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‘I have no regret advising Fajuyi to join Nigerian army’

By Muyiwa Adeyemi (Head South West Bureau Ado Ekiti)
31 July 2016   |   2:24 am
Alhaji Saburi Adeleye is not just one of the best friends of the first Military Governor of the old Western Region, Col. Francis Adekunle Fajuyi, but the 104-year old man was the one who advised him to join the Nigerian Army.
Adeleye

Adeleye

Alhaji Saburi Adeleye is not just one of the best friends of the first Military Governor of the old Western Region, Col. Francis Adekunle Fajuyi, but the 104-year old man was the one who advised him to join the Nigerian Army.

The centenarian, who lives in Iyin Ekiti, retired as a sergeant in the Nigerian Army in protest over the gruesome killing of his friend and brother, Fajuyi, during the counter coup of July 29, 1966. He said though Fajuyi was a school teacher before he convinced him to join the army, he had no regret for his advise, because 50 years after he sacrificed his life for the nation, he was still being remembered as a courageous soldier and respected by all and sundry.

To the old soldier, who is popularly known by his nickname in the community as Baba Mebolosi rin (Which literary means, ‘I am not friendly with wretchedness’), he is well respected for not only encouraging Fajuyi to join the army, but for being instrumental to the enlistment of the former Military Governor of old Western Region, General Adeyinka Adebayo in the army.

Even at his old age, Alhaji Adeleye still walks straight without the aide of walking stick and his memory is still sharp to recall some defining moments in the life and times of his bosom friend, Fajuyi, who he still describes as an ‘Epitome of Ekiti value’.

Recalling Fajuyi’s journey to the Nigerian Army, the retired Sergeant said, “we became friends in 1933, in Ado Ekiti, but we took the decision to join the Army in 1943, I am older than Fajuyi, but we were bosom friends. If he were to be alive now, he would have been 90 years this year. We were five that set out for Ilorin, where the Nigerian Army was recruiting soldiers. Remember that the World War 11 (WW2) was still raging, and only brave and courageous young men that joined the Army them. But five of us from Ekiti set out for the journey from Okesa Area, close to Fajuyi’s family house and trekked to Ajase town, in Kwara State, which is about 20 kilometres to Ilorin.

“Fajuyi was then teaching in Aisegba-Ekiti and was receiving 12 shillings per month. I returned from Lagos and went to meet him that I wanted to join the army. I told him about my previous attempt to join the army at the Glover Memorial hall in Lagos, but I was not enlisted, because of my diminutive stature. I told him my passion for the Army, the discipline and the way soldiers carried themselves in the society, which earned them respect, endeared me to the profession. I told Fajuyi that I still wanted to give a trial in Ilorin and advised him to join me,” the old man explained.

Adeleye said, “he agreed and around 1pm‬, one afternoon, we set out for Ilorin with three other friends. I had suggested we leave the following morning but Fajuyi disagreed, he said his father may not be favourably disposed to his decision of joining the Army. In the team was a younger brother to the wife of Ewi of Ado Ekiti, Oba Rufus Aladesanmi, who I think has become an Oba now in one of Ekiti towns.

“We trekked for six hours from Ado Ekiti to Ajase town. By 7pm‬, we had difficulty continuing with the journey, because we were all hungry. We searched for food but none was available, though Fajuyi wanted us to continue with the journey that night but we said no and prevailed on him that we should sleep at Ajase Motor Park.

“Fajuyi still did not agree, but while the argument ensued we saw an ambulance conveying a corpse from Ajase to Ilorin, I waved it down. I was smarter then than them, because I had lived in Lagos, I approached the ambulance driver and told him our journey, he agreed to carry us provided we can squat with the corpse, we had nothing to fear but the driver still insisted that each person must pay one shilling,” he noted.

According to him, “the ambulance took us to Ilorin and we trekked to a Catholic Church on Jebba Road, where Fajuyi’s teacher, who was posted from Ado-Ekiti to Ilorin, was residing. We got there around 10pm.That teacher, Mr. Rewane was a white man, and he gave us a cup of garri and four cubes of sugar for supper.

