Mabogunje at 90: A measure of grace indeed

It is better to celebrate life than death. Life, for me, does not consist in the length of existence but in the depth of the life’s worth measured in other-regarding capacities. In other words, it is better to celebrate the lives of those whose very existence constitutes a symbolic stretch of significant influences that a person has exerted on the collectivity. A hero is one whose life transformed the way we see life itself, and makes indelible contributions to our conceptual, intellectual and national infrastructures.

This is the essential way in which I conceive of the fulsome life of Prof. Akinlawon Ladipo Mabogunje, a father, an intellectual, scholar and patriotic exemplar extraordinaire. And what is more, Prof. Mabogunje is not a hero-at-a-distance for me. He has been right there from my earliest understanding of who and what a mentor means; his presence has always been a constant companion in my often-confused attempts to make sense of what path to take in life.

In 2011, when he was just at an octogenarian age of 80, Prof. Mabogunje published a massive tome of an autobiography, titled A Measure of Grace. Little did he know that that measure of grace has not yet been exhausted. The Almighty that strategically placed him in this part of the world, and within a most circumscribed space like Nigeria, knows that what Mabogunje considered a measure of grace is indeed a deluge that allows Papa to keep receiving enough grace to keep pursuing the divine mandate. The autobiography might need a second volume (certainly not from his aging intellect),as eleven years after the first volume, a lot has been done through that same measure of grace!

Between publication of A Measure of Grace in 2011 and when he was honoured by the American Academy of Arts and Science in 2017, I wrote two tributes that situate the significance of Prof. Mabogunje. Each of these tributes weighed the contributions of Mabogunje to the discipline of geography, and how that disciplinary perspective enables the nonagenarian professor to contribute his patriotic quota to the task of nation building in Nigeria. In this piece, I want to wrap this perspective up by moving from Mabogunje’s deep influence on my reform and administrative maturation to the totality of his contribution to the Nigerian state.

Papa Mabogunje took geography seriously as a discipline, indeed as his calling and at that, as a life-long mission. But rather than just seeing it as the cartographic exercise of mapping the world, in lines, shapes, dots and colours, so as to facilitate an understanding of places and spaces, he extended the theoretical reach of geography to a most situated and contextual application of its cartographic essence to the Nigerian space and the development imperative. In this regard, Prof. Mabogunje becomes the exemplar of an intellectual who binds the theoretical to the practical.

The geography of development, in his assessment, commences from a democratic recognition of the role of rural-urban governance in the idea of composite development in a state. So, right from very early, Prof. Mabogunje and his bosom friend, Prof. Ojetunji Aboyade, had alighted on the idea of tapping into the framework of networks of civic engagement and dynamics of social reciprocity to facilitate governance and development in rural areas. And so, the OPTICOM model for rural development was born. For Mabogunje, four principal elements become critical in achieving this transformation of the rural areas from within: organization, technological innovations, credit institution and market access.

Geographical mapping therefore intersects the concern for rural and national development. Geography therefore becomes a deeply humanistic discipline that enables us to uncover the fundamental concepts, like social capital, with which we can begin to retrieve our human essence and well-being.

It is from this perspective of the inter-relationship between development, rural governance, democracy and institutional reform that I picked my doctoral interest from since I took a first shot at it in 1987at the department of political science, University of Ibadan. In subsequent iteration, I wanted to commence from the perspective of the dysfunction of the public service system in Nigeria to the reform imperative that could be applied to arrive at optimality dynamics that could transform the public service into an efficient institutional machine for addressing the challenges of democratic governance in Nigeria. And of course, I needed to start sitting at the feet of Profs. Mabogunje and Aboyade for guidance in my intellectual and professional wandering.

The ideas of social capital and subsidiarity became too solid and intertwined ones, very crucial to my understanding of social mobilization for good governance. The principle of subsidiarity states that functions, issues, and problems that can best be handled at the grassroots should not therefore be centralized. Or on the flip side, the central government should only generate an exclusive list of those functions, which cannot be handled at the local level of governance. On the other hand, social capital speaks to the institutionalized networks of trust and norms that allow for collaboration and partnership in tackling problems from bottom up.

