My ultimate goal in life is to enrich lives -Akinosun

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HE is very simple, large-hearted and philanthropic, with the milk of kindness flowing in his vein. That is Dr Fola Akinosun.

An educationist from a very humble background, Akinosun was born at Oretu village in Ward 12 of Akinyele Local Government Area of Oyo State. He was taken out of the village at about three months old to Lagos where he was bred. He did not return to the village until he was about 30 years old.

A graduate of Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Edo State, his maxim is touching lives and remoulding people, which to him is success. “You are successful when you are able to touch and remould other peoples’ lives,” he said, adding that you are wealthy, not by how much you have but by how many lives “you are able to touch and turn around.”

According to him, he has experienced suffering in the real sense of the term and as such, is willing to come to the aid of any person suffering, irrespective of gender, tribe or language, “in as much as it is within my means, God helping me, I assist,” he added.

The very hardworking man, who had worked with the Bank of the North and the Presidency, devised a number of means to actualise his vision of touching lives.
“I did not just start without doing some studies. I believe that little drops of water make a mighty ocean, so, I decided to start small and not be in a hurry,” he explained.

Satisfied that he had touched his own personal life and those of his immediate family members, he decided to stretch his hand of love to his immediate community.

Since he is based in Ile-Ife, Osun State, he floated a non-governmental organisation, Community Mobilisation Development, after the Ile-Ife – Modakeke crises and liaised with community banks to sponsor a micro credit scheme.

So, he started the Transportation in the Rural Community Scheme and bought 30 motorcycles (okada) for 30 young men – 10 from Ile-Ife community, 10 from Modakeke community and 10 from Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) community. The men were to refund the motorcycles’ money on daily basis at the rate of N500 per day for seven months.

The graduate, who studied Business Administration for his second degree, said his intention was to go ahead and purchase 300 motorcycles for the second phase. But alas! The men who collected the motorcycles became insincere in their dealings with him and did not complete the refund of the motorcycles’ money.

Akinosun, who is highly revered for his honesty and sense of purpose, found it difficult to believe that the young men would not refund the motorcycles’ money and that act almost pushed him away from the project, more so that there is a limit to how one could recover debt in this part of the country.

But being humane and a believer in the ideologies of Professor Akin Mabogunje, he shifted his assistance to women because they are more easily open to social vices; in order to curb them from taking to dreadful alternatives, therefore, Akinosun gathered women who sold yam in groups of 10 and set them up with N100, 000.00 per group, that is N10, 000.00 per woman.

The women bought trucks of yam, which they shared and sold and also made a daily refund of N500 per woman. But along the line, one of the market’s women leaders died and the yam sellers used their benefactor’s capital to purchase the cloth chosen for their leader’s burial and that marked the end of the scheme as the yam sellers could not refund the remaining amount.

He organised a football match competition for young men to the tune of N3 million and a micro credit scheme of N1million to support women.

With a genuine desire to assist the less privileged to eradicate poverty from their midst, Akinosun embarked on further studies, which revealed that education liberates people faster from the shackles of poverty than the other schemes he had earlier attempted, thus, he embarked on education projects.

He set up the Foreign Links Campus, Deltas University College, Ghana in April 2008; the Foreign Links Campus, The College of Education, Ile-Ife in 2009 and the Foreign Links Campus, The College of Health Technology, Ile-Ife in 2010 to give qualitative education to youths at very affordable cost and scholarships to indigent students.

The Oretu village indigene, who said the schools are doing very well, said he adopted the ideals of Chief Obafemi Awolowo as far as education is concerned. In two years, his schools have offered 800 scholarships to indigent students and hope to offer a thousand scholarships more this year.

He also plans to have “technical colleges at Oretu and Iroko communities plus scholarships for children from all wards of Akinleye Local Government Area. He is also working on a Fola Akinosun Polytechnic, Ibadan having realised that education can easily change the lives of people faster than funds.

Currently however, Akinosun has delved into a new terrain, politics. Politics, according to Harold Laswel, is about who gets what, when and how? It is in his bid to pay back to the society in his own little way, having realised that government could touch more lives than an individual, that he is delving into politics.

He explained that if an individual could conveniently touch 2,000 lives, then the government would be able to touch two million lives at a go. Starting from his community therefore, he recently repaired a borehole which had been dysfunctional for about four years and presented a 2.7 KV generating set to power same borehole at Folarin village in Akinyele Local Government.

He intends to reach more people from the local government level that is the grassroots. His words: “I was challenged by my own humble background to ensure that I give back to the society part of what I am endowed with materially and morally. I am most appropriately positioned to take our local government to the next level.

I will run an open door policy sort of government where inputs would be welcome. Let us rise and work as a team and take our local government, state and country to the promise land.”