I worshipped in the same place as his daughter, Olufunke Olakunle Olunloyo, an Architect and Environmentalist. She’s invariably one of the first people to arrive at the place of worship and the last to leave owing to some duties she undertakes to keep the place going.
I was surprised to find her car gone in the parking lot immediately after the hour of worship on Sunday, April 6.
Getting home and seeing the breaking news told me why: Dr. Omololu Olunloyo, the iconoclastic former governor of Oyo State has just departed the flesh!
I knew Dr. Olunloyo before I met his equally brilliant and talented daughter (she doesn’t agree with me on that description). He was one of the first notable personalities I was privileged to make acquaintances with when I reported at the Ibadan Bureau of The Guardian as Oyo State correspondent in 1992.
Witty, engaging, avuncular and super smart, ‘Dr’, as we in the media close to the expert mathematician-enginer, fondly called him, was a school on two legs.
There were so many unforgettable incidents and encounters with him that will fill volumes of books.
But one that always left me laughing was when he met me in the office of Dr. Busari Adebisi, then just appointed Secretary to the Oyo State Government under former Governor Kolapo Ishola. Adebisi was my political science teacher at the University of Ibadan. The SSG had taken an excuse to use his office’s inner convenience after asking his bellhop to ask Dr. Olunloyo who was at the reception in.
The old genius breezed in, took a look at the SSG’s empty seat and inquired of him from me.
I greeted and told him Dr. Adebisi just stepped into the convenience and should soon be out. He took the seat beside mine, and almost immediately sprang up and went to the end of the row of framed photographs of all the occupants of the office until then and systematically started a review. He would stand in front of each, call out the name of the person whose image it was, name and reel out details about him – education, qualifications including class of degrees, year, job experiences, pedigree, colleagues/friends, personal idiosyncrasies, etc. Then, he would award him a mark.
When he got to the turn of the immediate previous occupant of the office, Dejo Raimi, a Russian -trained medical doctor, he went through the same motion, made a dramatic, long pause and with a grimace, derisively submitted: “You won’t find a trace of polish on him!
I almost choked on laughter.
To understand the import of Dr. Olunloyo’s judgment, you needed to be familiar with Dr. Raimi, who, although also highly cerebral, had a habit of chewing kolanut and smoking tobacco in whoever’s presence or company he was. Perhaps you also must understand the political context that got him ousted and replaced by Dr. Adebisi, and Dr. Olunloyo ‘s relationship with the political tendency and forces behind it all.
A genius that he was, he had a retentive and photographic memory with near intuitive capacity to apprehend and flesh out the details of even a mere hint of any subject.
On about two occasions after I had first met him, I tried to reintroduce myself, when he appeared not to have recognized me.
But he retorted: “Of course , I know you, Yinka Fabowale. Iwo ni reporter The Guardian to like lati ma fi phone yo mi lenu.”
On another occasion, Olakunle, his daughter and I, along with two other friends had, had an accident on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway on our way back from a visit to Lagos.
Olakunle who sat with another passenger at the backseat was wounded and had to be dropped off first for first aid care at her parents’ home in Molete immediately the towing vehicle that brought us in what was left of the wreckage of the car got to Ibadan.
She told me later that her father had wanted to know who drove the car.
She mentioned my name, hardly ever imagining her Dad knew me.
“Yinka? Yinka Guardian? S’oun na n se… ni?
I marvelled that he could quickly make the connection and remember me, because by then, we hadn’t seen or spoken in a very long time. Although, I suppose, I shouldn’t have been that amazed, knowing his formidable brain power.
Such was the remarkable impression Dr. Olunloyo had on me that I couldn’t help but give him a mention in my journalism memoir, A REPORTER AND HIS BEAT, (c) Yinka Fabowale, 2022.
Excerpts from Chapter 14: ‘Penkele’ News Makers and Sources reproduced hereunder:
Dr. Omololu Olunloyo
A redoubtable genius, Olunloyo was and still is a newsman’s delight on a good day, but a ‘nightmare’ when time presses. Trouble was, whether it was on phone or you sat down with him to an interview, the great scholar and versatile bureaucrat never appeared to recognize, nor did he draw a distinction between the classroom and the newsroom.
He kept you trapped with elaborate responses to your questions, regaling you with incredible quantum of facts, figures, and references from across epochs of the history of Nigeria or that of the subject under discussion, and anecdotal illustrations from personal experiences and allusions to different fields.
As one interested in knowledge, I loved to listen to the expert mathematician cum engineer’s scholarly postulations and elucidation, but as a reporter seeking his views to compile a report on an issue in the news that must reach the newsroom in Lagos often in less than an hour, ‘Doctor’, as we fondly called him, always put me in a dilemma about how best to shorten and end interviews with him without appearing brusque or impolite.
He had a way of finding a link to move from discussing one subject to another; and trying to apply all the formulas taught in Journalism School on how to cut an interviewee short was often in vain, as he either ignored your attempts to punctuate his explanations or pretended not to notice your eagerness to swiftly end the chat.
I called or went to him only when absolutely necessary, although he was an ‘encyclopedia’, an engaging conversationalist, with an incredibly rich humour bag to boot.
Adieu, Sir. May you journey home surrounded by love, helps and light.
Yinka Fabowale is an author and an Ibadan-based veteran journalist
