A great teacher named Gamaliel

 But this article is not about Jewry. It is about a Nigerian with the Jewish name of Gamaliel.  That name is one of the most influential in Jewish religion and civilization dating from the first century of the Christian era. Gamaliel was a great teacher of the law, and was, by some accounts, the head of the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish court in ancient Jerusalem. According to Jewish lore,“Since Rabban Gamaliel the Elder died, there has been no more reverence for the law, and purity and piety died out at the same time.” For Christians, he was a figure of moderation and wise counsel at a time when the early church was the object of bloody persecution. As recounted in the Book of Acts 5:33-35, “But when they heard this, they were cut to the quick and intended to kill them. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the Law, respected by all the people, stood up in the Council and gave orders to put the men outside for a short time. And he said to them, ‘Men of Israel, take care what you propose to do with these men’.”

We in Nigeria can also celebrate that among us once lived a great man called Gamaliel. He was not a teacher of the law as his Jewish predecessor was famous for. But he was a teacher of a different sort. Contrary to the general presumption, the vocation of teacher is not confined to the narrow walls of the classroom or the Academy. You can be a teacher in a family; you can be a teacher in government and public service; and you can be a teacher in the boardroom. Being a teacher means being a man or woman who combines knowledge and high integrity and allowing these virtues to percolate everything you do and say.  As the sages teach us, the greatest wisdom is sometimes demonstrated in silence. There is a silence that speaks of the ages. A silence that speaks louder than words. A silence that harks of high wisdom of the Order of King Solomon. Our own Gamaliel belonged to that Oder, in whom dwelt an excellent spirit, as was said of Daniel of old.

My father and mentor Gamaliel Onosode passed away in a Lagos hospital on Tuesday 29^th September. I had heard his name throughout my growing years as one of the legendary giants of Nigerian industry and the boardroom. It was not until the summer of 2005 that we met in person.  It was under one those arrangements ordered by fate. I had just returned to Nigeria after more than a decade abroad. As our residence was not yet ready, my family and myself had to spend several weeks at the Abuja Hilton. Onosode, who was serving on an advisory capacity for the Federal Government was our next door neighbor on the tenth floor. We soon formed a firm friendship. We always made it a point to have breakfast and dinner together.

I have learned from my French diplomatic friends that you can tell a lot about a man from just his dining habits – from the way he handles his cutlery to the way he eats his soup and doles out his helpings, down to the elegance of dinner conversation, the choice of words and the rest of it. Probably this is why dinner and eating are almost religious rites among the French!

I got to know Gamaliel Onosode as a man of high culture who wore his great learning with a light touch. He was a humorous, enlightened and highly cultured individual.

There was absolutely no trace of condescension towards me either on grounds of age, intellect, provenance or experience from his part. He treated me like a friend and an equal. Our topics of conversation often ranged from the pre-Socratic Greek thinkers Solon and Anaximander to Homer, Thucydides, Plato and Aristotle; Shakespeare’s immortal sonnets; the conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedonia. He gave me unforgettable lectures on Athens, Rome, Carthage and Julius Caesar. And Byzantium.

Gamaliel Offoritsinere Onosode was born in Ughelli, of Urhobo descent, on 22^nd May 1933. He attended the famous Government College Ughelli before winning a scholarship to study Classics at our premier university of Ibadan where he graduated in 1957.  As friends and classmates recall, Onosode plunged into the Ibadan campus like fish in water. He was not only University Scholar, a prize reserved for the brightest students, he was also a Government Scholar – a double Scholar, you could say.  Popularly known among his friends as “Gam”, he was said to have been an enthusiastic student politician on campus. He was to remain eternally devoted to his beloved alma mater.

The authorities of the University of Ibadan recently released an eulogy on Onosode in which they noted that, after graduating with brilliant honours in Classics, he made a “successful crossover to business management and banking and finance”. The word “crossover” was completely wrong, based on a profound misunderstanding. In those days the men and women who studied Classics were the princes of the academic world. At least that was the case until the 1960s in the great medieval universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The most brilliant people studied Classics, consisting largely of Greek and Latin language, history and philosophy. The second league went into medicine, engineering and the likes. The classicists were the people who became the leaders and administrators.  Studying the classics was considered the best preparation for leadership in government and the private sector. And so it was in their days.

