Dr. Tai Solarin who has Nigeria's first university of education, Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijebu-Ode, named after him posthumously in January 2005 by the Ogun State Governor, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, was also the first atheist to be honoured posthumously inside a church in the ecclesiastical history of Nigeria. This founder of Nigeria's first and only secular school, Mayflower School, Ikenne, was a patriot and nationalist par excellence when alive. He is remembered today as a great educationist, farmer, teacher, social critic, philosopher, philanthropist, administrator, writer, columnist, motivator, moralist, mentor, mystic, atheist and above all the quintessential conscience of Nigerian nation.

Born in Ikenne-Remo, Ogun State of Nigeria circa 1916 to poor and illiterate parents ?? Mr. Daniel Solarin, a drummer, farmer and palm wine tapper and Mrs. Rebecca Okufule Solarin, a petty trader ?? his twin sister, Madam Caroline Kehinde Solarin (JP), a devout Methodist Christian, died on Wednesday 29 April 1992 while Dr. 'Augustus' Taiwo Solarin, an avowed atheist, died on Wednesday 27 July 1994.

Tai Solarin was educated at St. James' School, Iperu-Remo for three months and at Ogere-Remo from 1927 to 1929 both in Ogun State before proceeding to Otapete Methodist Primary School, Ilesha in Osun State from 1930 to 1931 where he completed his Standard Six Certificate. He also went to Wesley College, Ibadan in Oyo State from 1933 to 1936 where he had his Higher Elementary (Grade Two) Teacher's Certificate. Having taught for five years at Methodist Primary Schools in Ago-Iwoye and Shagamu from 1937 to 1941, he left for Lagos where he worked briefly in the Customs Office as a typist.

In May 1942, Tai Solarin left Nigeria for England as a volunteer in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War (WW2) where he later became a navigator after a failed attempt at becoming a pilot. Having been discharged in April 1945 at the end of WW2, he enrolled at the University of Manchester the following year for a bachelor of arts degree in history and geography. With a postgraduate diploma in education at the University of London's Institute of Education from 1949 to 1950, he taught Yoruba language for a year from 1950 to 1951 as an Assistant Lecturer at the varsity's School of Oriental and African Studies.

Tai Solarin met the then Miss Sheila Mary Tuer in Manchester around 1947 and wedded the then 28-year-old lady on 14 September 1951 when he was 35. "I remember visiting the registry a day before our wedding in 1951 and asking to see whatever was read at the ceremony. I found that the wife must obey the husband. I told the registrar I did not want my wife, who was more intelligent than I was, to obey me. If she was to obey me, the family would die of mediocrity, as my wife would be taking dictation on decisions that might not be in the best interest at the family. In our 43 years of married life we have never had a day of sorrow. Ask me why not. My guess is that we spend each day as our last. We fill each day with plenty of activities in the service of others -- that of course is our religion." The family was blessed with Corin, a daughter, born on 27 June 1952 and Tunde, a son, born on 15 December 1956.

Arriving Nigeria from the United Kingdom in December 1951, Tai Solarin succeeded the foundation principal of Molusi College, Ijebu-Igbo, Mr. (later Prof.) Oluwole Awokoya, as the second principal of the college from January 1952 to December 1955. On 27 January 1956, Tai Solarin and his wife founded the first and only secular school in Nigeria, Mayflower School, Ikenne, Ogun State and remained its principal for twenty years when he retired in 1976 to establish the Students' Second Home in 1977, a boarding house which still serves more than two thousand students of the three public high schools in Ikenne town. Also complementing the now state-owned Mayflower School, was the establishment of the privately owned Mayflower Junior School, the primary school arm of the Mayflower institution, a citadel of secular education for self-reliance and all round excellence.

Tai Solarin was awarded an honorary doctorate degree in Literature in 1971 by the Alma College, Alma, Michigan State of the United States of America, in addition to about 30 years of bilateral annual students exchange programme between Alma College and Mayflower School, starting from 1963, with some ex-students of the latter having benefited from the university degree scholarships offered by the former.

Dr. Tai Solarin and his selfless wife sponsored more than 300 students within and outside Nigeria at various levels from kindergarten to doctorate level, apart from other unpublicised philanthropic gestures to the sick, the aged, the underprivileged and suchlike individuals and institutions.

He was appointed into public offices by various governments of Nigeria from the First Republic to the military administration of General Ibrahim Babangida by sheer virtue of his sterling patriotism. He was a member of the Somade Commission on Primary Education in 1962; Public Complaints Commissioner for the then Oyo, Ondo and Ogun States from 1976 to 1977; a member of the Justice Akinola Aguda panel for the creation of Nigeria's New Federal Capital Territory in 1975; the Chairman of the Presidential Monitoring Committee of the then Directorate for Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI) in Benue, Plateau, Borno and Gongola States in 1988; and founding Chairman of the People's Bank of Nigeria (PBN) from 1989 to 1991, among others.

