Dr. Omololu Olunloyo

By Odolaye Aremu

One of the mistakes I made in my younger days especially during the Nigerian Second Republic was my inheriting the political enemies of my father and grandfather – in a classic example of inherited biases.

They blindly followed Awo and I willingly hated all of Awo’s political adversaries in return. The most pathetic enemy I made at the time was that of Dr. Omololu Olunloyo! I can look back now and blame it all on my political immaturity. Silly of me.

I couldn’t intellectually or independently at the time distinguish a man and his situation away from his political affiliation. More complicated when I was entirely surrounded by die-hard supporters of Chief Obafemi Awolowo that rode with him all the way from the First Republic – in Action Group to the Second Republic and his Unity Party of Nigeria.

I vehemently disliked him for winning the 1983 Oyo State Gubernatorial election. An election that was noted for its heavy rigging and total chaos. I still disliked him when he eventually became a huge headache for his political party, as his personal ideology was antithetical to his party’s agenda. For he struggled in politics where he excelled in Mathematics.

Not until about 2001 when I saw the Hollywood production “A Beautiful Mind” – a movie loosely based on the life of Professor John Nash – a genius mathematician who revolutionized Games Theory, that it dawned on me that I wasted my negative energy on Olunloyo for so many years- as John Nash’s life and Olunloyo’s ran parallel.

Both individually suffered excruciating mental illnesses that affected their social existence away from the comfort of their gifts.

For Victor Omololu was a genius mathematician too, with specialty in Applied Mathematics and Numbers Theory. I essentially misunderstood the man incredibly for those long years. He was a man who understood numbers better than he did humans. The immaculate relationship he had with his gift literally created an invincible block between him and his fellow humans.

Where he metaphorically had a warm or cozy affair with numbers, he likely had his back turned against people and their quirky shenanigans. The words older folks described him with back in the old Ibadan were: “eccentric” and, or “maverick.”

He died yesterday and as I went back to watch that movie again, it helped in a way navigate around the maze of who that man likely was in his lifetime. They threw him haphazardly into politics for their own gains when he could have been left alone in a university, behind a huge blackboard with an endless supply of white chalk and other writing materials to keep solving mathematical equations. That was where he perfectly felt comfortable. Politicians are truly Sharks. And Olunloyo, in 1983 was clearly a naive, perhaps another Beautiful Mind running with the very Ugly crowd.

“ọmọ wa ni ẹ jẹ o see” ni wọn fẹẹ fi kóbá baba yẹn ni 1983.”

Like everything Nigerian. Politics and inherited biases were the resultant punishments of the brilliant man. Looking back at things now. Olunloyo, perhaps was indeed a ‘Beautiful Mind.’

May his soul find the desired rest in the absolute peace of death.

*Odolaye Aremu is a public affairs analyst