told her father-in-law that he would discuss the offer with his wife on how to go about it and come back later.
When they left there, my father reminded my mother that he had been converted to Islam and would not engage in anything fetish. He then preached to her that she needed not engage in any fetish thing but to rely only on Allah for a male child and not on black medicine. He insisted on not following her father’s advice. He assured her that he would pray, fast and read his Qur’an diligently till God not only gives her a male child, but one who would eventually be the head of his family. My mother agreed and accepted what her husband said with full faith; she never disagreed with him.
It so happened that after that incident, they had a child, a boy, and I happened to be that boy. Out of seven children, I happened to be the only surviving child of my parents still alive. That was the interesting revelation of my life before I was born.
Being the only son of your mother, was it a privilege you abused while growing up, as many such boys would?
My school time was quite interesting. First, there was the problem of admission into the Owu Baptist Day School. Our home was in the middle of the Owu Baptist Day School and the Baptist Boys High School (BBHS), both of which I attended. At the Owu Baptist Day School, I was very rascally and always playing a lot of pranks. My mother was very worried about it. Suddenly, she stopped being worried, which arose due to the outstanding performance of my elder sister in school.
One day, my mother confronted me and told me point blank that whatever I wanted to do with myself, I can go ahead, that she had been blessed with a daughter who was doing better than me in school. The words struck me as a big challenge. If she had taken a cane to flog me, it wouldn’t have had such an impact on me. But for her to tell me that a female would take over my position as her fondest child was a big challenge.
In school, I quickly called my classmates and, without telling them the details, had a meeting with them on how to start beating the girls academically and excelling generally in class. It was as if my classmates were waiting for just the meeting. How they got a quotation for us to memorise as a guide still beats me till today. The quote, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, goes thus: “The height by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.”
The quote stuck in our brain so much that, even now at 82, I can still quote it. We memorised it and were never sleeping again all through the night. Thereafter, we were always facing our studies and doing our best to get there. And we made it.
Examinations at the BBHS were quite tough and rough. At the BBHS, there were only two sub-classes in each class, Class 1A and 1B, 2A and 2B, till the fourth class. And in each, there were only 30 students, that is, 30 in A and 30 in B. In class 4, students tightened their belts more because before the end of the year, they would face five exams altogether and it used to be aggregate upon aggregate.
In class 4, the best 1 to 30 would be picked and after that, a red chalk would be used in distinguishing the first 30 to be promoted to Class 5 and the last 30 to be sent out of the school, dismissed. I was part of the 30 that got promoted to Class 5. At that time, it was as if Class 5 meant you had been promoted to the university. To be in Class 5 then at the BBHS meant that you were quite intelligent and able to cope with education adequately well.
Some young chaps like Olusegun Onabanjo did their school certificate exam in Class 5. But some, like me and Oba Dosunmu, the incumbent monarch in Owu kingdom, Abeokuta, where Obasanjo and I hailed from, waited till Class 6 before sitting for our school cert exams.
Could you recall some pranks you played as a secondary school boy?
There was a particular one that changed my belief about charms till today. During the annual Muslim sallah festival, our extended family usually joined us from our village in Arigbajo, near Ifo in Ogun State, to merry with us. Usually, there was a portion of the meat for those who slaughtered the ram. Our extended family from Arigbajo took that portion and we at home started speaking English to fault their action.
They sensed our displeasure and promised to give us something else as compensation. They then gave us a medicine they assured us was very potent for memory retention. We were asked to each get 18 tiny insects called guluso in Yoruba, which look like millipedes but move backward. We were also asked to get alligator pepper and nine feathers from each of the left and right armpits of cocks. We provided all these.
Our relatives from the village then made incisions on both our left and right armpits and applied there the concoction they had made, using the cock’s left feather on my right armpit and vice versa. They promised us that in the exam hall, we would pass effortlessly without reading. They instructed that during the exam, we should just be rubbing our shoulders, our armpits specifically, against our bodies as a cock does and all the answers would flow into our brains.
In school, at the exam for the History paper, I strolled into the hall full of confidence. The first question was a simple one on Mungo Park, but strangely, I didn’t know the answer. As our relatives instructed, I began to move my shoulders and armpits against my body like a fowl does, but no answer. I moved my left arm, then the right, then the two, just for me to remember the Mungo Park answer, but I got nothing.
