Beat the challenges of a difficult early childhood, hustle hard, and find your way to England to study at the University of London. Return to Nigeria to join the civil service, excelling in your duties and in your advocacy for workers’ rights that earned you the name “Mr. Car Loan.” Go on into politics and be mentored by the finest, becoming one of the private secretaries of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo. He respected and trusted you so much that he put you forward to contest for the House of Representatives. Win the election and go on to a stellar performance as Member, House of Representatives, representing the Old Ondo State.
Go on to become the Secretary of the Ekiti Caucus even before the creation of Ekiti State, with the Chairman being Senator Ayo Fasanmi. Work with other Ekiti patriots to advance the agenda for the creation of Ekiti State, and as Secretary, co-sign in 1979 the very first letter demanding the creation of Ekiti State, a vision that others took from where you stopped and eventually brought to fruition many years later.
In the middle of your tenure as MHR between 1979 and 1983, your wife gave birth to a bouncing baby boy in 1981. Name him after you: Akintunde Rotimi, Jr.
Demonstrate that you understand your role as father is much more important than anything else. Raise the boy and his siblings in the finest schools in England, Nigeria, the US, and Canada. More importantly, teach him family values of integrity, excellence, service, humility, and courage. Teach him quiet strength and the fact that the loudest is not always right, and to speak for himself so that brigands do not shape the narrative about his journey.
Raise him right. Take him to the homeland from his earliest years. Routinely pick this child from school and, before taking him home, bring him along to political meetings from as early as eight years old to sit, observe, meet the right people, and quietly begin to build a national network. Take him to Ekiti Parapo meetings in Lagos at Airport Hotel from the age of sixteen, even before university, to be mentored by greats like the Late Sir Remi Omotosho, the Late Arc. Fola Alade, Late General Adeyinka Adebayo, and Chief Julius Adelusi-Adeluyi, steadily plugging him into the mainstream of Ekiti development. Ground this boy by constantly reminding him of his identity rooted in a family heritage of apostolic Christian ministry and public service. Build him to become a man of faith and love, with a proud and enduring legacy.
Support his leadership roles through childhood to becoming president of his department in the university and president of a faith-based organisation. Support him on a career path in investment banking and public relations, but always remind him of the calling to public service. Expose him to opportunities at home and abroad and support him to establish an Africa-wide organisation that engaged global challenges and encourage his interest in peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction. Support his humanitarian work in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and other countries. Encourage him to travel around the world, visiting over forty-five countries, to build a global worldview.
At one of such global events outside Nigeria, he calls to tell you he met Dr. Kayode Fayemi, who invited him and two other Ekiti youth attending the conference. You encourage this mentor and protégé relationship, but at one time complain that your son is now closer to Fayemi than to you, his dad.
But you come to understand the ways of God and eventually start seeing things happen. Fayemi hides him in his structure, nurturing him in various roles, including as Principal Private Secretary, a role similar to what you played in your service to Obafemi Awolowo. After seventeen years, Fayemi decides he will support this boy to become Member, House of Representatives—the same role you held in your lifetime, only that now the constituency is even larger. God watches over His word and performs it, and this boy assumes office.
He goes on to be consistently rated a top ten performing Member in the 10th Assembly, and a critical national ally for the community of persons with disabilities, women, and other causes. He is even the Secretary of the Ekiti State Caucus of the 10th National Assembly, under the chairmanship of Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, a role you held in the First Assembly. In one instance, his motion on the floor liberated thousands of Nigerians who had faced career stagnation due to the HND/BSc dichotomy, just as you did in your days. He continues this journey, this tradition, serving the constituency with the fear of God and the consciousness of leaving the family legacy stronger.
Sometime along this journey, on the eve of your 85th posthumous birthday, some misguided nuisance, an online troll and bully, called your son, the one that you as an intentional leader raised, an accidental opportunist Representative.
You call on your comrades from the Ekiti Parapo, Abraham’s Bosom chapter, and you all laugh at the idiocy. They all agree that every generation has deviants like that, usually the loudest but the daftest. They are loquacious but lack the cerebral capacity Ekiti is known for. They know no honour and nothing is sacred to them, and they misrepresent the values that Ekiti people are known for. As the great crowd of witnesses talked about in the Book of Hebrews, they cheer on and say, “AkinỌmỌAkin!, continue the work of the Lord. The God of Heaven and Earth is with you and will by Himself teach those who want to take the place of God in your life a lesson.”
Happy 85th Posthumous Birthday to an intentional man and a great father, Late Hon. Chief Akintunde Rotimi, I.
AkinỌmỌAkin
