Faith and integrity as Baba PB turns 94, By Laolu Akande

It is not possible to know my father and miss out two very important attributes. The one is the power and place of faith and the other is the abiding currency of integrity.

In Elder Peter Babatunde Akande’s home, no matter how late you sleep, the 5:30 a.m. prayer bell is non-negotiable, and you dare not be absent. With 8 children and other relatives he raised, the morning devotion always had at least 12 people. The session begins with hymns, followed by the reading of Psalms, and concludes with everyone kneeling for prayers.

This morning routine, filled with spiritual and mental enrichment, shaped my growth and development into adulthood.

My father’s prayers were lengthy, focused more on gratitude than requests, often thanking God for even the unseen and overlooked blessings. A tireless prayer warrior, he firmly believed in the power of prayer. He instilled in us a deep faith in Jesus Christ, not just through his words but through his devoted and God-fearing life, which we, his children, have come to cherish and follow.

I have seen him demonstrate faith and integrity. He is also a strict disciplinarian who held us accountable, but his love and care for the family were always evident, with the unwavering support of my late beloved mother.

I remember in 1981 when the naira was more valuable than the dollar and my father easily coughed out $25,000 to send one of my two elderly brothers to an American university. I suspect that caused him not to buy the status symbol Mercedes Benz car at that time, rather keeping to his Peugeot 505. But thank God, my brother sent him the Benz some years later from abroad.

He loved education intensely and did everything to support all of us to go as far as we wanted and had the capacity for in terms of learning and schooling. I remember that he was so glad when I got admission to the University of Ibadan in 1986 after a couple JAMB attempts!

He has lived and continues to live a life of many accomplishments in his career as a business executive of major business firms in the country, such as Odutola tyre soles where he became a senior Branch Manager and the Michelin, where he rose to become the National Marketing Manager next in line to the General Manager and CEO. He actually acted in that capacity at some point with the understanding that he would be the first Nigerian CEO of Michelin. But that is a story for another day.

He resigned from Michelin and proceeded to start his own tyre sales business in Ibadan where the family had been based although he had been moving from Onitsha to Kano and then Lagos in his business executive career especially in those two above-mentioned companies.

In the community, he was a church leader as the Patron of the Choir and the Boys Brigade at the C.A.C Itabale Olugbode and Oke Alafia parishes both in Ibadan. In fact, he was not just an ordained CAC elder he was also the Treasurer of the Olugbode Church, which is the founding parish and missionary headquarters of the CAC in Nigeria and worldwide.

Baba PB has been a truly devoted man of God, who has served as an elder since the 70s when he was in his 40s. And because of his prudence, and forthrightness, church leaders kept him on the voluntary job of Treasurer all the way to his 90s. 

And his faith has been tested several times. In fact, he could accurately say like Job did in Chapter 13:15 “though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.”

Baba lost his wife, my darling mother in 2003 on the eve of her 70th birthday. Then he lost his fourth daughter in 2014, and his fifth daughter in 2024-only few months ago. But his faith in God remains incredibly strong. I have seen the pain and the sorrow that he carried when these transitions occurred and even beyond, but there is an overcoming conviction that he has that God is faithful. 

In 2015 when then Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) picked me as his spokesperson, it was a year after his 4th daughter died-she is the one right ahead of me. When my wife shared the news of my appointment with my father, he said to her in shaken voice saying  “I didn’t know I would still receive good news like this ever again!

That was both a reflection of the pain of his previous losses of loved ones, and at the same time gratitude for a cheerful development. When we eventually spoke about my job at the presidency then, he would say to me that God had told him that his children will get to the very top and that he was keenly grateful to see that come through!

I recall one of the family’s most trying times in 1997. My immediate elder sister married then Major Seun Fadipe in 1993 and when General Sani Abacha became head of State, General Oladipo Diya was the Chief of General Staff, the effective number two man in the then Federal Military Government.

When General Diya took office, my brother-in-law, Major Seun Fadipe, became his Chief Security Officer, similar to Major Al-Mustapha’s role with Abacha. Despite my position as a senior journalist and editor of Tribune on Saturday in 1997, Fadipe, being a never-say-die and disciplined officer, never shared any information with me, or offered leads for exclusive news reports. He was so tight-lipped!

But I worked closely with Dr Olu Onagoruwa, the Attorney-General under Abacha’s regime, and a group of notable Nigerians to push for a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution. We often held planning meetings at Onagoruwa’s country home in Odogbolu, away from Abuja where he served as AGF. The name of the group then was Network for Democracy with notable Ibadan based public intellectuals such as Uncle Yemi Farounbi who later served as Nigeria’s Ambassador to Philippines and Professor Olu Atinmo, then top UI professor.

But trouble started for the Akande family in December 1997 when on a Saturday news broke that a plane meant to take Diya from Abuja to Makurdi was found to have been laced with a bomb which exploded and eventually killed two security aides. But the lives of General Diya, Major Fadipe and others billed to fly the plane were spared as this happened just before Diya arrived to board. As editor of a weekly newspaper, I published a cover story the following weekend with the headline, “WHO WANTS DIYA DEAD?”

Bisi Abidoye who is still a leading journalist in Abuja was the writer of the story as the Tribune Bureau Chief. I am not even sure if Bisi was aware that his editor-myself was related to Diya’s CSO. In any case we did the story on its own merit.

No sooner after the story was published, a screaming headline on that Tribune on Saturday edition, the Federal Military Government alleged that actually Diya and 14 others had been planning a coup and they have since been arrested.

My father who had travelled to the United Kingdom to attend the Leeds University MA International Studies graduation of my younger sister hurriedly cut his trip short and made for home. As soon as he landed, he declared a fast and commenced round the clock praying. 

By that time details where still sketchy about what happened. But Major Fadipe, his son-in-law was already in custody and I remember that when they were brought before the Military Tribunal, he pleaded guilty!

My mother on hearing this just couldn’t understand and she kept asking in Yoruba “kini won ni Seun so? giliti?Translated this meant “what did they say Seun said, guilty? Her consternation was based on General Diya’s own statement that the coup was “a set up from the top.”

By April 1998, the Tribunal came to a guilty verdict on Diya, Fadipe and several others, and a death sentence imposed! It seemed the worst feared thing had come!

But Baba PB continued in fasting and prayers from that December 1997 and continued all the way, breaking daily in the evenings until Abacha passed away and a tragic death of his son in law miraculously averted!

I have never seen a more appropriate illustration of that Christian witty saying “PUSH: Pray Until Something Happens.”

So in conclusion, let me also say in the words of my sister, Evangelist Mofoluwaso Akande Ogunbiyi, in her tribute to Baba PB as he turned 94 last Saturday, “My Daddy is my Hero! GOD bless you Dad, l love you and you know it! I am loving you forever, Baba mi! You have shown all of us the light and you have been the best dad anyone could ask for! May GOD bless your new age. Happy 94th Birthday.”

Laolu Akande, a journalist and Editor in Chief of Empowered Newswire, was recently a senior special assistant to former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.