By Segun Ayobolu
On Wednesday, this week, friends, associates, colleagues, government officials including the governor of Lagos State, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu and Minister of Education, Dr Olatunji Alausa and critical stakeholders in the education industry gathered at the Epe Campus of the Lagos State University (LASU), on the invitation of respected journalist, editor, columnist, lawyer, environmentalist, politician and public administrator, Mr Olatunji Bello. The occasion was the formal unveiling of a spectacular new physical structure donated to the institution by the Executive Vice-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC).
The 550-seat sprawling building is an architectural masterpiece. It once existed only in the thought and imagination of the man fondly called TB by large numbers of his mentors, mentees and admirers. Thought translated into action, mutated into vision and is today a phenomenal material actuality, adding value to LASU and by extension Nigeria’s beleaguered educational landscape. In his speech on the occasion, TB traced the genesis and trajectory from idea to concreteness of the project.
In his words, “At my 50th birthday in 2011, I had committed to instituting an annual prize in five disciplines, namely, Law, Mass Communications, Social Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. I was very intentional about the criteria to qualify. Academic brilliance was one. Two, coming from a poor background. And three, the beneficiary must be an indigene of our dear state of Lagos. The whole idea is targeting those brilliant minds at the risk of dropping out of academic pursuits on account of poverty. To the glory of God Almighty, we have been able to sustain that scholarship programme to date.”
Fast forward a decade later as TB’s narrative continues, “So, as my 60th birthday approached in 2021, the concern was how I could do more.
For me, the idea of throwing a big party to mark the occasion was completely off the table.
My darling wife, Professor Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello, the very able Madam Vice-Chancellor of this great university, is the one who initially mooted the idea of building something for LASU to mark my 60th birthday. She was not yet the Vice Chancellor then. I never gave much thought to her suggestion immediately until a few days later. Eventually, after much reflection, l agreed it has to be an auditorium, truly befitting and fit for purpose”.
Although the architect, Mr Kunle Ayinla, came up with an impressive building plan, the projected cost, TB found staggering. Yet, he remained undaunted, ploughing on with determination and fortitude. Did not the Lord Jesus say that he who puts his hand on the plough and looks back is not worthy of the Kingdom of God? He put his fertile mind to work. According to him, “After days of wrestling with the architect’s budget in my head, it suddenly occurred to me I could ask those going to buy me gifts for the 60th birthday to monetise such and hand me the cash to do something really dear to my heart. It worked. A very wealthy friend and well-known businessman had wanted to surprise me with a brand new Toyota Land Cruiser Jeep. I appealed to him to convert it to cash. With donations from other able friends and well-wishers, we got started in 2021”.
It was a tortuous journey filled with unanticipated challenges such as the drastic fall of the Naira’s value and the attendant inflationary spirals of 2023 and 2024, but TB’s trust in the faithfulness of God to facilitate the completion of the dream never wavered. In the process, he had to sell his property at Magodo Estate in Lagos to keep the project going. Thus, Mr Olabode Opseitan writes, “It is not the size of the gift that stuns – it is the source. By every reasonable measure – whether by asset declarations, Forbes rankings, or real estate holdings – Tunji Bello is not among Nigeria’s wealthiest citizens. Yet, he has done what perhaps fewer than 10 Nigerians have ever done: build a legacy structure for a public university – not with surplus, but with scarcity…What emerged is not just an auditorium – it is a monument to moral courage, a structure built not on concrete alone, but on conviction”.
TB’s life has been built on the foundation of compassion, kindness, generosity, selflessness and a commitment to justice and the pursuit of public purpose. Myriads of those he has touched within and beyond the journalism profession over the years readily testify to his all too many acts of self-sacrificial giving, mostly getting nothing in return but gratitude and prayers.
For instance, in the book, ‘In Pursuit of the Public Purpose’, a collection of reminiscences, memories and reflections onTB’s life, published to commemorate his 60th birthday in 2021, a journalist and former Chairman of the Concord Chapter of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), Ogbeni Goke Odeyinka wrote, “I remember also how he assisted his first PA to study for his Master’s degree in Law in England. I know because the man involved happens to be my in-law.
