Homecoming: Briton searching for Nigerian roots finally meets half-brother
In the middle of the busy afternoon of Monday, May 13, 2024, mail dropped in my box from an unfamiliar contact by the name Ramatu Ibrahim. Ordinarily, I should skip it to check later but I did open it.
It read:
Dear Oladimeji,
Read a story you published in your paper on the 12th (of) March 2022. It is exactly like the story a friend told me about his dad and the lady his father impregnated in England while schooling.
I have pictures of my friend, Mr Muyiwa Odeinde, his dad, Arch Olufemi Odeinde, and his mum, Comfort Iyabo Odeinde. His dad’s obituary is also attached.
His mum, Mrs. Comfort Iyabo Odeinde, lives at Bodija, Ibadan.
His brother and sister are (1) Oluyemi Babajide Odeinde (2) Oyinkansola Odeinde…
This mail brought back memories. My story that Ramatu referenced was titled: ‘Father of Briton tracing Nigerian roots died in a car accident in 1981’.
It was the story of a 68-year-old mixed-raced Briton, Paul Bolton, searching for his Nigerian father, whom he had never met, reports The PUNCH.
Bolton was born in 1954 by a British young lady to a Nigerian young man, who travelled to England for studies. He was conceived out of wedlock by the white mum, who was 19 years old at the time. The mum’s parents rejected the dad, for being a black man and for putting their daughter in the family way out of wedlock. They cut off the relationship between them and took the baby to an orphanage soon after he was born.
The baby grew up without knowing his parents and at adulthood when he began to ask questions, his mother told him she did not wish to see him again and would not help him locate his father.
After searching for 29 years without any headway, he reached out to PUNCH Newspapers and our investigation helped to unravel his father’s identity in three days.
The story established Bolton’s father’s identity as Olufemi Odeinde, a successful architect, who died after an accident in 1981. It also revealed that on returning from England to Nigeria, Odeinde married Tinuade, the first indigenous librarian at the University of Ibadan, and they had two children, Oluyemi and Oyinkansola. Oluyemi, an architect like his father, died in 2021 at the age of 60. Oyinkansola, it was found, lives in Italy.
Now, Ramatu’s mail indicating that besides Oluyemi and Oyinkansola, Odeinde had another child named Olumuyiwa, should have surprised me, but it did not.
Back in 2022 while investigating to unravel the identity of Bolton’s father, Olumuyiwa’s name had popped up vaguely. It was mentioned in passing by one of the several persons I interviewed. The person hinted that the late Odeinde had another wife besides Oluyemi and Oyinkansola’s mother. I might have explored and introduced Olumuyiwa in a planned follow-up story but I did not have a sufficient lead. Bolton, who was searching for his Nigerian roots, told me he was happy enough to finally discover, through my investigation, that his father was the late Odeinde, a man from Ikorodu in Lagos State.
Now that he knew, Bolton should approach his family in Nigeria and unite with them as he had long desired, but he told me he did not feel confident enough to make the first move. He said he was hoping that his Nigerian family, who was now aware of his existence through my story, would reach out to him first, to guarantee him he was welcome into the family. But nothing happened.
About two years later, I asked Bolton again if he and his Nigerian family had finally met but he replied: “No, unfortunately, there has been no contact from my Nigerian family, but at least I am pleased to be aware of them.”
I encouraged him to begin by mailing Oyinkansola, his surviving half-sister, who lives in Italy, but he would not. He did not want to present as an intruder. He needed the assurance that his Nigerian family wanted to meet him as much as he wanted to meet them.
I recall that in 2022 Bolton’s wife, Jane, had told me: “I hope they will view him (Bolton) as a welcome addition to the family.”
Then on May 13, 2024, Ramatu’s mail came out of the blue. Attached were four portrait photographs of the late Architect Olufemi Odeinde; his obituary and funeral programme were kept from 1981. At the bottom of the obituary were listed the names of his children – Olumuyiwa Odeinde appearing as the third and last child, behind Oluyemi Odeinde and Oyinkansola Odeinde.
Ramatu copied my editor, Mr Dayo Oketola, her mail, which came in just when the frenetic newsroom activities were gathering momentum on that Monday afternoon. The editor needed my attention and summoned me on the intercom to his office. After he discussed what he wanted me for, I then brought up Ramatu’s mail. He said he saw the mail but had not opened it. When I told him what the mail was about, it sparked his interest. After we both examined the mail and the attached photographs and documents, my editor quipped that the lead for the concluding story had finally come and he gave directions on how to proceed.
