This particularly unforgettable day.Sometime in 1967, fifty eight years ago.It was actually morning time,within the week-days. Ordinarily, I was to have been at school at that time in question,but for the fact that I was on the afternoon shift.I remember so vividly to the minutest graphic details,as if it were just yesterday.
Coincidentally, I was standing at the frontage of our house, at 21 0loto St. Ebute-Metta;trifling away on sheer idle spectatorship of the random scenarios across the street.
Nothing particularly serious,but just the monotonous humdrum trickling of people coming and going.
At a point, I saw a young small boy in his Khaki school uniform. He was then in standard six, the last rung on the primary educational ladder, of eight calendar years as was the vogue in those days, presaging the later departure for the six-year duration as extant in the present dispensation. He was then attending a Catholic primary school in Lagos Island. Saint Stephen or so,if my memory serves me right.
Looking so morose, he was followed closely by his paternal grand mother, an elderly woman, somewhat plumpy, of slightly fair height, dark in complexion, with whom this young school boy was living, temporarily, though, his beloved mum, Mummy Sariat,by name,having just passed on,the previous year,1966.
Just before you could say J-a-c-k,this innocent looking tender-aged boy of twelve,was already almost totally stripped.With sheer bare pant only left,he was angrily pitched right on the immediate next-inch frontage of her grandmother’s shop, covered with a make-shift shade at 21A Oloto Street, just in immediate next-neighbour proximity to our own house, 21,Oloto Street within the same Ebute-Metta area of Lagos State.
In that cynosural full glare of passers-by, all hands were all over him, with severe batterings, bashings and unremitting spates of furious slaps delivered by irate band of disciplinarians.
A particularly serio-comic dimension in all these,was a woman, frail,petite, often referred to as Iya oni bread, who then lived with the grandmother of this boy.
Because of her frail physique, on account of which her slaps and beatings could merely be likened to the metaphor of a fly perching on an absolutely unfeeling Iroko tree – she would have no options than to now resort to her finger-nails in the hope that it would create an unforgettable scars that would ever linger as an indelible memorial as to serve as a permanent deterrent to any possible re-occurence of the “heinous committal”of the malfeasant young boy.
To cap it up, was the only man among these jury of angry disciplinarians.A tailor etched with Egba tribal marks,who rented a shop in the house owned by Alhaja Abayomi,grandmother of this boy in question.
Popularly referenced as” Brushee” – his hot searing lashes of the cane, pleasurably delivered with unfettered rein and relish,on the tenderly young boy, to complement the brawny bare hand treat of the women,left this young boy immersed in a horrifying pathos of indescribable weeping and wailing,dazed, dizified, ravaged and devastated,gasping for breadth,with rivers of tears and sudorific waters of streaming body sweat converging to form something of a mini ocean, compounded by a putrid flow of mucus, all converging to maximize for this tenderly young boy, a grim-hell experience he will never forget in a jiffy
His offence, as you may not unlikely be eager to know, is that he was sighted at a popular swimming pool in Lagos Island and duly reported to his paternal grandmother, who was so mystified to the point that she deemed it apt that the appropriate disciplinary measure for a “heinous crime” of such “staggering” proportion was far beyond only her to dispense. Thus was she left with no option than to traverse – from their abode in Lagos Island – the proverbial seven land and seven seas for the all-important reason that her mother-in-law in the other divide;that is the grandmother on the maternal side, Alhaja Abayomi must surely know about it,for an elaborate celebration of the disciplinary reprisal.
The object in reference was no other than Femi Pedro. And for those who may be in crisis of curiosity, considering the coincidences – not unusually uncommon; of more than just one person bearing similar first and surnames – the Femi Pedro in specific reference is no other than the ex Deputy-Governor , Lagos State,Otunba Femi Pedro.
Mind you, his was not just the common staple opportunism stereo-typical of the path to political ascent as particularly obtained here in our own peculiar clime,dogged as is often the case,by mediocre quantities leveraging on the lopsided trumpery of sheer base connections to ascend the commanding heights of political power.
If anything his,was a rise from the cynosural stardom of Managing Directorship of a leading bank in the country – in itself a remarkable stamp of technocratic competence and expertise,seminal to a successful political statescraft.
Pedro passed through the portals of Ahmadiyya College Agege, moulded for seven years, in the crucible of academic excellence for which the high-flying institution was popularly reputed over the years – emerging though in all his papers in good grade, just as he cleared two of his papers in the H.S.C.in good grade,topped by Economics in which he scored ‘B’
After a stint as a clerk at the Ministry of Justice,in Lagos Island,he flew in to the U.S.in quest of the golden fleece, bagging a Bachelors at the Wisconsin University, followed by a Masters at the equally reputable University of Wichita;all in brilliant acquittals with awards.
