KOLE AND I – JOINED UP LIVES

by Ladipo Adamolekun

(read at the Memorial on 8th August 2023)

Kole occupe mon espirit tout le temps et je parle de lui comme s’il est avec moi… Je réserve bien des choses jusqu’au moment quand je rencontrai Kole.

- Diary entry, July 23, 1967

(Kole is on my mind all the time and I talk about him as if he were with me…I keep back many things until I meet Kole).

From the time I first met Kole in Oyemekun Grammar School in 1957 to his passing in 2023, we remained close friends. Our friendship was not quite at the level of David and Jonathan in the Bible but it was the closest and longest that I’ve had; it lasted sixty-six years and some months!

We met as Assistant Librarians in Oyemekun Grammar School in 1957. He was a first- year student while I was in my second year. We instantaneously became friends as co-lovers of books. This rapidly extended to the social sphere as we visited each other’s family. We would have meals at his mother’s on weekends in downtown Akure and he would spend time with me from time to time during vacations in my hometown, Iju. There was a deepening of our friendship when I became the School Librarian in 1959 and he was one of my close lieutenants in running the library. Then, I became the Head Boy and Senior Prefect in 1960 and his unrestricted access to me baffled both my classmates and his own because our close friendship defied the established “seniority” norm.

After Higher School Certificate in separate schools (he went to King’s College and I went to Christ’s School) we both returned to Oyemekun as Junior Teachers in January 1964 and we shared an apartment. I moved on to Christ’s School after one term but we joined up again as undergraduates at the University of Ibadan later in the year. Although we were both active in Students Union politics, he did not show interest in my deep involvement in the University’s wing of the Action Group. A special dimension to our closeness was sharing a common set of criteria for selecting girlfriends!

A year after graduation, we were both in Britain for postgraduate studies – he, to Edinburgh, and I, to Oxford. When Edinburgh insisted on Kole taking a test to evaluate his ability to use English for postgraduate work, he threatened to quit the university. I advised him to abandon that route and provide appropriate evidence to the relevant authorities. His evidence was adjudged fully satisfactory, and he proceeded with his programme. Significantly, his first novel, The Edifice (Heinemann, 1971), was published a year before he obtained his PhD at that university!

Kole’s research brought him to Oxford for one term in 1970, and we enjoyed spending time together. He served as the best man at my wedding in August 1971 and hosted us a few weeks later during our honeymoon in Edinburgh/Glasgow conurbation. Then, we returned to Nigeria in 1972 and soon became colleagues at the University of Ife. The family friendship between the Omotosos and Adamolekuns on Ife campus was among the closest.

We would later proceed into exile but remained continuously in touch through letters, phone calls and exchange of visits over one-and-a-half decades. Then, tragedy struck: my spouse passed on in 2002 and Kole’s also passed on in 2003 – joined-up lives in bereavement added a mystery dimension to our friendship. He stood with me and my children shoulder to shoulder in Iju, and I was with him and his children in Cape Town.

Although Kole was still in South Africa (he had become a citizen in the 1990s) while I returned to Nigeria at the end of my international career at the World Bank, we remained close, joined-up across the African continent. In particular, he participated actively in Iju Public Affairs Forum Series between 2006 and 2015: he gave the presentation at the first quarterly session in January 2006 and chaired the last quarterly session in 2009. And he regularly provided insightful commentaries on the presentations at the subsequent annual Forum sessions held between 2011 and 2015.

Then, Kole came to Nigeria in 2016 to give back, based in his beloved Akure. He provided advisory services for Governor Olusegun Mimiko and taught successively at two universities, Akungba and Elizade, until he took ill in July 2019 and returned to South Africa for treatment. With Niyi Akinnaso, who was also based in Akure, and was giving back through the same activities as Kole, we constituted a “troika” (or “three musketeers”) that engaged in monthly wide-ranging conversations over meals, sometimes in a hotel in Akure, and sometimes in our respective homes. And Kole and I exchanged regular family visits with our spouses, Bukola and Jumoke, spending time in our respective homesteads in Akure and Iju. (Akure – Iju road had not “disappeared” by 2019)!

I give my last word to Kole.

“Ladi and I”.

“On the personal side, it is now obvious that over the years, we were right to yearn after some kind of spending some quality time together, en famille! That we could not do so all those years has perhaps made these recent opportunities such incredible happenings. I do not think that I have been happier in so many years… I am trying to understand where we come from and where we are. There is no doubt about what we are able to do. For the future of our families. For the future of our countries. For the future of our continent and of humanity. Our contribution continues… I thank you; I love you, and I wish you and Jumoke and the family, on both sides the greatest possibilities of our impressive possibilities…

With the greatest affection.”

Kole, October 31st 2009 (Email message)

AU REVOIR, KOLE.

Ladipo Adamolekun, August 2023.