“Nigeria, from the world go, was a fraud and it is still a fraud. Therefore, you cannot expect anything good to emerge from a fraudulent base. So, one is not disappointed really that Nigeria has become what it is now.” -Tola Adeniyi.
Today, 29 May, 2025 marks the 80th birthday of a media icon and an achiever, a multiple title-holder, former Chairman/Editor-in-Chief of the old Daily Times Conglomerate, a former Permanent Secretary in the Presidency, a former acting Editor-in-Chief of the Nigerian Tribune and former Deputy MD/Managing Editor of the defunct Sketch newspapers. Africa’s first newspaper ombudsman, he held senior editorial positions in Lancashire Evening Post and Burnley Express, both in the UK and the Atlanta Enquirer in the US. High Chief Tola Adeniyi, a former Visiting Lecturer [Theatre & English] at Lancaster University, UK, speaks on sundry issues in this exclusive chat with Newscoven.com.
How fulfilled are you, attaining the milestone of age of 80?
I think it has been very fulfilling. I must say that I thank God, the Olódùmarè Àdìtú, for attaining that status of octogenarian. I must say, given the situation back home when several people-my uncles, my aunties- some of them or most of them did not live up to 80 years, I think, for me, it is gratifying to have reached this milestone. I must continue to thank Olódùmarè that I have been granted this longevity so far.
As regards how fulfilling. Yes, I feel seriously fulfilled. I think my destiny, àkúnlẹ̀yàn, has been very very fulfilling. I want to say that I have no regrets whatsoever in the passage of time; all I have lived my life for, from childhood till today, I have no regrets whatsoever.
Growing up, you choose journalism as a career got to the peak at a very tender, becoming a regional editor of the old Daily Times conglomerate, just three months after joining the then major newspaper. How did did you do it?
Again, this is ọlá Ọlọ́run (mercy and grace of God). But before I formally joined Daily Times, I have been writing for the newspaper; I have been writing for Sam Amuka’s Sunday Times in 1970/71; I had a column with Sketch when Tunji Oseni was Editor, Sunday Sketch; I was also a columnist in Afriscope, Chukwumerije’s magazine- the first quality magazine in this country. And don’t forget that I started writing from my early days in secondary school. I was an official reporter for the school. I had a big Notice Board, called Young Journalists, which I erected at the age of 13, 14. I was writing regular columns, even at Ago-Iwoye Secondary School and I was also reporting events of the school at social gatherings every Saturday. So, it has always been my passion to be in the media.
And I remember, in 1960 when Professor Olubi Sodipo, the first Vice Chancellor of the then Ogun State University- he was then an undergraduate- came for vacation job at Ago-Iwoye Secondary School. He assembled those of us who had shown promise in Language and asked what we wanted to do. I told him at that time- I was 15 years old or thereabout- that I would like to be a journalist; I would like to own my own newspaper; I would like to own a press and that I would also like to publish books and that, if I have time, I can then end up in the academia. Professor Olubi said, yes.
That was my dream and it came to pass; I owned my own newspaper; I had a press at Monatan, Ibadan; I has Sunday Stamp and Naked World which were launched at Premier Hotel, Ibadan, with the late Alaafin of Oyo as the Guest of Honour. The late Chief MKO Abiola was there as well as the juggernauts in Ibadan.
Which other profession would you have taken to, apart from journalism?
Well, those with whom I went to secondary school and higher school, even the university expected me to own a theatre company because I started as an actor- even in primary school and at Ilé Kéwú (Quranic School)- I was already acting some of the stories in the Holy Quran. I was a major actor in my primary school- featuring in Western Region Festival of Arts in 1956. I remember acting the character of a woman in the Gospel of Ewa– a woman-a part given to me- and our entry came first. I used to act as a woman in my early days. I acted as a woman in Julius Caesar and several other plays.
In contemporary times, people would have taken you for a gay or a cross-dresser…
Yes, I know. Funny enough, you are right. But when I was growing up, I was wearing my mother’s bùbà and ìrò and I will take my sisters’ gowns in Ago-Iwoye and I will wear them. I will put on the bra and every other thing and I will walk round town, you know, as a jolly young man.
Would you have preferred to come into this world as a woman?
I don’t know. When I was younger, I looked very much like my mother. I still have my mother’s lips and her smile. I was very slim- almost thin.
