I was a teenager when I first met Ayoola Lawrence Oluwole Olukanni, one of the most politically conscious, perceptive, charismatic and efficient African ambassadors I have ever known.
I had joined a radical student organisation, the Alliance of Progressive Students, ALPS, in the then University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU. That decision changed my life trajectory towards leaving a better world.
I was immediately attracted to Olukanni who was to become one of my mentors. Some days later, I had enquired about him only to discover he was not a student! He had graduated the previous session and was a youth corps member. Despite this, he and some of his comrades like Ola ‘Fajo’ Fajemisin and Idowu Obasa, travelled frequently from their new stations to mentor us in Ife.
I lived in Lagos and when I went on holidays, I sought him out. He had joined the Foreign Service. I was not sure how a radically-minded youth, dedicated to changing the rotten political system, could survive in this service. But he not only did, but also made a marked difference and contribution. This earned him the affectionate sobriquet, ‘The People’s Ambassador’ for his demonstrable and uncommon dedication to the well-being and welfare not just of the Nigerian people, but people wherever he served.
When he served in Israel, 1994-1998, he was informally involved with various organisations both on the Israeli and Palestinian sides to find a solution to the Palestinian Question. I knew he would have been on the radar of the Israeli secret service, the Shin Bet with the possibility of his accreditation being withdrawn. But I knew he didn’t care as he could not stand on the side-lines and make no contribution to resolving what is, basically, a fundamental human rights matter.
Olukanni served twice at the Permanent Mission of Nigeria to the United Nations, UN, in New York. When I met him during his first tour of duty to the UN, I asked him if he met the then Nicaraguan Permanent Representative, Nora Astorga. In 1978, during the Nicaraguan Revolution, she had lured the ‘butcher’ General Reynaldo Perez Vega, alias ‘El Perro’ or “the dog”, to her home and got him eliminated by the young Sandinista revolutionaries. In 1984, the United States had rejected Astorga’s appointment as ambassador, so Nicaragua appointed her as its Permanent Representative to the UN. Olukanni said given the alphabetical order countries sat in the UN, the Nicaraguan and Nigerian delegations sat together. They became friends and talked a lot about revolutions and change in the world.
Whatever part of the world Olukanni served, including the Nigerian Mission to the European Union, ACP, Kenya, Austria and Australia, he was ever in touch.
He helped to fine-tune and implement Nigeria’s foreign policy on such diverse issues as women, environment, human settlement, oil and atomic energy. For three years from 2007, he returned home as the Director, Public Communications Division and Spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry. In those days, I watched him a number of times interacting with journalists as he projected the activities of the Ministry and its over 100 Diplomatic Missions across the world. It was a season of high visibility for the Foreign Ministry as the charismatic Olukanni who was also well known in the Nigerian cultural firmament, relentlessly pushed the Foreign Ministry and its policy thrust of Citizen Diplomacy and Economic Diplomacy, to the front burner.
One day in 2011, I ran into him at the Abuja Airport. He was on his way to Perth. What is happening In Australia? He had been appointed ambassador to that country with concurrent accreditation to New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Vanatu.
I knew he had come into his own and would shine like a thousand stars. He did. Levi Obijiofor, a Nigerian professor in Australia on Sunday, April 7, 2013, penned a testimony. He lived in Queensland, so he and his family had to travel to Canberra to apply for the re-issue of his wife’s e-passport which was due to expire. He said in the past, he had an unsavoury experience trying to renew family passports, but a friend told him that an uncommon ambassador had taken charge and transformed the embassy into an efficient system. He wrote that on arrival at the embassy, a smiling receptionist asked him his mission: “I told her I had an appointment to meet with the High Commissioner. She picked up the phone, spoke for less than half a minute and asked us to follow her upstairs. The VIP treatment was exceptional. I never expected that a Nigerian diplomat in an overseas country would be so affable, amiable, easy to reach, and accommodating to someone he has never met. As we were about to settle into the sofas in the waiting room, the High Commissioner burst out of his office and welcomed us warmly. He was unassuming. He spoke in a mixture of the Nigerian pidgin English and Queen’s English. You felt as if you were somewhere in Nigeria, in your classmate’s office…Later, he hosted my family and I to lunch in a restaurant located atop a mountain from where you can catch a bird’s view of the city of Canberra.”
Famous Nigerian writer and film maker, Biyi Bandele, in 2012, was in Australia for the premier of his film ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ when he first met Olukanni. “ It was a pleasant surprise and a welcome change from the indifferent -sometimes outright glacial-reception we had been accorded by the Nigerian consulates in one or two other countries in the northern hemisphere,” he informed.
On retirement from the Foreign Service, Olukanni was in 2018, head hunted to serve as the Director General of the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture, NACCIMA. He served for five years.
When on March 22, 2025, Olukanni turned 70, he thought the best way to mark the milestone was to return to Ilesha where he had attended primary and secondary schools and give something back to the people. He hit on the idea of providing free eye screening and vision test for 70 persons. He broached the idea with Ambassador Eniola Ajayi, an optometrist. She simply asked him to stand aside. She brought eye care equipment, free drugs and frames. There were 114 beneficiaries of the programme.
I joked with Olukanni that his Marxist ideology eyes philanthropy with suspicion. He responded in his lyrical style: “ As a Member of the Left still Left on the Left who deems it right to do a good cause, there is room for philanthropy. Even if all I get in return from these beneficiaries are loads of prayers, I believe as a Catholic, that I will not stay long in purgatory.”
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