Former vice chancellor of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile Ife, Professor Wale Omole, was known for his bold and often controversial decisions during his tenure. In this interview by TUNDE AYANDA and SEGUN ADEBAYO, Omole, now 82, shares insights into his life, the challenges he faced and his views on current issues, offering a unique perspective shaped by decades of academic and administrative experience.
Tell us about the Wale Omole Foundation and its connection with security in Yorubaland.
We have been working on the Wale Omole Foundation for a long time but somehow, we are not as active as we used to be because people are more interested in other things, particularly politicians. I am not a politician and I am not interested in politics. Now we have the Yoruba Academy and we have done a lot of work in terms of securing the South West. If you know the story of how Amotekun came to be, you will understand my point. We realised that other parts of the country are controlling the police and even the military. The military language in this country is Hausa. You have a lot of policemen who don’t even understand your language. If the police are for the people, they are supposed to be our friends, but they don’t speak our language. If we speak the same language, it will be easier for us and for them; we will know the families of the people who are policing us, and they will be able to tell us the truth and ensure security. My major concern is really animal science because we use animals like tigers to represent security, not only here but all over the world. This is what led us to Amotekun. Amotekun is leopard.
A lot of people come to us in the West and we accommodate them because we have no problem with anybody. But we realised that the more we accommodate them, the more pressure they put on us and the more they think that we are foolish. They are buying all our land and doing a lot of things and then we are becoming a minority economically in our own place. The leopard is an animal that usually stays by the riverside. It lies down there, even if you make a lot of noise from morning till night. It doesn’t care as long as you do not step on its tail. If you step on its tail, then you will see how stubborn it is; it can tear you into pieces. If we relate that to what is happening or has been happening in Yoruba land, you will realise that the people we accommodated have been stepping on our tails, and we have been peaceful. Why? We think we are the same people and should be tolerant of one another. We decided to protect ourselves, to avoid our people being needlessly killed. We don’t want people to be killed around us, torn into pieces. So, that gave birth to what we called the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN). But we are not in charge of the group because we were not given any ammunition to drive away any intruder into our land. We invited some of our leaders, especially the governors, to go to Abuja to seek some kind of protection for us. Not that the governors are not trying, but as you can see now, hunger is coming because a lot of our farmers can’t go to the farm anymore. Some even said in some quarters that cows are more important than human beings. In the South West, we said no, that is not who we are. We can’t continue to watch our people get killed and our women raped in the farms.
How much support did you enjoy from the state governors in the South West to drive this agenda amid the food crisis and other problems confronting the people in this part of the country?
The late governor of Ondo State, RotimiAkeredolu, was my student in the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife. His father, a pastor, was a great man. He brought Rotimi to me, and I must say that Akeredolu did well as a student. He even excelled as a lawyer that he became a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). He was always calling me to know what could be done to secure the South West, protect the people and ensure there was food security. Even when he was sick, he never stopped calling to ask me what we needed to do. I told him, ‘The forest is yours and you are the governor. If these marauders are killing our people with AK47, you can also apply for ammunition from the Federal Government. Even if we have Dane guns, we need to protect our people because protection is so important for us and people have taken us for granted so much, they think we can’t fight and we can’t do anything’.
Are you saying the Yoruba are ready to fight now?
We are not fighting but we are saying don’t kill us and don’t disturb us. Let our farmers go to the farm so that we can have food to eat. These are the issues on ground. So, we had to establish an organisation that has virtues because virtue is excellence, virtue is goodness. We don’t want to be quarrelsome; we want to be good to our people and everybody that approaches us. Do you know that many people don’t sell lands to Yoruba people in their places but we sell to everybody? Another important aspect of what we are preaching is ethics. Let’s use common sense and do the right thing; we want to teach our people how to be ethical, how to know the meaning of virtues – excellence, goodness, kindness, righteousness. That is what we are trying to do. We want this foundation to teach people how to go to farm, grow what they eat and be self-sufficient without having to kill anybody or get killed while in their farms making what they would feed their families with. It is about ethics and common sense.
What is the position of the South West governors on this idea?
I must commend late Governor Akeredolu. He was a courageous man who tried to get things right and protect his people. He would call at least once in a week despite his health condition. But I think the governors are more interested in other things rather than the potential of the people and their empowerment. The constitution expects you, as the governor, to protect your people and put their welfare at the top of your agenda. We have got to a point where we seem to have become a minority in our own land. These are the issues. So, we have to continue to interact with these governors. I have interacted with a lot of them even when we have the Yoruba academy but they have no time for us. Maybe one or two of them from the South West are doing well. I am not here to praise anybody and I am not a politician but the Oyo State governor, SeyiMakinde, by my assessment, is showing encouraging commitment to the issues we have highlighted. I don’t need anything from government because I don’t even vote during elections.
You don’t vote? What could be the reason for this?
The only time I voted was when MKO Abiolaran for president. He came to me in company with his wife to convince me to vote. I am a Jehovah’s Witness, we don’t do things like that.
Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t vote?