At Ago-Iwoye Secondary School, I was the prefect in charge of Drama. At higher school, I was the chairman of the Drama Unit. At the University of Ibadan, I was the President of the Drama Society and the Literary and Debating Society and I acted in major plays at the university. So, people would expect that I would end up as a dramatist; as an actor. So, if I didn’t take to journalism, I would have probably owned my own theatre company.
Given the proliferation of the media now, especially with the advent of the Social Media and the ubiquitous citizen journalism, do you think media practitioners, especially reporters, would have the same opportunities such as you had, rising fast in the profession?
Yes and no. Yes in the sense that anybody who is lucky to give as much application as I did, who is ready to study hard, to work hard and is opportune to be at the right place at the right time, could also have such opportunities that I had.
You are also right: At my time, we had just a few newspapers and so it was easier to establish yourself, if you know what I mean. It was just like in the early days of the television; you just hear few names of newscasters like Toun Adeyemi, Anike Agbaje-Williams and Julie Coker. But nowadays, there are so many newscasters that you will not even remember their names.
But I think it is the same thing in any other profession. In those early days, in Medicine, you will be talking of Professor Olurin, Professor Osuntokun, Professor Solanke and so on. But now, you have so many surgeons and so many surgeons that people don’t even hear their names. What I am saying in essence is that the more you have professors, the more you have newscasters, the more you have columnists, the more you have reporters, the less likely to have them distinguishing themselves because they are so many. Then, the competition was not as stiff as it is now because there are so many media houses now.
However, and like I said earlier, it is also possible to have such opportunities that I had because it also depends on application. It is not every journalist, it is not every columnist that would be credited with 16 columns a week. Yes, I became a regional editor within three months, but even within less than those three months, I was being published by all the newspapers in the stable of the Daily Times; I was writing stories for Lagos Weekend, for Daily Times, for Sunday Times and so on. So, within those three months, it was clear to Baba Babatunde Jose and everybody that somebody has arrived, without being immodest. So, it wasn’t difficult for them to say ‘go and head the Ibadan Regional Office’.
With the proliferation of the media, coupled with the parlous state of the Nigerian economy now, how can you compare the journalism of old and now in terms of viability?
Talking about being viable to be able to make it and to be able to survive economically is very tough now. This is because the cost of input has gone astronomically higher- news prints, ink and others. This is even applicable to online journalism: You need to keep your office running; the cost of diesel and petrol; the cost of repairing your generator and so. You need to put your car on the road; you need to pay your staff. So, input into journalism practice, whether print or electronic, is very costly.
And because of the recession worldwide, it has been very difficult to keep the pace. Most companies are folding up as they don’t even have the advert revenue. It is adverts and supplements that actually sustain newspapers, radio and television stations. And now that companies are not even making it, it is very difficult for media houses to source for advertisements or even to source for supplements. So, it has been tough all round.
But again the Yoruba says tí wọ́n bá ngúnyán nínú odó, tí wọ́n bá nse’bẹ́ níní éepo ẹ̀pà, ẹní máa yó, á yó (literally meaning in the midst of lack, some people will make it and are still making it).
So, talking about viability, I believe in prayers; I believe that anybody can break through in any circumstance, if the person has faith. I believe in hard work but I also believe in prayers because luck plays a major role in people’s life and the only way you can get luck is through prayers. Luck is not something that you can go and buy with money; luck does not depend on how big or how tall, or how fat or how thin you are. Luck depends on appealing to higher powers; appealing to Olódùmarè; appealing to whatever you believe in to grant you your request.
With your level of attainment in journalism, did any of your children take to the profession?
No, but they are all good writers. My first son published his first magazine at age 10; my youngest child who is 44-45 is a good poet; she writes good poetry; my last son is very good in ICT. My first son that I mentioned earlier has already published three books and he was writing a column for a Canadian-based newspaper. He studied Chemical Engineering, then Philosophy and he is also into banking. He writes better English than I do, actually.
You were born in era when Nigeria was the cynosure of the African Continent, even when the entire Europe was looking up to the country as the Black Hope and a formidable force to reckon with. Growing through the years, how would you describe Nigeria now?
Nigeria now is a sad story. Nigeria today is a shadow of itself. But to say shadow is even an euphemism; Nigeria is not a shadow because a shadow, to some extent, is still a reflection of the real image. When you are standing under the sun and there is shadow, the shadow will still carry your figure or image. But Nigeria is even worse than a shadow now; Nigeria is a very distorted shadow.
