Nonagenarian Chief Theophilus Amoo Modupeoreoluwa Omisore is a successful architect. In this interview by ADEOLU ADEYEMO, he speaks on a wide range of past and present issues, including the state of the nation. Excerpts:
At 93, you look good and radiant, what is the secret and also can you speak on your beginning?
My name is Theophilus Amoo Modupeoreoluwa Omisore. I am an Ife man. Born and bred in Ife 93 years ago, going to 94. I attended Saint Philips, Ayetoro Primary School, Ife. From there, I went to Oduduwa College. I worked briefly in the Treasury, Ibadan, and from there, I worked at Barclays Bank, which is now called Union Bank.
My colleagues in the bank then include MKO Abiola. I left Nigeria in 1958 to study architecture in England. I came back briefly in 1962, and finally, in 1964, I came back to Nigeria and qualified as an architect. I have practised now for well over 50 years. Right now, I am the chairman of a company called, ABDT Omisore Group Consult.
Let me tell you a little bit of my life history. I was not supposed to be born at all. My mother, may her soul rest in peace, was married to the late Ooni Ajagun, and when her husband died, she had two children with that man. My mother was very young at that time, so she got married to my father and had me and my sister.
All my names, I didn’t like them – Theophilus, Amoo, Modupeoreoluwa. All those three names had a negative impact on me. In Ife, tailors are called ‘Theophilu’, so because of that, I didn’t like the name. I also learnt that Amoo is someone who is naughty and my third name, I felt that only a feminine should bear that name but I hadn’t got the courage to ask anybody until I came back as an architect and I could face my mother.
I went to my mother and asked why she chose all those terrible names for me, and she told me that my late dad named me Theophilus and that if I had any issue with that, I should go and meet him to ask.
On Amoo, she asked why I didn’t like the name and I told her it’s a name given to naughty people and my mother said it’s my conglomen and even asked if I wasn’t a rascal.
I told her I’d agreed but why did she name me Dupe and she immediately told me she gave me that name. She said I wasn’t expected to live for one day. According to my mother, she had a very close whom they did everything together. The friend was pregnant while my mother was also carrying my pregnancy. However, the woman died during pregnancy, and my mother decided to go and pay her the last respect, but people warned her not to do so, telling her that a pregnant woman shouldn’t go to see another pregnant woman who has just died, but my mother said she will go.
She went to the place, and after leaving, she noticed blood coming out of her body and she had to hurry home. On getting home, she met her father who was leaving 11 miles from Ife. The man noticed that there was blood on her body and asked what was happening. My mother told her father the whole story and the father went and got a thread and needle. According to my mother, he sewed her up so that I would not come out. That was how God saved my life and that was why my mother gave me the name Modupeoreoluwa.
How did you meet your wife?
When I came back from England, I never had a single Nigerian friend, and also, as a student in England, I never gave any thought to marrying a Nigerian. I was the only Nigerian and one of the two Africans in my class. So, all my friends there were white people.
When I came back to Nigeria, I discovered that all my friends were already married with children, and I was way behind. One of my white friends invited me to a function at Tai Solarin School. When I got there, the function didn’t take place. So, they suggested that we should go to Remo Secondary School.
When I got there, the school was having its inter-house sports and I saw this elegant, slim girl running on the field just like a horse. She attracted my attention immediately. I asked one of the people whom we went there together if she knew the lady and he had no. He called a teacher and asked who was that girl. Finally, they arranged for the girl to come and serve us, and we got talking. That was how I met my queen and thank God I did. She has been a wonderful wife to me.
There are so many things that God has done through her for me that I cannot start counting. I remember, I was once ill and admitted to a hospital in the United States. When we got to the hospital, I had an operation and she was there with me. After my operation, I discovered that I was very very weak. I couldn’t get up, I was vomiting and I heard diarrhea. Then the doctor suggested that maybe I should be discharged and that my condition might be because I was not used to the food they were serving us with. At that time, my wife was still sleeping. When she woke up, I told her what the doctor said and she immediately said no.
She said her spirit didn’t tell her that we should go home. So, I said no problem if that is what she wanted. Then, the doctor came back with all the forms to be filled so that I could be discharged, and my wife told him that I was not going anywhere. She said the spirit told her that if I left the hospital, I wouldn’t get home before I died, and the doctor got a little angry, asking my wife who she was to tell him that. The doctor said we are spending a lot of money per night there and my wife said she doesn’t care. So, the doctor asked my wife to sign a form that she was the one who said I shouldn’t be discharged and she did.
One hour later, another doctor came in and told me that I had to go and undertake a test in their basement. So, I went there, they put me through a machine, and when I came out of the machine, I asked what the result was, but they told me the doctor would disclose it to me.
So, I went back to my bed, and the doctor, who was annoyed with my wife for saying that I was not going home, came back and started apologizing to her. He said my wife was right that the test results showed that if I left the hospital, I would die in the lift. He said the test showed that I had a blood clot. I would have died. So, there are many things she has done for me. That’s why she is my queen. She has been fantastic.