On the same day, I forwarded Ramatu’s mail to Bolton in the UK, to let him know about his other half-brother, Olumuyiwa. On the morning of the day after, I dialed Olumuyiwa’s mobile line, which Ramatu dropped. He picked on the first ring. He sounded very warm and courteous. When I mentioned my name, he became even warmer and confirmed that I was indeed speaking with Olumuyiwa Odeinde. He sounded so youthful, not anything near his age – 57.
He immediately explained to me why it was Ramatu and not him who mailed me.
Olumuyiwa was planning to mark his late father’s 43rd remembrance on June 1, 2024, and Ramatu, his friend, insisted that uniting with his half-brother, Bolton, would be a great way to honour the dad’s memory. The idea, he said, made sense because he recalled that while he was 14 years old, his late father had mentioned to him that he fathered a child in the UK while he was a student and regretted that he was denied the opportunity of seeing or taking the child.
“He mentioned it to me before. So, now that it’s happening in my lifetime, don’t I owe him that thing to say, ‘Okay, Mr. Paul, yes, indeed, he’s your dad? He was your dad; be at peace with yourself. You have a family somewhere. Be at peace’. In the man’s memory,” Olumuyiwa said.
Learning about Bolton
Olumuyiwa said he had learnt about Bolton in 2022 when our story was published. But a failed email to this paper delayed the efforts to reach out.
“We were burying a cousin of mine that died then. It was at the burial that somebody just told me jokingly, ‘O lo wa egbon e?” (Won’t you go and look for your brother?). And I was like, ‘My brother? What are you talking about? My brother, Oluyemi, died last year.’ Then the person pulled me aside and showed me the PUNCH article,” Olumuyiwa recounted.
Upon seeing the article, the first thing that struck him was the shape of Bolton’s forehead.
“Mr. Paul’s forehead, that was the first thing I saw! I just laughed. I knew. This one, this one, na my papa pikin be this,” he said laughing loud.
Then the other remarkable thing about the article was the photograph of the late Odeinde’s old office back in the 70s. The picture, Olumuyiwa said, evoked a rush of memories because that was where his late father told him about his son in the UK whom he was denied the opportunity to see.
“When I saw the picture of that Abusi greenhouse, that his office, I laughed because that was where we used to have our meetings,” he said nostalgically.
Olumuyiwa said being the last born he was particularly close to his father, who insisted he must school in Nigeria while Oluyemi and Oyinkansola went abroad for studies.
“Before my dad died – I was his last born. He had two wives, my stepmum and my mum. My stepmum had Yemi and Oyinkan. Yemi and Oyinkan were studying abroad. But I was the only one in Nigeria; he (my father) didn’t allow me to travel. He said I must study in Nigeria so that one child would be with him; that was his principle.
“I was in the boarding house. I went to Loyola College (Ibadan). But every Friday, the school would permit me to take two hours to go and see my father because he was close to the principal. So it was then he told me a story, about something that happened to him in the UK.”
The conversation began around the need not to waste food and be kind to strangers because you never knew who could be related to you.
“You know, we were talking about wasting food and then children and things like that. And then he started telling me, ‘Do you know you have another brother?’ I said, ‘Yes, Yemi Odeinde’. But he said no and then he told me the story that he got to know that he was a boy, that he never saw the boy. He never did anything; they did not permit him to even go near the child; that he offered to take his child back to Nigeria, but they didn’t allow him.
“So he was telling me that he didn’t know where the boy was, so I should be kind to strangers. That was what brought up that discussion. He was that kind of person to me. I was just 14 years old when he died,” Olumuyiwa narrated.
The accident that claimed Odeinde’s life
Odeinde died on Monday, June 1, 1981, after a motor accident on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. He died at a time when his architecture practice was blossoming. According to Olumuyiwa, Odeinde designed the Lagos State Polytechnic campus and was on his way from Ibadan to Lagos for his fees when he had a ghastly auto crash.
“That Km 46 where The Redeemed Christian Church camp is now, that was where that accident took place. The car somersaulted; it was a Mercedes Benz; the new one. The plate number then was something 400, either Oyo 400 or something like that.
“The car somersaulted, one tyre in the front, one tyre at the back got burst. He was in the back seat with his engineer then, Mr Adesanya, who also just died recently. The back glass shattered and shards of the glass entered his head. He broke some of his ribs.”
Olumuyiwa said his father and the engineer were first rushed to the Shagamu General Hospital, Ogun State for initial treatment after which they were transferred to the University College Hospital in Ibadan.
