For once, I have to be personal. The year 2008 expired two days’ ago. At that period every year, and in all parts of the world, the traditional exchange of greetings centers mainly on best wishes for a happy new year. Realistically, the desire of any human being on such momentuous occasion should be good health and perhaps security against life mishaps.
Every other aspect should be left to probabilities, thereby making allowance for inevitable, if occasional setbacks in life. Even at that standard, I was just very anxious for year 2008 to go away and never to return in any shape of my bitter experiences. Indeed, the last days of 2008 were getting unduly delayed to pass away so that the new year could roll in.

Year 2008, for me, comprised 12 months of sad losses, one after another of very dear ones – friends, professional colleague and a great mentor. So much I valued each of them that I don’t even know who among them I should start grieving the loss and paying tribute.
Yet, I cannot help starting with the death of my childhood friend, secondary schoolmate, classmate and virtual twin brother, Femi Fatoba, whose death, a fortnight ago, further worsened an agonizing year for me. The loss of friends and great mentor was already traumatizing enough that more like the average Nigerian; I became impatient for 2008 to just pass away.

As if to rebuff me that whatever I wished even in November, the year 2008 with only 10 days’ left, (December 20) very cruelly recorded Femi Fatoba among its victims.
Femi Fatoba dead? We were both part of our mutual lives. If I ever committed murder, Femi Fatoba would confirm if I could, or indeed did, and in what circumstances I could have committed such crime. Fatoba was from Ado-Ekiti and I am from Ijebu-Ode. We were like Damon and Pythias of Oxford Readers’ Book Five of my generation’s Primary School pupils.

I was away in England over 30 years ago when Femi Fatoba was to marry an American lady. But before the ceremony, Femi sent his fiancée to me in London for my blessing. With that honour, I simply told Tereza (and later Femi himself) that she was already our wife in winning Femi’s heart, a feat many ladies, since our secondary school days, could not.
When many years later, an indigenous spouse emerged in his life, Femi Fatoba again sent her from Ibadan to me in Lagos for my consent. When offered such privilege(s) for final word on a friend’s prospective marriage, such a friend, remains not just a friend, not even just a twin brother, but also someone special.

Femi Fatoba was a Nigerian of very strong conviction. He retired a few years’ ago as a lecturer at the Theatre Arts department, University of Ibadan where, to his credit, he produced many actors and dramatists making waves on the scene or even in journalism. Femi so much loved the theatre that on retirement at University of Ibadan, his rich experience was acquired by the Niger Delta State University authorities on contract basis in establishing the institutions theatre arts department.
With his family still at Ibadan, Femi Fatoba regularly commuted between Ibadan and Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, either way, a long eight-hour journey, in loyal devotion to the welfare of his family and obligation to his students. He was as one of such trips from Yenagoa on Saturday, December 20, 2008 when one reportedly drunk driver on the other side of the road lost control, swerved unexpectedly to the left for a head-on collision with Femi Fatoba’s vehicle and impacted so heavily that all of four of them in that vehicle died either on the spot (in Fatoba’s case) or on the way to the hospital.
My phone rang, December 20, 2008, a little after eleven in the evening. The caller identified herself as Lanre Fatoba, the deceased’s erstwhile wife, then speaking as a widow. That was the first time Lanre would ever call me directly. Otherwise, calls were always between Femi Fatoba and me, except when I visited him and his family at Ibadan.

Why then the strange phone call from Femi Fatoba’s wife and at odd period of the evening? Curiously, I asked her if everything was okay, only for the widow to give me the sad news of my friend’s death.
I know Femi Fatoba to be ever healthy as anyone of our generation, even though now subdued by old age. Subdued, that is, in contrast to our tough days at the CMS Grammar School, Lagos.
Call it interrogation or curiosity for the details. Was Femi Fatoba ill? When did he die and why was the information just being given to me after over 12 hours? Well, in the confusion, which enveloped the newest widow’s life, it was almost impossible to locate my phone contact despite rigorous search. How would you console a lady in such distress? Who was with her at that literally dark time? (Almost 12 mid-night) Femi Fatoba’s younger sister, Yinka. After speaking to her, it became impossible for me to sleep.

