{"id":554,"date":"2018-10-11T14:44:31","date_gmt":"2018-10-11T14:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vor.org.ng\/?p=554"},"modified":"2022-08-13T20:54:27","modified_gmt":"2022-08-13T20:54:27","slug":"headmaster-higher-ground-a-tribute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ictnetworldltd.com\/newvor\/2018\/10\/11\/headmaster-higher-ground-a-tribute\/","title":{"rendered":"Headmaster, Higher Ground – A Tribute"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dr

Dr Leke Oshunniyi<\/p><\/div>\n

The American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s yielded an inadvertent dividend!
\nAmericans of African descent were being given a voice after centuries of often brutal oppression. Assisted by hard won reverse discrimination policies such as Affirmative Action and emboldened by the post-war liberalism that birthed the \u201cHippy movement\u201d, Afro-Americans expressed themselves in the performing arts, revolutionising the music and movie industries. Simultaneously, across the Atlantic in Africa, young citizens of the newly independent countries sought role models who did not share either the conservatism of their older compatriots or the skin coloration of their erstwhile colonial masters. They found their heroes and heroines in \u201cBlack American\u201d artistes and actors \u2013 Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Bill Cosby, Richard Roundtree, Diana Ross, Sammy Davis Junior and a host of other stars too numerous to mention, who sang the song of freedom in the land of the free and the home of the brave. In their search for the \u201cgolden fleece\u201d thousands of Nigerian youth were drawn away from the usual destinations in the UK to the infinitely more promising USA.
\nPrince Olagoke Omisore, scion of a well-known aristocratic Ile-Ife family was one of those who embarked on the journey of a lifetime in the late 1960s. He sought and gained admission at the Manhattan Campus of the School of Architecture and Design of the renowned New York Institute of Technology. Speaking of his experience in America, he recollected \u201cI went to the USA to learn, but it was not only school learning I sought; I wanted to imbibe all I could of this interesting, diverse, exciting and rich country. I wanted to know what made the people think the way they did, what made their institutions strong and what made the USA the greatest country on Earth. I was not disappointed.\u201d
\nAn amazingly quick witted and resourceful natural leader, Nicholas, as he was re-christened, became the leader of his contemporaries who lived in Manhattan at the time. \u201cI made friends with everyone!\u201d he declared \u201cItalian-Americans, Polish-Americans, American Jews, Puerto-Ricans, Afro Americans, German-Americans, just name the group. They were so different, yet so similar in their search for a better life and the American Dream. I went everywhere, visited friends as far away as California and more than twenty states in-between. Smoke filled jazz clubs, music concerts, boxing tournaments, innumerable varieties of restaurants, parades, marches, political rallies etc. I was like a sponge soaking up all the experiences and drinking deeply from the cup of American thought, history, experience and wisdom.\u201d
\nIn all this, his studies were not neglected and he successfully completed the educational curriculum that earned him his qualifications. He always marvelled at the sheer competence and depth of knowledge of his lecturers. \u201cYou didn\u2019t have to be an academic to be a professor in the States\u201d he recollected, more than three decades after his graduation. \u201cIf you were an excellent carpenter, you could be given the Chair and Professorship of Carpentry in a University.\u201d His memories of his stay in the USA were to endure a lifetime, and proved to be an unerring compass in navigating the oft-treacherous waters of business and commerce in later life.
\nNicholas returned to Nigeria towards the end of the 2nd Republic in Nigeria, to fulfil obligations to his family and nation.
\n\u201cI never planned to be rich, all I wanted was a good job, perhaps a Peugeot 504 car and decent accommodation\u201d, but Providence had other plans. In his first week of working for a popular advertising agency, he had irreconcilable differences with his line manager, and, in his characteristic no-nonsense manner, resigned on the spot. On the eve of moving into his newly rented apartment in Ikeja, he decided to put into practise, the practical aspects of his profession, designing his own set of furniture. No sooner were the fittings completed, than an acquaintance offered to buy all at several times the cost. Thus was a thriving furniture industry born. Those familiar with Allen Avenue in the 1980s will no doubt remember his furniture outlet named \u201cHigher Ground (HG)\u201d, paraphrasing his first name, Olagoke. Mr. G loved to play host to his exceedingly widespread circle of friends and HG became an oasis of calm, beauty and pleasure in the dark and ugly days of military dictatorship. A trip to Ikeja was never complete until you had stopped by this latter-day salon of intelligent and upwardly mobile young and middle-aged men. The bonhomie, camaraderie and humorous conversation were simply electrifying. The Headmaster\u2019s Salon was arguably the first male grooming outfit in the area, later accommodating members of the feminine gender. An instant success, it became the place to \u201csee and be seen\u201d
\nIt was not all fun and games! He was one of a contingent of like-minded friends who established \u201cThe Forum\u201d a platform for the politically minded in the run-up to the Third Republic which proved to be an incubator for many at the heights of the political arena today.
\nMr. G did not suffer fools and was a man who did not mince words in circumstances that warranted appropriate retort. His speech in Yoruba was spiced with choice proverbs, drawn from a seemingly inexhaustible quiver. \u201cAraba gbera nle, odo\u2019n gbe arere\u201d he might say in response to unpleasant news, meaning what goes around comes around. Not surprisingly, he reserved the sharp edge of his tongue, his most acerbic and caustic witticisms for those who misbehaved in public office. He mercilessly lampooned and criticised this category of people, whom he believed, had made Nigeria a living hell and a graveyard of dreams.
\nThis writer was perhaps the first to encourage Mr. G to put pen to paper and articulate his thoughts on the polity. On the 8th of September 2010, he launched his first salvo as an Email to 22 friends titled \u201cA Nation at a Crossroads\u201d to well-deserved acclaim. His online audience grew to the point where it was necessary to reconfigure it as a blog, \u201cThe Whispering Canon.\u201d
\nAs his thoughts on the peculiar politics of Nigeria evolved, he became convinced that a return to the Nigerian Constitution in force till January 1966 was the only way forward for the country. He took up the clarion call of \u201cRestructuring\u201d and in his methodical and painstaking manner, he began to put together an assembly of men and women of Yoruba extraction. Ranging in age from 50 to 80 years, these eighty plus men and women were drawn from various professions and walks of life. The only pre-requisite for membership of this constellation was that members should be intellectual juggernauts. These leaders of thought would form the nucleus of the think tank now known as Voice of Reason (VOR).
\nVictor Hugo was right when he declared \u201cNo force on earth can stop an idea whose time has come\u201d. The speed with which VOR was adopted and embraced astounded even its founder\/convener. Indeed, Mr. G himself often marvelled at the strength of the conviction and purity of thought of members on the issue of re-structuring. Evidently, many had reached identical conclusions to the Nigerian political conundrum, long before they were co-opted into VOR.
\nWith the benefit of hindsight, one now wonders if Arole (the Caretaker) as he came to be known in VOR, had a presentiment of his Transition from the terrestrial plane. \u201cKeep all the VOR documentation\u201d he would admonish, \u201crecords are important.\u201d The VOR came into being in August 2016, exactly 2 years before the onset of the terminal illness that was to promote him to the place in the heaven reserved for revolutionaries and patriots.
\nThe Voice of Reason is nothing less than Arole\u2019s magnum opus, his gift to the present and the future, a legacy for compatriots living and yet unborn. A legacy entrusted into the capable hands of an army of cerebral colossi, the like of whom has not been seen for 70 years. Arole has bequeathed the VOR, an idea whose time has come.
\nEsto perpetua!
\nLeke Oshunniyi
\nOctober 2018<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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