The following excerpts are from my written tribute to Pa Victor Adetunji Haffner at his funeral service on Friday, November 27, at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Marina, Lagos
The home calling on November 5 in Lagos of Mr. Victor Adetunji Haffner, at 96, marks the end of a glorious era in the profession of engineering in Nigeria. This era produced some of Nigeria’s finest engineers and public servants in colonial Nigeria like the late Chief S.O. Fadahunsi of the old LEDB and Chief T.M. Aluko of the Lagos City Council, who is probably better remembered as a notable novelist. Pa Haffner was in this esteemed group of pioneering pre-independence engineers. He was a pioneer in telecommunications engineering, the first in his field. He served his country proudly and diligently. For over two decades, from 1954 to 1975, he straddled and shaped the future course of the development of telecommunications in Nigeria. In 1964, he became the first CEO of the Nigerian External Telecommunications (NET), the first state-owned telecommunications company in Nigeria. Pa Haffner was buried in Lagos on Friday, November 27, 2015, after a moving and well attended funeral service at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Marina, Lagos.
Engr. Haffner was born on September 1, 1919 at 10, Haffner Street, Lagos. After attending the Church School at Broad Street, he received his early education at the CMS Grammar School, Lagos, from 1932 to 1938. Among his classmates of the 1938 set were Pa Akintola Williams, the first Nigerian chartered accountant, and his younger brother, Chief Rotimi Williams, the distinguished Cambridge educated lawyer, now deceased. My late father, Chief Olagunju Asaolu Fafowora, was of that set too. Of the 12 students who performed brilliantly in the Cambridge School Certificate Examinations in 1938 and went on to have brilliant professional careers, only Pa Akintola Williams is alive today. He was a month older than Pa Haffner. They remained close friends until the end.
After a brilliant academic record at the CMS Grammar School, Lagos, from where he obtained his Cambridge School Certificate in 1938 at the age of only 19, a remarkable feat in those days, Mr. Haffner worked for a while as a clerk in the Accountant-General’s office of the colonial service. It was from there that he proceeded to Northampton College, London, (now City University) for the first part of his engineering course. After that, he studied at the famous Regent Street Polytechnic (now Westminster University), from where he graduated in 1954 as a Chartered Engineer, specialising in telecommunications engineering. He was the first Nigerian in this field. He worked briefly with the English telecoms firm, Cable and Wireless, from where he was recruited by the Nigerian colonial government in 1954 as a pupil engineer in the old Post and Telegraphs (P&T) department. His rise in the P&T was meteoric. In 1963, he was seconded to the newly formed company, Nigerian External Telecommunications (NET), as deputy general manager. The following year, he was appointed the managing director of NET, a post he held until his sudden and inexplicable retirement in 1975 by the Murtala Mohammed military regime.
It was under his watch at NET that satellite communications was first introduced in Nigeria. It was also during his tenure as MD that NECOM House, the magnificent 32- storey headquarters of NET, was developed at 12, Marina, Lagos. He always wanted the best for his country in the field of telecommunications. When, at 95, he presented his memoirs, “Reflections on Nigeria’, to the public last year, his professional colleagues acknowledged him as the pioneer of telecommunications engineering in Nigeria. After his sudden retirement from NET, Marubeni, a Japanese communications firm, offered him a consultancy. This provided him with some financial succour. As he noted in his memoirs, he made more money with Marubeni than he did at NET.
But it is not simply as a distinguished and an accomplished engineer that Pa Haffner will always be remembered. He had very wide social and family connections and he touched many lives for good. He was versatile, cultured and a good churchman. In his public life, he stood up for principles that he valued, based on noble ideas that he never compromised, no matter how strong the opposition was. Many thought of him as being controversial. But he always stuck to his guns, no matter whose ox was gored. He also left an enviable legacy at the Cathedral Church of Lagos, Marina, with which he was so strongly connected from birth. From the age of nine he was in the church choir. He was also a most influential member and secretary of the Standing Committee of the Cathedral for many years. He was honoured with the Cathedral Parish Award for his immense and varied services to the Cathedral. When the Cathedral needed to buy a new pipe organ, it was to Pa Haffner that it turned. As Chairman of the Church Organ Fund Raising Committee, Pa Haffner successfully accomplished this difficult task.
I also personally owe him a debt of gratitude for providing me with very valuable advice and information when I was writing the history of the Cathedral. Over two dinners at his pleasant Ikoyi home, he provided me with a mine of information and insights into significant historical events in the church of which he was a personal witness. He was proud of his old school, the CMS Grammar School, Lagos and, until his death, contributed immensely both materially and financially to its physical development in recent years. When I was privileged to serve as the President of the Old Grammarians’ Society (OGS), he gave me his encouragement and unstinted support. I knew I could always count on him and his old classmates, Pa Akintola Williams and the late Chief Rotimi Williams for support. In fact, he was honoured posthumously by the school on November 21, 2015, for his valuable contributions to the progress of the school over the years.
Considering his privileged pedigree and distinguished family ancestry, one could say that Pa Haffner was born with the proverbial silver spoon. He was a direct descendant of the Creoles, the immigrant Brazilian families that dominated the social and political life of the old Lagos colony under British colonial rule. But as he wrote in his memoirs, which it was my pleasure and privilege to review, he had to work hard for his professional success, in a career that took him to the top as a telecoms engineer in Nigeria. Pa Haffner’s father, Mr. Frederick Matthew Haffner, was an official of the Lagos City Council. His mother, Victoria Adepeju, was a niece of the legendary John Otunba Payne, a brilliant lawyer and first Nigerian Registrar of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. He was also a Church Warden at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos.
Pa Haffner also had as his grand uncle, Dr. Henry Rawlinson Carr, who graduated from Durham University at 19, and had such a brilliant career in the colonial civil service, rising to the post of Resident of Lagos, and next in rank to the colonial Governor of Lagos. When Pa Haffner was a student at the CMS Grammar School, Lagos, then at Broad Street, he lived with Henry Carr at his sprawling mansion at Tinubu Square. As Henry Carr was never married and had no children, he took Haffner as his adopted son and nurtured him carefully. This was a rare privilege which, no doubt, had a profound influence on Haffner as he grew up. It was Henry Carr who ensured that Haffner joined the Cathedral choir at nine. That was when his love of both church and classical music began. He learnt the piano and became quite good at it. He was a patron of the Cathedral Choir. He grew up to be a man of culture and pleasant manners. My wife and I would normally visit him in his lovely home on his birthday anniversaries. These visits were always a great pleasure and delight, as Pa Haffner was such a splendid host, taking every care to make sure his visitors were relaxed, happy and convivial.
In 1957, Pa Haffner married Grace Olubunmi Majekodunmi, a cousin of the late Dr. M.O. Majekodunmi of Abeokuta. She died in 2007 at 81. They were blessed with three children, two boys, and a girl, Bimbo who, in his last years, looked after him with such devotion and affection.
To his family, numerous friends and professional colleagues, I offer my deeply felt condolences. May Papa’s soul rest in perfect peace.