“It was at UCH that I saw him (after the accident). So I was seeing him every day. The school permitted me to go and see him every day. And he was okay. He was on the sickbed for about two weeks. He had a POP around his chest because of the broken ribs. The injury to his head from the shattered glass, there was no problem. They removed the shards and they bandaged his head. And you know, we were laughing at him because that was the first time he would have his head shaved. And he was playing with us.
“There was even a time people spread rumours that he was paralysed. So when I came home from school, he showed me. He said, ‘Muyiwa, see, my leg is not paralysed’. He lifted his left leg, and right leg, showed me his hands and I said, ‘Yes, I’m satisfied’. He said, ‘It’s only this POP remaining.’ Then he told me, ‘Tomorrow they will discharge me’… He died that night,” Olumuyiwa said ruefully.
A dream cut short
Though he hailed from Ikorodu in Lagos, Odeinde started out his career as a civil servant in the Oyo State Ministry of Works, where he rose to become and retired as a director. On retiring, he went immediately into private practice as an architect and achieved financial success.
“My dad was a very successful architect. He was a millionaire. He retired as a director in the Ministry of Works and Transport in Oyo State. When he retired, we went to his office, packed his stuff and he went into his private practice as an architect. He became quite successful. He had clients and he became very successful and that was when he died, painfully.”
Odeinde had built a mansion in Bodija and had grand plans for spending time with his family.
Olumuyiwa explained: “That building is on Ilaro Street in Bodija. Being an architect, he had designed it to fit his particular desires and needs.
“He told the two women in his life at that time – my mum and my stepmum – that he built three parts, three semi-detached duplexes. My stepmom on one side, he in the middle and then my mum on the other side.
“He planned that if he walked this way and this one was not welcoming, he would go to the other side and if the two of them gave him troubles, he would stay in his place, so they wouldn’t disturb him.
“That was the kind of person he was. So, I told him then that I preferred to stay with him rather than stay with anybody. So, we just laughed it over. But just before we would move into the building, he embarked on that trip to Lagos, had that accident and died.”
The funeral
The obituary and the funeral programme that accompanied Ramatu’s mail showed that Odeinde’s remains were interred on Friday, June 12, 1981, at the University of Ibadan Cemetry after a funeral service at the Agbeni Cathedral Methodist Church, Ibadan.
“The late Bola Ige read one of the Bible passages at the funeral,” Olumuyiwa recalled, noting that his father, as a successful architect, was well-connected.
“We’re from Ikorodu, Lagos. The governor, (the late) Bola Ige, all of them, they were his friends. He designed the Lagos State Polytechnic; Architect Odeinde designed it,” Olumuyiwa said proudly.
He would like Bolton to know that he has a rich African heritage and he is welcome to unite with the family. Olumuyiwa emphasised that he felt obligated to welcome Bolton with open arms in honour of his late father.
“If my dad remembered that he had a child somewhere that he did not know where the child was – that was how close my dad and I were, that he discussed that matter with me. And if somebody had shared all those things with me, why wouldn’t I, if I now see that this is the child, why wouldn’t I stretch out my hands to the child?”
This was the news and assurances that Bolton had been longing for, so when I suggested a Zoom meeting to unite them, both parties eagerly embraced the idea.
Bolton, now 70, came to the meeting alongside his wife, Jane, while Olumuyiwa was joined by his cousin, Yomi Porter, and friend, Ramatu. It was all joy and laughter during the Zoom meeting on the evening of June 8, 2024.
“Oh my goodness! Amazing. How are you?” Bolton exclaimed with a broad smile upon seeing Olumuyiwa.
With equal enthusiasm, Olumuyiwa responded, “When I see your forehead, it’s typical of our family! It’s nice to meet you, bro! This is your family!”
Beside Bolton, his wife, Jane, was equally full of smiles.
Jane, who has been very involved in her husband’s decades-long search for his roots, remarked: “It has taken a very long time to finally piece together the full history and this is the final, unexpected chapter to the story. So, it’s quite incredible.”
“It took a long time to find a family! I started to search for my family 31 years ago!” Bolton said ruefully.
Reflecting on his long search, Bolton explained, “Thirty-one years ago, when we had our first child, my daughter, I said to myself I really do need to find my family so I can pass it on to my children.”
He recalled how he quickly found his mother and the disappointment when she declined to meet him.
According to Jane, Bolton’s mother declined because the trauma of “being pregnant as a student and having a child by an African man” in the 1950s was something she wanted to permanently put behind her. This was a time when such relationships were disapproved by the white community.
