Obituary Bolaji Akanfe Ola, October 15, 1938 to May 8, 2023

Wale Fatade

NOTHING prepared me for a terse WhatsApp message on the night of Monday, May 8. “Good evening sir. To God be the glory. My dad passed on early today.” Sent 12 minutes before 11pm, I didn’t see it un l a er 11pm. Kunle, his third son, was the bearer of this bad news.

“Wow. Baba Ola? Dead?” was the only response I managed. I know all mortals will die but Baba Ola, as we call him in our family, was not scheduled to die now. Yes, in my mind, like us all, we have a metable of death. And Bolaji Akanfe Ola was not supposed to go on the day he breathed his last. My wife and our children were in Iwo during the Easter period but we could not join my parents to worship at the First Olukotun Bapst Church then. Baba Ola o wa le, replied my mother when I lamented that I missed seeing him. I le it at that hoping to meet him when next both of us will be around. That will be no more.

It has taken me me to process his death. Psychologists speak of denial of reality as a stage in grieving and I guess I’ve not exited it yet. How do you celebrate a man who loomed large in our lives as children and now as adults? How do you write about a man with whom you know where you stand? You see, no prevarica on with him. He wears his heart on his sleeves and he did not care what you think or say about his views or posi on on issues. As I remarked to my friend and his Dawodu, Kayode, Baba belonged to us all. Yes, he was not for the Ola of Ile Oloya alone, he was my father, our father, and the Ajibade Fatade family’s father as well. Of course his life transcended his immediate family, what with a career in the defunct NEPA before becoming a lawyer and his short-lived foray into poli cs in the ill-fated Babangida transi on of the early 1990s.

Our lives intertwined, and s ll do, with his children at different levels: Kayode and I are contemporaries, Kolade is effec vely my mother’s son and served as the best man in my wedding over two decades ago travelling all the way from Gusau, Zamfara State for the ceremony while Kunle is friendly with my own brother, Adeniyi; though his main pal in the family is Bolarinwa. Tunde, the doctor is in the mix too while Femi bonds with Deola my youngest sister as both are lawyers. Beyond this, however, Baba Ola loved our family to a hilt. I remember with nostalgia our trips from Iwo to Lagos in his car, the first in 1993 as a final year undergraduate and how he insisted in dropping me off at the University of Lagos though it was not exactly on his route. He later told my father, “I wanted to be sure where that boy was going.” We took many trips together and Baba loved to speed even a er he had an accident that ended with his car becoming a scrap. The fighter in him survived that crash only to resume his racing exploits when the roads were not as famished as they are now. Formula One drivers should be happy they didn’t encounter him as he would have beaten them hands down un l he stopped driving.

But we know his special love was reserved for Deola, a lawyer like him. On visits to our house before Deola’s face became a rarity due to marriage, Baba would insist on being served whatever he wanted by his learned friend. While my sister completed NYSC and was wai ng for a job, he waxed a brief for her at the Iwo High Court and he paid her. She shared how Baba saw her at the court one day and waited for her own case to come up just to watch her offering insights on the case a er the session ended. Not without adding transport money for his daughter. To Deola too was the highest adula on a er we presented him a portrait for his birthday celebra on organised by the children.

He loved debates and was highly polemical, the lawyer in him usually surfacing and he must have been a wonderful advocate in court. Omo mi, ma da baba e lohun he would always remark whenever we sparred with my own father over poli cal issues, usually on January 1 when he comes on his usual new year visit to our house. Though his poli cal career was attenuated, or maybe s llbirth, he never shied from expressing his views whenever we spoke. O en my view tallied with his and we poked fun endlessly at Mr. Fatade.

His devo on to family was never in doubt and we can only pray that God grants Mama Ola, his spouse of nearly six decades, strength to cope with Baba’s exit. She deserves credit too, staying married to a strong man like Baba is a lesson in tenacity and pa ence. God bless you Mama.

Requiescat In Pace, Bolaji Akanfe Ola. Fatade, a journalist, is commissioning editor with The Conversa on Africa h ps://theconversa on.com/africa