Tell us about your parents.
My immediate father and mother. Let me first describe them. My mother’s name was Onire Omoyaaku in Odo-Ogbe, Ile-Ife’. My father was Joshua Richard Oyebanji Ifagbule Omisore. I do not know of any father in the world who loves his children as much as my father loved us. We, children, used to call him ‘Abiyamotooto.’ My father spoonfed every child. In our house, we never had mothers, all of us were our father’s children.
My father was very close to Ooni Adesoji Aderemi. They were friends, but my father would leave any meeting or any function when it was going to 7:00 p.m. and come home because he wanted to feed his children. His wives, one of which was my mother, would cook the food and bring it upstairs, where my father would spoon it for every one of us, and he would eat his own after we had finished eating. He was a father in a million.
Although he did not condone indiscipline but he would stand by his children under whatever circumstance. My father would not stop you from being punished, but he will be there with you through thick and thin. I remember an incident where I studied at Oduduwa College. In our days, we had white people as inspectors, and my inspector of school then was one Mr Bullock. This man had a bulldog he came to school with, and I didn’t like the face of the bulldog, so I took a stick and walloped the bulldog. So, Mr Bullock took me to the principal and the principal dismissed me.
I went home and I told my dad what happened. My dad said I should have allowed the dog to bite me first before I walloped it but said he would see the principal. So, my father went to the principal and told him he could not dismiss me from the school because the people owned the school and not the inspector. So, the principal agreed that I won’t be dismissed but he gave me a tough punishment. I was asked to cut grass for months. However, through my trial and tribulations, my father was coming to where I was serving that punishment every day. He will be there about 12:00p.m and stay with me for about two hours. Whenever he was coming, he would bring two bottles of Crola and a packet of cream crackers. He will bring out his folding armchairs, and we will sit down. He gave me one bottle of Crola and took the other one. We will gist and after I finish eating, he will tell me that is okay for the day and he will leave till the next day. He did that all the time till I finished my punishment. Only a father in a million would do that. That was my father.
My father’s dad was Omisore another giant. That’s the one we are celebrating on the 12 of April (today). He was something else altogether. I witnessed something in 1941, the year he died. By chance, I was there when he was reading his will. He was a stack illiterate. He never wrote any will but he was telling his children what would have been in the will. I was his grandchild but I was with them by chance that day. He told his children what he wanted them to do after he had died.
He gave them three instructions. The first one was that they should bury him in a particular place in his house. The second instruction was that after he died, there must not be a division between his children. He told his children that they must unite, noting that with unity, nobody would be able to break them. The third instruction was that when he died, none of his property must be sold. He said his property must be there for generations to come. He, however, told them that if, for whatever reason, they had to sell any of his property, they must find one Omisore and sell it to him. Those were his instructions and thank God that is what has been happening since. I’m the head of that family today. Today, none of his children is alive. The last to die was Iyiola’s father (Senator Iyiola Omisore’s father).
Can you recall your happiest and saddest days?
Certain people who are close to me, I saw them die and my first regret in witnessing such cases happened in the case of a very good friend of mine called Femi Olafare. Olafare was an Engineer who lived in Kaduna. He died suddenly of a blood clot. I was there when he died. He was a very good friend of Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Alani Akinrinade. He had a house in Ibadan, so whenever he came to Ibadan, we were always together. He called me to say that he was feeling weak, and I told him to call a doctor or go to England for a checkup. He told me he just came back from England for a checkup, and the doctor checked his result and told him he was okay.
The incident happened on Ileya day. We were supposed to go and celebrate with our friends. Bola Ige wanted me to come and have lunch with him, so we were supposed to go together. I went to pick him up in the house. There and then, he collapsed and I woke him up. On waking up, he asked what happened, and I told him, and he made a last statement, saying, ‘So I’m dying’, and he collapsed again, and that was it. He died. I cannot forget that sad day in my life.
As for my happiest day. I have two children, a boy and a girl. Thank God they are both successful in life. My daughter is working as a secretary at an oil company in Lagos and makes much more money than me. In her own right, she is very rich but something was missing, she never had a child. I used to cry to God to bless her because whenever I went to the office, I would see beggars carrying their babies and begging for money.
God answered our prayers and my daughter got pregnant and gave birth to a bouncing baby boy. The boy today is my best friend. It makes me very fulfilled and I thank God over and over again.
At almost 94, you are still commissioning projects for the family. Why?
My grandfather, Lowaku Anibijuwon Omisore was everything, particularly in Ife. Each of his names has a meaning. The reason why he was named Anibijuwon was because he was the only child of his mother. It was not that his mother didn’t want to have another child, but my grandfather’s father was the one who didn’t touch her because he was scared of his father-in-law, who was very powerful. He was an herbalist, and nobody dared maltreat his daughter.
