By Nkasiobi Oluikpe / Correspondent, Lagos
He grew up hating farm work because of its tediousness. But with a very humble beginning, he never knew he would have gone to school,
Oguntoye
although before 1937 when he was finally able to enroll in the primary school at age 10, he was able to recite the Yoruba alphabet fluently. His elder brother, then a produce buyer at Oja Ife, talked him into coming to serve him and going to school in exchange. The little boy that hated farming jumped at the idea.
Midway into his primary education, he was sent out because of non-payment of school fees. Again at Oduduwa College, while in class three, the same scenario repeated itself, but luck shone on him when the white colonial District Officer (DO) that came to watch his school’s inter house sports took an interest in his performance and offered to be paying his fees because he won three awards in addition to the intermediate certificate.
But this was short-lived as the Whiteman was transferred and replaced by another Whiteman.
Odewale Oguntoye had to approach the new DO for educational assistance. The man obliged him. But after his class four he was asked to go and work with the Nigerian Railway.
The young Oguntoye didn’t like that idea because he had his eyes fixed on furthering his education even though situations around him pointed otherwise. Along the line, God blessed his brother again and he was able to finish his secondary education.
He started working in Lagos with the defunct P and T (technical). When he got transferred to Kano, fear of meningitis made him resign and switch over to the federal civil service where he was employed as a sanitary inspector in training. Again, he got transferred to Benin from the Lagos Town Council after his training. He refused to go because he was processing his passport to travel overseas to study. All the while, he has been saving his money in the Post Office.
In 1952, he transferred the money from the Post Office to the Farmers’ Bank with a view to transferring it to whatever college he would be studying in abroad.
To his shock and dismay, the bank went bankrupt and was liquidated. He lost his life savings. Odewale felt the world had ended.
He saw the picture and write-up of the then President of the U.S., Roosevelt in a magazine. Young Odewale wrote him, requesting for a scholarship to study in the USA. The letter through the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria was returned to the post office two weeks later, stating that the US President was not in a state of granting scholarships to students, that if he needed a scholarship, he needed to go through a private organisation or institution.
But then, his kinsmen at Modakeke, rallied round and gave him money to transport himself to the U.S. with a promised that he would work to earn a living while schooling.
At Bates College in U.S. his money lasted only for a short while and as he was about leaving the school for another one that offered him a scholarship, Bates College, out of pity for his Farmers’ Bank experience offered him the scholarship but he had to work for his bed and boarding during summers.
After his first degree in economics, he switched to Wharton School of Business and Finance, University of Pennsylvania, USA for his MBA before returning to Nigeria.
His life ambition as a child was not to read economics but law. But if he had read law in the U.S. while Nigeria was still under the British colonial rule, the certificate coming from the U.S. will not be recognised and accepted by the colonialists here because if you must read law then, it would have to be in the United Kingdom. Since U.S. offered him better opportunities and at the same time, he also wanted to come back home to work with his certificate, he jettisoned the idea of reading law.
That notwithstanding, today Odewale tells you, he doesn’t regret reading economics because if he had read law, he would have been tempted to practice politics because all his contemporaries that read law then went into politics. He didn’t like the way it was being played. Politics he says has always been dirty in Nigeria, right from the word go.
His career life revolved around Nigerian Breweries then under the United Africa Company (UAC) conglomerate where he held several managerial positions until his retirement in 1980 when he and his wife, jointly floated a stock broking firm.
He lost his wife in 1989 to the cold hands of death and has not only remained a widower but promised to remain so until death because according to him, he could not find her substitute in any other woman. He also considered what would become of the children, should he take to another wife.
This reporter sought to know how he was able to woo this lady into marrying him and what it was about her that made him to stick to her even after death.
Hear him: “She was a caring and understanding wife and mother. I don’t think I will be able to meet or see any other substitute in another woman. At that time the highest most girls could attain was higher elementary, so it was difficult to get an educated wife those days. Through one of my aunties, I was able to meet her at her school in Agodi-Ibadan. I told her point blank my purpose of visiting her. She told me she was at work, I should come back. In the evening I went to her and we started talking. It was God’s intervention.”
Odewale’s humble beginning helped to shape what has turned out to be the happiest day of his life: “That was the day I had my MBA at Wharton School of Business and Finance, the first business school in the United States. When I look back at when I lost my money to Farmers Bank and still attained my ambition, I feel elated. The second was the day I was married and the day my first daughter was born.
Has he any regrets. Yes, because he is a mortal. But his relationship with God has made him to learn to give thanks at all times.
“So many bad things happened. When I did not know God I used to believe in the power of juju because I was from a family of juju worshippers. But when I had problem in 1952, it was God I cried to and God’s people prayed for me. Since then, I have stuck to God and have always had cause to give Him thanks.”
Odewale’s childhood story goes thus: “My childhood was nothing to write home about because I grew up in a village and started learning through third parties who were not teachers and on my own, while my mates had no interest in education. But for God’s intervention, I would never have gone to school.”
Now fully retired, he toggles between home and church and is currently the Overseer of The Apostolic Church (TAC), Yaba Assembly.
To the younger generation he says: “They should put God first in all they do. Most of my contemporaries, who felt they could do things by their own power, never experienced fulfillment.”
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