JOF Falore: Ọmọ Ayékọ

By

_Kolade Mosuro_

He had a lot of stories inside him, many of which occasioned laughter and joy. JOF was jolly, a generally good-natured man.

His memory of GCI was encyclopaedic, and this always fed him stories. He belonged to the 1962 set and he was at a time the National Secretary of the Old Boys’ Association. Wherever you met him, be it in circumstances of work or leisure, he was always in a reminiscent mood about GCI. His commitment to the values fostered at GCI was total and he never failed to give of his time and resources. His last assignment was that of Governor of Carr House. I remember calling him to take up the assignment. I explained that we needed someone to help re-introduce the ethos of the old school to the new boys. He wouldn’t let me finish. He jumped at it. As it turned out, he was the most senior in the pack and so became the Governor-General among the five House Governors. I teased him that he was a failed politician who found a back door as a House Governor to access the title of ‘His Excellency’. He took his assignment to heart and his meetings had all the flavours of Falore in them. They would start about 1:00 pm and finish about 6:00 pm. What on earth could they be discussing for so long? Falore was at the helm of affairs and he regaled the group with stories after stories, drawing from an inexhaustible GCI repartee, until it was dusk. But they got the job done and did so with zeal.

Sometime in 1990, he and Elusade (1954), with Demuren (1962) calling in from the UK, were holed up in a Nigerian Breweries Guest chalet in Ibadan, under the auspices of Banwo Smith (1959), who was then the Brewery Manager, writing the second in the series of the GCI story. I stumbled on them. They tossed the manuscript at me to read. I finished reading it by the poolside and didn’t think it was at par with the first book about GCI. In that case, Banwo Smith said, I must appear before the NEC to give my verdict. I gave a scathing verdict. Lekan Are (1948), who was presiding as Chairman at the meeting, did not mince words. If that was my verdict, I should take the manuscript immediately for repairs. He moved to the next topic. There was no room for appeal nor protestation. The repair turned out to be a fun project and one which brought JOF and I further closer.

Much later, JOF had a publishing project he shared with me. His father was an ordinary man who had done extraordinary things in his community as a police officer and later as politician. JOF wanted these simple, great achievements captured in a book. We went to work on the project much to his delight. When the book was finished and published, he rushed a copy to Governor Bola Ige. According to JOF, Bola Ige admired the book, with the exception of the title. We had recommended the title “Ọmọ Ayékọ”, JOF chose a different title. On reading the book, Bola Ige suggested to JOF that the book should have been titled “Ọmọ Ayékọ”. It is for that reason that I have titled this piece, “JOF Falore: Ọmọ Ayékọ”, in tribute to him.

Two books down his sleeves, he caught the publishing bug. He was from thereon going to be a publisher, thus creating his publishing company, Phaloray Bookways, and choosing social customs and mores as his unique genre. His books on etiquette, Tips of Etiquette and Decent Lifestyle, Books 1 and 2, drew heavily upon what we were taught at GCI. JOF, through his books, was now championing a crusade to improve social conduct in secondary schools across the country. We sold hundreds of the publications at our bookshop.

When payment was due, I would make JOF renounce all the negative things he had said about the Ijebus before authorizing the release of his cheque. Once he got his cheque, he went on the rampage again, touting that Ilesha, his home town, is the centre of the universe and a chief in Ilesha is higher in status and nobility than a king in Ijebuland or any other land. At his next payment, I would again make him renounce all the aspersions he cast about the Ijebus. He would collect his cheque, put it in his purse, tuck the purse under his armpit and strut to his car, saying Ijebu money is worthless anyhow!

I chastised and queried his education when he told me he had never travelled out of the country. My winning argument was the Somali maxim, borne out of a nomadic life, that a man who has not travelled outside of his land, does not have eyes. It was important to see a different world. The opportunity soon arose for him to visit the UK, where one of his sons was attending school.

When he returned, he excitedly came over, still yawning from the rigours of the journey. His overseas trip was an eye-opener in developmental economics. He had ventured into politics and such an exposure could be helpful. But here again I warned him. What he had seen was not all necessarily better. Different, admittedly, but not necessarily better, because there is the veneer that peels off when you place things under a critical searchlight. We had been taught at school that not all that glitters is gold. His venture into politics was not a success. As much as he tried, he believed he was good, he thought he was good, but he was not good enough, or should one say well-armoured, for the murky politics of Nigeria. In the end, he threw in the towel.

I called him one morning and asked: ‘JOF what are you doing?’ He answered that he was still in bed and went on jokingly to complain that I should not be waking him up that early at his age. The call was about 10.30 am! He wasn’t that elderly - but he used age as a great leverage to set him apart and taunt any interloper, to force respect. I took in his banter and said to him that there was a GCI problem that needed to be solved. In that case, he said, he would join me in the office in an hour. And so he did. Long before GCI was handed to the old boys to manage, Falore and I were deputed to face the Prof. Niyi Gbadegesin committee the government had set up to argue a case why the school should be handed over to the old boys. And when the school was finally handed over, it was Falore and I that were despatched to seek rapprochement with some unwilling civil servants to accept that we would make great use of the opportunity. JOF was Mr. GCI personified.

JOF was also a playful prankster. If he met his senior, it was convenient for him to claim that he was a chief from Ilesha and could thereby no longer be a junior to anybody. If he met a junior, he rubbed it in that he was both a senior and a chief, affording him the latitude to condemn the junior to his status. If you challenged him, he would retort with his usual rhetoric: what is GCI turning into that you had the effrontery to disagree with him! You could never catch him off balance. He had the garb and he wore his clothes very well, befitting of a chief.

He made you laugh so much, you couldn’t believe that he could ever be serious, but then deep down, he was a serious man. He studied geology and people in his field learn to look down and look deep. They could smell liquids and minerals beneath the earth surface. He tuned his nostrils to detect water. I teased him. While his colleagues struck oil which turned out to be gold, he struck pure water. But then water is life. People like him make life worthy and impactful.

The last time he came over to my office, I observed and remarked that he had lost weight. He admitted that much, that he had not been feeling well. In his jocular manner, he assured me that there was nothing to worry about, and in any event, he promised to give me notice when death was near. I was at a meeting early Wednesday, April 22, 2026, when it was announced that JOF was gone. What? How could he have, without notice? JOF was an extremely good company and only in death did he ever break a promise.

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