Tai Solarin

Tai Solarin was a leading Nigerian humanist and educationalist. He was at one time the chairman of the People’s Bank of Nigeria and also a writer for leading Nigerian newspapers. He served in the British Air Force during the Second World War and studied in the universities of Manchester and London. He campaigned for human rights and founded and ran for many rears a secular state school, called the Mayflower, which powerfully spread humanist views.

The majority of schools in Nigeria are religious and the Mayflower was therefore a shining but lone example of secular education. It was started in 1956 with seventy pupils and by 1992 had around 2,000 pupils. Solarin said that "I have stood, almost exclusively, for free, universal and compulsory education for all children, to the end of high school." He believed in children being taught to be masters of their own fate.

He was particularly critical of the Roman Catholics, who exerted much control over Nigeria’s largely private education system. He recognised Nigeria was essentially a religious country, but thought that this would change with an increase in literacy. He responded to the question is humanism and athiesm not ‘un-African’ or possibly ‘detrimental to the African psyche’ by replying that: ‘Humanism and atheism develop in the mind of man, not for a special breed of homo sapiens but for humanity. Just as the wheel has been invented, not for whatever race invented it, but for humans everywhere.

He said it took him thirty to get the sledgehammer to break the (religious) shackle around his mind. But he was enlightened by people such as Charles Bradlaugh, H G Wells, Robert Ingersoll, Jawarharlal Nehru, G B Shaw, and H A L Fisher. As a result he could ‘maintain great comfort and infinite happiness living as a humanist.’

Segun Oyebade has described Tai Solarin as the number one outspoken athiest in Nigeria, who was a great supporter of Action for Humanism in Nigeria. It was suggested that he should be made Patron Saint of Action for Humanism.

Adebeyo Akerele in the Guardian (September 5, 1992) stated of Solarin that: ‘Not believing in our concept of God and heaven and thus the need for salvation, he has spent his life doing good for the selfless reason that it is good to do so. Solarin has fed the poor with food and the ignorant with knowledge. He has clothed the naked. He has suffered personal deprivations for the freedom of others …’

Tai Solarin wrote: ‘ My allegiance is to man. Locally to the Nigerian; universally to humanity.’