IF there is an essential instrument that autobiographers need to earn the confidence of their readers, it is a good deployment of memory as a writing tool. An autobiography that combines deft writing and skillful shuttle into the past of its subject, with elegant mastery of the terrain of writing, is a delight to read any day, anytime. ‘On the Journey to True Fulfilment: The Autobiography of Oluremi Atanda Omo Abake Elewe’ is a book in this category. A fluidly told story of the life of the author, his upbringing and engagements in life, the reader follows the fluid narrative of the serpentine journey of the life of Olurem Atanda.
A 634-page book, its sheer volume may initially scare a lazy reader. However, they would soon discover that, ‘On the Journey to True Fulfilment’ is a text with a flowing narrative that has a cohesive clarity and which arrests its reader from the very beginning. It only sets the reader free when he approaches its Index. The author’s simple narrative technique is very apt for the autobiography, enabling him to explain facts with no inhibition and allows him to weave events of his narration in a persuasive manner that convinces the reader of the validity of his story.
Divided into nineteen chapters, the book reveals the essential elements of the life trajectory of the author, his birth, boyhood, journey into adulthood, schooling, working years and the various encounters he has had in life – positive, negative, life-threatening, elevating and all that – all of which contributed immensely in moulding the 80-year old OlueremiAtanda who is being celebrated today.
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In the book, you will encounter a man who places a unique and I dare say, rare love, for his native land. Iwo, from the first word in the book, to the last, seemed to be the oxygen that sustains the total narrative of Oluremi’s life. You can even be pardoned to guess that the totality of the author’s quest to become somebody in life, from youth to adulthood, was pegged on the need to make Iwo, his nativity primus inter pares. While in the public and civil service, Atanda was mindful of the growth of his town; even when not a full-fledged politician, he intervened in its development and seemed to perceive its developmental strides as sine qua non to his own development in life.
As a student of the Quranic school where his parents enrolled him at a tender age in Iwo, or as a Western education student, beginning with schooling at Baptist Day School, Oke-Odo, Iwo, young Oluremi demonstrated a brilliance and precociousness that was almost a subject of legend. These strides took him to Molusi College, Ijebu-Igbo, Government College, Ibadan, University of Nottingham and his doctoral degree at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. His teachers revered him, his classmates literally worshipped his brain and a then-appreciative Nigerian society activated his study by awarding him scholarships at every point of those educational attainments.
I have read many biographies and autobiographies. None is in the class of ‘On the Journey to True Fulfilment: The Autobiography of Oluremi Atanda Omo Abake Elewe’ in terms of the quantum of regurgitation of decades-old information that is contained therein. Perhaps the greatest strength of this book is the information available about the author, from the macro to the micro. Information saturates the length and breadth of the autobiography. It will make a reader to want to ask the author if he, from the day of his birth, aware he would live this long, aware that he would someday write his biography, had been jealously keeping a bank of information which he dished out in this book in their minutest details.
For instance, how could an 80-year old recall so vividly an event that happened while he was in Standard Three in 1950 when a teacher, whose name he still recalled, beat one of his brothers one day, so mercilessly that he and another brother of his burst into tears? How did he recall so vividly how the teacher not only beat him for engaging in what I call communal cry but, mockingly teased his brother by saying, ‘awon brothers e ma ti e n ba e sunkun’?
As the reader reads through the book, he will naturally wait for the intersection where Oluremi Atanda will avail him the details of the story that makes his name a household commodity in this part of the country. It is the story of Atanda Group of Schools and how it became an octopod among educational establishments, a precursor of virtually all such ventures today. Atanda Group has since given birth to many other offshoots.
There is no gainsaying the fact that, though Atanda made his name as an agriculturist and one of the first set of Nigerians who scooped higher degrees in pre and post-war era in Nigeria, Atanda Group of Schools was the incubator of how Oluremi Atanda became a household name. Those who however assume that the founding and rise of the school were a simple curve on a graph line for Oluremi Atanda would be shocked to read in the book that the school literally went through hot crucible to be where it is today. It struggled to be approved by government, went through internal matrix of corruption, misplaced trust and stabbing in the back by those the founder placed in the administrative top echelon of the school.
As said earlier, the author dedicated sizeable chunk of the book either to wholesale reference to the politics and development of Iwo or chunky paragraphs of the book to discussing issues that have to do with the town. He got involved in the politics of Iwoland and like every politician will recount, he was faced with barefaced treachery, false reading of his political movements which led to his eventual bowing out of politics.
The right summation of ‘On the Journey to True Fulfilment: The Autobiography of Oluremi Atanda Omo Abake Elewe’ should be that it is a narrative of the life of a man who was desirous of making a success of his life, who eventually traverses a journey of life that is a mixture of sweetness and bitterness.
- Dr. Adedayo, columnist with the Tribune, reviewed this book on the occasion of Atanda’s 80th birthday celebration.