April 08th, 2024

Tribute to a most dearly beloved brother
I had a nick name for Pastor Babatunde Afensimi Adebayo, my beloved brother. I called him ‘Patriarch’ and he called me ‘Matriarch’ mostly, and sometimes he called me, Wordsworth, and beautiful daughter of the Most High God.  We frequently chatted on WhatsApp and occasionally did video calls. In the years of 2017 and 2020, my beloved Brother Tunde would read and give feedbacks on each of my published books through WhatsApp! He prayed for my writing career and blessed me. He became inspired to start writing his memoir, which is uncompleted due to his health challenges.  We shared a very unique relationship and had a deep fondness for one another. I came to realise that Bro Tunde was a most private man treading the earth with caution, following God painstakingly with undivided attention and unflinching loyalty. His last text to me was on 27th December 2022. He informed me that he was hospitalised and could not take calls.   He never mentioned the nature and details of his ailment. He never wanted anyone to get anxious about his health. His faith in God endeared my brother towards me over the years. He would always end his text messages with, ‘God has been my strength and Shepherd. Glory to him.’ His sudden transition to glory was a huge shock to me and all our family members because he had always put up a strong front. 
He was a father figure on our A Adebayo Forum. He would always declare Christmas and New Year blessings. He constantly prayed for all his siblings. A great encourager he was. When we lost one of our beloved sisters in May 2022, he had said, ‘We serve a God before whom there is no impossibility.’ He always sent out such hopeful messages to siblings who were facing challenges in their lives and prayed with intensity. Brother Tunde was someone who would generously respond to my ‘Happy New Month’ with prayers and blessings in return. I also received his prayers and blessings for each new week.  He was a man who loved his mother so much and would always share quotes from her such as, ‘Not to ever eat poison out of shyness!’ Due to his health challenge, he expressed deep regret at not being able to attend most weddings of his nieces and nephews.  He once expressed concern that our youngest sister had not responded to his text. Five days later, he texted me saying, ‘Sister Funke has just called me and we spoke. Thank you our beloved Mother Hen.”
Bro Tunde was so grateful to God for miracles in his life. He proudly shared some with me, like how a befitting 70th birthday celebration party in January 2020 was organised for him after 20 years of his retiring from the university! In November 26, 2021, the university formally named a very big hall, in perpetuity after him as: Babatunde Afen Adebayo Multipurpose Hall and in December that same year, he received a Meritorious Service to FUTA [Federal University of Technology, Akure] back dated to 1999. He said he was the 6th Registrar of the university and none had received such great respect and appreciation as he had! To him, God had ‘qualified the unqualified’ and deserved ‘his reason to praise, worship and thank God Almighty’. He said he never mentioned his health issue at FUTA. He mentioned how God sent him Dr Bamgboye, a kidney transplant specialist, a friend and brother to bless his life. It was through Brother Tunde that I learnt of his pride in his children’s careers.  He said they were a source of joy and happiness to him in particular. He mentioned the unique and blessed relationship of over 55 years with a friend and ‘brother from another mother’, a dentist, a doctor and retired naval commodore - Brother Bola Sanni. He mentioned late Uncle Rufus Adebayo whom our dad connected him to in 1973 who became like a second father to him.
I enjoyed Brother Tunde’s humour, witty expressions and proverbs. When in August 2021, he was telling me about his progress in his writing, he wrote, ‘When a lady has not seen danger, she runs holding her breasts but when she confronts real danger, she forgets she has any breasts! This was him explaining about his health. When I sent him the platinum jubilee booklet for my husband, in 2020, he had said, ‘ I will comb it with an eagle eye.’  He read English and majored in Literary Appreciation and Criticism.  One of his responses to encourage my writing when I had asked whether Lord Jesus would be angry with me for imagining His life not mentioned in the bible, he had  quoted Revelation 22: 18 – 19, then said that ‘he did NOT think writers of Biblical fiction were adding or subtracting from the Bible, if they did not sin against the Holy Spirit, which includes the denial that Jesus was born by the virgin Mary, died on the cross for our sins and resurrected on the 3rd day or blasphemed against the Holy Spirit.’ That birthed my new book yet to be published.  He described the years of 2011 -2013 as the “good years” when he passed through the shadows of death. He said this period features greatly in his book. He blessed our Uncle, Chief Alex Adebayo, who visited him often to pray for him. He considered the part of his life when he did not grow up with our dad as ‘painful, ugly and bitter’ and had asked the Lord to ‘put the past behind’ him for the rest of his life. ”I have put my hand on the plough and I pray not to look back – Luke 9:62. I have given my life and my ALL to Him. My past is gone forever and I hold no grudge against anyone.”
He was a loving brother and family man. He surprised me when he sought me out at Unife in 1979 when he was doing his masters. He also paid me a visit in Port Harcourt in 1993! It was a joyous reunion. When we lost our father in 2004, he gathered us all, his siblings, and he and his wife feasted us with a reunion luncheon. Occasionally, when we spoke on phone he mentioned how grateful he was to God for his wife, his children and siblings. I will deeply miss him and our fellowship. May his soul continue to rest in eternal peace and glory. I will end with a praise verse I composed for him in 2020 after he had just sent me a photograph of himself:
“My handsome princely Patriarch. The man himself!! Deep as deep is mysterious with wisdom that is fascinating as complexity. A lover of God and totally dependent on His mercy. A man who has known and experienced the goodness and mercy of God. A poet at heart. A passionate man in his intelligence and reasoning. A very cautious man from Sabon Gidda. He x-rays first with his sight and measures words with an invisible scale. You are a wonderful man that beholds the world with a serene face that masks a contemplative and benevolent spirit.”
From me Olusola Sophia Anyanwu.