Our teacher, a very tough and serious-minded man, observed my cock-like action and enquired why I was behaving like an ill cock, shrugging feathers as if it wanted to die. I had to tell him I was feeling sick and he asked me to go home. At home, furious, I destroyed the rest of the potion and vowed never to take anything fetish again for the rest of my life. And true to my words, ever since then, I have never touched anything fetish again. But suffice to say I failed the paper woefully.
As school mates with Olusegun Obasanjo, were you involved in any memorable rascally pranks with him?
Yes, I was. There was one that we went hunting on a wetland where there was a lot of water. We aimed at a bird and successfully killed it but it fell inside the water where we found it difficult to retrieve. So, the three of us – myself, Segun and Onaolapo Soleye, a former Finance Minister – had to form a human rope by tying our shirts one to the other and stretching to get to where the bird fell.
What was your experience studying in Britain?
At the London University where I studied, I did part-time, which was very difficult to pass. In part-time, you could be given as low marks as only 23 per cent, while in full-time, they could give you as high as 90 per cent. Gaining such high marks was impossible in part-time, but that was where I booked. To make learning more difficult, I was working while studying.
I remember that the day the results came out for Intermediate Law, Inter-LLB, I was on Tottenham Court Road heading to school to look for my results when I saw a legion of our school mates, all of them weeping, saying they had all failed. In order to avoid seeing my failure, I turned back home and joined in the weeping process. I thought I had failed too. It was that difficult to pass in part-time. When I got home, someone asked me if I had checked my results personally and was sure I failed too. I said no. I eventually went back there and I saw pass against my number, 1164, and I realised that I passed.
What were the tough jobs you did while studying?
Post Office. To get a job at the Post Office, you must have the prerequisite I.Q. They must be sure that you were competent and capable before giving you the job. Whoever didn’t match the standard they required in the postal room would be given the job of a cleaner.
What helped in getting the job was that at the BBHS, I was very good in Geography. A lot of the British boys who passed the postal exam were also good at it because they were living there, but a lot of them were also failing and were either asked to go away or employed as cleaners.
I remember that the day I was asked to come for a test for the job at the Post Office was the same day I was going for my A-level exams. When I sought for advice from some people on which one to do, some said that I should go to Chelsea and do my A-levels; after all, that was why I was in the country, while another advised that I should go for the postal job as survival in the London would be impossible on an empty stomach.
I became confused and couldn’t pick any of the advice. Remembering now, it was funny. I just left home and took the next available bus to whichever of the two destinations it would land me. The bus I took stopped me at King’s Cross where the School of Postal Geography was located. I had started sorting when I realised that I should be in the exam hall doing my A-level. I told the governor that I was not feeling well and I wanted to go home. He told me that some people had spent two weeks trying the exam that would eventually get them the postal job, but they failed. He added that for the first time that I got an opportunity, I was taking an excuse!
When he eventually gave me permission, I sped off. On my way downstairs, I saw a friend and fellow Nigerian, Solanke, who asked me where I was heading to. I simply told him to take care of himself and hailed a taxi to Chelsea. When I got to Chelsea for my exams, the invigilator told me two more minutes and they would have closed the door. After the two minutes, I wouldn’t have been able to enter the hall for the exams. Well, I sat for the A-level papers. In my three papers for the A-level, I got 70, 75 and 73 per cent. I passed all three brilliantly.
When I was through with my A-level on Friday, I went back to King’s Cross, to the School of Postal Geography. The governor told me that though he was not trying to discourage me, nobody had been there for one week and passed the postal exams, and I had only one week for the exam. He said I wouldn’t be denied the right of still trying. Since I was given that right, I was provided with all the papers and everything that I needed to know. I then went back home to concentrate on studying all the counties. I memorised everything.
When I got back there on Monday, I started sorting quite effortlessly. The world was just before me. After I finished sorting, I collected the result and saw all my mistakes, about 15 out of 3,000. I did it again, 10, then later 5. Before the end of that day, I got everything right. On the second day, Tuesday, I was just perfecting it. After I became sure that I could do it, I went to the governor to tell him if it was possible for me to do my exams on Wednesday, instead of the Friday we were supposed to do it. He went to tell all the other governors about my strange request. But he agreed I can do it on Thursday and they all decided to be at the venue of the exam.