“The next morning, he asked us about our mission to Ilorin and we told him we wanted to join the Army. He was surprised. He asked Fajuyi if he brought his Standard Six certificate and Fajuyi said yes. He expressed his dissatisfaction to Fajuyi joining Army but volunteered to secure him another job.“The remaining four of us then left Fajuyi with his teacher and went to the place where the enlisting into the Army for the WW11 was going on and as soon as we got there, we were promptly welcomed and in less than 15 minutes, we were registered.”

For Adeleye, five days after they were enlisted at the Army recruitment camp, “Fajuyi came to visit us, his teacher had secured a job for him as a forest guard and he rode a bicycle and wore the uniform. They allowed him into the camp because he was a government worker. We stayed for 22 days in camp, before we were ferried inside the train to Enugu for military training. We had spent three months in camp when I saw my friend, Fajuyi again. He said he had been sacked from the forestry office in Ilorin because they found out that he was from Ekiti and not from the Ilorin. At that time, it was difficult for somebody from the West to get job in the North. Because of his sack, he said he had no option but to go back to Army recruitment centre.”

According to Pa Adeleye, while Fajuyi’s set was taken to the CTS in Accra, Ghana for their military training, his set trained in Enugu. It was from their respective training camps that they were later redeployed to the war fronts in India.“When the war ended in 1945, he was redeployed to Zone 6 in Apapa, Lagos while I returned home. He had been trained to become a clerical officer in the army because he had a Standard Six Certificate.

“I went back to meet him, we used to hail each other with our nicknames. I used to call him Kakao, while he called me SB. He encouraged me to stay in the Army with him. He took me to his boss, Major D. J. Bonne, a white man. When he told his boss that I was staying, the boss was happy and offered me a post of a Dispatch Rider for the then Governor-General John Macpherson.

“While in the service of the then Governor-General as a dispatch rider, I was able to assist my younger brother, General Adeyinka Adebayo, who came to stay with me in Lagos then to be enlisted in the Nigerian Army. When Adebayo completed his Class four education in 1948, I searched for a white-collar job for him in other areas but we didn’t get. I later asked him if he would like to join the Army and he said yes. I said Ademulegun, Sodeinde, Ironsi and Ogundipe were then the highest ranking officers in the Nigerian Army then.

“I took Adebayo’s application letter to the Governor-General and he wrote exactly the same thing Sodeinde wrote in his own application letter. The only difference was the address and name of Robert Adeyinka Adebayo.”He continued, “the Governor-General was surprised and asked me why my younger brother was bearing that name. I was a Sergeant then in the army and I explained to him that after loosing my father, my mother moved on to marry Adebayo who was Adeyinka’s father and that settled it. That was how my younger brother, General Adebayo, emerged the number five of the Nigerian army till date. He is the only one alive now out of the five of them. Adebayo started his military training at the 3rd Battalion in Abeokuta.

“Fajuyi and I were very close friends, and more like brothers, we married into the same Ereguyi family in Okesa quarters in Ado-Ekiti. We married almost at the same time and our wives put to bed almost at the same time. He was a very good friend. He was very compassionate and selfless. He was not yet an officer when he assisted me with all the privileged information we needed to make my brother, General Adebayo an officer of the Nigerian Army then.

“I was on annual vacation when he was killed. I was here in Ado Ekiti, while he was in Ibadan. The then Military Head of State, General Aguiyi Ironsi was on a visit to Ibadan when the coupists came to assassinate him under Fajuyi’s roof. Fajuyi had protested and offered himself to be assassinated with Ironsi to prevent a war between the East and West. He said that if his life was spared, the Easterners would invade the West with a mindset that he was responsible for the death of Ironsi and the ensuing calamity would be monumentally tragic, hence, he offered his life to forestall such tragedy.

“He was ordered to get down from the vehicle that took the coupists back, but he refused and that was when they shot him. It was his death that made me resign from the Army. By that time, I had put in 11 years of service. I was really disillusioned with the job and opted out. My number was 101538 as a Sergeant in the army.

Fajuyi was a very approachable leader, he listened to advice from his followers and his people. This is a virtue that is lacking among our leaders today. They don’t listen to advice from their subordinates and the people and that is why they are not doing well,” he concluded.

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