After giving birth to Omisore, the mother decided that even though he was her only child, she would make sure Omisore had many children. So she married about five wives to Omisore when he was 15 years old. At the end of the day, my grandfather, Omisore, had 24 wives recorded and over 180 children as of when he died in 1941. That was how he got the name ‘Anibijuwon’. Someone born as one but has many.
For the other name, ‘Omisore’, I heard that during the pregnancy, the mother was scared of miscarriage and she went to her own father who was an herbalist and her father told him something to do and use but someone told her not to use those things. The person told her to drink and bathe with water called ‘Osun Odo’ in our area at that time. So, the mother agreed and used the water till she gave birth. That was why she gave him Omisore.
Major roads in Ife that linked the town with other towns like Osogbo, Ilesa, and Ondo State, were constructed by my grandfather during the days of Ajagun Lawarikan. My grandfather was Ajagun’s chief. So, he went to meet the king and told him that it’s not good that Ife is isolated but the king said we can’t afford to link Ife to other towns. But my father told him we could do it and asked him to order every family house in Ife to give him 10 men to work with him.
So, the monarch ordered, and my grandfather, with the men, was able to connect Ife to these towns. It was while linking Ife to Ondo that my grandfather saw some hunters at Awolowo town, Garage-Olode and he thought the place would be good for farming. He went to the same Ooni to ask if he could be given that land, and the Ooni said Yes, he could have it because he had worked for it. Since the place was given to my grandfather, nobody has been a chief or king in the town except an Omisore till date.
My grandfather had vision that most of us do not have. Even at the moment, bearing in mind that the man died in 1941, some of the things we have done cannot even match what he did.
On one occasion, when we were celebrating my father’s 60th in the lord, I took some people to our family house, and I saw that the condition of the road was very bad. Also, I was always proud to show off where our grandfather was buried but that day, I was ashamed because the place was collapsing. So, I told myself that I must get the road reconstructed and the building rebuilt. I called my children and the apex members of our family and told them I wanted to do these projects, and they supported it.
So, that was the reason for doing these projects. It was not to show off. It was out of shame because our name is much bigger than those things. To now think that the place where they buried the person we refer to as our own ‘source’ is dilapidated, no way. I can’t leave it like that. God has seen me through it and I thank God.
What would you say is the way out of the decay in the society?
I will tell you a short story, and that will prove my point. By God’s grace today, I am a fellow of the Institute of Architecture. We have over 500 members and I am in number 20 something. But there was a time when I observed that what is happening in Nigeria today wanted to start happening in the institute. Some people were trying to buy the fellowship. People who had not done enough were being given the fellowship because they had money to pay.
So, there was a conference here in Ibadan where I presented a paper called ‘I Accused.’ On that day, I accused every architect that was in that hall and I proved my point that unless we change, we are already ruining the institution. Everybody there gave me a standing ovation except one boy called Tunde Olorunda.
Olorunda got up and said he disagreed with me. Everybody was surprised, and he said to me, sir, what you said is right, but where are you when all this is happening? Why weren’t you on board? The lesson therein is this, you cannot correct anything from outside. You have to be part of the system to correct things. That was why I joined Architectural politics. That year I became the head of the Western chapter. The point of importance there is that we should not stay outside the fence to correct things. We cannot all be politicians but we can all play politics. We should all be involved because when it rains, it rains on all.
How will you describe governance in Nigeria, particularly the recent state of emergency declaration in Rivers State?
Our system is corrupt. Neither the Rivers Governor nor the President nor Wike is right. Their thoughts are not genuine. They are not talking for the people. You are either talking for Wike or Fubara or you are either in the APC or PDP. That is not democracy.
Election is one thing while governance is another thing. Nigerians are yet to get that. What we still have is if you didn’t vote for me, you won’t benefit from me. That is not correct. What I see in Rivers is that the people who do not support one side or the other are being dealt with. It is not right at all.
What is your advice for the President and the youth in this present situation?
We older people have failed. I totally accept it. Our forefathers did not fail but this generation, we have failed. But there is no reason why the youth of today and tomorrow should follow in our footsteps. They should resist what is happening now. Even if it means dying in it or dying for it. People in South Africa fought for freedom. Why are we so afraid to die? What we think about here in Nigeria is how we are going to get to the system so that we can go and steal our own. It is not right, it is crazy. But unfortunately, we see all these things and we don’t query it. Until we are prepared to query it, there will not be any reformation in this country.
My own advice to the youth is that they should speak out. They should not just accept what is happening. They should speak out. When you see something wrong, say it is wrong. Don’t wait until it is already late before you complain.
For the President, I’m not a politician, but I will advise as a Nigerian. If the President has his own reasons why he wanted to be the president of this country, then he should go and sit up. Nigeria is not Lagos. His planning is not good enough, he can do better.
Take, for example, removing the fuel subsidy was a beautiful idea. I endorse it 100 percent because the people who were being paid those subsidies were dishonest. They were getting the money that they didn’t work for. However, where our president went wrong, with due respect to him was that he didn’t study the situation very well and plan for the unseen. He should have made sure he had a board in place to look at all these things and see the pros and the cons.
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