The Shadow In The Twilight: An Ode to Pa Reuben Famuyide Fasoranti (1926–2026)

By Marindoti Oludare

There are men whose lives are measured in years, others whose lives are measured in accomplishments, and a rare few whose lives are measured by the generations they have inspired. Pa Reuben Famuyide Fasoranti belonged to that rare breed of men whose very existence became a moral compass for society. He lived for a century, but the measure of his life was never in the number of years he lived. It was in the principles he upheld, the lives he touched, the institutions he built, and the causes for which he never ceased to fight.

For as long as I can remember, Baba Fasoranti has been one of the men I looked up to. He represented everything I believed public service ought to be: integrity without compromise, leadership without arrogance, political conviction without blind loyalty, and an abiding belief that the welfare of the people must always be the supreme purpose of government.

It was this admiration that, in the lead-up to the 2023 presidential election, made his endorsement of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu one of the most consequential influences on my decision to join the campaign for his presidency. I believed that a man who had spent his life advocating true federalism, restructuring, state police, and public accountability would not lend his moral authority lightly. If Baba believed that Tinubu could advance these causes, I believed there was good reason to join that effort.

Today, as we mourn his passing, I find myself reflecting not only on the extraordinary life he lived but also on the promises we owe his memory, some of which remain painfully unfulfilled.

Baba was born on May 11, 1926, into a Nigeria still under British colonial rule, long before independence, long before the First Republic, and before many of the political institutions we now take for granted had been conceived. To say that he participated in Nigerian politics for almost as long as modern Nigerian politics has existed is hardly an exaggeration. His life traversed colonialism, nationalism, independence, civilian administrations, military dictatorships, and the return to democracy.

Yet his journey began not in the corridors of power but in the humble pursuit of knowledge.

As a young man, he dreamed of becoming a medical doctor. But the educational limitations of his time stood between him and that ambition. At Ondo Boys’ High School, where he received his secondary education, the absence of adequate science teaching denied him the opportunity to pursue the subjects needed for medicine.

For many young men, such a disappointment might have ended in bitterness or resignation. For Baba, it became the foundation of a lifelong mission. He would dedicate himself to ensuring that the generations coming after him did not have their ambitions determined by the limitations of the schools they attended.

He went on to study at Yaba Higher College and University College, Ibadan, before pursuing advanced studies in education in Britain and Australia. He became a teacher, an administrator, and subsequently a principal. In 1957, he became the founding principal of Anglican Grammar School, Iju-Itaogbolu, which began with only 30 students. He would later help establish Omolere Nursery and Primary School, Akure High School, and St. Frances’ Academy, named in memory of his beloved wife.

The young man who could not study medicine because his school could not adequately teach the sciences devoted his life to building schools where other people’s children could pursue their dreams.

What greater testimony to selfless leadership could there be?

Baba’s political life was equally remarkable. He was an admirer and disciple of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, whose philosophy of progressive governance, education, social welfare, and federalism resonated deeply with his own convictions. But Baba was no political sycophant. His loyalty was to principles, not personalities.

Perhaps no episode demonstrates this better than his extraordinary encounter with the political establishment of the Action Group in Akure.

When Awolowo’s political machinery supported a candidate for the chairmanship of the Akure Local Council whom Baba and his associates believed did not represent the wishes of their people, he refused to surrender his convictions to party authority.

Instead, he and his supporters established the Alarm Clock Party, challenged the established political order, and defeated the Action Group candidate at the polls.

Imagine the audacity of that young man! A committed disciple of Awolowo, standing against the candidate preferred by the very political leader he revered, not out of personal animosity but because he believed that the people of Akure deserved the right to determine who represented them.

And perhaps even more remarkable was what followed. Having made his point and secured the mandate of his people, Baba returned to the Action Group. He had not abandoned his political philosophy; he had merely refused to abandon the people for the sake of party convenience.

There lies a lesson for today’s political class: loyalty to a political party must never become disloyalty to the people. A party is merely the vehicle through which the people exercise their democratic rights. It must never become an instrument for suppressing those rights.

The story of Baba’s service in the Akure Local Council also provides an enduring lesson in public morality. While serving as council chairman and simultaneously working as a school principal, he refused to draw two salaries. He considered his income as a principal sufficient and chose to offer his political service without collecting remuneration from the council.

At a time when public office has become, for too many, an invitation to personal enrichment, such a disposition almost sounds unbelievable. But Baba belonged to a generation that regarded leadership as a duty to be discharged, not a privilege to be exploited.

His years in local government are also remembered in Akure’s history of early public infrastructure, including local recollections of pioneering road development around Arakale. For him, the measure of political authority was not the prestige of occupying an office but the visible improvement in the lives of those who elected him.

This philosophy followed him into the Second Republic when he served as Commissioner for Finance under the administration of Chief Michael Adekunle Ajasin between 1979 and 1983.

Together, Ajasin and Fasoranti represented a tradition of public probity that has become distressingly scarce in contemporary Nigerian politics. The resources of the state were held in trust for the people, and public officials were expected to account for their stewardship.

Their reputation for integrity was tested when the military overthrew the civilian government in December 1983.

The succeeding military administration subjected members of that government to imprisonment, investigation, and prosecution. Chief Ajasin was famously tried twice and acquitted twice, yet remained in detention. Baba Fasoranti also endured imprisonment and prosecution in the aftermath of the coup.

It was an era in which allegations against the political class became a convenient justification for military intervention, and men who had devoted their lives to public service could find themselves deprived of liberty by those who claimed to be rescuing the nation.

Baba emerged from these ordeals without abandoning his principles. He would go on to participate in the struggle against military dictatorship, lending his voice to the campaign for the restoration of democratic government.

The same man who had challenged his own party over the wishes of the Akure electorate would later stand against military rule in defence of the sovereignty of the Nigerian people.

His was not a convenient democracy that mattered only when his preferred candidates won. It was a conviction that the people’s mandate must remain sacred.

And so I wonder what Baba would make of the political developments in our country today, where party nominations are sometimes determined not by the wishes of the electorate but by the influence of powerful individuals far removed from the communities whose futures they seek to control.

What would he say to political imposition, the manipulation of electoral processes, and the growing belief that power belongs to those who can control the machinery of a party rather than those who can win the confidence of its members?

I believe his life has already answered these questions.

A man who once challenged Awolowo’s preferred candidate to defend the democratic rights of Akure people would hardly have wanted future generations to surrender those same rights without resistance.

Baba’s life was not without profound personal tragedy. He lost his beloved wife, Frances, in 1991. He endured the death of a daughter while he was in military detention. Then, in July 2019, another daughter, Funke Olakunrin, was brutally murdered by gunmen along the Benin-Ore highway.

For any father, the loss of a child is an unbearable burden. To lose a daughter to the same insecurity against which one has spent years warning one’s country is a cruelty beyond words.

Yet Baba did not allow his personal grief to diminish his concern for the suffering of others. If anything, the tragedy reinforced the urgency of his lifelong advocacy for the protection of lives and property.

This brings me to one of the most poignant images of Baba’s final years: the frail, elderly statesman, confined to a wheelchair, who nevertheless found the strength to travel to Abuja and appeal directly to President Tinubu for the restructuring of Nigeria and the establishment of state police.

Dr. Marindoti Oludare, Pa Reuben Fasoranti, and Marindoti’s dad, Dr Patrick Oludare, at the home of Papa in Akure, on July 6, 2023

On April 17, 2024, Baba led an Afenifere delegation to the Presidential Villa. At an age when most men would have withdrawn completely from the affairs of the world, he was still pleading for a country where its citizens could live without fear.

He was not asking for a contract. He was not seeking a political appointment. He was not requesting a favour for his children or grandchildren.

He was asking for a safer Nigeria.

There is something profoundly moving about a man nearing a hundred years of age, who has already lost a daughter to violence, continuing to spend what little strength remains in his body demanding the security of other people’s children.

That, to me, is the essence of Baba Fasoranti.

And it is here that my admiration must coexist with my disappointment.

President Tinubu has taken steps toward the establishment of state police, including supporting constitutional changes and legislative proposals. These developments deserve acknowledgment. But I remain deeply saddened that the reform did not become a functioning reality while Baba was alive to witness it.

Indeed, the irony of history could hardly be more painful. On October 23, 2026, just three days after Baba’s death, the Presidency announced that the proposed constitutional amendment to establish state police had secured the support of 24 state Houses of Assembly, crossing the constitutional threshold necessary for the reform to advance.

Three days after he departed.

Baba had lived a hundred years. He had waited through colonialism, military dictatorship, and successive civilian administrations for the emergence of a truly federal Nigeria. Yet he departed before seeing one of his most enduring aspirations become reality.

I wish President Tinubu had moved with greater urgency, not merely for Baba’s sake but for the countless Nigerians whose lives remain vulnerable to insecurity. Baba deserved to witness more than promises and proposals. He deserved to see the machinery of a restructured security system take shape in his lifetime.

Nevertheless, this disappointment must not become an excuse to abandon the struggle. Rather, it must strengthen our resolve to complete it.

We who remain must now take up the mantle.

We must insist on state policing that is genuinely accountable to the communities it serves, with proper safeguards against political abuse, independent oversight, and a firm commitment to protecting every Nigerian, regardless of ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, or social standing.

We must continue the struggle against corruption, that malignant disease which robs our schools of classrooms, our hospitals of medicines, our roads of durability, and our security institutions of the resources required to protect the people.

We must resist the manipulation of elections and the imposition of candidates, for a society that permits its people’s votes to be stolen cannot credibly claim to honour the memory of a man who once defied his own political leader to defend the right of his people to choose.

We must remember that political leadership is not measured by the number of convoys surrounding an officeholder, the size of the allowances he collects, or the fortunes accumulated by his associates. It is measured by the opportunities created for the next generation and by the dignity with which the ordinary citizen is treated.

Above all, we must restore integrity to public life.

For me, Baba Fasoranti will remain a North Star, a constant moral reference by which to judge not only those who seek to govern us but also our own conduct as citizens.

At a hundred years of age, he had nothing more to prove. He could have spent his final years in the comfort of his family, receiving tributes and enjoying the gratitude of a society he had already served beyond measure. Instead, he continued to concern himself with the unfinished business of Nigeria.

Therein lies the final lesson of his remarkable existence: a life of service never truly retires, and a conviction worth holding is a conviction worth defending until one’s final breath.

Now Baba has entered the twilight of eternity.

The sun that illuminated a century of Nigerian history has finally dipped below the horizon. The voice that once rose in defence of the people of Akure, that challenged political imposition, that upheld probity in the management of public resources, that resisted military tyranny, and that pleaded for the security of our country has fallen silent.

But there is something about the twilight that we must remember.

As the sun descends, the shadows of great things stretch farther across the earth.

And so it shall be with Baba Fasoranti.

Though he has sailed beyond the horizon into the quiet embrace of the night, his shadow remains cast upon our nation. It will stretch across our political institutions, across the schools he founded, across the roads of Akure, and across the conscience of every Nigerian who still believes that public office should be an instrument of service rather than self-enrichment.

His body may have surrendered to the passage of time, but his ideals have not. His voice may have fallen silent, but his example still speaks. His eyes may have closed to the troubles of our nation, but the light of his convictions must continue to illuminate our path.

And when the darkness of corruption, electoral manipulation, insecurity, and political expediency threatens to overwhelm our country, may we look toward the North Star of his example and find the courage to do what is right.

Let us not merely mourn Baba. Let us become worthy of him.

Let us complete the work he could not finish.

Let us build the Nigeria he believed in.

For Baba Fasoranti may have departed into the twilight, but his shadow will remain with us long after the night has fallen.

And so long as we keep his ideals alive, the darkness shall never claim his light.

Rest peacefully, Baba.

Your struggle is now ours. Your mantle has fallen into our hands. And we must not let it fall to the ground.

• Dr. Oludare, a US-based, Nigerian-born medic, is Convener, Social Rehabilitation Gruppe (SRG). He writes from Texas.