09/03/2023
Yoruba Legends" series #8
J.K. RANDLE –
SCION OF LAGOS ROYALTY
Among the notable sports enthusiasts in Lagos in the 1950s who ruled the roost of Lagos high society before Israel Adebajo’s time was the man known as J. K. Randle. Our father, the Black Prince, knew him, having met him several times when his well-connected friends invited him to the Island Club.
J.K., as my father called him, was a saro and a true omo Eko. He was a scion of the Lagos aristocracy, being heir to nineteenth-century émigrés who came from Sierra Leone. His father was the famous physician, John Randle, who was one of the first Africans to graduate in medicine from the University of Edinburgh. His mother was Victoria Matilda Davies, the first daughter of Captain J. P. L. Davies and Sarah Forbes Bonetta, the famous protégé of Queen Victoria of England.
This is what our father told us about him, “When J.K.’s parents got married, Queen Victoria, after whom the bride was named, gave them many expensive gifts. These included a christening set made of solid gold. The queen also gave them the material for the wedding gown and a lifetime allowance of the then princely sum £40 per year.
“At his christening in 1909, his parents named him Joseph Kosoniola Randle. Afterward, everyone called him J.K., although he had the same initials as his dad.
“J.K. showed great promise early in life. At the age of twelve, he was enrolled by his father at the CMS Grammar School. Later, he transferred to King’s College. This was not far from their house on Tokunbo Street, near Campos Square.”
But then tragedy struck. His father, Dr. John Randle, died in 1928 when J.K. was in his final year at King’s College. His dream of proceeding to university in England or Scotland like his father was dealt a harsh blow. Thus, after finishing his Cambridge school certificate examination, he had to take a job in the colonial civil service in the Treasury Department. He went to work on his bicycle which he rode the short distance from his family home in Tokunbo Street to his office near the Race Course.
Over the years however, J.K. was able to fulfill the promise of his high birth and his parents’ legacy. Within a few years, he left his civil service job and went into business. And after a few false starts, he thrived. Every venture he embarked on after this blossomed with success, and he became rich and popular. He became a revered member of the Lagos high society of the 1950s. It was that heady decade before Independence from Great Britain, when there seemed to be no limit to the achievements of young enterprising “natives” as the British colonial masters prepared to yield the scene,. In politics and commerce, young enterprising Lagosians with English-sounding names like Doherty, Davies and Randle dominated the scene.
From contemporary descriptions including those of the Black Prince, J.K. was said to be all, dark, slim and handsome – the poetic ideal of the attractive young male, beloved by society women and extolled by the glamorous praise singers of the day. He was befriended by men in the corridors of power, and was always surrounded by a gaggle of friends and admirers. He was known for his kindness and his big heart – for he was unstinting in his largess and was a great philanthropist. According to the Black Prince, he was also, from an early age, an all-round sportsman who excelled in every field on which it was his pleasure to play — cricket, golf, polo, tennis, and soccer. He was a star athlete in track and field in school, helping, with skill and valor, to place King’s College ahead of every school it competed with.
“He was a founding member of the Island Club, where I met him,” our dad explained. “At one time, he was chairman of the Lagos Race Club. He had his own stable of horses imported from England. He rode his own horse when he played polo with his friends, many of them European expatriates, in Ikoyi which in those days was dotted with well-manicured lawns and open fields for the enjoyment of tennis, hockey and polo in the cool tropical evenings by the upper class of that colonial society. He was also a member of the Lagos Town Council. And he was on the planning committee set up by the government to build the National Stadium in Surulere, not far from Randle Avenue, a thoroughfare that was later named after him.”
But like Israel Adebajo, J.K. was fated to die young. When the Nigerian contingent prepared to go to Melbourne, Australia, for its first-ever participation in the Olympic games in 1956, J.K. was chosen to be the leader of the delegation. But he fell sick on the plane on the journey back home. He died in Lagos at the General Hospital on Broad Street, not far from his beloved Island Club.
Like his later-day contemporary in Lagos, Israel Adebajo, our father would say that J. K. Randle would be remembered for his philanthropy, love of the good life, social prominence, and success in commerce. These were traits, he assured us, that thoroughbred Lagosians loved in their idols and popular heroes.
“Like Israel Adebajo, J.K. Randle gave back to the people of Lagos more than he took from them,” he said. “He left a mark on the history of sports in our nation that is yet to be matched by others.” And we the modern chroniclers of the stories of the great men and women of our land, have to agree.
When they were alive, Adebajo and J.K. were unmatched in their fame, zest for life and enduring place in the popular imagination of their time as high achieving men about town. They were flamboyant, imaginative, and successful in many areas of human endeavor and enterprise. They seemed to live larger than life. And since the lives of our heroes are often marked by tragedy, they both died young, in their forties, before their full potential could be realized.
Thus it is that J. K. Randle has become part of the legend of Lagos and Yorubaland. In this, he was like Herbert Macaulay, Henry Carr and Candido Da Rocha in an earlier generation. And befitting a man who we have elevated to the status of hero and legend of the Yoruba people, to the end of his life, J. K. paid a respectful homage to his Yoruba ancestry and cultural heritage despite being a protégé of the British royal family. He was a traditional chieftain of Yorubaland, having being made Lisa of Lagos by Oba Adeniji Adele II. According to the Black Prince, J.K. would often proudly assure his friends that this traditional honor of his Yoruba people was far more important to him than the Victoria Order he had received from Queen Elizabeth II of England.
Several months after his death, in a fitting epitaph, a popular Lagos musician recorded a song that said this of J.K.
B’aiye ba yeni,
ka gba pe o yeni o.
Aiye ye J. K. Randle o;
Orun re
a si dara o..
We should acknowledge it
When life is good to us,
Life was good for you, J. K. Randle
And your existence after this world
Is also sure to be pleasant.
In our own time, J.K. Randle’s famous family is remembered by an iconic cultural extravaganza erected on Lagos island near his beloved Island Club. Built on a piece of land that once belonged to J.K. himself, it is named after his equally illustrious father. This is the John Randle Center for Yoruba History and Culture.
Excerpt from “A New Age” Book 3 ‘Itan – Legends of the golden age,’ by Oladele Olusanya. All rights reserved. Available on Amazon and other reputable online booksellers
