Afe Babalola: A Man Of Global Acclaim By Tunde Olofintila

One of the wonders of creation is the dotting of the galaxy of humanity with giant stars of men and women. These stars are the inventors, the great writers, the philosophers, the philanthropists, the jurists who daily minister in the hallowed temple of Justice where they slug it out to resolve the mystery of legal cases or at workshops, seminars or other conferences where they dig deep into the foundation, practice and interpretation of the law.

The beauty of it all is that these wonders of creation spend their intellectual and material endowments for the collective good of the majority in a grand design to leave the world around them better than they had met it.

Such is Nigeria’s Aare Afe Babalola, OFR, CON, SAN, LL. D (London), FKC (London), an iconic legal practitioner of note, a robust educationist, a well-rounded healthcare provider, a commendable farmer, a community leader, a respected university administrator and a well-known philanthropist who we will be celebrating at the maiden Aare Afe Babalola Day on Friday, October 18, 2024.

Having said that, let me make this open confession: writing about the phenomenon known as Afe Babalola, a man who is does uncommon things in an uncommon way, in an uncommon terrain and achieving uncommon results, the man we are celebrating, is somewhat a Sisyphean task; a Sisyphean task in that the frontline legal icon is a many-sided man who is different things to different people.

Besides, writing about a man whose life is defined by and predicated on the superlative virtues of hard work, determination, dedication, excellence, philanthropy and patriotism may require some serious thinking before one commit pen to paper, as they say.

Afe Babalola, a polymath of some sort, is not only a highly committed educationist, a disciplinarian, self-made man, an astute administrator, the founder of the wave-making Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), a master planner, a farmer, a valiant entrepreneur, the unsparing philanthropist, is also a former winner of Senior Teachers of Nigeria Award by Association of Nigeria Teachers.

A man of commendable candour and incisive intellect, Babalola has been so many different things on the educational landscape of the country, nay the world at large. He was a two-term Pro Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of the University of Lagos, Nigeria; a former Chairman of the Committee of Pro-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, Winner of the Best Pro-Chancellor Award in 2005 and 2006, Winner of Queen Victoria Commemorative Award at Socrates Award of European Business Assembly in Oxford UK and member of the Rector of Europe, October 2007.

It must be mentioned here that his seven-year stint at the University of Lagos afforded him the opportunity to see, firsthand and barefacedly, the rot, decay and the dwindling qualities in standard education, an uncanny experience which informed the establishing of his own university in 2009 to institutionalise quality and functional education, to raise a new generation of leaders that will change the society for the better and to teach Nigerians how a university, properly so-called, should be run.

A man of bucolic beginnings, Babalola attended Emmanuel Primary School, Ado-Ekiti, where he obtained his Standard Six Certificate. That, as it were, was the end of his formal education. But he was neither deterred nor discouraged. He pressed on and through determination, industry and the grace of God, he was able to turn seemingly impossible situations and circumstances into glowing possibilities to become a legal colossus, a cardinal in the Basilica of Jurisprudence, a frontline educationist and a renowned farmer, an artist in the art of giving, building and donating multi-million naira edifices to many institutions of higher education, professional bodies and social organisations in different parts of Nigeria in the last three decades, as well as a shining example that he later became in life.

Through his well-known “I can do it spirit”, he passed Cambridge School Certificate Examination, GCE Ordinary Level, GCE Advanced Level by private study. He went ahead to obtain his Bachelor’s degree in Economics in 1959 and LL. B (Hons.) in 1963, also by private study. He was called to the Bar of England and Wales in July 1963. He became a member of the Nigerian Inner Bar when he was made a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, in 1987. On March 11, 2015, he was conferred with the honorary LL. D of University of London, making him the first African to be so honoured with an LL. D in the 179-year history of the University of London.

A selfless statesman with an intimidating profile, he demonstrated the ever-flowing fountain of selflessness in him when in 1982 he waived a legal fee of 5 million British Pounds Sterling for a federal institution to be established in his home state of the bigger Ondo State then, a selfless and patriotic gesture that gave birth to the Federal Polytechnic. It was first sited in Akure before it was relocated to Ado-Ekiti, Babalola’s homestead, when the Federal University of Technology took off in Akure.

It is a selfless man in the mould of Babalola, a man who is willingly giving to the society what the society denied him early in life, that can erect towering edifices and donate them to many institutions of higher education, hospitals, professional and social bodies in different parts of Nigeria before proceeding to build his own university which has now become the toast of others, including those that are several decades older than it.

