Captain of his school’s tennis team established as one of the best swimmers of his days, amember of the Cricket-Eleven and so many other formidable feats which to date remains unparalleled. He was an artist par excellence as his paintings collection proves. Music, to him, was second nature where others strove to acquire such art. He did his best to inculcate in all these skills and attributes which made him uniquely exceptional, in particular the art of self-discipline.
He attained the status of King’s Scout (highest rank in many Scout organizations) when theranking was tough to gain and considered an achievement of a high degree. He then wenton to complete a Pre-medical first degree at Liverpool University at a time when the phenomenal potentials of nuclear energy were being explored for various functions includingthat which picked his interest: medicine.
Pa Olatunde Lawrence was the first African to become a Nuclear Physician at the time whenhe graduated from the Oxford University where he was also an athlete of note.
To redirect the powers of nuclear energy to the aid of the partially blind or sighless, ateaching hospital in the City of London, St Bartholomew’s Hospital (St Barts) took a pivotalrole in the research and invited young Josiah Olatunde Lawrence to join the research team;he was recommended by one of his professors.
He, therefore, worked as a researcher for two years and became so widely known, that Dr.Kwame Nkrumah, the then President of Ghana, eagerly invited him to establish a research center in Ghana.
While being interviewed in Ghana for this role, his patriotic nerves activated the line of thoughts to serve and contribute to Nigeria first. He chose to honor his nation but alas! Pa Olatunde Lawrence could be said to have come from the future when we consider hisforte and troubles with Nigerian leaders during his era, he met with oppositions in highplaces and diverted his attention to the private sector. Instead of Nigeria as a nation, wherehe would have left impressively indelible nationwide marks in the educational and nuclearphysics landmarks.
Nuclear physics was not in the curriculum of any university in Nigeria at that time, and herefused to return to Britain. He went back to his first love: teaching (he was a secondaryschool teacher at the Ondo Boys’ High School, years earlier before going overseas). He andtaught in Kwara State, he also taught at Imade College in Owo, Ondo State, where hegathered a lot of invaluable experiences to develop what he wished to accomplish hismission in education for the countryThis background facilitated his steps back to his first career as an educationist and he optedto start teaching secondary school level physics at his old school, the CMS GrammarSchool,(Grammarians!) in Lagos. In a step towards his ultimate goals, He found himselfcomfortable on familiar grounds; he taught the same subject: physics.
Young, energetic, with acutely relevant and resourceful, innovative ideas with such enthusiasm that he became very popular, and his alma mater authorities, became uncomfortable with his methods which appeared to revolutionalize some educational theories in practice at that time. Regretfully, he was compelled to reluctantly leave for King’sCollege, Lagos. He was not just a teacher, he was a sound holistic educationist at heart, especially that he believed in a system that promotes self-reliance in education. An example is a tutorial after main classroom teaching, where smaller groups are mentored for further delivery of subjects and topics already taught.
His frustrated efforts must have contributed to a temporary change of his career from teaching to Land Surveying (as a civil servant) because even at King’s College, as clear as the coast seemed, the old prejudices still wore hard. He was convinced that he came ahead of his time. He, however, made great use of some acquired knowledge about various vacant pieces real estate in Lagos, knowledge which came in good stead when he was later to search for land to establish Gaskiya College.
At City College, Lagos, he eventually encountered a phratral spirit in one Nigerian politician of note Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, proprietor of the Lagos City College: a fellow visionary on amission to transform the face of education in Africa, starting from Nigeria. They had asignificant number of attributes in common, they were sportsmen, fine intellectuals, men of great resourcefulness, and refined intelligence. Dr. Azikiwe was one of the first Africans who encouraged him to experiment with the tutorial system in imparting knowledge to thestudents and was highly impressed with the results. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe had to answer the call of patriotism ‘at a higher level, and so he left Lagos City College which fell into the hands of a Board that found it implausible to appreciate neither the rudiments nor the necessity for of the new delivery methods.
That was his eureka moment! Pa Olatunde Lawrence decided to make his history. He stepped out and commenced the journey to birth his pregnancy of many moons, for the sakeof his country and for those who count as greater tomorrows of Nigeria. Olatunde Lawrencewas a Nigerian of mixed Edo and Yoruba parentage. His father – Chief John Ojo Lawrence,who famously “swore” by the ‘TRUTH’ and with every ounce of his breath – became his idoland impetus for the rest of his life. The ‘truth’ thus became a quality admired in his father and naturally made both the word and its meaning a beacon in his pathway through life.
And Pa Olatunde Lawrence unprecedentedly enshrined TRUTH & firm discipline in everyway and in particular at establishing his educational intellection with no need for neither struggle nor undue governmental strife. He, therefore, found it self rewarding to name hisdream institution GASKIYA COLLEGE.
The then Prime Minister Alhaji Tafawa Balewa along with some genuine yet ignorant criticsand some professional denigrators started vehemently attacking his ideology as they mistook the name for a sell-out to the Northerners who controlled the nation then, from the Federal level.
They knew so little of Pa Olatunde Lawrence was never tribalized and could not have needed to be detribalized as they erroneously admonished. His parental lineage, his childhood community, and destined pathway in life did not permit but loyalty to Nigeria as a nation and humanity at large.
“Gaskiya”, is a word of Hausa origin and translates as the TRUTH, HONESTY, or SINCERITY. It is a word that has crept into many Nigerian tribal vocabularies especially the Yoruba language.