No, we don’t; we don’t get involved in politics. The reason is that politics is often about people’s money and we are not supposed to be spending people’s money on ourselves. We should spend people’s money on the people. Send people to school, make them happy. Many people cannot afford to sponsor their children; many people actually don’t give breakfast to their children, they hardly themselves eat. Can we continue to keep quiet? All we want to do is train people and teach our community how to improve their economics. There is cassava all over the place to make garri. There is yam all over the place for people to eat and grow. Those are the kinds of things we want to educate our people about—how to sell things and then have some resources for themselves. We will continue to talk to our governors; we are not fighting them. They said they want to run for office, but leadership is about service. If you don’t protect your people, who will vote for you when you are contesting? The same thing applies to everyone; regardless of your religion, you must eat, you must be kind to your neighbor. But all these values are missing in our daily lives. I am not looking for anything; I am 82. How can I be happy when a lot of my students who graduated many years ago are still looking for jobs? Now, agriculture is the richest sector on earth because food is important, but the farmers can’t even go to the farm anymore. These are the issues we must address by establishing something that can make our farmers go back to the farm and be productive.
There is hardship in the land and Nigeria’s problems seem to have defied solutions. How does this make you feel?
I read a lot of bad news every day that makes me sad. I can’t count the number of people I try to help. Most of these people, I don’t even know. I have been a pensioner for 25 years. The moment I hear someone is hungry or has nothing, it becomes my problem. I am so sentimental that sometimes when they tell me their problems, tears come to my eyes. But rather than crying, let us do something. I want to stop crying. When I give people something, it is God’s provision, not mine. We can be friends to one another, we can be kind to one another; we should be mindful of our brother’s plight because we all can’t be on the same level.
At 82, how do you see life now? What comes to your mind when you see the light of a new day?
Good question, but my answer might not be as beautiful as you want it. I lost my wife a few years ago. That is her picture over there. I know I am loved by God to have met my wife. It will surprise you that my wife and I lived together for 47 years and we never quarreled for once. It is not on record that we had any quarrel for 47 years. I was shocked when I lost my wife. I couldn’t explain what befell me. We were planning to go out but I didn’t see her come down the stairs. I went to the room to call her but found her dead in the shower. The shock took me out and I have not recovered up to today. Only God has sustained my life.
You never had any sort of argument? People may find that very hard to believe.
I can’t explain it; it must have been God. I’m an Ijesha man, she was Ijebu. And people would say ‘Ijebu oda, Ijesha osunwon’ (the Ijebu are not good, the Ijesha are not any better). Two years before I met her, I told my mother that I wasn’t going to get married. My brother, Professor SegunOmole, was rounding off his PhD in development engineering. I said, ‘Don’t worry, I don’t have to get married; my brother, always first-class in everything, should rather get married and move on with his life’.
WHY didn’t you want to get married?
I was young and busy with social life. I had a music band then. I was a deejay. I was looking for money and I didn’t know how to steal.
People say women are difficult to manage, how did you manage your woman for 47 years?
People say women are difficult to manage, but men aren’t any better either. We don’t understand women; they are blessed in a different way. Men always act like they are the boss but we are not, and that’s the truth. Women are not only meant to support men but they also add value to our lives and to the society at large. For men, even if you have money, who is going to cook the food for you? We tend to think having some money makes us superior and because of that, we become very arrogant towards women. I have said it several times, this thing you people call love, I don’t understand it. I’m not someone who falls in love easily. When I married my wife, her parents told me to take care of her and not let her suffer. That’s all. All they cared about was that I took care of her and I am glad I did that until she passed away. I mourned her for almost a year. I couldn’t eat. I was in the hospital for months and doctors couldn’t understand what was wrong with me. Today’s young men are looking for ladies from rich homes, and a lot of our men are not taking care of their women. You can’t keep pushing your responsibilities to women and expect your marriage to thrive. When I met my wife, I didn’t understand love. I only asked if she could live in a house where they only spoke Yoruba. At that time, she was teaching Use of English, and she said she would cope. I am a Yoruba man to the core. I told my children that if I fell sick, they should not take me to any hospital abroad because I didn’t want the white people to use me for experiment. Many black people who travel abroad for medical treatment often become experiments for these people. And it is very expensive to fly a dead body home from abroad.
You once said in an interview that you had never been admitted in the hospital. Your dad lived up to 108 years while your mother died at the age of 97. You are 82 now, is there anything you do to stay this healthy?
I went to the hospital at 79 because I lost my wife. As I mentioned, I mourned for eight months. Three of those months, I didn’t step out of my room. If you’re lucky enough to have a woman who never gave you any trouble, you will deeply miss her when she is no longer beside you. My wife lost her mother when she was eight years old, so my mother became her mother. My mother once asked her why she called me ‘Daddy’. I was 12 years older than her. Despite losing her mother at a young age, she was well brought up. Before we got married, I had to take her on a trip for three months before I could make up my mind. We visited about seven countries.
Tell us more about the deejay part of your life.
I loved music so much that when I was in school, anything I was taught, I converted to music and sing. The first thing I did whenever I left a class was to translate what I had been taught in English to Yoruba to have a deeper understanding of the subject and sing with it. A former student that I taught over 40 years ago told me recently that he hadn’t forgotten the music rhythm I taught them in class. He said it continued to help him to not forget things.
Do you regret any of your actions as OAU VC?
How can I regret doing things that made life easy for people? For example, I didn’t study computer in school but I knew that computer was going to be a big thing in years to come so I built a computer centre that the school uses up to today. As a leader, you have to know the language of the future. When I was appointed to the Council of the University, I knew we must have a computer building. Until 1975, OAU was a regional university. One of the Yoruba men who were in government as military men said the school should become a federal university and it became a federal university. If I had the opportunity, I would change it back to a regional university. At that time, we were producing drugs and foods for export. The drugs we are not making today, we were making them then. OAU was created in 1962 and by 1968, we were already known all over the world.
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