The Nigeria that we have today does not reflect the Nigeria we ever knew. So, the country is even worse than a caricature; you cannot say this was the Nigeria we had in 1945 or the Nigeria we had in the 1960s. The Nigeria of today is not in any way comparable with the Nigeria that we used to know and it does not reflect the Nigeria that we expected to be.
There is a common saying that when the foundation is faulty, the structure put on it can never last. Would you want to attribute the rots and decays we are seeing now to a kind of foundational structural deficiency?
I think it is more than structural deficiency because Nigeria emerged out of fraudulent calculations, out of fraudulent configurations, out of fraudulent political jigsaw. I mean, the British who bought Nigeria as a land were not thinking of a country or a people. They just bought Nigeria as a business enterprise for their company, the Royal Niger Company, which later became Unilever and several others. Nigeria was just a business enterprise; they only later gave us paper independence.
Nigeria, from the world go, was a fraud and it is still a fraud. Therefore, you cannot expect anything good to emerge from a fraudulent base. So, one is not disappointed really that Nigeria has become what it is now and it is going to get worse because, like you rightly said, you are complaining about a k-legged person and what he carries on the head and he says, ‘don’t look at the load on my head but look at my legs’. That is the structure of Nigeria. When [Lord Fredrick] Lugard, the eunuch, amalgamated the South and the North and made the North about two times or even three times larger than the two other parts of the country, you know that it was not going to work and it will never work.
But the same Britain colonised India, a country that was able to rise out of the ashes of Colonialism to attain greatness in the Comity of Nations today. Would you attribute the Nigerian situation to the system or to the individuals who find themselves at the corridors of power?
When Britain colonised India, there was no ethnic group there that it gave power to. Britain did not tie all other parts of India to a pole and then gave those tied to the pole to one ethnic group in that country. What I am saying in essence is that, if India was a tiger when Britain colonised it, Britain didn’t tie down that tiger and didn’t give its tail to some parts of India to ride the tiger roughshod. That is one.
Secondly, Indians used their common sense; they realised that it might not work. So, they allowed Pakistan to break away. So, Pakistan left and after it left, Pakistan itself found out that it wasn’t going to be okay to remain as one country and so, Bangladesh also went away. That was how they became manageable.
But to have NIgeria as it is- with the Yoruba, the Igbo, the Hausa, the Fulani, the Tiv, and so on living together in one unworkable contraption, you can never expect any progress; you can never expect any development.
So, you envisage the Indian experience to happen here before Nigeria can move forward?
I have always expected Nigeria to break up and I have been saying it. This is because we are running two systems; we have a part of the country that talks about Sharia; we have a part of the country where whatever money they have, they say they are marrying off 1,000 people in one day with the government giving them money; in the same country, some people are paying ₦2billion, ₦3billion to send people to Mecca, while you have southerners struggling to pay school fees of their children and so on. We cannot live together; we cannot be together. The thing will collapse.
There is no country on earth that is run the way Nigeria is being run- that is structured the way Nigeria is structured- that can survive. History tells me so, that this country will collapse one day; and it is already collapsing. We are just pretending and living on false hopes and self-denial. Nigeria is not one country; we have about three or four countries operating in one space.
That is a militant approach and contradictory to the optimism of your friend and soulmate, Dr Yemi Farounbi…
Yes, Farounbi is my friend, but don’t forget that he is a Christian; don’t forget that his father was a priest. Christians all over the world have a different worldview; their religion imposes on them a kind of hope which I don’t share. They will always say there will be a better tomorrow without necessarily working towards the better tomorrow. They just believe that manna will continue to fall from heaven. But it is not so. If those who brought the religion to them don’t believe so, why should they continue to believe so?
Israel, rather than say ‘I am going to wait for manna to fall’, they developed the best military force in the world to defend their land. America that they say is God’s own country don’t wait for God to supply them security; they invested heavily in military hardware.
So, Farounbi is a great Christian and, like most Christians, like my wife too, he believes that there is hope. They live on hope; they live on God’s promise which is okay. But I don’t believe that living on God’s promise alone would solve the problem of Nigeria. Nigeria is not workable; it is like putting lion, sheep, goat, snake, pig, dog and so on in one room and you expect that there will be peace. There will never be peace.
How then would you describe your own faith?
