I have reached a very significant point in my regular public writing, and compelled by a personal work restructuring that I just undertook to step it down significantly, by 70% perhaps. It means I would henceforth intervene in national discourse only in very few occasions when I feel so strongly, and when I need to share lessons that could deepen policy and discourse from lectures I deliver from time to time. And it is therefore a juncture that I feel compelled to share with my vast community of readers who have tolerated my public commentaries and opinion pieces for many years my decision that I am signing off of regular public commentaries into semi-retirement. This simply implies that while I would surface once in a while to reiterate my advocacy issues, I will now have more time to dedicate myself to more lectures, and possibly attempt to write some more books as I receive inspirations in the near and far future. I had returned to this business of writing for about a decade now, and I have satisfied my inner craving that I could still write. I was drawn to writing not willingly, but by a compelling desire to draw the public into the understanding of some salient dimensions of our collective national predicament, and how we must go about reflecting on and resolving them. My founding discipline of political science, and lifelong dedication to the public service both enforce on me the rigid discipline of writing as advocacy for national reconstruction.
Sometimes in 2011, and after a very long hiatus in writing in the popular media, I was compelled once again to pick up my pen and enter the public sphere of reasoned and reasonable discourse. There were two interrelated missions on my mind then when I made this decision. The first was stirred by the urgency of deepening institutional reform and institution rebuilding that was becoming obvious. About a decade before then, I had taken up a monthly guest lecturer’s task at the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON) at Badagry, and a little less frequently at the Centre for Management Development (CMD) and the National Institute for Peace and Strategic Studies (NIPSS). These seminar series facilitation and lectures take up very defining issues in public sector management and the Nigerian civil service system. From this reform impulse, I made a decision to deploy public education writing series to expand these issues into the broader ones of re-professionalizing the public service as a means of rebranding the civil service in Nigeria into a world class institution by expanding the community of reform champions beyond the bureaucracy.
The second impulse to enter the public sphere came from the renowned political scientist, late Prof. Claude Ake, and specifically from his foreword to my biography of the late Prof. Ojetunji Aboyade titled A prophet is with honour. In that Foreword, Ake decried Nigeria’s attitude to her heroes and heroines. This gave me the inspiration to, first, see clearly the relationship between these heroic capacities and the Nigerian postcolonial redemption; and second, to generate series of critical narratives around individual heroes and heroines, mentors and statesmen and stateswomen. The cogent essence of these narrative is to argue not only that these extraordinary men and women, patriotic Nigerians all of them, have contributed heroically to achieving the Nigerian project, but that treating them with respect and understanding the point of their heroic sacrifices would serve as a national incentive and encouragement for other Nigerians who are equally determined to give themselves and sacrifice their efforts and even lives for the greater glory of this great country of ours.
As far as I am concerned, this is the stuff of which committed writing and public commentaries are made. And in this wise, I have a legion of seasoned and astute forerunners and contemporaries whose writing and companionship have served as the occasions for more durable and rigorous conversations on the well-being of Nigeria. Here, I pay an unreserved respect to those sagely wordsmith—Peter Enahoro, Olabisi Onabanjo “Aiyekoto’. Ray Ekpu, Olatunji Dare, Mohammed Haruna, Dan Agbese, Yakubu Mohammed, Fred Onyeoziri, Godwin Sogolo, Femi Otubanjo, Femi Orebe, Sam Omatseye, and many others. I started reading this generation of writers from graduate school. Then there are those who are more contemporary with my entry into the public sphere; especially those with whom I share notes and feedbacks regularly: Ayo Olukotun, Festus Adedayo, Segun Ayobolu, Olusegun Adeniyi, Akin Osuntokun, Reuben Abati, Abimbola Adelakun, Okey Okechukwu, among others. All these old and new Op-Ed and public commentary warriors have helped sharpened my capacity to clearly understand and articulate my worries, understanding and directions for the Nigerian state. These fearless writers embody the courageous commitment and clear-headed focus on the germane issues around which Nigeria and Nigerians ought to reflect.
This is what has been the template I had adopted for all my public education and advocacy series. While I may not consider myself as courageous as these veterans largely due to the abiding public service values that remains my testament as mentor to a large pool of bureaucrats, I strove to put in my own little reflections and reasoned inputs into the mix of volatile commentaries on where we are as a nation and what could be done to make Nigeria great. A bulk of my public commentaries has been dedicated solely to the national project, and the challenge of postcolonial development in Nigeria. From education to literature, from politics to governance, from religion and interreligious dialogue to entertainment, and from philosophy and the humanities to gender issues and scientific development, I have sought in all these essays to connect the many complex and labyrinthine dots in Nigeria’s postcolonial and post-independence predicament that have made national development a thorny issue close to sixty solid years after the official end to colonialism. Some of my passionate entries have been dedicated to the relationship between the humanities and the social sciences (HSS) and the prospect of national integration in Nigeria. I have raised issue, first, with the methodologies of the HSS; and second, why intersectionality with the sciences as well as a renewed understanding of the relevance of the HSS in a global capitalist world is the way forward.
These are the various levels of fundamental issues to which I have dedicated my writing spirit over the years. but I am not done just yet. Writing is just one dimension of my reform passion and advocacy. At a more institutional level, the Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy constitutes the platform from which my professional work continues. It is now this platform, at this interregnum, that I hope to be able to go on with my commitment to teaching and my professorship, and to public administration advocacy and advisory professionalism. I hope to be able to deepen the involvement of the ISGPP with concrete technical support and engagement with key policy makers, public and private. And when the occasions demand it, I hope to make some forays into specific issues that become germane in making Nigeria work. So, this is Tunji Olaopa signing off!