By Jide Osuntokun
The oldest person alive is Ethel Caterham living in Surrey England but the oldest person who ever lived in modern times is Jeanne Calment of France who lived for 122 years. There were many people in the Bible for example Methuselah, who were reputed to have lived much older than these ones. The figures cited here were the verified ones. There are people in Okemesi, my home town where people are said to be in their 120s. This may be true because many people there do not eat junk food or any processed food. The average age in Nigeria is in the 50s and the global statistics is much higher than that. Winston Churchill the then hardworking war leader in England died at 90 and Charles de Gaulle died at 79. These two do not represent the global average and may be due to their genes. I however want to look at the issue from my personal perspective.
A few years ago on retirement, Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) was reported to have said old age is like a plague which affects everyone. The meaning of this statement is clear: because whether one likes it or not, and if one is lucky to reach old age since only eight percent of the world’s population reaches that age bracket, one is bound to go through several experiences before the curtains are drawn.
I was in France collecting data for my PhD when General de Gaulle made this statement around 1968 when he was already 78 and had been holding leadership positions of the French people since becoming leader of “Free France” from 1944 to 1946 and had been president of France for many years from 1958 to 1969. One thing that no one can forget about him was his Gallic pride and arrogance which made him almost feel he was France. But his comment on old age is so cryptic that one cannot easily forget and these days as an old man I always recall it.
It was not until I turned 80 that I really began to feel the years God had granted me. In my journey of life, from one half-sister of mine who was over 80 before she passed on to the great beyond, I am the longest living person in my family. Both my great parents and my mother lived over a hundred years but my father died when he was 60 and I was nine then and it was the grace of God and that of my brother, Chief Joseph Oduola Osuntokun that saw me through primary and secondary schools. All my highly distinguished brothers died before they reached 70 years and I did not expect to live long on the account of my siblings’ short lives.
I went to the University of Ibadan on scholarship and to graduate school first on University of Ibadan scholarship and when I got the Canadian Walton Killam Trust Memorial Graduate Students Award, thus I relieved the University of Ibadan the burden of paying for my PhD degree. I have had a very successful academic life which took me to teaching at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada as an assistant professor from 1970 to 1971, lecturer in the University of the West Indies 1971 to 1972. I came back home in 1972 at the instigation of my teacher, Professor J.F. Ade.
Ajayi my benefactor and the University of Ibadan, my Alma Mater sent me along with other young people to Jos to establish what was then known as the University of Ibadan Jos Campus.
Needless to say I thoroughly enjoyed the place because it gave me and others opportunity to know our country and to shape the destiny of our younger compatriots. Unfortunately on a personal note, my young unforgettable wife, Abiodun Olayinka lost two pregnancies in Jos due to inadequate health facilities which forced me to leave Jos for the University of Lagos in 1974 and where I retired from in 2005. I however went for some public service in the National Universities Commission 1978-1982, University of Maiduguri 1982 to 1984, Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1988-1991, ambassador to Germany 1991 to 1995. After retirement, I helped my church with the establishment and running of the Redeemer’s University Ede from 2005 to 2016; I was in the Presidential Advisory Council on International Affairs (1999- 2015) pro bono. I also served my state as pro chancellor and chairman of the governing Council of Ekiti State University from 2011 to 2014 and finally retired from active service in 2016 because of old age and since then I have been in what the English would call “splendid isolation”.
Perhaps I should say the most important thing in my life since my wife joined the Saints triumphant in 2003 is that by the grace of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God ordained me, first as a Deacon, and later as an Elder, in the church and I am committed to doing all that lies in my power to work towards the advancement of the church and the gospel of Jesus the Christ.
My experience as an old man is varied. Some establishment like GTB gives elderly people the privilege of being first served before others when we go there for banking transactions and I must say, I find this very satisfying. Old age in Nigeria, unlike abroad generally speaking, does not confer advantage on the elderly. In the UK and at least in some parts of the USA, once you are a citizen over 65, one is exempt from paying for public transport. The public transport we have in Lagos for example is so overcrowded that if one was given free ride, I will not consider it a favour. In our culture the elderly are respected as repositories of wisdom. But it is not uncommon to see old people derided nowadays as those who caused the problems confronting Nigeria which young ones are now facing.
Let me go to the physical degeneration aspect of being old, with my situation as an example. When my son was nine in the 1970s, I always gave him a physical advantage by asking him to stay in front of me for a distance of about twelve or so yards when running just to encourage him. Later, he told me if I wanted to run with him, we should start together. Of course when we started together, he always left me behind. I tried to engage Finn, one of my grandsons in long tennis match. I was surprised when the young man diplomatically asked us to go home because I simply couldn’t get the ball over the net in several of my service games!
There was a time we went for bicycle ride in Atlanta and to my chagrin, I found riding a bicycle extremely difficult and I had to ask my son and his family not to wait for me because I wasn’t fit enough. The last experience I had with one of my daughters’ family was when they took me for a canoe expedition on a river called “Beautiful”, an estuary of Lake Ontario. We had to paddle the canoe over a distance of eight kilometres. I was in a separate boat with my son in-law while my daughter and her daughter were in another canoe and my grandson had a separate boat where he was sole sailor. It took hours for us to reach our destination. Despite the fact that my son-in-law did most of the donkey job of paddling our boat, I was so exhausted that I couldn’t get out of the canoe unassisted when we reached our destination!
I slept for about 10 hours that night because of the exhaustion. These days the most rigorous exercise I am comfortable with is walking.
I don’t have any social life any more. This may be because I am a widower. The church provides avenues for my social interaction and support. I miss not having anybody to share my thoughts with at night when everyone has gone their different ways. It is terrible to be alone but surprisingly, I have gotten used to it.
Loneliness can sometimes be good for our souls. This gives me time to ruminate about events in my country and to be obsessive about finding solutions even when nobody asks for my views and opinions. If the infrastructure were good, this is the time for people like me to sit down or up to write their memoirs and share their ideas for the future with men in power today and those who would come later.
Finally apart from the cost of travelling, I am now no longer interested in travelling. It is a hazard going through the airports and immigration desks in foreign countries and queuing up for visa interviews in embassies and the tedium of hours in flight. Sleeping on strange beds in hotels and even in my children’s homes is not the best for me at this stage of my life. Reconciliation of one’s desire with one’s strength is the greatest challenge I feel as I grow older day by day and I have to sustain myself with medications, which thank God, I can afford but which the general Nigerian population can hardly afford. This should not be the case because everyone has the right to sustainably good health .This unfortunately is a luxury in Nigeria and most places in the world.
