By GBENGA GBESAN1
The exit of Chief Solomon Oladapo Sofoluke on 11 October 2025 marked the departure of a public service colossus.
A civil servant to the core, Chief Sofoluke’s 93 years on earth were lived absolutely epitomising the public service’s credo of anonymity.
He lived in total anonymity, rather than being the object of the slightest public attention. Anathema to him was the celebration of any type. The media was a forbidden territory. He shunned being talked or written about. Yet, a thousand bouquets will not suffice in complimenting his exemplary service rendered to the people and governments, cutting across regional, state and federal levels in Nigeria.
Few would equal or beat his record of being a quintessential, model public servant. His was a Spartan life in public service devoid of any pretension.
Born on 29 September 1932, Chief Sofoluke was from Wasinmi Ake, Abeokuta, Ogun State. His father was Pa Emmanuel Ayodele Sofoluke, while his mother was Madam Florence Olanrewaju Sofoluke (Nee Sodeke).
He began his education at St. Peter’s School, Ake, Abeokuta, followed by secondary education at Abeokuta Grammar School, Abeokuta, and later attended the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), where he studied at the Institute of Administration, obtaining Certificates of the Corporation of Secretaries and in Public Administration.
After completing his education, he pursued a career in civil service. He was employed on 14 April 1953 as a Third-Class Clerk by the Western Region government.
Chief Sofoluke’s first posting was the Ministry of Education. His period of employment coincided with the revolutionary epoch in the educational advancement of the Western Region, marked by the introduction of the first-ever Universal Free Primary Education in Nigeria. It was a historic march for all levels and categories of civil servants in the Western Region.
Chief Sofoluke was glad to be among the trail-blazing civil servants who were the backbone of the implementation of the policy.Eleven years later, rising through the ranks, he was promoted to the Executive Class.
The 1964 promotion culminated in his posting from the Ministry of Education to the Public Service Commission.
On 3 February 1976, when Ogun State was created, he, naturally, was deployed to the new state along with others. He resumed at his new posting, the Civil Service Commission, Ogun State, in April 1976.
Accustomed to hard work, his devotion to duty started to be noticed. Within a short time, he was promoted to the Administrative Class. The Administrative Class are the top echelon of the civil service responsible for advising political functionaries, formulating, coordinating and implementing policies.
Usually comprising university graduates, they provide leadership and strategic direction for the civil service. The Administrative Class, so to speak, constitutes the elite class of the service. Joining the group, Chief Sofoluke served in various agencies.
They ranged from the Secretary for Finance and Administration in the Ministry of Works and Housing to the Ministry of Forestry to the Ministry of Education, the Office of the Head of Service, the Local Government Service Commission, and the Teaching Service Commission.
At every agency, he embossed his peculiar stamp of excellence on the job. He was always the first in and the last out of the office. Chief Sofoluke’s watch was timeless, despite the job being the government’s work with a definite time for resumption and closing. If he was being ridiculed for his punctiliousness, it didn’t appear that Chief Sofoluke was bothered.
How much more to allow such shin-ridicule to become a discouragement to him. Ever known a man who, as can be said, gave all to the government’s job? It was Chief Solomon Oladapo Sofoluke.
He gave all to the government’s job, a job axiomatically referred to in Nigerian parlance as nobody’s job. He took not an inch or ounce back from his obsessive commitment. While serving in the Ministry of Works and Housing, however, he was selected by the Civil Service Commission to be part of an overseas Federal and States Delegation to conduct a recruitment exercise.
The exercise conducted in June 1980 took the team to countries that included Great Britain, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Russia, Bulgaria, Finland and the Netherlands. Besides this opportunity, however, his career in the civil service afforded him the opportunity of participating in career development programmes, among them workshops and seminars, both at local and international levels.
Exactly on the dot of his 35th year in the service, 14 April 1988, he took his exit from government service. He retired. He was Secretary for Finance and Administration at the time serving in the Teaching Service Commission.
There was no declaration of age to prolong his stay, the usual civil servants’ dubious ploy of blaming their parents for failure to forget to register their births at birth. Nor did he engage in other nefarious ways that people resort to prolong their service in the civil service. Chief Sofoluke stood on the high-pedestal of truth. He did what was right.
He had come, had seen, had fought, and felt the little grace he had accomplished in the civil service was sufficient for him. He thus bid goodbye to the only job he had ever had in his life. Though he was out of the service, the values of the civil service he had imbibed never left him. They stuck to him like glue; they had become second nature to him.