On his arrival from the U. S. he was offered an appointment on account of his academic distinction – as a lecturer at Kwara Polytechnic where he served out the mandatory N.Y.S.C. programme.
There,he endeared himself to the teeming mass of students and school authorities alike,both of whom would have liked him retained on account of his subject mastery and tutorial dexterity – but fortunately or unfortunately,it would appear as if this young man of great destiny,was cut out for the gravitational thrust of professional corporate banking.
Professionally, Pedro was primordially grilled in the mill in the Central Bank of Nigeria,serving there in the exalted managerial hierarchy
Next in that order was the First City Merchant Bank where by his fastidious bent for excellence he endeared himself to the then Executive Chairman and Proprietor,Otunba Subomi Balogun.
The same feat of competence and lustrous high efficiency was also replicated at the Guaranty Trust Bank;his immediate spring board leap to the First Atlantic Merchant Bank – his stop-gap of professional corporate engagement as a banker – just before his salutarily merited ascension to the glamorous deputy-governorship of Lagos State.
Needless to emphasize that at this theatre of corporate departure for the exacting sphere of politics – that is the First Atlantic Merchant Bank – which equally witnessed his deserving meteoric ascension to the apex managing directorship of the corporate outfit – Pedro shone in megascopic brilliance – bringing his personal auric goodluck, his dynamic sway;his creative elan, managerial fecundity to lift the high-flying bank to hitherto unattained heights.
His subsequent but dramatic transmogrification from the hitherto familiar orbit of corporate banking,to the befitting prosilience of a deputy governor – garnered on the mettle of his corporate reputation – which in its lucent awe and prodigy, enraptured the then governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu – was to signal a revolutionary watershed,not only in his personal oddyssey,but on the larger geo-political space of that premier state of the federation.
To be sure,his presence in the exalted number two hierarchy of Lagos gubernatorial administration was to spell a progressive intervention of seminal significance, setting the paradigm of economic prosperity in the state,at an unprecedented all-time high,by dint of his visionary dynamism, creative fore-sight and amazing managerial acumen
His pragmatic visionary ideation was more signaly demonstrated in the strategic sphere of revenue generation, which saw the revenue base of the state, witness a phenomenal quantum leap than had hitherto been extant.
For a national political figure like Asiwaju universally acclaimed as the arrow-head of the progressive bloc – torn between the visionary obsession to make the premier state of Lagos a model of excellence on one hand and the dynamic vision to expand the geo-political, frontiers of the progressive bloc across the vast national space – Tinubu could as well have gone to sleep on the crucial question of economic planning and administration; with the likes of Pedro on the crew, leaving him with adequate concentration on the dynamic expansion of the progressive frontiers on the wider national canvas.
When our own Wole Soyinka, the literary leviathan categorised himself in the definitive ambit of a wasted generation;heart could not but bleed for those in full acquaintance with the ex deputy governor – from the specific context of his burstling potentials – that this familiarly accustomed Soyinka epigram could not have been more relevant to anyone else,in descriptively apt portraiture, than this consumate and highly reputed banker and remarkably brilliant economist.
It rankles the nerves in agitated remonstrance that here is a talent imbued with the acumen for surgical chemotherapy of the cancerous tumor plaguing the national economy,wasting away,grossly untapped.
An optimist, pragmatist and possibilitarian of an incurable order – in him may be something of an esoteric inner genii, innate and inborn too, like the self-confessed daemon or good genius of Socrates that inspires the possessor to dissect and surmount tasks of the most gargantuan dimension.
His driving force consists in his clean slate of conscience, definitive single purpose, a devotional altruism to the common good and a broiling patriotism elevated to sublime religiosity.
Of his luminous patriotic impulse,it perhaps becomes pertinent at this juncture,to chip in – with the authority of a griot,a narrative garnered on credible first hand authority.
This is to say that Pedro left the shores of native Nigeria, early 1976 and by 1981,he was already back on sail, within a spatial frame of five years,having bagged a Bachelors and Masters;refusing to be carried away by the charms and alluring exoticisms of the sybaritic Island of the United States – thus, setting the general mass of the people numb-struck in the bizarre imagery of a creature just newly arrived from the moon.
No less was I also rattled in staggering amazement that moment in the same 1981,when I saw him so unexpectedly in Ibadan,in company of my elder brother, brother Olu,whom he had followed on a leisure ride from Ilorin,then Boda Olu’s, base,where he (Pedro) was also serving his mandatory NYSC program, only few months after his return from the U.S.
