Christopher Kolade: His light shone ever so bright

Every so often, I am mistaken for Christopher Kolade. I am Kolade Mosuro. Well, we both attended Government College, Ibadan (GCI), but then Christopher was in a bit of a hurry; he got there before I was born. He got in in 1946. I told him there was a transpositional error in the year I got in, which was 1964. The years 1964 and 1946 contain the same integers, if a boy chooses to be clever with figures.

After he passed, I was accosted by a man, who, on hearing my name, wondered whether it was I who had just died! I assured him I was alive and took no offence. A friend took the matter further because he wrote to say he had just returned from paying a condolence visit to the family of Kolade Mosuro, who had just passed. I am prepared to make an appearance in the coming days to startle the world.

Christopher Kolade and I have long been entangled with our names. I told him I wished the bank had made a mistake and sent his bank statement to me, and my liabilities to him. He told me he had more liabilities than I did. I challenged him to put it to the test, which he failed to do. We lived happily with our liabilities. The only time we were at “war” was when he made the obnoxious claim that his house, Swanston, in Government College, was better than mine, Carr, when in fact, he knew that mine was irrevocably better than any other.

In 2016, Prof. Oladipo Akinkugbe had a reunion of some sort for his 1946 GCI classmates and their spouses at his residence in Ibadan. There was an apology from Prof. Wole Soyinka, another classmate of theirs. He was somewhere in the air but sent some bottles of wine in atonement for his absence. Akinkugbe had asked me to conduct the affairs at that reunion. For my part, I went to GCI, dug into the school records, and showed up at the 1946 reunion with a cane!

Questions were posed to the “boys,” and if they got it right, we drank to their health, and if they got it wrong, the cane was going to be applied. To play safe, I had a junior boy with me to administer the punishment! So I asked, for example, what Christopher Kolade’s weight and height were when he got into Government College. For all their brilliance, the boys did not remember weights and heights. Kolade was the most boisterous on that day, but I spared him on account of our name. These were old men, but the everlasting child of secondary school never left them.

In GCI, Akinkugbe was tall with unequal legs, Kolade was short with short legs, and Soyinka was small with spiny legs. The class did brilliantly in academics and did not fare well in sports. But they knew themselves intimately well such that when Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize, they threw a party for him, but on the occasion, they delegated three of their classmates to follow him when he needed to use the bathroom, knowing he could so readily from there make for the Seme border or the airport. They ensured he used the bathroom and marched him back to the party.

And so when Akinkugbe died, it was a wise choice by Chief Olu Akinkugbe that Dr. Christopher Kolade should deliver the funeral oration. He opened the eulogy with these words:

Almighty God, for His Supreme purpose and commanding pleasure,
Gave the world a Light, and named him Oladipo Olujimi Akinkugbe;
A veritable Star; a venerable Sage above measure,
His brilliance shone ever strong on his allotted day.
A Teacher of teachers;
A Leader of leaders;
A trusty Beacon, for all coming generations ever to treasure.

Well, Christopher Kolade may just have been talking about himself. Or, if we reversed the situation, Oladipo Akinkugbe would have said the same thing about Christopher Kolade if he had gone ahead of him. They emerged from the same mould.

And then Christopher Kolade went further in the eulogy as follows:

Your life helps us to look afresh at some concepts and philosophies that we had taken for granted. In your years of life on this earth, you were present and prominent in so many roles and in so many places that we must now review our long-held belief that a rolling stone gathers no moss.

All the evidence that is available to us tells, and confirms several times over, that your “rolling stone” created lots of its own “moss” and gathered a great deal more, giving us the opportunity to appreciate you, not just in terms of your years or the positions and Awards that you received, but especially, in terms of the distinguished results that you registered, and the excellent value that you created, and added to every situation that you touched.

Integrity, Serenity, Wisdom, Purposefulness, Accountability — those are some of the attributes to which we can testify he possessed. He has truly served the purpose of God in his generation, and also primed upcoming generations with values and resources on which they will construct the edifice of their own leadership performance.

I have turned these words over and over in my mind and concluded that Christopher Kolade may have been talking about the ideals he subscribed to, which he found in Akinkugbe, and could as well be talking about himself.