Femi Fatoba and I met, for the first time, on a very wet Monday morning, January 27, 1955 at CMS grammar School, Odunlami Street, Lagos, at the site now occupied by the National Library of Nigeria. We were part of 62 new intakes from a joint national common entrance examination conducted by CMS Grammar School, Lagos, Methodist Boys High School, Lagos and Baptist Academy, Lagos, featuring candidates from all over Nigeria, although mostly from the south.
Within the hour after school morning prayers, the 60 of us were located to forms One A and B. Femi Fatoba, I and 28 others found ourselves in form One A on the first floor of the junior boys’ block.

We were mostly very enterprising. Retired Navy Commodore Rasaki Davies, retired director-General, Nigerian Law school, Koleade Abayomi, Duro Onabule, retired director of music, FRCN and organist of St. John’s Church, Aroloya, Lagos, Kehinde Okusanya, Seye Ogunjuwon, Ayodapo Williams, Segun Finnih, Demola Oshin, Kayode Ayodele, Dehinde Odunlami and of course, Femi Fatoba. Some of our colleagues in Form One B like Sola Odunfa, retired BBC correspondent, would rather keep our company.

Fresh and innocent boys from different primary schools and very used to equality of status, our first experience was that any schoolmate in a higher class had to be addressed as “Senior.” If that was tolerable, the very idea of fagging of junior boys by the senior was intolerable and had to be resisted.
I had he first taste when picked up by a senior for allegedly making noise. The punishment? He gave me what was said to be imposition, a sentence, “What annoys an oyster? A noisy noise annoys an oyster,” which I was to write out one hundred times and submit the second day. If only for the rhythm of the sentence, I obeyed but when I submitted the imposition, without even bothering to count if the number was complete, the senior asked me to tear the whole thing to pieces.
That was the first and last time any of us got trapped. Thenceforth, we became committal. Any attempted punishment on any of us by any senior became a battle to be fought by all of us. We had a good advocate in the English and Yoruba tutor, Baba Adeyemi, who mostly regarded any junior boy under punishment as a victim of the wickedness of senior boys.

Fagging in any case was largely a misused show of “seniority” by the seniors. Just as we resisted the punishment by senior boys, we also ensured our juniors supported us because we corrected, instead of punishing them if necessary. The whole thing was some kind of fun and in an entire pupil population of only 360 boys with a well-loved principal, Cannon B. A. Adelaja, every case we won was well-celebrated.

There was, throughout his life at school and teaching career, something easily distinguishable about Femi Fatoba. Not an albino, but he was so fair in complexion to pick him out in a crowd of one thousand. And when age plus life struggle slightly darkened his skin, he grew a long beard matched by only a former Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios, in length and spread. To give him out more, Femi Fatoba’s beard was completely grey. Michael Jordan must have copied his zero hair head style from Femi Fatoba. That was the measure of his peculiarity.

To see a very close friend like Femi Fatoba die so suddenly in an unprovoked motor accident less than a fortnight to the end of the last month of the year, it is a personal relief that the year 2008, like every year has no second chance.
Actually, Femi Fatoba’s death removed any doubt, if there was any, that 2008 was wicked to me, right from January. But let’s consider the last term - August upwards. My quiet rest had hardly begun. It was my holiday period but I was stunned by the death of our boss at the Daily Times when it mattered, Alhaji Babatunde Jose. But he died at the same age with Hubert Macaulay.

So? What has age got to do with it? Babatunde Jose was a builder of men and institutions. In his time, the greatest desire and pride of any Nigerian journalist sure of him/herself was to be a Timesman. You had to be good and once you were, you would shine and be appropriately rewarded under Babatunde Jose.
He was a father and let’s face it, no father can satisfy all his children. Impossible. Anything to the contrary is sheer hypocrisy and indeed, immodesty. Look back now, newspaper production all over the world at that time, was somehow primitive. As the over-all boss, Alhaji Jose was ever there in the “Chase room” to carry out corrections as early as half past six in the morning, when most reporters would still be in bed. While not necessarily doubting the judgement or competence of his team, Alhaji Jose, like a true professional throughout, thought, acted, behaved and taught as a reporter himself.
On what was called page proof on wet newsprint, Alhaji Jose’s presence advising against or objecting to any issue was in the form of blue pencil with a circle or question mark on the paragraph or the headline, a refined and inoffensive way of suggesting an alternative.