My faith is Mareism which is a belief in Olódùmarè and the sacred breath of life. It is not far from the Yoruba Belief; it is not even far from Islamic Belief; that Olódùmarè is a spirit and Christians also say so- Ẹ̀mí ni Ọlọrun. That is the cornerstone of my faith that Olódùmarè is Ẹ̀mí; that is why He can be everywhere. It is only the air that can be everywhere- no other thing under the heaven can be everywhere and spiritum means air- spirit. When you say air, air is water and water is air- hydrogen and oxygen.
I belief in Olódùmarè and also in the sacred breath of life. You can do without food, you may not even drink water for a whole day, but you cannot survive without air for five minutes. And if you believe that water is air, the entire human brain which is dense in water is also air. Even the petrol you put in your car, they call it gas because it must first turn into gas before it can work. This means air powers the world. So, my faith believes that we have to believe and respect Olódùmarè, the omnipotent and you have to worship air- the sacred breath. When breath leaves you, you become a carcass, a dead body.
Islam and Christianity believe in life after death and then judgment. Does Mareism have same belief?
My faith doesn’t believe in judgment at all. My faith doesn’t believe that you commit offence in this world and you are going to somewhere where somebody is going judge you. This is because there is no habitable physical structure anywhere apart from this earth known to man and the Bible also say so. When some people asked Jesus whether they will inherit their wives that are dead, He said no, you cannot remarry your wife in heaven.
But Jesus Christ talked about judgment…
Yes, but sometimes when they say this, it may just be a theoretical thing and then we make it look bigger. In fact, in the place where they talked about hellfire, they say the punishment would be like hellfire, not hell…
But don’t you think that hell must be real for them to say it will be like hellfire?
Of course, we all know what fire is. If I say ‘I am going to beat you blind’, we all know what blindness is, but it does not mean that I am going to blind you. So, when they say the punishment in heaven or wherever is like hellfire they didn’t say there is fire burning somewhere, but that the punishment is going to be intense like fire.
But having said so, my faith, Mareism, says that any crime you commit on earth, you will receive maximum punishment for it on earth. Again, the hypocrisy of the Western World: if you believe that judgment is in heaven, why did they create courts? Why did they create police? Why are they sending people to prison? Then, they will tell you ‘judge not for you not to be judged’. This is all to justify slavery so that you don’t blame them that they put padlock on your mouth. They will tell you, don’t judge your wicked rulers. If you don’t judge, why did they create judges?
The Western World, the Christian World judge everyday and they will tell you, ‘don’t judge’. If sins have been forgiven, why are you sending people to prison? You cannot forgive a sin that has not been committed. So, it is so contradictory.
But I am not here to criticise any religion. Anybody has the right to believe in whatever they believe in; if you say stone is what you are going to be worshipping, it is your business. If you say it is gas that you are going to be worshipping, it is your business. I was not brought here to judge anybody in terms of their faiths.
Mareism is the faith that came through inspiration. I have been on it for 50 years. It is not me that says this is the way the world was created. I received the calling and when you read the book, ‘The Holy Creed of Mareism‘, you will find out that it is not written by me or anybody. It is just messages and messages on how the world should be run. I don’t believe in death; I don’t believe in judgment anywhere; I don’t believe in paradise; I don’t believe in hell. My faith doesn’t believe in those things. My faith believes that whatever you do, you will receive your punishment here and now.
Reflecting on your life in the last 80 years, what do you consider to be your happiest moment(s)?
Happiest moment? Okay, you used the words happy, happier, happiest. All my days have always been happy. I have been so grateful to my creator that I can, without being immodest, say that I hardly experienced any sad day in my life. Olódùmarè has so kind to me, beyond my expectations.
But then, if you are going to talk about my happiest moment, it would be the day I got married. And why is it so? It was because it was in fulfilment of my destiny. That made me happy. I was told, four months before I met my wife that I should not worry that my wife will come to me by herself.
I have had four or five engagements which didn’t work. I was never married before I met my wife but I had serious girlfriends; I did introduction with one; I did engagement with one; I gave marriage notice at Iyaganku, but it didn’t work.
