Former Managing Director of Daily Times, Tola Adeniyi, shares his life experiences in this interview with OLUFEMI ATOYEBI
How did you develop your writing and acting skills?
I started education in a Quranic school and since then, I have developed my acting skill. By 14, I had become a poet and by 15, I had published my first work. I was the president of the literary and debating societies in all the 19 colleges in Ijebu land by 17 years old. I was later the president of all the literary and debating clubs in all the West African universities.
I attended the University of Ibadan for my first degree and the University of Lancaster for my second degree. I also did some diploma degrees in Mass Communication and later in book selling. I was an information officer in the old Western States and before 1970, I taught in six secondary schools in Lagos, Ondo, Ijebu-Ode and Abeokuta. Before that time, I worked in the Nigerian Television Service between 1967 and 1968.
When did you start journalism?
My journalism career actually started in 1959 as official reporter of Ago Iwoye Secondary School and as editor of my school magazine, The Spartans. In 1971, I had a column in AfriScope until around 1973. I also wrote a column in Sketch under Tunde Oseni and Sunday Times under Sam Amuka.
So my life has always revolved around acting, writing, teaching and African cultural activities. I lived a restless and creative life as a young man.
Did you go through the odds to fund your education?
I marketed my own books as a boy going from school to school. I would read from the books to a gathering of pupils and encouraged them to buy them. I used the money to finance my higher education. I was also a rancher and I once worked at construction sites, carrying concrete blocks and sand for the bricklayers. I was also a drummer at social functions.
You live in a huge house with few people around you at 70 years old. Where is your family now?
My children are now in Canada with all my grandchildren. My wife is also living there. We have been there for the past 20 years. I have a school in Canada called Canada College of Business and Technology and I also have a publishing company there called Canada University Press. Here in Nigeria, I am the chairman of Knowledge Plaza, a consulting firm of ghost writers, biographers, editors, strategists and public relations experts. I don’t have a cocoa farm or kolanut plantation, but what I live on now is marketing my knowledge.
What motivated your love for journalism?
I think it is inherent. I am a Gemini and all Geminis are creative and communicative. In 1959 when I was just 14 years old, I bought a large board and erected it in our school in Ago-Iwoye. I called it press board. I was pasting articles and feature on the board, lambasting our teachers. I was rebellious as a young boy. I also encouraged my friends like Peter Omoroboai, Femi Sonaike and Adeyemi Folarin, to write on the notice board. I was born with the skill. At the primary school level, Mr. Adeyemi, who was our drama teacher, encouraged me. He would write a synopsis and we would rehearse it.
Because I have always opposed oppression, suppression, intimidation, cheating, hypocrisy and lying, I was compelled to talk in the public and write to fight those ills in the society. I will also say that I was inspired by the late writer, D.O. Fagunwa and a Yoruba magazine called Aworerin. At 14, I visited the late Tai Solarin to show him my work and travelled in a lorry to Ibadan to see Fagunwa barefooted. I saw him at the then radio broadcasting station. In fact, I dedicated my first poetry to him.
As a 14-year-old poet on radio in those days, my signature tune was ‘Aye ode oni.’ I addressed moral values and attacked immorality among our young girls. At 14, I once described the moon as ‘bright as the day with gentle fire like water in a pot, the only one eye that illuminates heaven and earth.’ When I look back at what God did for me, I am always overwhelmed.
How did you draw inspiration for all these activities?
I cannot ascribe my achievements to my effort or hard work, they were achieved through the powers beyond me. God just chose me to actualise his power. I prophesied good things to myself and they all came to pass. As a primary six pupil, I said I would marry only a graduate and I did. These were not coincidence but the work of powers beyond me. The powers put everything in place for me.
Was it not risky for a young boy to travel alone just to see someone you had never met?
If you consider the fact that I started taking long stride early in life, you will not consider what I did as a risky venture. Solarin was a classmate of my first school headmaster, Mr. Babasipe. He had also visited our house in Ijebu, so I knew him very well. He inspired me a lot.
You frequently refer to Olodumare and powers beyond you. Are you referring to the same God?
As a child, I was very mystical. If you share the same astrological science with me, you will also be mystical. You will dream and see visions. I had the concept of soul fire when I was 14. That was when I said to myself that I would not die because people with soul fire don’t die. By 15, I had already discovered that the spirit resides in the soul.
That spirit is the propeller of human being. The body we carry around is just a garment. I wrote in a poem that the body is like the shell of a turtle or a snail. The actual human is the soul, which houses the spirit. My religious ideology started developing so early in life. When the Romans say that God is spirit, what they are saying is that God is air. In the faith that I embrace, I understand that Olodumare (God) is air. He can only be air to be everywhere. The human body is more of water and air.
What we refer to as the sky is just the space between the earth and another planet. There is nothing there, it’s just air. In my religion, we refer to heaven as the known and unknown. God is not in a particular place. He is not in heaven but with us as individuals.
Does your belief not contradict the religion you inherit from your parents?
I have been to Mecca and Jerusalem. What I profess out of knowledge is part of my evolution. I pray that God should give me long life to live more. He has revealed a new phase to me and I am about to publish a book. It is a book of revelation gathered over a 50-year-period. It is called ‘The holy creed.’ I authored it through inspiration. If you look at the great books like the Bible and Quran, they were authored by great inspirations. Olodumare appeared to me and He showed me how He created the world.
It’s a great revelation. If people follow my faith, nobody will pay tithe or need anyone to pray for them because you don’t have to do that. Olodumare (God) is in you. Yoruba refer to Him as the inscrutable. He is so phenomena that you cannot define Him as a man or woman. If man develops the mind over matter, we can command anything and it would obey. Everything created by God can communicate. I developed all these over a long period of time from childhood. I also realised that the sun is just a ball of hot air. Each time I have a vision, I will wake up and write it down.
