Professor Omotoye Olorode To Interview Attahiru Jega
Toyin Falola
Professor Omotoye Olorode To Interview Attahiru Jega
Omotoye Olorode retired as a Professor of Botany at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife in Nigeria on September 30, 2008, after forty-one (41) years of teaching, research, and intense public service and engagement in popular mass and labour movement activities. After that, he was contract Professor of Botany at the University of Abuja and Olabisi Onabanjo University at Ago-Iwoye, from where he finally retired to live in Ogbomoso studying at a small Biodiversity outfit. He is a member of a large extended family and a dedicated nuclear family with wonderful biological and social children.
He was born about 1941 into a family whose forbears were originally from Ile-Ife. The paternal family were farmers, while the maternal family were traditional cloth weavers. Pre-School, he grew up in a completely traditional Yoruba ambience which became gradually swallowed up, literally, by Western and Middle-Eastern cultures.
From primary school experience in a Baptist School in Ogbomoso and an Ansar-Ud Deen School in Lagos, he imbibed the triple heritage of Yoruba (traditional), Judeo-Christian, and, to a lesser extent, Islamic, culture.
He trained as a teacher in Ogbomoso and Osogbo in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In Osogbo, he met radical nationalists during the Lumumbist (Congo Independence) movement and became familiar with the writings of H.O. Davies, Nnamdi Azikiwe (both of Nigeria) and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana.
He started undergraduate studies at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, where he met lecturers like Kalu Ezera, G.E.K. Ofomata, Babs Fafunwa etc. and student leaders like Ken Emezie, Adaka Boro and Ibezim Chukumerije. He had to transfer to the University of Ife in October 1966 because of the impending Civil War.
He was one of the three 1967 1st Class graduands (all transferees from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka) at the University of Ife. He was appointed Assistant Lecturer and proceeded to the University of Kansas, Lawrence, where he obtained a PhD in Botany in 1970. He returned to the University of Ife in October 1970.
Since 1970, Dr. Omotoye Olorode has taught Foundation Botany, Systematic Biology, Plant Taxonomy, Biostatistics, Cytogenetics, Genetics and Evolutionary Mechanisms at Ife, Bauchi, Akungba, Abuja, and Ago-Iwoye. He has supervised many PhD students, some of who are now retired Professors. He has published journal articles and books in Cytogenetics and on weeds, the Grasses and the Flowering Plants.
He has invested a large amount of his time and talents in the struggles of the labour movement and specifically in education and organisation in ASUU and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). He was a member of the radical Ife Dialogue Committee and the Ife [Socialist] Collective that joined other radical university campus groups at Nsukka, Calabar, ABU, Jos, Port Harcourt, Lagos, Ilorin and Ibadan to erect, with the NLC, the foundations of ASUU in Nigeria’s labour movement since the early 1980s. In this regard, he has contributed, and continues to contribute, to the working class and popular education through public lectures, symposia and rallies; and through articles and books on political economy, on the education sector and culture, and Nigeria’s history.
Sunday, December 12, 2021
5:00 PM Nigeria
4:00 PM GMT
10:00 AM Austin CST
Register and Watch:
https://www.tfinterviews.com/post/attahiru-jega
Join via Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88686434686
Watch on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/tfinterviews/live
Watch on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2lvX7A2iVndiCq0NfFcb0w/live
Farooq A. Kperogi
Blog: www.farooqkperogi.com
Sent from my phone. Please forgive typos and omissions.
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Toyin Falola
He will be 81 in the next few months.
Still alive and healthy….
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Olasupo Laosebikan
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Toyin Falola
Cornelius Hamelberg
This promises to be a stellar interview since it’s rumoured that “honest Joe” Attahiru Jega was more or less the architect of the free and fair election that guaranteed fourth time lucky Muhammadu Buhari victory in 2015 . Jega’s the equivalent of Sierra Leone’s Christiana Thorpe who supervised Sierra Leone’s 2007 elections. Jega will be surely sounded about his premonitions concerning Nigeria’s forthcoming mother of all elections in 2023, won’t he?
Another question of questions, for the impoverished minds badly messed up by dialectical materialism , and the billion dollar question is , which legend is going to interview Ojogbon Toyin Falola ?
Surprisingly, never heard of “the Karl Marx of Nigeria” - a very local Karl he must have been at a time when David McLellan had already wrapped up Marx for us, laid him bare and laid him to rest definitively and with all finality in tune with earlier anti-communism indoctrination or pollution if you will ,via us cutting our teeth with compulsory Animal Farm in the lower secondary school syllabus, although, even if just like Ojogbon Omotoye Olorode, it would seem that from Highgate Cemetery Mr. Marx is also “still alive and healthy “ and from there he or his ghost or both ( Marx in Africa ) were by then still reaching out , spouting ideological bullets in Angola, Namibia, Mozambique during the cold war that was being played out in Africa and the Communist Party of South Africa sending shock-waves of panic through the big business interests such as the gold & diamond mining industries in that country..
