As Air Commodore Kolawole Falope (rtd) walked into the venue of an interview with Saturday Independent, the shouts of Baba re o (this is father) rented the air at various angles. And to each beckoning, he stood and took out time to acknowledge cheers and greetings.
Though he and his colleagues were prematurely retired from the Air Force for reasons unknown to them, the Parakoyi of Ife is not sitting down to bemoan the treatment. Rather, he goes about his life a happy man, affecting people’s lives with his happiness.
Falope was born in Ife, Osun State on August 28, 1940. Educated at Government College, Ibadan, Oyo State, he trained to fly aircraft in Ethiopia and Germany.
Though the country had about four civilian pilots before him, he was the first trained Nigerian Air Force pilot.
He was one of those who risked their lives in fighting to make Nigeria remain one during the course of the civil war. But in 1979, according to him, for whatsoever reason, the government of President Shehu Shagari retired him and others at the peak of their career.
“Though I feel bad about it, who knows, maybe he was saving our lives, whatsoever, we are a very happy people now. The Air Force was just growing up, so we left with only our salaries. But God never leaves his children, he maintained us up till today. Of all the officers that were retired, I can’t point to any one of them who is rich, but they are very highly respected and educated men. I am forever proud of them.
“Businesswise, we are into our own private lives, some of us have tried our hands in business and I can assure you that many of us have failed because we are not trained in it but at least we avoid hunger and keep our children in school, especially, our growing children. We did manage to train our children and today they are the ones feeding us, so we are very happy,” he said.
Besides being an Air Force officer, he was also a sportsman. According to him: “Outside the Air Force, I helped the government in many ways. I became the chairman of the Nigerian Football Association (NFA) and we won the All Africa Games in 1973; I took over from Commodore Kenchebe (late). I worked in Washington DC as a Defence and Armed Forces Attaché; and because of the education and training that we had, I didn’t find it difficult as the Americans liked me a lot. At the end of my stay, I was awarded an American national honour, the first Blackman to receive that honour, I feel very grateful to God.”
Did he set out to become a military man? He said, “It was just God’s wish, when I passed out of Government College where I was a member of the Boys Cadet Corps, my next step was automatically the university, so about eight of us went to teach in one school in Ekiti and it was like they wanted a Yoruba boy somewhere, so my principal sent for me. That was how it happened, so we were sent to Ethiopia and had a very good tough training there. We woke up at 4am, ran about 10 miles, you know Ethiopia is pretty hilly, and we did it.”
He also spoke on what it felt like being an Air Force pilot. “It was a very tough and interesting life. How many of us can fly? So being able to fly, you are able to shoot down a plane, you are able to bomb, it is not easy. You need the heart because you know that people would die. Honestly, I would always go for that profession, I love it.
“To be a pilot, you must be very intelligent, that is why out of about 100 people who put in for flying only about 10 people made it. You really have to be dedicated, if you are in the air and there is a problem, you have to know what to do. If you have to jump out of the plane, you have to know where, otherwise, you would save yourself and the plane would land on people on the ground and kill them.”
Having experienced and witnessed the educational system then and now, he makes his comparison. “I don’t think we are doing well. In our own time, if you had a School Certificate Grade II in Government College, Ibadan, you were considered almost a failure but now, you have a party. And in our own days teachers were like God, they were highly respected. They had houses and cars, but now, I don’t know if any teacher had any house or car. There was this wide margin between the student and the teacher. But now you see them, probably chasing the same women and doing the same thing. But then, government is not funding education. As a schoolboy all our teachers were housed with cars, but now, I have got some in-laws who don’t even have a bicycle and they are teaching. The government doesn’t have a policy about this type of thing. The government should sit up and encourage this teaching profession, otherwise our country will go into ruins because that is our backbone; without education I wouldn’t have been able to fly. Even if I went there through the back door, I would crash.
“The learning atmosphere is very different. In our own time if the teacher is coming this way and your father is coming the other way, you would run away from the teacher and walk the other way. Around 1951, I remember I was made to bring something to my teacher’s house, which I forgot; the following day I saw hell. He beat the hell out of me. Now the teachers are just traders, but then do you blame them? What they are paid is nothing. You would find that even where they are living, they all go on Okada, whereas in our days, within six months of teaching, you would get a car loan. Now, maybe you may need to teach for about 10 years before being entitled to that. It is the government; it has to establish its code of conduct for these teachers knowing that the future of the children rests with the teachers and that the future of the country rests with the children. We are going to die and leave these children behind. Go to any of the secondary schools, see the classroom and see the teachers’ table. We need to wake up.”
Falope could not have imagined telling his parents he wanted to go professional with his sporting activities.
He said: “In our own days, it would be ridiculous for somebody to say his profession was football. It was not common. In fact, my parents would have said that I was mad. That is not to look down on sportsmen; I admire them being a sportsman myself. Professional sportsmen then were also good. But the university degree thing during our time meant a lot. If I had not continued my education, it would have been a bit ridiculous.”
Ask him if military men really fall in love and he says, “I don’t see why not. The military man is just like any other human being. The only difference anybody can talk about is that the military men are highly disciplined. It is such a noble course. In America, it is compulsory to be in the military for at least two years. It is a good training ground; it brings out the best in you. Today in the U.S. some of their best military personnel are women.
“The wife of a military man is enduring. She is often a loner at home and the husband is transferred around. She goes through all these problems. Every woman would like to see to the success of her family. So it is not easy. I would say that these wives begin to know their husbands after so many years. They are really very good because they endure a lot.”
As a retiree, he admits that “what I have been doing mostly is catching up in the sense that I needed to know my children more and to see to their lives. So, I centre my activities on them. The retirement benefit I got was used to start a good big farm in Ile-Ife. I don’t need to go and meet Mr. A for contract because my children are seeing to my needs. I just want to be strong and alive and have a good time.”
For his leisure, “I love sports a lot and I spend most of my time in sports. I play tennis a lot and I love people. I visit friends and they visit me. We crack jokes, talk about those beautiful days and wish that those days would come back so that people like you would enjoy. We didn’t have money, but we had good life.”
What would he feel like undoing if he has the chance?
“Who am I to query God. He has been very nice to me. I can’t say this thing you did for me I wish you hadn’t done them. I was about 13 when so many of us took the entrance exam into Government College and I ended up being the only one taken, shouldn’t I be grateful. Then after my HSC (Higher School Certificate), the Air Force was just about to start and I was a pioneer. Even though we had two or four civilian pilots, but in my own set, we were the first in the Air Force to fly. Shouldn’t I be grateful? My children are doing well. Being the chairman of NFA during whose tenure Nigeria won the All Africa Games for the first time is something very special in my life.”
source:http://www.independentngonline.com/DailyIndependent/Article.aspx?id=37292
No comments:
Post a Comment