What were the challenges you faced as a columnist?
When I started writing, I defined what I wanted to do and decided to term it agitation journalism. Agitation has always been part of my life. I fight for justice and used my work to campaign against injustice. I combined agitation, campaign and creative types of journalism in my work.
When I was in the university, we were being poorly fed and we approached the matron and discovered that our hall warden stole bags of rice in the kitchen. I led my colleagues in Kuti Hall to his house around 3 am. We forced him to carry a bag of rice on his head from his residential quarters to the hall kitchen. I will not mention his name; I will say that he later became a minister.
In 1962, I led fellow students to revolt against a vice principal who wanted to become a principal by force. He wanted to drive away the white man that was our principal. I was just 17 at the time. I had many columns in several newspapers and wrote in them under various pen names. Nguwen Tol Nae, Tola Nee, Tcha Bento and Abba Saheed were some of the names I used. I had 16 columns in Daily Times alone per week. I also wrote for The Punch Newspaper in the 1980s. I later became the Chairman and Managing Director of Daily Times.
Did you envisage that the paper would fold up?
I knew that it was a matter of time before the paper would collapse. In 1976, Olusegun Obasanjo retired Babatunde Jose unjustly. He used the opportunity of the crisis in the company at the time to send Jose and some major editors away. The government also acquired 60 per cent share of the newspapers. The moment that was done, I knew that Daily Times would be rested.
No government establishment has been able to stand the test of time in Nigeria. They do succeed in civilised countries because they have stable leadership. Jose achieved in the newspaper because he was there for about 14 and 15 years. If you change your wife or husband frequently, you can never have a stable home. Any company that changes its leadership frequently will surely collapse. There are several other albatross that led to the demise of the company but the major one was because it did not have consistent leadership.
Did any of your works put you in trouble?
I have a lot of them. When I wrote about police vehicles being used as kabukabu (taxi), I was arrested in 1974 by the then Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon. I saw it and took a picture and wrote about it. The good thing is that Daily Times under Jose took immediate action to free any of its arrested men. I also walked into trouble when I wrote about soldiers who harassed civilians regularly in Lagos. I was arrested and threatened by the military. Former military governor of Oyo State, Paul Tafa, once ordered soldiers to arrest me and remove my eye and a leg in 1979. At the time, I wrote about the dirty state of the state as refuse covered everywhere.
I was charged with seditious felony and would have probably gone to jail. But When the late Bola Ige was elected governor, he let me off the hook and suspended the case. I was also arrested four times at the airport on my way from trips abroad up to 2004 with my passport seized. There are so many others but one is grateful that he is still alive.
How did you meet the late MKO Abiola?
I first met him in 1966. He was using a Peugeot404 but he was already a big man. But we came closer in 1974 when my club in Lagos invited him as a special guest. We exchanged contacts and became very close. He was so kind to me. He took me like his younger brother and the affection was unimaginable. Each time he visited Ibadan, he had a special seat in my home. When an attempt was made on my life in 1977, he came to me and said that I should leave the country in a hurry. He also helped me when I was doing a course in Lancaster University. When he died, I was in exile in Canada. I organised a service for him in Canada and over 2000 people attended the service. Four ministers in Canada gave speeches. Abiola played a significant role in my life and his memories will remain indelible in my heart.
What is your impression of the recent transition in Nigeria?
Let me start by saying that what we have now is still an attempt at civilian regime, we are not there yet. We have civilian government but we do not have democracy yet. (Chief Olusegun) Obasanjo was a dictator because the constitution gave too much power to the president. Umaru Yar’Adua was weak because of health challenges and Goodluck Jonathan was never in power even though he was there for six years. The power rested with the women in his government. The ministers took advantage of his weakness to steal and he could not stop them. Some went away with pension fund while subsidy scam went to an unimaginable height. Anyway, there is nothing like subsidy but just an avenue to share money in the corridors of politics.
Now we have Muhammadu Buhari and hope that he will make a difference. I set up an organisation in Canada called ‘Global Intelligential for Buhari.’ We used the social media to campaign for him and ran down the Peoples Democratic Party. The organisation has members all over the world and we share the belief that Buhari has moral authority. We share the belief that Nigerians will support him and go to war if he calls them out. We are happy that he won.
We pray that he gets it right. The first 30 days will determine what to expect from him. He does not have to rush into picking his cabinet. To pick a cabinet from 180 million people is not what we must rush. He must not be stampeded into choosing his cabinet. If he makes the mistake of recycling old faces, Nigerians will forget about him. They want freshness and change.
Who do you expect to be in the cabinet?
Nigerians have bright people who are under the age of 40 and who can run the country successfully. We expect that nobody above 55 should be in the cabinet.
Will that not create problem for him because some of his allies in the struggle are older than what you are suggesting?
Because he succeeded, everybody will lay claim to his electoral victory. Only God gave him victory. He had attempted it three times but God said that was not his time. Some of his allies spent money but they were not the final determinant. At Buhari’s age, he must be able to talk to them, thank them for their contributions and let them know that it is more important to move the country forward than to share positions without proper consideration. He can make them ambassadors or board members and chairmen. I can recognise about five ex-governors that should owe key positions in that government. They have the quality and sacrificed a lot for the success of the All Progressives Party, especially in their zones. In some cases, they were made sacrificial lambs. I will not name them in public and I know Buhari knows these young men. He should also spread the cabinet to represent only the key groups like the doctors association, journalists, engineers and so on.
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