My dear professor, brother and friend, Toyin Falola,

A big congratulation to you on your 70th birthday today. As someone who had gone ahead of you in chronological time-span, let me welcome you to the septuagenarian circle. I sincerely thank God for granting you the grace and favour to get this far. Getting to this biblical age is not an easy journey. Our existential challenges as humans, and more critically as Nigerians, are many, and even all the more so, for someone like you who shoulders many responsibilities as a scholar, a custodian of culture, an elder in your own right, a statesman, and a public intellectual. I must say that I deeply appreciate your unrelenting interventions in Nigeria’s unraveling as a nation. Nigeria needs her intellectuals, professionals and patriots; those who can quarrel with her to instigate the progress that seems to have eluded us for so long. And you have successfully situated yourself in that best tradition of patriotic interrogation.

Nigeria means a lot to me, at a level that most people still fail to understand. And it is clear to me, from the series of interventions you have made, that the country means a lot to you too. I know it takes courage to step into the churning waters of national discourse in this great country of ours. It also takes lots of wisdom to be able to get a clear grasp of and be able to adroitly unravel the thorny issues we have been struggling with for many years. I thank you for making that decision not to remain silent and just bask in the glory of your well-deserved achievements as a global scholar and celebrated intellectual. You keep yourself in the water, cold or warm.

I doubt that, being already a venerable elder, there is much that I can really tell you. But permit me to hint to you clearly that the 70-year mark is an age of reckoning. It is a phase that brings issues into stark relief —what had been, what could have been and what could not be. It is a moment to take stock of where one is coming from and what lies ahead. This is the phase where, in cultural and spiritual terms, the hoary head becomes an exemplar of values. We are both at a point where our sociocultural value frames are almost becoming a relic in the context of the revaluation of values the present generation champions. And so, we come to the point of those Jewish elders, in the Book of Ezra, lamenting the foundation of the new temple from their perspective of the beauty and majesty of Solomon’s temple. And yet, as our people say, Àgbà kì í wà lọ́jà, kórí ọmọ tuntun wọ́.

May this your new age, my dear professor, brother and friend, be accompanied with health and wealth and many good and great things. And may we both finish strong and finish well by witnessing the goodness of God to make Nigeria great in our life time. Congratulations and many happy returns of this day. I will be with you again when you are 80 and it will be in a Nigeria we all want. Cheers.

** Obasanjo is a former president of Nigeria.