The morals, principles, and ethics of service had become Chief Sofoluke’s lifelong ingrained habits. His cultivated way of life never changed, nor in any tiniest bit. At 56 years when Chief Sofoluke bowed out statutorily from Ogun State Civil Service, he was in his middle age, yet to knock at the door of sixty years, when oldness begins.
What could he have done after retirement to make ends meet? Fortunately, an unexpected silver lining came on the horizon. The Babangida government established the Mass Mobilisation for Self-Reliance, Social Justice, and Economic Recovery (MAMSER) in 1987.
MAMSER was to reorient Nigerians to shun waste and vanity; take the nation and citizens away from affluence; and inculcate a new virtue in public life by discouraging corruption, dishonesty, ethnic and religious bigotry, as well as electoral and census malpractices.
The agency’s ideals fitted his principles perfectly. Consequently, he didn’t hesitate when the agency tapped him as its Administrative Officer. But Chief Sofoluke only worked with the agency (which has now metamorphosed into the National Orientation Agency) for a period of eight months.
Notably, his life-long principle of honesty, which had been of little merit to him materially, travelled with him to MAMSER.Thereafter, he moved to the Code of Conduct Bureau, another agency established by the Federal Government.
The Code of Conduct Bureau was to fight corruption. He became its Ogun State Bureau Representative. There, he worked for thirteen years, from June 1987 to June 2000. After the stint with the Code of Conduct Bureau, he ended the era of appointments to public offices.
He was aged 68 then, an age at which some were just beginning their lust for sumptuous public offices. Everywhere he traversed in public life, Chief Sofoluke left a mark, an indelible imprint of a worthy, exemplary public servant. In the Ogun State Civil Service Commission, for instance, where he worked in 1982, the Chairman of the Commission was full of praise for him.
He described his posting to the Commission “as a great blessing to the Commission,” further stressing that, “His tremendous capacity for hard work, fruitful contributions to productivity and various benevolent activities … carved a good image for the Commission.” Chief Sofoluke’s alluded personal qualities included “competence, diligence and ability to find solutions to problematic situations facing the Commission.”
Both “his outstanding qualities” and “enviable marks deserved commendation,” the Chairman said. As of the time of this commendation, Chief Sofoluke had spent 29 years in service with only six more years to his retirement.
He could not have been creating an impression for the Chairman to notice him, nor undertaking eye service to curry a favour to boost his career. Ask the contemporary civil servants if they can beat their chest regarding such an impeccable character testimonial from the head of their organisations without being bootlickers. Your guess may not be too far different from the answer. Indeed, when Chief Sofoluke left MAMSER, the shortness of his stay did not erase the quality of his well-known service rendered in the best tradition of an Oladapo Sofoluke. The Ogun State Director of the agency, Chief Isola Folorunso, noted his stellar, “unique and invaluable contributions”, which, he said, marked his “wealth of experience, humility, and maturity…” out in the service of the organisation.
Without mincing words, Chief Folorunso’s character testimonial of Chief Sofoluke rested on three words: “diligence, dedication and loyalty”. He displayed those three attributes with absolute fidelity both to MAMSER, as an organisation, and to him, Chief Folorunso, as the leader and head of the agency in Ogun State.
There was never a single occasion that Chief Sofoluke behaved like today’s civil servant. He neither betrayed his organisation’s trust nor that of its leader. He didn’t borrow ideas from Judas to sell his boss for a pot of porridge. He was thoroughly diligent, pristinely dedicated, and unwavering in his loyalty.
Short as his stay was, Chief Sofoluke departed MAMSER with his head tall. In fact, Chief Sofoluke was an enigma, a riddle whose conduct contemporary public servants would find weird. Ask yourself which civil servant would have the opportunity to make money in office today and would resist the temptation? Can you point to that civil servant who will return unspent funds to the government’s coffers rather than find the means of pocketing them? Opportunity, it is said, comes but once. If a civil servant had failed to take advantage of the first opportunity, what would be the reaction to a second chance? Would that individual stick to principle? There is one known example of a civil servant who behaved atypically. He contradicted the norm. That individual was Chief Solomon Oladapo Sofoluke. Leaving MAMSER in 1988, he became the head of the Code of Conduct Bureau in Ogun State.