As a practical demonstration of the fact that it is not only when one is fabulously rich that he/she can help and raise other people, the moment Babalola started earning a living from his law practice, he did not wait to become a millionaire or a billionaire before he turned his attention to philanthropy by giving scholarships to the needy and outstanding brilliant students.

As an acknowledged philanthropist, Aare Afe Babalola has made the following gifts or donations to tertiary institutions, communities, hospitals and unions/societies in Nigeria.

• He financed and donated a multi-million Afe Babalola Auditorium to University of Lagos. The building was commissioned by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2006.
• He financed and donated a multi-million naira building to African Heritage Library at Olorunda-Aba Road, Ibadan.
• He donated a multi-million naira Nuclear Medicine Building to University College Hospital, UCH, Ibadan.
• He constructed multi-million naira model Bar Centres for Ibadan, Ado-Ekiti and Akure branches of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).
• He made substantial financial contributions to PREMI, an organisation for the Rehabilitation of Prisoners.
• He initiated an Endowment Fund Scheme in University of Lagos. The annual income from capital investment of donation was used to award scholarships to students of the University. Five hundred scholarships were awarded in February 2006 under the chairmanship of former President Obasanjo. It is the first of its type in the history of our universities.
• He initiated the Build-Occupy-and-Transfer (BOT) system under which hostels worth hundreds of millions of naira were constructed for the University of Lagos.
• He contributed more than 10 percent of the money to finance the construction and take-off of the Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti.
• He was the Chairman of the Committee for the construction of an ultra-modern palace for the Ewi of Ado-Ekiti which today is one of the best in Nigeria. He also made substantial financial contributions.
• He financed and donated an ultra-modern auditorium to the Faculty of Law, University of Ado-Ekiti (UNAD) which was commissioned by former President Obasanjo in 2004.
• He built an ultra-modern church costing over N75 million at Ado-Ekiti. The building was commissioned by the Archbishop of Anglican Communion of Nigeria in 2005.
• He constructed a block of flats for Inland Club at Ado-Ekiti.
• He built and donated the Aare Afe Babalola Labour House for the Nigeria Labour Congress at Ado-Ekiti.
• Aare Afe also built a museum in honour of Fabunmi, the famous Ekiti warrior, at OkeImesi, among others.
• He awarded numerous scholarships annually at Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti and to Ado-Ekiti indigenes.
• In 2017, he instituted the Annual Afe Babalola Poverty Alleviation Programme where he doled out millions of naira to Nigerians to uplift them, their businesses and vocations.
• When the dreaded Covid-19 invaded the world in November 2019 and the better part of 2020, Aare Babalola donated N100 million, 800 bags of Rice and 1,000 bags of Garri to bring soccour to Ekiti people through the Resource Mobilisation For Ekiti State Covid-19 Response.
• In 2023, Babalola donated a whooping sum of 10 million British pound sterling towards the establishment of the Afe Babalola African Centre for Transnational Education in King’s College, London, to lift indigent African students from the pangs of ignorance, lack, want and poverty through quality education.
• As part of his resolve to encourage the youth to return to farms, Aare Afe Babalola reduced the school fees of his students studying agriculture by 50 percent. In addition, he gave seed money of N250,000 to every graduate in Agriculture from Afe Babalola University.
• At the state level, he has since 2014 been organising an Annual Agric Festival in Ado-Ekiti called ABAEX (Afe Babalola Agric Expo) with the best overall farmer in the state going home with N2,000,000 while the best three farmers in each of the 16 local government councils in the state go home with N250,000 in this order: The best farmer (N200,000), the second best (N100,000), and the third best (N50,000),

An unyielding and unwavering patriot, Babalola is incurably optimistic that Nigeria has the ability and the capacity to be better and greater than what it is today. So, he speaks against the cankerworm of corruption afflicting every segment of the society, including his primary constituency of law, at every available opportunity.

Apart from the numerous scholarships to people and offers of employment to thousands of people, Babalola, a plutocrat with pluralistic tendencies, maintained the Ijan-Ikare Road, including the 100-year-old Ureje Bridge on a federal road for nine years between 2009 and 2020.

As the world gathers in Elan to celebrate this citizen of the world of African descent, who is popular at home and revered abroad, one could only summarise this treatise with what the late Premier of the Western Region, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, (SLA), told the late Hon. Justice Kayode Eso, JSC, in the presence of Chief Oluseye Ejiwunmi in 1965 during the trial of the Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, to wit: “Olorun a fun yin se o”(meaning may God assist you) and continually too.

Olofintila is Director, Corporate Affairs, ABUAD.