At 89, Mr Adedoja Adewolu sits as Board Chairman, University of Benin Teaching Hospital. In this interview withcelebrated your 89th birthday on October 1… Well, I will say Nigeria is 62 and I’m 89. I want to thank God for that. Nigeria got independence in 1960. I was already in England then. I was in London in 1960 and I was in the St. Albans Hall when the Nigerian flag was lifted up.
My father was a very wealthy cocoa farmer and he was lucky he had younger and older sisters who had children before him because he had a delay. So, he was the one who sent the children of his sisters to school. He assisted in sponsoring their education and they were the ones who took the records. For instance, Reverend Ayodele Soleye, who is one of them, was the one who wrote down my birth date and showed it to me.
When Awolowo introduced free education, many people took advantage of it and I can say that in Abeokuta, we had the first educated woman, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, who was also the first woman ever to drive a car in Africa. She was the wife of I.O. Ransom-Kuti, the the Principal of Abeokuta Grammar School, which I attended. She was also the mother of Beko and Fela.
When Nigeria got independence and was going to have the Federal Government, it was noted that all the money from the regions was to be gathered together and given to the Federal Government so that the Federal Government could be in control. We, the students from the Western Region in England, were rudely surprised and we were told to go and demonstrate that the Federal Government should not merge all the accounts together, but rather that the accounts should remain separate.
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