EDITORIAL: Anthonio Oladeinde Fernandez…Passage of A Remarkable African

imageAnthony Oladeinde Fernandez (12 August 1929-1 September 2015) would appear the Edward Blyden of his age.

Edward Wilmot Blyden (3 August 1832-7 February 1912), was officially Liberian: at one time, Liberian High Commissioner to the Court of St. James; and at another, ambassador to France. But he was born at Saint Thomas in Virgin Islands, to parents who were freed slaves, emigrated to Liberia, did education and journalism work in Sierra-Leone, where he died and was buried — but not before he became the champion of Muslim education rights in Fernandez’s native Lagos, Nigeria. For that, he got a Lagos memorial: the Edward Blyden Memorial Primary School, off Lewis Street, in Lafiaji, on Lagos Island

Ambassador Fernandez, who died in a Brussels, Belgium hospital on September 1, was born Nigerian. But he lived his life as a pan-African, engaged in a trilogy of exertions: business, bureaucracy and diplomacy, in an awesome career that spanned a couple of African capitals; and which yielded humongous fortune.

His pan-Africa diplomatic career was the stuff of sheer fable: Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Permanent Representative of Central African Republic (CAR) at the United Nations, special adviser to the President of Mozambique on international economic matters, Ambassador-at-Large for the Republics of Togo and Angola, in 1966 consul for the then Republic of Dahomey (now Benin Republic), economic adviser to the Angolan government, aside from long-time adviser to President Jose Eduardo dos Santos (who has ruled Angola since 1975); and deputy minister of finance, Swaziland. That all of these countries are non-Anglophone also underscores his proficiency in language. He was a polyglot.

But his diplomatic-bureaucratic career would appear fired by his business interests. Aside from Petro Inett, which did oil exploration in Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, his business interests spanned bauxite exports, gold mines and diamond pits, in these countries, mainly in central and southern Africa.

In real estate, his high rise Tower Fernandez (now reportedly sold), hugs the Onikan skyline in Lagos, an object of neighbourhood buzz: of a reclusive native who made good, but seldom seen. He is also said to own an island in New York, and choice property in Scotland, France, Belgium and England. These, with his array state-of-the-art autos, speak of benumbing wealth.

Yet, all that came from a very humbling beginning, thus underscoring Fernandez’s stupendous rags-to-riches story. Though belonging to the proud Lagos Popo Aguda (Catholic quarters) community, of repatriated former slaves from Brazil, his father was a copy typist; while he himself left school in class four, stowing away to the United States on fortune-hunting. When the native returned, he was a far cry from the struggling boy of yore. He had hit gold.

It is an addition to the Deinde Fernandez mystique that though he never returned to Lagos (in the sense of a native who had conquered the world and come home to re-settle), and was probably more known in some African capitals than he would ever be known in his native Nigeria, his last home address was in Kano, where he married Halima Maude, a Kano native.

Mrs. Teju Philips, his first child, was commissioner of commerce, in Lagos Governor Bola Tinubu’s first cabinet (1999-2003).

Also, for all his “Africanness” and “Brazilian” flavour, Oluwo Fernandez remained faithful to some native core values. As Oluwo (literally, Yoruba for “chief of cult”), he was a high chief of the Ogboni Confraternity, and was highly revered in that cult. During the Abacha dictatorship and the ensuing battle to revalidate Chief MKO Abiola’s presidential mandate, he was a big but quiet financier of the cause of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO).

The only chink, in the late Fernandez’s shining armour would appear his philanthropy. At best, it was unstructured and ad hoc. At worst, it was near non-existent. That is why his estate should put charity structures in place to memorialise him.

The NATION

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