As the head of the agency, in his hands were the control of decision-making and the purse. The seat was also lucrative. It had opportunities if the occupant cared less about integrity. Or to put it aptly, if the person wanted to abuse the office. Why not put one or two houses by the side to earn rents from after leaving that office? That sounds like a real possibility. Or, on the other hand, accumulate as many shares as possible? Of course, nothing stops that from being done.
And better still, why not acquire vast land that can be sold later? Acquiring such a hidden asset is no longer a secret in Nigeria. The means or avenues through which civil/public servants abuse their office in Nigeria have become vast. But here is the summary of what Chief Sofoluke did on his “second chance”. In the thirteen years of his “second chance” in public office, Chief Sofoluke remained his usual uncommon Nigerian public servant. He remained honest to the core.
He maintained his undiluted integrity. He exhibited his trademark selflessness, transparent honesty, and impeccable integrity. He became the talking point among his colleagues and the leadership of the Code of Conduct Bureau. At the organisation’s national meeting in Jos, Plateau State, on 22 April 1997, Chief Sofoluke was asked to stand before his colleagues. The Chairman of the Code of Conduct Bureau at the time, Hon. Justice J. H. Dandaura, put on the floor not for reprimand but rather for commendation.
The Chairman complimented “his tireless efforts”, extolling them as “highly commendable” virtues. There was also the singular exemplary conduct of his, the financial prudence, eulogised by the Chairman. Hon. Justice J. H. Dandaura was full of praise for his (Chief Sofoluke’s) management of the organisation that resulted in his saving “enough funds from his allocation to buy a Peugeot 504 Station Wagon for official use” of the agency in Ogun State. In one of his plays, All’s Well That Ends Well, William Shakespeare wrote: “No legacy is so rich as honesty”. And that’s the legacy Chief Sofoluke left behind. It was not only in his public service career that Chief Sofoluke gave all his all. To matters spiritual, he devoted himself single-mindedly; in community development, he acquitted himself selflessly; and on the family side, he carried the emblem of being the patriarch of the Sofoluke Family distinguishably.
His relationship with the Church started as a young boy. He was a member of the Choir at the Cathedral of St. Peter, Ake, his lifelong church, from birth to death. In 1988, he had served as the Auditor of the Church, which involved his assessing the church’s book of accounts. Regarding church society membership, he was a Member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the only society he belonged to in the church. Chief Sofoluke remained the longest serving Secretary of the Society, a tenure that spanned over forty years and spread across the tenure of no less than three presidents. In 1996, he was conferred with the Chieftaincy title of Ekerin Balogun of CSU, Cathedral of St. Peter, Ake, Abeokuta, the only chieftaincy that he identified with.Outside the church, Chief Sofoluke was a Member of the Olumo Club right from the inception of the club in Ibadan.
He became its President, serving from April 1963 to April 1998, thirty-five full years. For 28 years (1987 – 2015), he was tirelessly involved in the activities of the Lisabi Day Celebration Committee as one of its Joint Secretaries. Similarly, he also put his services at the doorsteps of the Joint Action Committee of Egba Clubs (now Egba Indigenes Global Association), just as he equally served as a Member of the Bursary Award Committee of Egba Clubs. Within the Asero Estate community that he lived in, he was involved with the Police Community Relations Committee (PCRC), serving as a member of its Obantoko Unit, Abeokuta, and included, as well, was his serving as the Vice Chairman of the community’s development association.
Any path Chief Sofoluke tread, his impact was always felt, despite his uncompromising preference for anonymity and being unobstructive. The Olumo Club recognised his huge impact on the life of the organisation, which resulted in his being appreciated with an award on 12 August 2000.
The club rolled out the red carpet for him praising his exemplary leadership, untiring efforts, and immense contributions that helped nurture the Club. The Bursary Award Scheme of the Joint Action Committee of Egba Clubs would also follow suit in the same year. On 12 September 2000, they gave him an award “in deep appreciation of his meritorious contributions to the successful administration of the Bursary Award Scheme of the Joint Action Committee of Egba Clubs”. Of relatively recent occurrence was his 2023 award by the Cathedral of St. Peter, Ake, for his contributions to the growth and development of the Church.Happily married with children and grandchildren, the departure of Chief Solomon Oladapo Sofoluke was definitely the exit of a titan, an enigma, a public service icon, a man who wrote his life in gold, even if quietly. Have your deserved rest as you continue to sleep perpetually in the bosom of your Lord. Adieu!
Gbenga Gbesan is a journalist based in Abeokuta, Ogun State
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