On Thursday, about 10 governors all stood there invigilating only me sorting 12 boxes one after the other. When I finished, they told one another that the boy passed. They went to their office and wrote something about me to the effect that I must have crammed it all but that whatever happened, I must be encouraged to come back for the PhG – postman higher grade. But the PhG offer lapsed and I couldn’t make use of it because I was always absent due to my academic studies and exams.
How much was the Postal Office paying you?
I was paid £10 per week.
With your dedication to your studies, did you have time for socials?
Yes, and I was able to cope with that. We had a society for indigenes of Egbaland (Abeokuta). And I was always there. There was a joke about that. There was a time that someone was asked why he wasn’t attending meetings, to which he replied that such things are for the Ajibolas and their grammar. He said he couldn’t cope with the English grammar being spoken there and he heard that they have even stopped speaking English and, rather, Ajibola has started speaking in Latin. It was true. At one of the meetings, someone said something and I replied by quoting Archimedes in Latin. They all started shouting that Ajibola no longer wanted to speak English; it was now Latin. But that was the joke of the time.
How did your law practice take off on your return?
I remember that but for fate, I wouldn’t have travelled abroad to study Law, or been alive to even study anything. After school cert, I went to Ibadan to work. In 1955, Chief Adegbenro engaged my services. He was the Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs. It was the matter of picking files from one table to the other but I wanted something more challenging. So I got another job at the Government Press where I had also applied there. They told me that I passed, gave me a job and I started working there.
There were three departments there – machine, binding and composing. I was in the binding department and my boss was one Mr. Kadara who hailed from Lagos. He loved me so much that he had a lot of ideas he was putting across to me. He told me that he would work hard for me to be trained as a printer in Britain, and he was actually working on it. He rejected his assistant, Mr. Bolu, and virtually made me his assistant. During one Christmas period, Mr. Kadara wanted to travel to Lagos to spend his Christmas there and invited me to come along. But I couldn’t go because I was expecting some members of my family who wanted to visit me at Ibadan. Unfortunately, Mr. Kadara was involved in an accident on the way and died. And that marked the death of the ambition of being given a printer’s job. I would have been a printer by now and not a lawyer. Or I would have been dead.
After Mr. Kadara’s death, Mr. Bolu, his former assistant, told me point blank that he would not make the place comfortable to work in. So, he was always giving me query for nothing. That was when I decided to move to Lagos and started raising money to travel overseas. And that rekindled my ambition to move to Britain to study Law.
After I graduated from the university in Britain and was returning home by sea, towards the tail end of the journey, I began walking about in the boat and, behold, who did I see? Mr. Bolu! He was returning from a six-month course that they used to give them in the ministry. He thought I was one of those working inside the boat but I quickly corrected his notion by telling him I was a passenger like him. I made him realise that I am now a qualified lawyer.
He was shocked and couldn’t believe it. Silently, he went back to his cabin. It was when the boat got to Apapa in Lagos and he saw my mother and other family members waiting to welcome me back that he realised I wasn’t joking.
Something like that happened to me twice, such that after everything, the other side eventually knew what happened to me after all.
Another shocking story about my life had to do with my time at the BBHS. One of our teachers, Mr. Johnson, a disciplinarian, was a friend of my father. There was a time when I was in Class 4 that my father enquired from Mr. Johnson about my performance in school. He replied I was a restless and very playful child. He didn’t give any commendable word to suggest I would be a success. It so happened that some years thereafter, right there in London, on my way to Lincoln’s Inn where I was being called to the Bar, I was already in my wig and gown when I saw sitting in front of me Mr. Johnson. He looked at me keenly and asked to confirm if I was Ajibola, and I answered in the affirmative. When he asked what I was doing there and I told him I was going to be called to the Bar that day, he couldn’t believe it.
Would you say it was your emergence as president of the Nigerian Bar Association, which culminated in your appointment by General Ibrahim Babangida as Minister of Justice and Attorney-General, rather than your private law practice, that was the turning point in your life?
