Toyin Falola at 70: The reminiscing about a scholar and legend

• Published date: 08 January 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

TF, as Professor Toyin Falola, is known all over the world, has gracefully been inducted into the exalted and hoary circle of the septuagenarians. And strangely, his self-effacing self would not acknowledge nor celebrate this momentous occasion with at least a seminal offering as we are wont to. Sometimes in November, 2022, I raised the issue of the approaching 70th birthday with him. 'What should we be expecting?' I asked. I had in mind the type of elaborate intellectual celebration that heralded his 65th birthday in 2018. TF replied immediately to my query, 'It will be in May 2023.' I was momentarily confused. But going by how disorganized and absent-minded I could be sometimes, I took the statement for a kind of mix up on my part, hoping to get back to the conversation in earnest. But then, when I got the invitation a few days ago to chair this birthday event slated for January 1, it immediately became clear to me that TF's response to me was the usual diversionary and evasive tactic to shift attention away from a celebration of his immense self. Well, thank God it has not worked! Didn't Ralph W. Sockman, the famous American Protestant radio pastor, say that 'True humility is intelligent self-respect which keeps us from thinking too highly or too meanly of ourselves. It makes us modest by reminding us how far we have come short of what we can be.'

The truth is that TF is the type of person who would not want to put himself ahead of others. And this is all the more so if the circumstances and occasions are not auspicious. His sense of self necessarily reflects on his understanding of and care for others. This is the sense projected in the Yoruba proverb: Àìfinipeni, àìfèèyàn-pèèyàn, lará oko-ó fi nsán ìbànt?´ w?`lú ('A lack of proper regard for others, a lack of proper regard for people, is what emboldens the country bumpkin to venture into town clad only in a loincloth'). In other words, TF is not one to discard others in the service of self-glory or self-positioning. And yet, the truth is that while tragedies, setbacks and disturbing circumstances will always be part of us; but crossing the 70-year mark, and especially for a well-regarded icon, will never happen twice. And neither will the challenging times ever justify our not counting the days of the deserving, so we could order our feet unto wisdom, as the scripture enjoins us.

In the best sense of Yoruba cultural understanding, TF is a gbajumo of a most distinguished sort. His larger-than-life...