Femi Ayodele

Bamidele Falegan, a renowned banker, economist and researcher, X-rays his li’s sweet and bitter experiences via his memoir: My Yesteryears

Wole Soyinka, the Nobel laureate, is said to have labeled some autobiographies as scripts written to massage the ego of the writer. Falegan’s Yesteryears, on the contrary, relates the true life experience of a man who, despite his humble beginning and opposing forces, weathered the storms of life to become a renowned banker/economist.

Inspired by the desire to reel out lessons from the good, bad and ugly experiences of his life, Falegan decided to relate, first-hand, an account of how he rose from nothing to something. He captures his ordeals at the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN; experiences as the director of Research, Owena Bank of Nigeria, First Interstate Merchant Bank, and his odyssey as the first Nigerian Managing Director, Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, in those years of military regime when impunity and lawlessness were prevalent. These factors make his memoir a reference point for all. “My story is not meant for me alone but for the reading public, historians, philosophers and biographers who will pass judgment on what I did or did not do, topped by what I wrote down before my departure. It is good to preserve one’s deeds, or even what others might see as one’s misdeeds,” Falegan remarks. The outcome is a 326-page rich and stimulating work.

The book: My Yesteryears

My Yesteryears is divided into 22 chapters. The memoir starts with the parentage and the early life of the author, and Falegan paints his as not being born with a silver spoon. Growing up in a polygamous family exposed him to some prejudices. Chapters two and three focus on his experiences while in secondary school – Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti. His hatred for mathematics was an issue all through his secondary education and up till his post-graduate education. How he overcomes this fear and other prejudices makes the rest of the chapters captivating and hilarious.

The 326-pager is a collection of the writer’s stock of hidden treasures, ranging from family to work life, school days, peers and what he tags: “Challenges of man’s inhumanity to man”. His work life at the Federal Mortgage Bank, FMBN, Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Owena Bank, First Interstate Merchant Bank threw up some storms that makes him call his three-year sojourn in FMBN wasted. Typical of him, the writer, exposes a deluge of operating problems, mendacious claims and the shady deals of a hostile firm of consultants, appointed by the federal government to manage FMBN, then Nigerian Building Society, comprising majorly foreigners who took advantage of the collapsed system to milk the nation.

The author does a chapter-by-chapter analysis of the military’s dictatorial style of governance that made bankers, especially bank MDs, turn puppets in the hands of powerful politicians, and the pressure from the borrowing public that pitched him against his board members and some political big guns. The lawlessness typical of that era, which he feels are deviation from the ideal, and the conspiracy that trailed his appointment as the first Nigerian MD, FMBN, his sojourn as the Director of Research at the CBN, where he narrowly escaped a death trap, edify the book as a viable guide to life.

Published in Nigeria in 2013 by Bamboo House and dedicated to the memory of the writer’s parents – Daniel Falegan (Aba Daani) and Eye Bojesomo Falegan (nee Akerele). Falegan’s Yesteryears is of good printing quality, double-spaced, with index that makes it easier to locate names and events. Foreword is anchored by a school mate, Adelola Adeloye – an emeritus Professor of Neurosurgery, University of Ibadan, who interestingly had a first-hand account of the writer’s experience. Catalogued with an array of photographs, data, figures and rare confidential documents, the memoir is a treasure trove and a viable reference point. The title given to the book gives away its content as in-depth account of the travails of a man who, in the midst of fierce opposition stuck to ethics, while the back cover is adorned with the image of a young and sharp-looking Falegan, typical of bankers.

There is no strength without weakness, however. The fact that the writer doesn’t mask his weakness/ mistakes, as some writers are wont to, makes the book an embodiment of both bitter and sweet lessons