Incidentally, TB’s gesture of altruistic philanthropy at LASU is coming at a time when the world is entering a new phase of chronic individualistic selfishness and self-centeredness. Seek ye first the kingdom of your individual greed and personal egotism, and all other things shall be added unto you, seems to be the new human credo, especially with the advent of President Donald Trump and his ‘Make America Great Again’ mantra. Consequently, America has turned inward particularly during his ongoing second term, terminating its financial contributions to the World Health Organization (WHO), scrapping the USAID, turning its back on the gripping poverty and immiseration that grips much of humanity despite the world’s wealthiest and most powerful country’s capacity to do much good and help fashion a fairer, more equitable, just and compassionate world.
This seems a far cry from the spectacular manifestation of amazing generosity of the spirit and overflow of the milk of human kindness exhibited by some of the world’s richest persons in the early years of this century. In his essay on different dimensions of this revolution in altruism, titled ‘What Should a Billionaire Give – and What Should You?’, Peter Singer writes, “In the same world in which more than a billion people live at a level of affluence never previously known, roughly a billion other people struggle to survive on the purchasing power equivalent of less than one US dollar per day”. Writing in 2007, Singer noted that most of the world’s poorest people were undernourished, lacked access to basic health services, including safe drinking water and could not send their children to school, with the result that at least 10 million children died yearly, according to statistics by UNICEF.
Responding to this dismal and desperate situation, Singer states that “Last June, the investor, Warren Buffett, took a significant step toward reducing these deaths when he pledged $31 billion to the Gates Foundation and another $6 billion to other charitable foundations. Buffett’s pledge, set alongside the nearly $30 billion given by Bill and Melinda Gates to their foundation, has made it clear that the first decade of the twenty-first century is a new “golden age of philanthropy”.
On an inflation-adjusted basis, Buffet has pledged to give more than double the lifetime total given away by two of the philanthropic giants of the past, Andrew Carnegie and John D.
Rockefeller, put together. Bill and Melinda Gates’ gifts are not far behind.”
What is intriguing is that many of the world’s billionaire philanthropists are atheists or agnostics, not excluding Bill Gates and Buffet.
TB is a Muslim married to a Christian and pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG). Compassionate kindness is thus not limited to religious inclination or orientation. In their book, ‘Greed is Dead-Politics after Individualism’, published in 2020, two eminent economists from the United Kingdom, Paul Collier and John Kay, contend that the world, despite Trump, is moving from an essentially narcissistic individualism to a return to a more communal, cooperative ethos without which human survival in the long run cannot be guaranteed. This is because “humans are first and foremost social animals and our successes always depend on cooperation”.
TB has shown the light for many more privileged persons to find the way to compassionate giving for the communal good. There are all too few affluent Nigerians, such as Aliko Dangote, Femi Otedola, Afe Babalola, Wole Olanipekun, and Tony Elumelu, among others, following this path relative to the number of Nigerians of considerable means. I am told that Anambra State, for instance, has the largest collection of billionaires in the country. How has that benefited their state? TB announced to the audience that, courtesy of another friend, Mr Biodun Omoniyi, Managing Director of VDT Communications, there will be free WiFi at the auditorium to enhance the learning experience of students. Moreover, the maintenance of the auditorium will be handled by another private management company for one year.
Tracing his orientation to philanthropy and public service to the examples of his late father, Alhaji Azeez Olatunji Bello, his late boss and mentor, MKO Abiola and President Bola Tinubu, TB stressed that “this auditorium is my own token of appreciation to God Almighty for his grace and to my dear native Lagos State for the great opportunities given me. First, I have also been one of the beneficiaries of the Lagos State Government’s scholarship award as an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan in the early 1980s. And later the privilege to serve in public office in various capacities”.
TB has obviously never forgotten that to whom much is given, much is expected. All too many of us disdain this truism all too often to the detriment of the collective good.