Some twenty years or so ago, when my son was at the university in London, he told me he and his friends found comic relief in going to the Nigerian High Commission during their lull. Their university was just a stone’s throw away. They would sit in the waiting room and observe. Some Nigerian citizens came prepared for a fight; some boiled only when they got there; some were bemused by it all and hissed to forewarn that they would soon let out steam; some spoke at the top of their voices: Do you know who I am? Some were tired of it all: I beg, return my passport if you can’t do anything, nonsense.

By the door somewhere, a voice rang out loud: I am old enough to be your father, imagine. A man seemingly quiet, but in a state of exasperation, suddenly burst into a passion. Every now and then, an officer would whizz from the inner room through the waiting room, clutching some files and feeling important. All eyes in the waiting room would trail him, in the eagerness to claim him, in the hope that one of the files in his hold belonged to them.

Not quite. So they continued to wait and fume in any manner they could. In all these, the security officer at the entrance kept a straight face, like the sentry at Buckingham Palace, pretending not to notice the drama, only to tell unbelievable tales to his brethren at home. These incredible developments brought him to work the next day, for more. There is really no dull moment at the Nigerian High Commission, London.

Meanwhile, officers of the High Commission lay in siege and escaped at the end of the day through the back door.

And then I saw Dr. Christopher Kolade walk majestically, without aides, undisturbed, with comfort, in a city of noise. This was London. I was not going to disturb him, so I walked admiringly, hidden by several paces, behind him. He walked with respect and dignity while the air gracefully made way for him. One could touch the atmosphere and savour it. It was pleasing. My delight was that a good man, a very decent man, was ahead of me — possibly the best representation of Nigeria.

Yes, he was our High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. I joyfully filed behind him as he strode along the West End of London. For a moment, it struck me that this is exactly what soldiers mean when they claim they can walk blindfolded behind some special generals taking them to war. They say this when they have found absolute leadership in their general. Christopher Kolade was a general’s general, a grand leader of men.

Consider that to a “big” man who walked across the same streets of Central London on another occasion. Nigerians went after him, calling him names, for stealing our money. It does not take long for Nigerians to gather. The painful look in their eyes is a summons. The “big” man quickened his steps and went hiding in a Boots Chemist shop. The stench of his crime could not be contained by any fragrant product from the shop. The crowd found him there, and they harangued him until a policeman gave him some protective reprieve so that Boots could continue with its sales and not be detracted by Nigerian pantomime acts. London is a theatre, and it regularly features Nigeria.

A few years back, some academics put together a three-volume book, a seminal exposition on Dr. Christopher Kolade featuring People, Leadership and Management in one volume; Business and Economy, Nation Building and Ethics in another; and Broadcasting in the last volume. It was called Kolade’s Canons. To title a three-volume book about him as Kolade’s Canons sounds almost messianic. In truth, he led an unblemished ethical life as part of an economic life.

What those three volumes said and showed concretely was that Dr. Christopher Kolade was consistently exemplary and deeply knowledgeable throughout his varied career as a teacher, broadcaster, corporate executive, diplomat, university administrator, and preacher. They said further that he was a shining example of public and private life. Yes, he was a remarkable man, an erudite scholar and practitioner, someone who effortlessly exerted much influence through ease, a simple and natural sense of carriage. Let us not forget to mention that in his conduct, he used words attractively and spoke distinctly. All those who encountered him felt some purity about him.

The same praises continue to resonate even in death when his alma mater, Government College, Ibadan, amongst many, put out an obituary that simply said he was an epitome of competence, integrity, and selfless service. The only missing line in the obsequies is that he was an exceptionally great thinker and jolly to the core.

About a year ago, I sat down with him in his living room to talk about company succession. The conversation expanded to life and the imminence of death. An end was bound to come for all mortals, and so it did for him on Wednesday, October 8, 2025.

Now, when I am called Dr. Kolade, I nod and smile approvingly, knowing full well the old man bequeathed a name worthy of bearing, all enshrined in gold.

Dr. Kolade Mosuro is a Publisher, Bookseller, and Trustee of the Government College Ibadan Old Boys Association.