“She had to put it all behind her, so she didn’t want to meet him. And also, she got other issues. One of her own children had been born with significant disabilities. She had two daughters and her husband was also unwell at the time, so, she met with the social workers and declined to meet Paul. But the file indicated that your dad had wanted to take the baby,” Jane told Olumuyiwa.
When blood calls
Bolton studied and practised as a structural engineer. But strangely, unlike most structural engineers, he found that he loves and has a keen interest in architecture.
“I have a lot of clients who are architects and they always say to me: ‘You seem to like architecture,’ – because most structural engineers are not typically interested – and I will reply to them and say, ‘Yes, I like architecture!’ This was a strange thing, and then interestingly I realised my father was an architect!” Bolton said.
Beaming with a large smile, Olumuyiwa said this was more than a mere coincidence because building and design run in the Odeinde family.
“My grandfather, who is also your grandfather, is the first indigenous quantity surveyor in Nigeria; his name is Oladipupo Odeinde. So, you see, this thing about building and stuff runs in the family; it’s in the blood,” Olumuyiwa remarked.
An unexpected discovery
In late 2023, Bolton survived a stroke. While he has recovered considerably well, he is not fully back to his old self, so Jane does most of the talking.
She opened up an unexpected chapter in the family saga when she mentioned that besides Bolton, another Briton, believed to have also been fathered by the late Odeinde, had been found in the UK through Ancestry DNA.
The man’s name is Tony. He is 68 years old. He bears a striking resemblance to Bolton and their stories are remarkably similar.
Tony was born in the 1950s in the same Hull city where Bolton was born. He was born by a young white woman to an African man strongly believed to be Odeinde. Like Bolton, Tony was given up by his mother after birth and was adopted by a white family named Tong. He has never met his biological parents either.
Jane narrated: “Around the time that we were finding out about the family in Nigeria, my daughter, just out of interest, went for an Ancestry DNA test, which can tell whether you’re 40% African, 20% French, whatever and it can be used to help match you up with people you might be related to.
“Around the same time, another young woman in the North of England, in Hull had done the same thing for her father. So, when Paul’s information came through, within a day or so, he got a message through Ancestry DNA, saying, ‘I think you could be my dad’s half-brother’ because the DNA was showing a sibling match.
“We were a bit confused at first, but we can confirm that you have another half-brother in England named Tony, who is two years younger than Paul.”
Jane said if there were any doubts, such were erased when Bolton and Tony finally met.
She said, “We arranged to meet and immediately I saw Tony, I saw Paul in him and his daughter, Jenny, could be one of my children. She looks like our children.
“I imagine that your father had no idea; he might have had a relationship… but the DNA was quite definitive. So, I am saying you’ve got not just one half-brother but two!”
According to Jane, Tony’s mother, is it believed, was much younger than Odeinde and she wasn’t a fellow student. “Tony believes his mother is still alive and living in the same city, Hull,” she said.
With a bemused smile, Porter, who was with Olumuyiwa at the meeting, remarked “The Odeinde men are known to be quite prolific when it comes to women’s affairs.”
Olumuyiwa did not flinch at the revelation, rather he said, “Nothing is new under the sun.”
For him, the more, the merrier.
“Let’s just sort it all out once and for all. If my dad were to be alive, I believe this is what he would have done, to bring everyone together. He’s an African man.”
Dreamed Nigerian visit
When Bolton was young, he always dreamed about coming to Nigeria. He once found a tiny opportunity to but it fizzled out just before it could materialise.
“I’ve never been to Nigeria,” he said. “I remember one company I was working with and they had a new project that was going to be in Nigeria. This was a long time ago. And they were looking for people that would go to work in Nigeria and I said, ‘I’ll go! I’d go!’ But I wasn’t qualified enough at that time.”
Jane added that their children have always been eager to visit Nigeria. She told Olumuyiwa, “When we told our daughter we would be meeting you today, the first question she asked was, ‘When are we going to Nigeria?’”
She expressed optimism that a visit to Nigeria for a physical union may be about happening finally.
“I’m sure it will happen at some point,” she said.
Before that, however, their first daughter, Kalila, who is 30, will be getting married in London in August, and they would be pleased to have some Odeinde family members around.
Summing up the significance of this meeting, Jane said to me: “We are so grateful for all your help in highlighting Paul’s story and then connecting us with his family …it would make a good film script!”
Olumuyiwa was equally full of gratitude. His message to me the day after the meeting said this much:
“Mr. Paul and I chatted till about 11 pm yesterday. A lot of people will be happy, but not as happy as I am about this. Thanks so much for your efforts, I cannot forget you ever.”
