By all ramifications, Aare Afe Emmanuel Babalola, a legal luminary and philanthropist, is a very successful personality. For a man whose grass-to-grace story will turn a blockbuster should it be made into a biopic, his legendary exploits in legal practice have spread beyond the African shores and the entire Black Race. Wealth or money, none is no longer Aare Babalola’s headache. He has broken into smithereens the usual saying of a tree cannot make a forest —metaphorically and in reality. He has shattered the myth by emerging the highest private investor and the biggest employer of labour in his home state of Ekiti. He is rated among the top 10 richest lawyers in Nigeria with an estimated net worth of $500 million. In 2009 at the ripe age of 80, the nonagenarian established the now famous Afe Babalola University (ABUAD) on a 130-hectare vast expanse of land in Ado Ekiti, to promote education in Nigeria.
Spotlight gathered that Babalola also has a big passion for distance learning. His success story today has been attributed to an opportunity created through the transformative power of remote learning which allowed him to study from his home in Nigeria as a young indigent person and graduated with degrees in Economics and Law from the University of London. Because of that, Babalola remains a grateful man as he’s expanding that high quality education opportunity to others. The Legal Titan has also donated a ‘token’ sum of £10 million (N5.6 billion) to King’s College London to establish the Afe Babalola African Centre for Transnational Education. The new centre will enable young Africans to access education and opportunities which they would otherwise not be able to have. It was learnt that Ekiti State-born philanthropist decided to invest his hard-earned money into the British Institution—his Alma mater— which altered the very course of his life and made it possible for him through its Distance Learning Programme to be who he is today. Of course, a lot of knee-jerk reactions are trailing the huge donation as some see it as a ‘misplaced priority’. The critics say Babalola’s donation should have been invested in Nigeria. But it was gathered that much of that money —and value— is coming back to Nigeria and Africa. Meanwhile, Babalola’s charity, indeed, begins at home. Aside from many multi-billion naira philanthropic activities he has executed and still ongoing across the country, his University, ABUAD, just last month, kicked off the same Distance Learning Programme to offer blended and online programmes to students who have had their journey to higher education disrupted by various factors.