The respected founder of the Mayflower School Ikenne and renowned social critic, Dr Tai Solarin rose from bed on July 27, 1994 and showed to sign of a life-threatening ailment. He took his breakfast of pap.
Done with the meal, he was on his way upstairs. On the staircase, however, his leg slipped, and fell the man. That was the end of Solarin who was born 77 years earlier.
Incidentally, that day, he had two days earlier scheduled an appointment to break his silence over an incident connecting with the nation’s political history.
For 28 years, Solarin had kept in his austere belly the account of his last encounter with the late Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Major General Aguiyi Ironsi who came to power following the failed coup of January 15, 1966.
Despite the fact that Soyinka maintained a weekly column in the Tribune titled ‘State of the nation’? never did he give in to a temptation to spill the milk.
He kept the information to himself for a reason or reasons he also kept to his chest. He probably had thought that since the encounter was between only him and Ironsi, it was exclusive to him alone.
But when on July 24, 1994 a young reporter/researcher with the then Newswatch magazine, Mr Raphael James approached him in Lagos and quite unexpectedly threw the question at him, Solarin knew the young man already had a clue but not the whole story.
And there on the spot, he approved an appointment with him in his Ikenne residence with a promise to unclad that long kept secret.
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