Dr. Tai Solarin adopted what he called a permanent "battle dress" in 1979 after visiting the densely populated China which had almost 100% of Chinese children in school against less than 25% of their counterpart in Nigeria. Protesting this governmental irresponsibility, he swore to live the rest of his life in the semblance of pupil's school uniform of khaki shorts, short-sleeved shirts and "Knowledge is Light" cap until subsequent governments of Nigeria wake up to the responsibility of sending 100% of Nigerian school-age children to school. "When I was coming back from China I was nearly in tears," recalled Tai Solarin on page A4 of The New York Times of Friday, December 29, 1989. "They have one billion people there and every child goes to school. When will it happen in this mighty country, I wondered. And I vowed I would do everything to make it happen. In the meantime, until it happens, I will go around in shorts. And if during my lifetime there is no free education, I will be buried in shorts." Two years before his death he affirmed that "My greatest joy is the opportunity I have to contribute to the education of Nigerian children. I am a worshipper of human beings and the children of Nigeria are my gods and goddesses."

He was detained in various prisons across Nigeria for his human rights activism right from his first major detention on 12 October 1974 by Gowon's military government to his last major incarceration on 12 March 1984 by the draconian duo of Buhari-Idiagbon regime which cost him seventeen months behind the bars. Thanks to Mr. Kehinde Sofola, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) who defended him in the law courts for decades without charging a dime, among other lawyers.

Dr. Tai Solarin was admired as "the conscience of the nation" by Nigeria's greats like Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN), Prof. Wole Soyinka, Prof. Babs Fafunwa, Prof. Sam Aluko, Prof. Femi Osofisan, Prof. Tam David-West, Chief Obafemi Awolowo (late), Chief Bola Ige (late), Chief M.K.O Abiola (late), Prof. Ayodele Awojobi (late) and Prof. Olubi Sodipo (late) who wrote that "Solarin could conveniently be likened to many profound and influential social critics and activists in WORLD HISTORY and his social philosophy can be cogently compared to several WORLD LEADERS'. His concepts of the school can also be compared to WRITERS such as Jean Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Paine".

Tai Solarin's mentors were cosmopolitan. He had leadership mentor in Jawaharlal Nehru of India, political mentor in Obafemi Awolowo of Nigeria, philosophical mentor in Robert Ingersoll of America and literary mentor in H.G. Wells of London.

The great educationist is immortalized in Nigeria with Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijebu-Ode in Ogun State; T & S Hospitals in Mushin and Apapa, Tai Solarin Memorial School in Amuwo-Odofin, and his statue at Yaba, all in Lagos State, apart from a road and a library named after him in his home town of Ikenne, Ogun State.

He is also immortalized in more than 30 publications written by him and about him and his school. Among his own books are: A Message for Young Nigerians; Towards Nigeria's Moral Self-Government; Thinking With You; Our Grammar School Must Go; No Witches, No Angels — My Credo; Not God's Injunction Today; To Mother With Love (An Autobiography); and Mayflower — The Story of a School. Books by other writers on him include: Who's Afraid of Solarin? by Prof. Femi Osofisan; The Educational Theory of Tai Solarin by Dr. Tony Aladejana and Dr. Sam Obidi. Tai Solarin's Footprints on the Sand of Time and Tai Solarin's Adventures: A Practised Philosophy, both by Dr. Wale Omole.

Dr. Tai Solarin was a widely travelled world citizen. He had been to virtually all the continents of the world namely North America South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Among the countries visited by him and his wife, Sheila, are the United Kingdom, the former Soviet Union, the U.S.A., Canada, China, Japan, India, Israel, Australia, Bulgaria, Brazil, Chile, Czechoslovakia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Sweden, Tanzania and Ghana, to mention just a few.
(Excerpts from Education for Greatness 1: Selected Speeches of Dr. Tai Solarin pages 11-15).