But four months to August, I think that the man was a guard at Isopako, somewhere in Mushin, Lagos. Through my friend, Femi Sonaike, the man met me and said, ‘young man, don’t worry yourself, the woman you are going to marry will come to your house. You won’t meet a woman outside; you are not going to chase after the girl. The woman will come to your house and she will become your wife’. That was in April. By 23 August, this lady, a very beautiful girl, followed somebody to where I was living for the celebration of the first year birthday of a child. I won’t expect a graduate teacher to come and do birthday ceremony for a one-year-old.
She came in company of one of her father’s tenants to that place on the Polytechnic Road, Ibadan. And that day, I was already going to Abeokuta. I have almost reached Abeokuta when an old friend of mine, Raymond Nwokobia- I was buying banana by the road side- saw me and he said, ‘Tola, where are you going?’ I told him I was going to Abeokuta. He said, ‘I am on my way to Ibadan, your house.’ You know we didn’t have this facility of telephony at that time; it is not an era of mobile phone as we do now. So, he didn’t inform me that he was coming but I made a u-turn.
Before leaving my house for Abeokuta, some tenants (I lived upstairs and some tenants were living at the back of the house) had requested that they wanted to make use of my fridge to refrigerate their drinks. I gave them the permission and I left. So, I wasn’t coming for any party.
But then, I turned and by the time I reached Ibadan, it was about 6pm. I went to the backyard and I saw people still being entertained and I saw one young lady. I said ‘your face is familiar’ and she said ‘your face is familiar too’. Then she said, ‘you are an actor’. That was what they knew me by in my days at the University of Ibadan. She further said ‘you are Tola Adeniyi’. I said ‘yes and I know you too. You are one of the girls wearing these gereje gereje gowns (free flowing long gowns) going to Christian Union meetings’. They called themselves Scripture Union (SU) and we laughed at it. She was drinking Fanta; I took a small bottle of Guiness Stout and I poured some little content of my Stout drink into her drink and told her to taste it. I also poured some of her Fanta drink into my drink.
About just 20 minutes later, they said they wanted to go. I said to her, ‘did you bring a car?’ She said no. I said ‘can I drop you?’ I myself asking whether she brought a car, I didn’t have a car. I had cars but my vehicles were always problematic. It was a girlfriend’s car that I had with me that day. Some girlfriends do gave me their cars to use for the weekends.
I then took her home. In those days, you have almanacs on the walls. In their house, their kitchen was upstairs. I just said, ‘can I meet your mother?’ That was a strange question. But she said ‘okay, you want to meet my mother, come up.’ Then we went upstairs. I looked and I saw an almanac and I told the mother ‘mama, I am coming to marry your daughter on December 2.’ The woman thought I was drunk; even she herself thought I was drunk because I didn’t discuss anything with her, not even being her boyfriend.
And that December 2, 1972 was the day we got married; just three months of courtship and that was the day I will regard as my happiest day; a day that destiny has been fulfilled as prophesied.
Any moment of regrets in your life?
There has been no regrets whatsoever in my life. If there is any regret that I have as I speak, it is that, for whatever reason Olódùmarè had or has, to put me in a country like Nigeria, that is my only regret. My only regret is seeing young graduates hawking Dodo Ikire (a snack) at Ikire. I wish I was not brought into this miss-match of a people.
I would have wished that I wasn’t born into this contraption where the educated are being led by the uneducated; where the wise people are being led by stupid people and where the stupid people themselves are so idiotic that they cannot shake off the yokes on their necks because Yoruba will say ẹnu ẹni la fi nkọ mé jẹ (it is with your mouth that you will say you don’t want to eat a particular kind of food). It is regrettable that I am in the midst of people who are so dumb, so stupid, so enslaved that they have refused to say mé jẹ to what they were given to eat. That is the only regret that I have.
Another issue that I have- not a regret though- has to do with identity. Identity is one of the problems facing humanity, especially in Nigeria and many other places. People don’t have identity; they don’t know who they are. There is crisis of identity running through life everywhere. It is important to have an identity. I think the Bible even say something like be true to yourself and you can never be a fault to anybody else. You have to know who you are; if I know that I am Tola, I don’t have to copy someone else. I don’t have to say I am Ibadan when I know that I am Ijebu. Most people don’t know who they are. They just stumble through life; they never ever tried to discover who they are. And because they don’t know who they are, they cannot make any headway in life. You need to know who you are; am I a man? Am I a woman? Am I a lion or a tiger? Am I an amotekun or a sheep or a goat? It is important for every human being to do introspection from time to time; challenge yourself and discover yourself. That is when you can make a headway in life.