Unfortunately, the Daily Times group as an institution was destroyed in1975 by our self-proclaimed radicals and mis-educated socialists, who exploited the naivety of the Murtala-Obasanjo regime in advising the administration to take over the Daily Times group. The aim was to use the giant publishing house for mobilizing Nigerians. For what? Dictatorship and authoritarianism.
At that strange development, Alhaji Jose went into dignified retirement. Unknown to him, and perhaps to every observer, Alhaji Jose’s retirement was a sort of death sentence for the Daily Times.

To be fair, it must be mentioned that on Alhaji Jose’s death, one of the executioners of government take-over of Daily Times, Ebenezer Babatope was bold enough to publicly confess his regret in jointly instigating the take-over.
One of the ridiculous ironies of our time was that the very same Olusegun Obasanjo after running down the Daily Times publications, turned round to privatise the carcass. Nigeria!

In the same month of August 2008, my cousin, Chief Lekan Otubu, Osi-Balogun of Ijebu, one of us in the Bobayo age group and a member of Ijebu Council-of-Chiefs died after a major operation from which he appeared to be recovering. Imagine the shock when he passed on.
While still grieving that loss, a very good friend, popular actor, a humorist and traditional ruler in Remo, Oba Funso Adeolu also died. As friends, we became closer when, as a prince, he joined in fiercely opposing the attempted deposition of Oba Sikiru Adetona as Awujale of Ijebuland. In Yorubaland and especially, it was a mark of courage to take such a stand at that time against the opposition forces. Oba Adeolu, late Alaaye of Ode-Remo will be remembered for his contributions to preserve the dignity of Obaship in Yorubaland.
In September 2008, a professional colleague, Yinka Craig was to join the list at the age of about 60. Known to be healthy all along, we were shocked that he developed a fatal ailment, the news of which was first carried by the Sunday Tribune that “Yinka Craig is dying.” Dying? Seemingly impossible! But he eventually died.

Yinka Craig married an Ijebu lady and I always teased him to discharge cultural obligation of prostrating for me for marrying my sister. Yinka would always respond that in fact, I owed him the obligation to appreciate him as a good husband of my sister and securing her from the harassment of Nigerian men.
According to Yinka Craig, the two of us would have to establish our claim in a law court on condition that the presiding judge was not an Ijebu, lest the bias of three Ijebus – Mrs. Craig, myself and the judge – against him. I would fire back that similarly, no Egba judge should preside or such a judge and Yinka Craig, both Egbas, would be biased against us. We would then jokingly agree on an out-of-court settlement.

Yinka Craig belonged to that compelling generation of sports commentators and broadcasters. No history of broadcasting in Nigeria would be complete without listing Yinka Craig’s pioneering efforts on the weekly Newsline and Daily A.M.Express.
Only his family and the Nigerian Institute of Estate Surveyors would adequately appreciate Nigeria’s loss in the death last October, of Otunba Tade Ismael, about a month to his seventieth birthday. A good friend and a member of the Bobayo age group in Ijebuland, Tade Ismael, past president of the Institute of Estate Surveyors, was a hard worker, a good public speaker and very meticulous fellow.

Less than 24-hour before his death, he, as usual, held the audience spellbound at a lecture he delivered to his professional colleagues somewhere on mainland Lagos. Indeed, in a tribute at the well-attended burial ceremony, the current president of the Institute of Surveyors was still in shock to be openly incoherent, in apparent disbelief of the sad news, except that he faced the reality of Tade Ismael’s body being lowered into the grave.
Exactly a month later in November 2008, another friend, Dr. Olu Allison, a Chemical Engineer/Industrialist and also a member of Bobayo age group in Ijebuland died after a long illness. He was particularly versed in the history of the culture of Ijebus.

Way back in January 2008, another friend and member of Bobayo age group in Ijebuland, Biyi Okege, a civil engineer died in an accident along Ibadan-Ijebu/Ode road. Biyi Okege was to branch at Ijebu-Ode on his way to Lagos to attend the birthday celebrations of one of our friends. He never made it.
That might be an early warning I never noticed or seriously paid attention to. Hence, my anxiety for the year 2008 to just pass on. Only for Femi Fatoba to be added to the list.

Today, while remembering these mentor, (Alhaji Babatunde Jose) and friends, my great relief is that no single year ever returns a second time in anybody’s life.
Happy New Year!