The Gaskiya College was founded and initially located in Yaba, Lagos, on March 3, 1963.The College birthed in holistic education ideologies which shaped the future of students who passed through it then with a liberal spiritual or religious scope but remained loyal to the faith of the founder – Christianity – with no hindrance promoting Islamic worship. The founderin his effort to perpetuate the Nigerian culture and tradition across boards designed the uniform to reflect just that. The first of its kind at that time in Nigeria, if not in Africa. Mostradical was again the success derived from the model of education delivery: tutorial teaching mentorship and teaching immediately after main classroom delivery where the impartation was based on exercises and assignments which gave the pupil a form of mastership and control of the assimilation of instruction and knowledge. It was a form of learning to learn which transformed the face of education for the students at that time as they were part of innovative learning just as he was part of St. Baths in the City of London, UK. then.
Nigeria would not yield and he got academic support from his alma mater, Oxford University, and other institutions in the western world as the students had learning gadgets supplied to enhance the new method of learning being introduced, e.g. stencil boards, etc. Self-respect, self-dependency, respect for others indiscriminate of gender differences promoted healthy interactions amongst male and female students at Gaskiya College then. As the School grew into an institution renowned for academic excellence and educational performance, it became clear that Olatunde Lawrence was not a national rebel but an enigma on a divinely apportioned mission who would habitually spring bounce back afresh at every occasion when he got beaten. He was stirred but not shaken as his coast kept enlarging and it was eventually time to put to practice his acquired Land Survey experience as a civil servant years back.
He moved to the present site when proximity to sophisticated and well-equipped government institutions naturally shows off the pretentiousness of the educational systems. seldom openly challenged. Here is a good example was on an occasion when a national radio quiz session was canceled for no explicit reason but that Gaskiya College of Olatunde Lawrence trounced a government institution. A rematch was proposed and Gaskiya withdrew from participating as this was part of the indiscipline he refused to condone and which was the order of the day in those days.The seeds of Gaskiya bilingual springing in him and he decided to significantly nurture it tofruition by not confining the institution to Nigeria as education strongly founded on a bilingual scope played on his mind as on the mindsets of the rest of academic worldwide, inparticular, English and French. Nigeria once again frustrated his fragile attempts at teachingthe french language to desired standards and that was when he chose to in a three-yearframework collaborative liaison with sister schools in Nigeria and one francophone country.The success rate was great because, it was not simply that his products became trulybi-lingual and multi-cultured, or that the system achieved a remarkable degree of success,but that these students went on to make disciples of French speakers in Nigerians to date. But helas! the officials of the Ministry of Education stopped the granting of visa requirements and basic travel allowance (BTA) to students, accusing the founder of trading in foreign exchange. He could not fight the granting of a visa immediately, however, he did the unthinkable and fought successfully the rights of every Nigerian citizen to BTA in a win-win approach. What did he do? He took all the exchange students in question to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) along with passports he had obtained for them, to physically attest that we were not ghost-students whom he tried to use for his foreign exchange gains as alleged.
Being at the vanguard of forward-looking educationists in the nation, he nursed for long the idea of running a private university. He envisioned private universities even at that time when the nation could only float federal ones but the idea was miscarried from conception due to attempts to criminalization by shallow mindsets. Hence the acquisition of such a vast area of land which now is home to three big individual colleges run by the Government. What an irony.
But Olatunde Lawrence, though no longer with us in the temporal, still lives amongst us, in our memories, in our daily lives, in the wind that blows each time you encounter discipline and truth, each time you are honest. He gave Lagos State a school it can be proud of and gave that name to the street on which it is built. The school built and made the street; the founder’s name would have been given to it, but he demurred. As long as the school is alive, he was sure he would have survived the passage of time. Unquestionably, he was a visionary and an accomplished missionary.
Likewise, the idea of a private university played a major role in the thinking behind the acquisition of the college. But the idea was discouraged almost to the point of criminalizing it before it was dropped. The other forward-looking educationists who were at the vanguard ofthe movement can now only shake their heads in disappointment — if they are still alive.He gave his state a legacy in a school the State can be proud of and to the street on which the College is built a landmark of repute. The school built the street; the founder’s name would have been given to it, but he modestly demurred because his products attest to his efforts in major spheres of governance in Nigeria. It was a colossal loss and great pain when many Gaskiyans were lost as promising leaders on the airforce plane-crash in the service of their motherland He was heartbroken and whelm up tears whenever he remembered the incident which was probably erased his ray of hope for a significantly disciplined Nigeria in his lifetime.
And so, as Gaskiya College celebrates her 58th anniversary today Wednesday 3 March, 2021, he remains here today as always and for generations to come. Jonathan Olatunde Lawrence was a germinating seed that springs afresh whenever buried.He came, he saw, he restructured in sublime degree and conquered!He bequeathed on his us and generations yet unborn an acquired life of inspiratory visions achievable prospects discipline and unequivocal honesty in labor for true progress. If he successfully made a disciple of you, go on and do the same.
Congratulations and Happy 58th Anniversary, Gaskiya College, Badia, Lagos-State
Long live Gaskiya College | Long live Truth /Honesty! | Long live Pa Olatunde Lawrence!
Long live Nigeria!!!.
Dr. Aderonke Tomori
