Nigeria, Jan. 13 -- Warren Bennis, the American scholar and author once wrote: "Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary." This is indeed the befitting epigraph for my unceasing and irreducible admiration for a truly exemplary icon: Chief Afe Babalola-vintage elder, statesman extraordinary, legal luminary, business mogul, philanthropist, educationist and nationalist.

This is not my first tribute or critical engagement with this colossus, nor is it an afterthought. But I seem not to have exhausted the stock of my critical admiration for what his figure or personality means for our cultural, social and pol...