One of Onosode’s old classmates and life-long friend has been Chief Emeka Anyaoku, who rose up to the exalted position of Foreign Minister and Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations. Anyaoku described the late Onosode, who was best man at his wedding as a remarkable and highly gifted gentleman, modest and total unassuming. Anyaoku once remarked that while mathematics trains the mind in thinking, the classics imbue it with both capacity for thought as well as humaneness.  It is great to be a genius, but it is glorious to be both a genius and a man of virtue. These two virtues were well expressed in Gamaliel Onosode as they have been in his bosom friend Emeka Anyaoku. They are among Nigeria’s finest.

The Ibadan Classics Department, to my recollection, is the premier and sole Classics Department in Nigeria. This is a great surprise and disappointment to a country which aspires to world leadership. I know that the Classics no longer have the influence they did in the past, but we as a country still need to train a small crop of classicists who can contribute to the development of the Humanities. The classics remain a vital part of any good liberal arts education. We need them sorely if we as a nation are to take our place among the standard-bearers of world civilization. It was my good privilege to have met the widow of the late Professor John Ferguson in the beautiful ambience of rural Sussex in England. Ferguson was the founder and head of the Ibadan Classics Department; a great teacher and mentor to Onosode, Anyaoku and succeeding generations of students. He was a great man in his own right.

Onosode was no doubt a giant of industry in this country and a statesman without reproach or blemish. He was also Director and Adviser to President Shehu Shagari on the budget. In the 1960 he was the pioneer Secretary of the Nigerian Industrial Development Bank (NIDB) which was later to metamorphose into the Bank of Industry (BOI). He was Chairman and Chief Executive of NAL Merchant Bank from 1973-1979; Chairman, Commerce Bank during 1979-1983. He also chaired the boards of the Stock Exchange, Dunlop and Nigerian LNG and was for many years the President of Nigerian Stockbrokers. He was Chairman of Airtel, the pioneer telecommunications company in Nigeria. He also headed several public commissions, notably the Commission on Parastatals.

Gamaliel Onosode loved Nigeria so much. He was never the type to leave our country in search of the proverbial “greener pastures”. I understand he was offered the opportunity to be the pioneer President of the African Development Bank Group as far back as 1975. Hewas said to have turned it down.

For all his services and accomplishments, he was a recipient of several national and international honours, among them the Order of the Federal Republic (OFR) and Fellow of the World Bank’s Institute of Economic Development. He received a garland of honorary doctorate degrees from Obafemi Awolowo University at Ile-Ife, University of Benin, University of Ibadan, Rivers State University of Science and Technology, and Baptist Theological Seminary at Ogbomosho. He was pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council of his alma mater, University of Ibadan, a position he held with distinction, turning down all the emoluments that went with that position. He was also Chair of the University of Ibadan Endowment for 30 years, pooling together funds in excess of 1.5 billion naira today. He was also Chairman and Pro-Chancellor of the University of Lagos.

He was once honoured with a special award worth 1 million USD dollars by Airtel of which he was Chairman. He asked that the money be donated to his alma mater, Ibadan. An ardent Baptist and lay preacher, he was a pillar of the church and founder of Good News Baptist Church, with congregation with over 2,000 members. He also served as Chairman of the Global Missions Board of the Nigerian Baptist Convention. A deeply spiritual person, Onosode was not the type of individual you would ever catch mouthing the name of God carelessly as is the wont of many so-called ‘religious’ Nigerians. I have since come to know that people who go on and on about “God, God” are the most to be afraid of. Many of such are strangers to God as well as Humanitas.

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Professor Isaac Folorunsho Adewole described him as “a man with Spartan discipline, a perfectionist of sorts but with a human disposition”. It is an apt description of the man I knew. It was my great good privilege to have counted such an intellectual, leader and patriot as a senior friend and mentor. De profundis ad te Domini, clamaviam! Dr. Gamaliel Offoritsenere Onosode, OFR, BA (London) Hon. D.Sc.  (Ile-Ife) Hon. D.Sc. (Benin) Hon. D.Sc. (Rivers) Hon. DD (Ogbomoso) Hon. D.Litt. (Ibadan).