Ogun finance director, wife ended three-day fast day he was killed – Brother

am Lanre Oyekanmi, the elder brother of Taiwo Oyekanmi who was murdered by gunmen suspected to be armed robbers last Wednesday while on official duty around the Kuto flyover bridge in Abeokuta.

There is about a seven-year gap between us. I was born 1965 but he was born 1972. My mother had two sets of twins. He (Taiwo) belonged to the second set. My younger sister, who was born after me, is a twin from the first set of twins; her twin died in infancy. My late brother’s twin also died in infancy.

Growing up was fun for us back in our Ifonyintedo village in the Ipokia Local Government Area of the state. I was the first to leave the village for school when I was about 11 years old. My father was a very hardworking farmer, but he later added a bakery and was in the business of baking bread. So, we grew up in such an environment, going to the farm and baking bread.

This is a story that I would love to share because when my father was growing up, almost all his siblings left the village, leaving behind my father to stay with his father who was our grandfather. So, my father had the same mindset as he stayed behind in the village with his father. My late brother, Taiwo, did the same for our father, so he chose him.

How?

He lived with my dad and whatever they did worked together. So, when it was time to go to secondary school, my father convinced him not to go, and that they should continue the farm work together and he agreed. But because of the love he had for education, coupled with the fact that he usually saw his mates with whom he left primary school going to school every morning, he took from his savings which he got from his bread-baking business which he did during his spare time and secretly went to school.

Was your father aware?

My father was waiting for him that day on the farm but he never showed up. Later in the evening, my father discovered that his son had gone to school and was no longer ready to work on the farm all the days of his life.

What did he do?

He said if that was what he had chosen to do, he should continue with his education. That was the first breakthrough for my brother. After his secondary school education, he gained admission to study a particular Education course at the Federal College of Education, Osiele, Abeokuta, which I cannot remember now. However, about a month later, he was offered admission to study Accountancy at Ogun State Polytechnic, which is now Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, Ojere, Abeokuta. My father’s elder brother, who was working with the Ministry of Education, advised him to leave the FCE and go with the Accountancy offered to him at the polytechnic; he said it was better with bright prospects and that one would always have the advantage of studying a professional course.

He was brilliant and very focused. He took the West African Senior School Certificate Examination once. I got a teaching appointment at the time he was in secondary school and was posted to his school. He was in the science class with about eight or nine others. The pupils in his class were not more than 10. To be considered for the sciences in those good old days, one must be academically sound to some extent. I am talking of the 1980s and early 1990s. He left secondary school in 1992 and in 1993 or 1994, he gained admission. So, he was academically good to some extent. He underwent his one-year national youth service in Abia State.

When did he join the Ogun State Civil Service?

After his national youth service, he joined a quarry company in Abeokuta and worked there briefly, maybe for about six months before the company wound up. He then returned to the village to join our father in the farming and bread-baking business and it looked like my father was happy in a way – that he had gotten a partner, someone who could take over from him because he had always wanted that. So, Taiwo, who was very hardworking, started from where he left off. It was while doing that that he met his wife who was teaching in a primary school and they had their first child. The farming involved the cultivation of maize, and cassava and we equally had an oil palm plantation, so life was really good for us. While growing up, we never lacked anything good. Although we may not say we were born with a silver spoon in our mouths, we had our needs taken care of. However, we didn’t joke about farming. While I was at the university, when I came back home during the holidays, I went to the farm.

So, toward the tail end of the administration of Chief Olusegun Osoba as the then-governor of Ogun State, he was employed in the civil service as an accountant. He did not even want to take the offer because, at the time, people thought that (Osoba’s successor,) Otunba Gbenga Daniel, might get there and sack the beneficiaries of the late recruitment exercise, but graciously, Daniel never did that and that was how Taiwo began his civil service career.