Surprisingly too, there were no such tensions in Nigeria – Nigeria never looked up to the then Soviet Union, China or Cuba as enviable role models save for some ideological inputs from two other unsung Nigerian heroes , Aminu Kano , his activism, his speeches and writings and Pa Michael Imoudu
Another buk : https://www.jacobinmag.com/store/product/59
Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Sent: Tuesday, December 7, 2021 7:47 AM
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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Ojogbon Harrow,
I think that prior to globalism swallowing us all up, chewing us and spitting out the chaff , we ( rich man, poor man, madman, specialist) are more or less in the position of “ But you'd better hurry up and choose Which of those bills you want, before they all disappear"
What’s best for Africa?
Should China take over completely?
You are the professor in this field with indisputable vast experience and as you know, there’s precious little in your terse rejoinder about which to disagree with you here. It’s a fact that the McCarthy era is long over , even though Bernie “ the commie” Sanders and Angela Davis can still be tainted by the vast shadow that that era still casts over America.
I’d like to take a closer look at what Bhaskar Sunkara has to say ( I have been following some of the articles in his Jacobin, for a while.
As the bird bard sang in the fit of fervour that accompanied his then new-fanged religious conviction, “Karl Marx has got ya by the balls, Henry Kissinger's got you tied up in knots.”
Your take that “capitalism is the excuse for expropriating the wealth of others” jives with Amiri Baraka’s “ex-humans, ex-slaves, unknown, incorrect, crosed out , multiplying the wealth of others”
Last night on BBC News America, I heard Chris Christie talk about Kamala Harris not fulfilling the role expected of her, that traditionally the Vice President should be seen and not heard and that there’s a lot of bad news coming outta the higher echelons of the Democrat Party , that it’s increasingly becoming dysfunctional, there’s talk of racism and sexism and an utter lack of rapport at the very top – all bad news for the upcoming Gubernatorial elections in battle ground Georgia, early next year.
Cornelius Hamelberg
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Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Cornelius Hamelberg
Dear Kenneth,
One can only learn from all the ideas and proposals that you offer for our serious consideration. A decade ago I listened to Jeffrey Sachs...
I have just watched a documentary featuring Abdulrazak Gurnah on Swedish TV. The documentary was made after the announcement that he had been awarded The Prize. We can safely imagine that life could never be the same after such an announcement – you wake up look at yourself in the mirror after your morning shave and see not merely a full professor but a Noble Nobel Literature Laureate smiling back at you, as in “when you're smiling', when you're smiling', the whole world smiles with you”, the whole world ( millions) at your feet. Somehow as he talked about the effects of his flight to Merry England , because of the persecution of Zanzibar's Arab minority etc. etc. about the gradual adjustment to refugee status as the new cultural reality that gradually reshapes what was the original identity, and the incarnation/ absorption into the resultant person, I couldn’t help comparing and contrasting him – on the basis of what strikes me as a personality imbued with humility as a quality – compared to that austere, superior air of disdain as a permanent attitude to those perceived as lesser beings, I couldn't help unconsciously comparing him with our dear friend Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul of blessed memory, remembering that we are not supposed to speak evil of the dearly departed). Inevitably , I couldn't help comparing Gurnah with the more ideologically militant Ngugi Wa Thiong'o with whom I’m sure that you and Moses Ochonu could have a jolly good discussion about Ali Shariati's “ Marxism and other Western Fallacies” and about adaptations of Marx that could determine the future of Africa
As for dear Cornelius , looking at some literature through the lenses of Arnold Kettle was where the buck stopped. I suppose that Kettle’s disciples are applying such methods and insights to both African literature and African cinema.
In this compare and contrast game, what we do know is that compared to what was once British colonialism, the vestiges of French colonialism remain stronger in Francophone Africa where even with a change of management - the managers now more enfant noir and more parler francais they have so lovingly retained the colonial tax system once imposed by France - such as ( “no taxations without representation”?) - still dutifully paying their colonial taxes with Paris as the location and headquarters of their Central Bank and this is still by all the ex- Francophone colonial nations, and apparently our Cameroon is no exception, which legacy partly accounts for the Ambozonian secessionist impulses – they don’t want to be a part of it !
There’s the growing popular belief that give China a chance in Africa, give them a mere 150 years in Africa and they will accomplish – for the people of Africa, what the European Imperialists have still not succeeded in achieving since The Berlin Conference , 137 years ago
My hannukah came to a joyful conclusion two days ago….
Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
None of the above can be
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
Sent: Wednesday, December 8, 2021 6:03 PM
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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Professor Omotoye Olorode To Interview Attahiru Jega
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Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university