A GREAT TEACHER NAMED GAMALIEL
For as long as I can remember, I have always been fascinated by all things Jewish: the Talmud; Mishnah; the Kabbala and Zohar; The Ramban Moses Maimonides; tales of the Baalshem; down to moderns such as philosophers Martin Buber, Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt; writers Gershom Scholem, Sholem Alecheim, Walter Benjamin and Isaac Bashevis Singer; the extraordinary tales of the Hassidim; and remarkable figures such as Albert Einstein and Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz whom I met as a graduate student – a man widely regarded as the greatest living genius on earth. I of course feel sorrowful about the many travails of the dispossessed people of Palestine. However, in our age of growing anti-Semitism, I am proud to consider myself a friend of the Jewish people.
But this article is not about Jewry. It is about a Nigerian with the Jewish name of Gamaliel; reminding us of one of the most revered and influential names in Jewish civilization. During 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 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 Apostolic Church was the object of bloody persecution by the Jewish establishment and their Roman conquerors in equal measure. 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 named Gamaliel. Unlike his Jewish namesake, he was not a teacher of the law. 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.
You can also be a silent teacher. As the sages of old have taught us, the greatest wisdom is sometimes best demonstrated in silence. There is a silence that speaks of the eternal verities. 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 adopted father and mentor Gamaliel Onosode passed away in a Lagos hospital on Tuesday 29th September of bone cancer, age 82. 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 of those arrangements ordered by fate. I had just returned to Nigeria after more than a decade abroad to serve as Deputy Governor of the Central Bank. As our official residence was not yet ready, my family and myself had to spend several weeks at the Abuja Hilton. Onosode, who was serving on one of those advisory assignments that he was often drafted to serve by 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 whenever possible.
As an intern in the French diplomatic service and someone trained in the art and science of French public administration, I have learned 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 regarded almost as religious rites among French officialdom since the days of Louis XIV and Cardinal Richelieu!
I got to know Gamaliel Onosode as a man of high culture who wore his great learning with a light touch; a pious, humorous and highly enlightened human being.
Come to think of it, 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. Although we were not on regular contact as I would have loved, we met on several other occasions in the course of our activities in the financial and banking industry, notably in the context of the Chartered Institute of Bankers.
Gamaliel Offoritsinere Onosode was born in Ughelli, of Urhobo descent, on 22nd 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" is not the right word, based as it is on a profound misunderstanding. In those good days, the young men and women who read the Classics were considered to be the princes and princesses 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 greatest lawyers often had a solid grounding in classical studies as part of their intellectual foundation. The classicists were the people who became the leaders and administrators. It was considered the best preparation for leadership in government and the private sector. And so it was in their days. For example, when the Commonwealth Development Corporation was looking for its first West African executive, Emeka Anyaoku, an Ibadan classicist, was appointed as the best candidate from the whole of our sub-region.
One of Onosode's old classmates and life-long friend, Anyaoku rose through the ranks of the Commonwealth Secretariat to the exalted position of Secretary-General. Anyaoku describes the late Onosode, who was best man at his wedding, as a remarkable and highly gifted gentleman who was also modest and totally unassuming. Anyaoku once remarked that while mathematics trains the mind in thinking, the Classics imbue the mind with both capacity for thought and humaneness. It is great to be a genius, but it is more glorious to be both a genius and a man or woman of virtue. These two virtues were well expressed in the late 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 rather disappointing for a country like ours with its great scholars and geniuses; a country which aspires to world leadership. Granted that the Classics no longer wield the influence they once did, we as a country still need to train a small crop of classicists who can contribute to the development of the Humanities. Historians are only now acknowledging the African roots of Hellenic civilization. I spent several memorable years in the ancient city of Tunis. I got to know of Old Carthage and the role of the African heritage as far as Roman civilization goes. The Classics remain a vital part of any good liberal arts education. We in Africa need them sorely if we are to take our place among the standard-bearers of world civilization.
As it happens, it was also my 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 and devoted teacher and mentor to Onosode, Anyaoku and succeeding generations of students. He was a great man in his own right. I saw in Mrs. Ferguson's eyes a deep and inexpressible love for Ibadan and for Nigeria as a whole.
Onosode was a giant of industry in this country -- a statesman without reproach or blemish. He was served for some years as Director and Adviser to President Shehu Shagari on the budget. In the 1960s 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. Unlike some of us, 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 President of the African Development Bank Group in the 1970s but he flatly turned down the offer.
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 Foundation, raising the princely sum of 1.5 billion for the institution. 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, numbering a congregation of over 2,000. 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 among the people one ought to be most afraid of. In truth, 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 humane disposition". It is an apt description of the man I knew. It was my great good privilege and honour to have counted such an intellectual, leader and patriot as a senior friend and mentor – one of the greatest Nigerians of the post-independence generation. 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).
De profundis ad te Domini, clamaviam!
Obadiah Mailafia
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