By Oluwayomi David Atte
That’s the man! He and Zi were the youngest in our class when we started secondary school. He was only about 10 then and I was over 13. He was, in 1964, the youngest boy to be admitted into that prestigious school which started in 1952 as Missionary School. Even me , 3 years older was considered small then. Seniors carried him on their shoulders around the Compound and he spent his time just playing around and not reading or being serious in class. At a point they asked his father to return him home because he was too playful. His father had been a Primary School teacher who taught everywhere in Yagbaland in Kogi State and had become a well known Headmaster by 1964.
Everybody got the shock of his life when there was a Science Quiz in which only Seniors in Forms 3, 4 and 5 took part. They were asked to define Archimedes Principle (I have never been able to spell it properly being an akuri in Maths and Physics myself) Nobody got it right. The white Science Teacher was going to say it when this little Form 1 boy (Ayo) jumped up. He was always full of pranks so someone got up and carried him to take him out of the Hall. “I know it. I know it”, he shouted. He was asked to be put down. In his tiny uniform, Ayo shouted at the top of his voice and quoted it perfectly! The Science Teacher, others and even the Principal shot up from their seats with open mouths in wonder!
That day, a day I will never forget, everyone was convinced that this boy would go far. What I still wonder about is he ending up in the field he grew in. In Secondary School, he was Science all the way. You would see Ayo carrying big Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics Textbooks for Forms 4 and 5 or even A Level studying them when he was in Forms 1 or 2.
He didn’t take notes in class. Whatever he heard, it was enough. He didn’t need to write and read notes later for exams. Whenever he studied, it was textbooks of senior classes. We all knew this boy was beyond us. He was EXCEPTIONAL, FOCUSSED, TENACIOUS and had a heart like a child that didn’t know how to be arrogant or rude or jealous, or fretful. In fact people feared he was not serious with things of life because things never bothered him.
We were islands of education – the elite- in those days, (only 4 of us in my Primary 7 went to College). We wanted to look special to the girls and our former classmates – bought new dresses, and shoes, had special hair cuts etc. Ayo could not be bothered. Daddy bought him dresses but he would sit in the dust with his friends in the village during holidays. Even in school, he didn’t bother about whether his uniform was neat or not. What he was passionate about was KNOWLEDGE, VOCABULARIES, NAMES OF SPECIES, SOLAR SYSTEM etc. We did not know what he was talking about then.I
can go on and on till tomorrow and not scratch the top of Ayo’s prodigious intellect. He lived ideas! This was a man with a rough facade on the outside but was one of the most unpretentious, down to earth, simple minded and beautiful minded men I have ever met. To an observer, Ayo, might look like an unorganised man, but he seemed to have understood, Solomon in Ecclesiastics, much earlier than most of us that “vanity is vanity”.
He placed no great store on his appearance and material wealth. I know no girls who refused to date him because he didn’t pursue elegance. BUT there could NEVER have been a more organised MIND walking this earth. Ayo knew that IDEAS were richer than worldly possessions. So he pursued intellect, all his life AND DIED AT HIS POST, LEARNING AND GIVING KNOWLEDGE! AN IRREPLACEABLE IROKO HAS INDEED FALLEN. I am going to miss him for the rest of my days.
* Dr Oluwayomi David Atte