One might well recall on an interesting note of coincidence,that in 1975, just few months on the eve of his travel to the U.S.Pedro,then working as a clerk at the Ministry of Justice,at Race Course, Lagos Island,also took time to visit Ibadan, lodging for a week or there-about in Boda Olu’s apartment,at a time that the later was resident in Ibadan.It was from Boda Olu’s residence that he was visiting his darling girl friend Jumoke Odumuyiwa now Justice Jumoke Pedro,who was then undertaking the G.C.E. A/Level program at Ibadan Polytechnic
This stupefying shock cannot but be expected in an age defined by a massive wave of emigration, to that niravanic paradise in popular referencing as “God’s own country” that they would often refuse to be placated and rather ready to give in the last drop of blood in frenzied desperation to arrive at that paradisial Mecca of economic prosperity, strewn at every nook and cranny with gold – that even our supposedly elevated crop of professionals, scholars, technocrats,at the home front would often see – in their perverted perception as the rendezvous to ultimate all-time accomplishments.
In this,you need not be scrutinosly so perceptive as to discern against this background,the sublime flame of patriotic impulse embedded in the Pedro persona;the nostalgic passion bordering on irrepressible monomaniac obsession for fatherland and the graven code in the tablet of his inner heart, that West or East, no place like home.Indeed,for this exemplary man of destiny,it was signaly all too apparent that self-fulfillment will indeed be far from it,in a millieu in which the primordial native community are far from fulfilled.
It wasn’t as if he forgot any essential left-over he was coming to pick at home;not as if he was prompted by a family business to superinted over.No.Except for his burning fervor for fatherland – a tall order ideal, quite untypical of a youth of his age – virtually then in his mid 20s or there-about at the time in question; more-so against the contrasting back-drop of massively desperate frenzy of emigration to that popularly acclaimed”God’s own country”. Ironically in the end,this epic decision paid off eventually in terms of his celebrated glorious attainment as an inspirational model of emulation,and an outstanding factor with considerable gravitas within the elite bracket of the movers and shakers of the society.Had he tarried much longer,he probably may not have been what he is today.
Two other vital decisions which from my candid opinion would unlikely not have altered his trajectory for good,was also his dramatic last minute decision to sway from the sciences which he was actually heading to,by virtue of his subject combinations at the H.S.C.(Chemistry/Biology/Economics) – for Economics.
And of course the third,for the perceptive was his Divinely teleguided choice of wife,in the person of Jumoke, a highly disciplined and brilliant lady,as I had known her to be, during our growing up years,over 50 years ago – whose auric goodluck contributed in no mean measure to what my big brother, Otunba Femi Pedro is today.
And certainly not to be discounted,if my intimate closeness to the family is anything to go by,is the impeccable moral credentials which easily passes as an ostensible hallmarks of his fore-bears,just as it considerably informed his strict moral upbringing as indicated by the very opening missive of this journey in memory, introduced as a deliberate matter of course,that people may be apprised of the moral pathway which has taken this great achiever to his immensely enviable achievement.
But for this impregnable moral forte, only God knows what would have happened at that momentous political tumult pitching him and his boss,Tinubu at bitter antagonistic revilement,that the irate members of the Lagos State House of Assembly desperately out to “roast him alive” rummaged so furiously; but in vain, even for the flimsiest of an alibi to consign him to the “hangman’s noose”.
That for you,is the quintessential model of impeccable integrity – a man,bred in a house which at most,was not better than a shanty.Yet he roused up,emerging from that unreckonable
class of discountenable commoner to live in high brow Ikoyi, not only living in Ikoyi, but the choicest part of that aristocratic preserve;with a street – Olufemi Pedro – named after him,ever before he joined the political fray – during his spell as Managing Director, First Atlantic Merchant Bank.
Yet,he never forgot his root.You may wish to venture to his grandmother’s house in Oloto,where he grew up; which in those days,was nothing better than a shanty and you will see what he has made of it!
Again bitten by the irresistible bug of ecstatic reminiscences I cannot but recall that emotionally gripping moment,January 1968,to be specific.
Young Femi had set forth from the Oloto Street residence of her grandmother, Alhaja Abayomi;clad in simple jacket and trouser,ash color,with paltry luggage, accompanied by this same darling grandmother of his.Just the two of them.I watched as they negotiated the Griffith Street junction – now Bornu Way,to link the popular Oyingbo Market for an onward journey to the rustic outskirt of Agege.
That particular moment, in time,57 years ago,little if at all,was I or anyone who might have been a witness; enamoured of the paranormal higher cognition that it was the commencement of a journey to great destiny!
Happy Birthday to My Big Brother,His Darling Wife, Children and his entire extended family.
*Kola Johnson Is A Writer And Journalist.