'Chief Simen Adebo once said, "Don't die for Nigeria. Live for Nigeria." I have lived for Nigeria and I shall die for Nigeria. I am very pleased to have offered myself for the good of all,'
TAI SOLARIN, 1991

'Though Tai Solarin was criticized for not believing in God, his humanitarian zeal might put to shame many a sheikh and bishop."
ADEMOLA ADEGBAMIGBE, 2000

'If anybody like me, who has given an entire life to serving humanity, qualities for hell, then give me the hottest part of hell.'
TAI SOLARIN, 1988

Only the ignorant go to hell, not a well-informed person.
TAI SOLARIN, 1970


TAI LIVES ON

Tai Solarin must have taken Stephen Grellet's wise words to head and to heart, for he lived those words: "I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show any human being, let me do it now, for I shall not pass this way again…"

Tai, educationist and social crusader, preached the sermon of Humanism, lived for humanity, making man, particularly the common man, the fulcrum of his life's struggles.

Teacher and founder of Mayflower School, Ikenne, Tai, as most people fondly called him, was a unique person: simple but not simplistic, frugal and facetious, his life was an open book. He practised what he preached, living more by example and less by precept.

The school he set up, Mayflower, was an encapsulation of his philosophies, the philosophy of Spartanism, of Humanism, of Welfarism. He often described himself as a man-fearing rather than God-fearing person. His atheistic reasoning taught him to fear the one you could see rather than the One you could not see. Religious purists whose belief in God is anchored on faith rather than on ocular proof disagreed with him. But he defiantly held his ground until he passed away on July 27, 1994.

His contributions to humanity are substantial, substantially invaluable and invaluably substantial whether as a teacher, a public complaints commissioner, a political or social activist or as a writer. An uncompromising apostle of free education, he believed in his heart as well as on his hat that "knowledge is light". He wore the expression like a tattoo, a permanent badge of his identification with a cause that was his life's passion.

In every field of work in which he found himself, he made man, the respect for man, living or dead, the centrepiece of his endeavour. Many will remember him as the Lagos scavenger, the man who would remove corpses for burial from anywhere he found them in Lagos, an insanely practical rebuke of officialdom which had made a habit of letting the dead to decompose and the stench to assail our nostrils.

Tai was far from being "a material man", or if you prefer, a materialist. He always dressed in mainly khaki shorts, shirts and cap, and never made any pretensions to sartorial elegance. Not for him the Shakespearean expression that the "clothe maketh the man". To him, knowledge is what does it. Yorubas are a race that cherish flourish. The language is rich in proverbs, the people are flamboyant in attire and songs and dances, and they love titles and festivities, the whole shebang of ostentation. But Tai was able to stand out of the crowd with conceited aloofness.

He wasn't built big. A smallish man, an affirmation that dynamite comes in small packages. He was an intellectual power-house, one who made invigorating company, reeling off anecdote after anecdote, jumping from one subject to another not for reasons of pedantic show-offism but for reasons of just being himself: a truly, fully educated man.

Tai had a mammoth following not merely among his students, or his teachers but among all those, young and old, men and women, who found his words at Freedom Square, at lecture halls, in books and newspapers, the equivalent of Freedom Square, at lecture halls, in books and newspaper, the equivalent of pearls. "May your road be rough," he said in an article on January 1, 1964. "I am not cursing you; I am wishing you what I wish myself every year. I, therefore, repeat, may you have a hard time this year, may there be plenty of troubles for you this year! If you are not so sure what you should say back, why not just say, same on you? I ask no more."

Why the curse? Because, as he puts it, "Our successes are conditioned by the amount of risk we are ready to take… The big fish is never caught in shallow water… You cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs; there is no paean without pain…" That article has been reproduced in several books since 1964. But that is merely the tip of his intellectual iceberg.

Most men in their old age are feeble. So was Tai. He was attacked by both age and asthma. He walked gingerly, not on a tip-toe but he tapped the floor, not fearfully but lightly, wondering why age has somewhat caged the lion. Nonetheless, his steps were still imbued with confidence and courage, the courage of a man who wasn't afraid to face the odds whatever they may be. Even in that ripe age of 78, he still had the quality of electric vitality, he still had a lot of get-up-and-go; his voice, though weak, carried strength, not loudness, but strength that comes from moral purity.

Tai was a terror to many governments, past and present, and was in and out of the slammer several times. He had a near god-like disdain for danger and often travelled where angels feared to tread. Whenever he was convinced about something, he would let the world know where he stood. And he stood there defiantly. Sometimes he erred, because as a human being he was susceptible to rumours. If he erred, he often did on the side of the common man or on the side of crusading for honesty and integrity. When he performed the last public act of marching for democracy the Sunday before his death, he wrote for himself a fitting epitaph. He will miss the great tom-tom of the triumph of democracy over dictatorship in Nigeria when it occurs, but we shall remember him as one who gave the last ounce of his energy to that struggle.

Think of Mahatma Gandhi, think of Nelson Mandela, think of Martin Luther King, all of them global monuments and icons. Tai belongs to this pantheon of the uniquely great.