Chief Michael Adekunle Ajasin. Educator, Administrator, and Statesman.
Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR), BA (Durham), Dip. Ed (London), DCL (Sierra Leone), LLD (OSU), LLD (FUTA).
Born in Owo to Peter and Deborah Ajasin on November 28, 1908. The eldest of five children, two of whom survived him: Mrs. Rachael Morenike Ojomo and Mrs. Mary Ajibola Aiyegbusi.
He attended St. James's School, Owo, St. Paul's (later Oloyede Memorial School) and entered St. Andrew's College, Oyo in 1923, passing out in December 1927 with a brilliant and enviable record. The CMS posted him first to St. Andrew's School, Warri and later to St. Luke's School, Sapele, where he remained as Headmaster until 1943.
He proceeded to Fourah Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone in the heat of the Second World War, graduating in July 1946, then to the University of London for a Postgraduate Diploma in Education. He returned to Owo in 1947 to become Principal of Imade College, one of the best schools in Western Nigeria, where Papa stamped his personality of high discipline, hard work, athletic disposition and academic brilliance on the thousands of pupils who passed through him. He founded Owo High School in 1963.
“He had the singular virtue of modesty, even humility. He never boasted about the historic fact that he was the undeniable architect of the free education which transformed the old western region.”
He paid his dues in politics, rising from the lowest rung. He ran and won election as a ward Councillor, District Council Chairman, Divisional Council Chairman, Federal Legislator and Governor of the old Ondo State (winning the highest percentage of votes in the gubernatorial elections nationwide in 1979). He was referred to as the “Millionaire Governor”, the only governor to record over one million votes.
In 1962 he became President of Egbe Omo Oduduwa. With the passing of Chief Obafemi Awolowo in 1987, the leadership of Awo's political family naturally fell on him. The unfolding transition programme of General Ibrahim Babangida saw Papa become the rallying point for progressive forces, culminating in the SDP victory in the 1993 Presidential Election, an election acclaimed as the freest and fairest in Nigeria's history.
“He ran a very long race; neither did he fall nor stumble. When he had run his own part of the race and finished tops, and we (Nigerians) would not do our part, he took the baton again and led the way.”
Papa was a workaholic. Even at seventy-one, when he became governor, he brought an unmistakable dynamism of a much younger person to bear on the governance of Ondo State. Honest to a fault, highly disciplined and principled, he lived a Spartan life. He stubbornly pursued any cause he believed to be right and just, and was very consistent.