Ayinke

Ayinke House and Sir Mobolaji Bank-Anthony

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When it comes to remembering the good and labour of our heroes past, our memories can be awfully defective. Other societies, conscious of how tricky it can be to rely on the oral recollection, with all its failings, make conscious efforts to document, codify, archive and preserve in different forms, including art and monuments, so that the past can be present with us and remain a ready companion into the future.

A lot of the noise and strife today is on account of the disconnect between the present and the past, with stories of yesterday being written with the pen of today by mischief makers, conflict-preneurs in days when the attention span is now limited to nano-seconds and the frame of reference for becoming an authority on a matter is now only 160 words. We are too busy with today to remember their was a yesterday.

On 2 previous occasions here, I have turned a little light in the direction of Sir Mobolaji Bank-Anthony. Understandably, not many know or remember the man. Yet, one of the longest stretches of road in Lagos is named after him.

The old Airport road was renamed in his honour long ago. Mobolaji Bank-Anthony way embraces you at Maryland, takes you the whole stretch of the road to deposit  you right into the arms of the Local Airport.

I am not too sure if the statue of the man placed somewhere towards the Airport, opposite Ayinke House, is still standing. Mobolaji Bank-Anthony Way. But how many connected the statue to the road? How many connected it to the historic Ayinke House it overlooks? How many people saw it for what it represents or ought to represent?

Sir Mobolaji Bank-Anthony was one of the most successful Businessmen of his generation. But that is now what makes the man an icon. His legacy was more in the area of philanthropy.

He built and donated the Maternity Complex at LASUTH, Ikeja, popularly known Ayinke House (as he named the facility after his mother). The official account available then, if I am right, was that between him and his wife, Lady Bank-Anthony, they did not have a child of their own. But he thought it fit to build a facility to ease the process of child birth for other people.

Sir Mobolaji Bank-Anthony also built and donated a ward to the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Igbobi. I think it is named after him.

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But how many people know this? How many people know the man or his story? How many even care, when all we care about now is money and the moment? Who cares about building libraries and monuments? We are toot busy burying our archives. Who cares?

So lost have we become of who we are and where we are coming from that some Local Government Administrators made moves at effecting change of name of some streets in Lagos which sounded ‘foreign’ to them, not knowing that those streets were actually named after Nigerians.

Such a relief to hear that Ayinke House which has been on lock-down for many years, on account of a renovation work, is finally being commissioned. To have such a place on a shut down for so long, with all the attendant difficulties that came with it for the people, is something one will never understand

Glad that the doors are opening again with better facility and more modern equipment in place. I was quite disturbed at a report that the place had been rechristened as “Institute of Maternal and Child Health”. Further checks revealed that the Journalist must have misreported. But even then, I do not have sufficient information to understand the reasoning behind this other name now hanging on to the name- ‘Ayinke House’.

I had argued that  Lagos missed an opportunity in the celebration of its 50th Anniversary to hold our hands and take us back in time. I thought it would have served us better to celebrate the past rather than the present.

I would expect that the commissioning of Ayinke House today would be used to celebrate Sir Mobolaji Bank-Anthony and let people know we once had such men who had the welfare of the ‘ordinary’ people at heart and left a legacy behind that has impacted the lives of thousands of Nigerians who reside in Lagos.

Today should be a day to pay tribute to Sir Mobolaji Bank-Anthony.

By Simbo Olorunfemi

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