I had been very active in the Nigerian Bar Association, putting my money, time and resources to that effect. It was at the NBA that I distinguished myself as an activist, leading on the side of human rights. The roles I played in the NBA at that time gave me the elevation to do a lot of things.
When I became the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, I did more. For six years, three months, twenty days and one and half hours, I was not taking my salary. In my sharing formula, I gave 25 per cent of my salary to the NBA, 35 per cent to the government and 40 per cent to all other organisations involved in humanitarian activities. Those in want, the motherless homes and others, had the last share. I was doing all that. I was using the money to help the deprived and I took no penny home from my ministerial salary. By that time, I had practised for over 23 years, and I was quite sufficiently satisfied with what I had earned for myself. I was still getting money from the dividends accruing from my investments and that was being paid to me in my office by the bank. Once I realised that I had enough to care for myself, I wasn’t prepared to have any extraordinary money.
So many things happened to me at that time, influencing my desire not to excessively enrich myself. I was trying to avoid that – and I avoided it.
During my tenure as Attorney-General, I employed three staff into the NBA – Sowunmi, Ojukwu and one other person – who were working with me tirelessly on the laws of Nigeria and I was paying them, instead of the government, regularly. Even if gifts were brought to me, we were always having quarterly fairs at the Ministry where we would display all these gifts and sell them, then pay the money back into the account of the government.
I always warned people not to give me fridge, wristwatches and other gifts, that I would not use them, but they wouldn’t yield. They kept bringing them and I kept selling and giving the government the money. Some even went to the extent of giving me cars as gifts. I told them to take their cars away. I would just say it is an abuse of office. I always refused all things, including severance allowance to public officers.
I was very much conscious about the pervasive corruption that would destroy the whole system and I was very worried about that. I was doing my own knowing full well that those coming behind me would follow my footsteps.
One of them happened to be Yemi Osinbajo, the present acting President of Nigeria. He worked directly under me. I showed them and demonstrated it, and I made them realise that once you engage yourself in this money-grabbing idea, you would destroy the system.
You worked for Babangida when it was alleged that he was institutionalising corruption, so why didn’t you resign or walk out?
It was because that didn’t stop me from being me. Being me would gradually encourage others not to be corrupt. It may not catch on with everybody, but it will catch on with some. I was given a lot of respect by Gen. Babangida.
One thing that I noticed from all the activities that I’ve been involved in since I finished from academic engagement was that you even don’t need too much of academics to be part of the intelligent group. Good character will get you a place in that group. Integrity is also needed.
In founding Crescent University, which one informed your thinking more: academics or good character?
Both. A student must be academically sound. We ensure no one goes out with a bogus certificate. At the same time, we don’t want to breed brilliant beasts. We teach them to behave, comport themselves well and have all the qualities of a good person.
I feel so happy, honoured and delighted with what happened to one of our students who graduated and went to another university in Scotland for her post-graduate studies. The girl, Rafiat Gawat, finished from our university with a first class. Lagos State noticed her brilliance and gave her a scholarship to study further at the Robert Gordon in Scotland.
Coincidentally, there came another first class girl from Igbinedion University to Robert Gordon. They started together for one year. Rafiat passed with distinction and the other one failed. That is accentuating our desire that our certificates should not be bogus.
What are your unforgettable moments?
Whenever someone will eventually die, it is not in the hand of any mortal, but in the hand of God. There was an occasion when two international judges and I escaped death in the old Yugoslavia. When we got into a plane at Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, the captain told us to prepare for any eventuality because the plane before us had been destroyed by the enemy. We were flying through the enemy area and the Serbs were shooting and killing everything and everybody in sight. During the flight, there were three, four attempts to shoot down the plane. But we made it to land successfully but had to crawl out of the plane.
When we got to the hotel where we had been booked to lodge, we were told it was fully booked. We were compelled to look for another one, the Bosnia Hotel. The second day when we passed through the first hotel where we had been rejected, we saw it had been bombed and many of the lodgers killed.
Aside those lucky escapes, there was also one occasion when I missed a plane which eventually crashed and people went to the airport to look for me because I was supposed to be in the crashed plane.
There were so many other instances that God pulled me out of the jaws of death.