Quite consistently, Prof. Akin Mabogunje has shown himself a constant patriot. From the 1962 task of demarcating the enumeration areas in preparation for the census, to several survey assignments on a national scale, and from public service review responsibility in 1972 to the establishment of the Directorate for Food, Road and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI) and the community banks concept, Mabogunje had been on course in serving the Nigerian state right from his university days. Planning the Federal Capital Territory, from 1976 to 1978, was the most patriotic assignment of a lifetime for a geographer pushed into what was considered a basic adjunct discipline.

Every other assignment Mabogunje undertook for Nigeria—community banking, poverty reduction, land reform, housing, mortgage banking, etc.—was stamped with the enthusiasm of breathing life to governance and development. Even when he finally retired from the University of Ibadan in 1981, he was not yet done. Together with his partner in theoretical creativity and development sparring, Prof. Ojetunji Aboyade, he set up first the PAI Associates, and then the Development Policy Centre (DPC) to continue making himself available for the task of undermining the challenges of development in Nigeria.

The idea of the DPC was critical in my understanding of the path my own post-retirement life would take. When I had become a permanent secretary, the very peak of my public service career, I had thought that I could use that career height to begin to deploy some of the elements of my reform philosophy to defraying the dysfunctionality of the public service. Unfortunately, retirement happened so quickly though, as it turned out, as a clear self-affirming divine arrangement. And I just was not yet done with the reform business! And when I began to give thought to my post-retirement trajectory, the significance of the DPC (to which I had dreamt and hoped to retire) came to mind, and that was how the idea of the Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy (ISGPP) came to light. And it was not difficult to think of who will be the fountain to draw inspiration from; who to head the governing board. Who else but the man who inspired the very conceptualization of the idea in the first place?

On this his 90th birthday celebration today, October 18, 2021, Papa Mabogunje, the sterling nonagenarian and patriot, has been retired for 40 years. He has aged, but he is definitely not tired. How does someone who has been there right from the founding of his beloved country ever think of retiring when that country’s cartographical essence is still caught in serious predicament?

How could Prof. Mabogunje ever suspend his deep geographical and developmental knowledge of Nigeria when there are still a lot to be done? What would he ever tell his Creator who has blessed him so much about Nigeria when the measure of grace is still flowing to keep assisting the country? Now the Federal Government has assigned a budgetary allocation for a population and housing census in 2022. Who else to reference in that regard than someone who had featured prominently in previous attempts, even if he is no more fully available due to old age? Professor Akinlawon Mabogunje remains a sincere and critical optimist about the possibility of the Nigerian state regaining her lost capacities in becoming a great nation. He not only has a great respect for the enormous wealth and material resources of Nigeria, he affirmed, with every force of intellectual conviction, that there are various and immense human capital—a critical mass of Nigerians in all walks of life, including himself—that are sufficiently patriotic to be saddled with the responsibility of making Nigeria great.

And this is one national hero that the Nigerian state has made effort in honouring. The Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) came in 1980, aside other numerous accolades from within Nigeria and outside. However, the cartographic essence of the disciplinary relevance of Prof. Akin Mabogunje’s contributions to the mapping of Nigeria demands a more “geographical” memorialization of his efforts, dedication and contributions to making Nigeria better.

Since he was significant in ensuring the cartographical beauty of Nigeria federal capital, naming one of the streets in Abuja after him is not too much of a debt of appreciation to pay for someone who loves Nigeria this much. And this is the time for the Federal Government to demonstrate that Nigeria can really be committed to her heroes and heroines—when they are still alive, well, patriotic and willing to still give the best of their capacities to their fatherland.

Olaopa is retired Federal Permanent Secretary& Professor of Public Administration, National Institute For Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos.