A Homo Economicus and a Homo Digitalis: A Curmudgeon ...

1PROF. YAKUBU ABOKI OCHEFU

A Homo Economicus and a Homo Digitalis:A Curmudgeon Cliometrician’s Cogitations onEconomic History, Genetics, Development and

Institutional Legacies

Introduction

The Historian as an Old RabbitThe story of the Old Rabbit, which is credited to oneof our teachers, Anthony Koroma, who for many yearswas Professor of history at the University of Maiduguriprovides a good setting to commence this lecture. Thestory goes thus; In the Rabbit kingdom, the youngrabbits assembled themselves to discuss the problemsfacing the community. They identified the elders asthe source of the many problems and decided to killthem all so that the community would be a betterplace to leave in. They all did except for one whocould not bear the thought of killing his father. Hesmuggled him out to a secret location and every sooften would sneak out to visit him, bringing food andstories about how the kingdom was faring. After severalyears, a terrible ailment befell the rabbit kingdom,killing them in large numbers. All the young rabbitsapplied various solutions that did not work, and thedeath toll kept rising. When the young rabbit visitedhis father, and told him the sad news, the old rabbitscreamed and noted that the ailment often visited thecommunity every ten years and a type of leaf thatgrew abundantly in the community was the cure for it.With the information, the young rabbit was able tosave the rabbit kingdom from total annihilation. When

2 13TH INAUGURAL LECTURE

asked by his peers how he discovered the remedy, heconfessed to the source of the knowledge. The youngrabbits then reversed their decision and asked theyoung rabbit to bring his father back to the kingdomso that he can continue to serve as its collectivememory. The moral of the story is that History servesas the collective memory of all societies. Withoutit, we may be doomed.In 1991 after I successfully defended my PhD thesis,

a companion of Mr. Inalegwu Okwa my childhood friend,Ms. Margaret Westmoreland who at that time was acultural attaché to the United State Embassy in Lagos,presented me with a book titled ‘’The Wise Men: SixFriends and the World They Made written by WalterIsaacson and Evan Thomas in 19861. She wrote;‘’Congratulations Yakubu. Now that you have writtenmuch history, the time is now for you to go out andmake history’’. Till point, it had not really occurredto me that as a historian one should strive to makehistory. Our task was to chronicle the history ofothers. I was however, fortunate to cross paths withthe likes of Eskor Toyo, Eddie and Bene Madunagu,Bassey Ekpo Bassey, and Akpan Hogan Ekpo who not onlyexposed me to the contrasting paths on the role ofthe intellectual in society’s development, but moreimportant, on how to cause change in society no matterhow little. The debate then was more like liberationtheology of Latin America in the 1960s and ’70s. Theargument was whether the academic and indeed thehistorian focus narrowly on what his job descriptionentails? Teach, research and provide service to the


community. To teach what? What you are paid and/ornot paid to teach? Research on what subject? Morecontroversial is community service. What type ofservice.?The philosophical underpinning of my lecture derives

from the cross-disciplinary intersections in Biology,History, Economics and Psychology. As a Professor ofEconomic History and Development Studies, I willproceed first by interrogating the major theoreticaland conceptual issues in Economic History (globallyand especially in Africa). In this regard, I willpreoccupy myself with the vexed issues of developmentand underdevelopment using Nigeria and Benue State ascase studies. In providing answers to the developmentquestion, I will catechize on what is often referredto as ‘’new knowledge’’ and show how appliedinformation technology is redefining what we learn,how we learn and how learning outcomes provide newways of solving old problems. I will show how mydiscipline is being fundamentally challenged bycomputer-generated visualization, ‘’big data’’,artificial intelligence, machine learning, andgenetics. How in our increasingly multidisciplinaryworld, History and the humanities remain the basicbuilding blocks for our species will also be discussed.Because I lay claim to being an active historian, Iwill anchor the lecture by telling two personal storiesrelating to agenda setting, goal-seeking andinstitutional legacies. In so doing, I will answerthe question; should a historian tell his own story?.While this may be considered intellectually dangerous,


arrogant, foolish or unprofessional, I dare to attempt.Because the two entities that I have elected to usein telling my story are still evolving and many ofthe dramatis personae are still alive, and indeedsome of them are in the hall today, I may offend somesensibilities. To those who may feel so, I offer noapologies.An inaugural like this can be likened to a ‘’high

wire act’’. The lecturer needs to juggle and balanceit in three ways. First is to impress your academiccolleagues and students. Second, you have to do sowithout boring the general audience and sending themto sleep, especially after taking pounded yam forlunch before coming. Thirdly, you have to end on ahigh note such that the audience will applaud yougenuinely and not out of courtesy or at the promptingof the master of ceremony.

Homo Economicus: Conceptual and Methodologicalmatters arising in Economic History, BehavioralEconomics and Development StudiesThe question of why Africa lagged behind the rest ofthe world as far as economic growth and developmentwere concerned, was first posed to me in 1981 in a 300level economic history class taught by David TerrillLloyd at the University of Calabar. The question wasmore sharply presented by Anthony Gerald Hopkins, myAfrican Economic History Professor at the Universityof Birmingham in 1984. He wondered why colonialismhad a much more devastating impact on the culture ofAfricans than it did to Asians during the same era.2

At the onset of my teaching career in 1986 at the


University of Calabar, this question popped up quiteoften in my classes, as I wanted my students tounderstand and have a global perspective of thephenomenon of development and underdevelopment. Ateach point in my academic career, the question poppedup. When I had the privilege of becoming a professorof economic history in 2003, it became clear that Iwould have to share my thinking on this question withmy professional colleagues and co-travellers on thepath of knowledge at one point.The question becomes more pertinent when one

considers the fact that Africa and Africans wereglobal leaders as far as many aspects of the foundationsof human civilizations were concerned. The templateon which modern civilization was replicated came fromAfrica in terms of Language, writing, religion, basictechnology, science etc. We know this from our studyof Netjer Medu the sacred Khemetan pictographicwriting, which is one of most ancient writing systemknown to humankind and was used extensively on thewalls and shapes of temples and monuments, tombs andcoffins of Paraou, sacred statues and papyrus scrolls.3

More widely known today by its Hellenic misnomer,‘’hieroglyphics’’, Netjer Medu roughly translates as‘’Divine Words’’, ‘’Divine Writing’’ or ‘’DivineSpeech’’, and portrays the Powers of Earth and Cosmosand how they related to Human life.4

Economic History or Historical Economics?Economic history is the study of economies or economicphenomena of the past. Historians or economistsundertake analysis in economic history by utilizing a


combination of historical and statistical methodsand in most cases, the application of economic theoryto historical situations and institutions. Gustavvon Schmoller, a German Historian, was an early pioneerof the historical school of economic history.5 Buildingon the works of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall,and with the likes of Max Webber and Joseph Schumpeter,this school of thought adopted the quantitative andignored the theoretical and mathematical approachesof mainstream economics. The early thinkers were,however, split on how economic history should bestudied. Should the focus be on how economic phenomenaevolved in the past (i.e. from historical economics)or by studying the generality of economic theoryusing historical episodes? The American economichistorian, Emeritus Professor of Economics at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology and one of thearchitects of the Marshall Plan, Charles P. Kindlebergerexplained this position in his 1990 book; ‘’HistoricalEconomics: Art or Science?. ‘’He wrote that; ‘’Ihappen to profess historical economics, rather thaneconomic history, using historical episodes to testeconomic models for their generality’’.6 Economichistory, M. M. Postan maintained, was produced, likethe mule, by cross-breeding between economics andhistory.’The economics from which it derives rests onAlfred Marshall’s wide definition of that subject,who called it ‘’the study of humankind in the everydaybusiness of life’’, rather than Lord Robbins’s narrowerdefinition as the ‘’study of choices among ends usingscarce means with alternative uses’’.8 The broaderdefinition encompasses the role played by technology,


the environment, law, sociology, psychology andpolitics, in economic life. Economic history alsodiffers from history, moreover, in wanting to gobeyond narrating what happened in the past to explainingwhy.This approach was heavily contested by those who

held the view that pure economics involved a componentof economic history and that the two were inseparablyentangled.9 Others believed that economic historyshould courses, research agenda and academic chair’sseparate from mainstream economics.10 In most economicsdepartments, Economic History falls under the realmof applied economics. Scientific, economic historyis sometimes said to be merely applied economicsusing historical data, but with most of the historyremoved. Over the years, the curricula in economicshave become more sophisticated in the use ofmathematical theories, and econometric and statisticaltechniques. This has more often than not, led tomainstream economic history and other types of appliedeconomics being squeezed out of the curriculum tomake room for more and more high-powered mathematics.Traditional Economic historians, for the most part,have resisted this development, claiming that thepast has useful economics and that broad economichistory, develops more facts, better facts, bettereconomic theory, better economic policy and bettereconomists.11. Anatole Kaletsky asks the rhetoricalquestion and provides a mordant answer;

Was Adam Smith, an economist? Was Keynes, Ricardoor Schumpeter? By the standards of today’s


academic economists, the answer is no. Smith,Ricardo and Keynes produced no mathematicalmodels. Their work lacked the ‘’analyticalrigour’’ and precise deductive logic demandedby modern economics. Moreover, none of themever produced an econometric forecast. If anyof these giants of economics applied for auniversity job today, they would be rejected.As for their written work, it would not have achance of acceptance in the Economic Journal orAmerican Economic Review. The editors, if theyfelt charitable, might advise Smith and Keynesto try a journal of history or sociology.12

He goes further to argue that;

Economics today is a discipline that must eitherdie or undergo a paradigm shift-to make itselfboth more broadminded, and more modest. It mustbroaden its horizons to recognise the insightsof other social sciences and historical studies,and it must return to its roots. Smith, Keynes,Hayek, Schumpeter and all the other truly greateconomists were interested in economic reality.They studied real human behaviour in marketsthat existed. Their insights came from historicalknowledge, psychological intuition and politicalunderstanding. Their analytical tools were words,not mathematics.13

Indeed a panel of theorists and historians went beyondthis in insisting that economic history honed theintuition, needed, along with analytical skill, inmaking an economist, helping develop alertness in


allowing for the contingent as well as the systematic.Thus Economic history, it was concluded, while certainlynot sufficient to train an economist, wasunquestionably necessary to the education of one.14

The quantitative study of economic history known ascliometrics, is a term derived from Clio, who is theGreek goddess of History. The term was coinedinitially by Jonathan R. T. Hughes and Stanley Reiterin 1960 as a reference to the systematic use ofeconomic theory and econometric techniques to thestudy of economic history.15 Cliometricians argue thattheir approach is necessary because the applicationof theory is crucial in writing solid economic history.The term homo economicus, or economic man, depictshumans as actors who are consistently rational,narrowly selfish, and who pursue personal goalsoptimally.16 It is a term used for an approximationof the genius Homo sapiens that acts to obtain thehighest possible well-being and achieve predeterminedgoals given available information about opportunitiesand other constraints, both natural and institutional.A Homo economicus is seen as ‘’rational’’ in thesense that well-being, as defined by the utilityfunction, is optimized given perceived opportunities.That is, the individual seeks to attain particularand predetermined goals to the greatest extent withthe least possible cost.17 Note that this kind of‘’rationality’’ does not say that the individual’sactual goals are ‘’rational’’ in some broader ethical,social, or human sense, only that he tries to attainthem at a minimal cost. Only naïve applications ofthe homo economicus model assume that this hypothetical


individual knows what is best for his long-term physicaland mental health and can be relied upon always tomake the right decision for himself.18

As an economic theory, homo economicus has itsconceptual roots in Behavioral Economics which focuseson the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional,cultural and social factors on the economic decisionsof individuals and institutions and how those decisionsvary from those implied by classical theory. Behaviouraleconomics stems from questioning the principle ofperfect rationality in economic theory. The literatureon this topic has over the years, become very extensiveand covers many anomalies in human behaviour, whichundermine the presence of this principle in economicagents. Although Von Neumann and Morgenstern createdthe theory of expected utility and treated it as anormative theory of human behaviour, Katona was oneof the first scholars to analyse economic behaviouras influenced by the environment and its changes.19

According to him, in order to understand economicprocesses, one needs to include subjective variablesand psychological factors into the analysis.20 Heargued that motives, attitudes, tastes, hopes, andfears are variables which affect both the perceptionof the environment and behaviour. Thus economic theoryenriched with the results of psychological researchsupplements or sometimes change traditional analysisof supply, demand, income and consumption.21 Indeedthe World Development Report 2015 discusses the mind,society, and behaviour and how a more realisticunderstanding of choice and behaviour can make


development interventions much more effective.22 Asmost economic historians do, I subscribe more toBehavioral economics as it allows one to see thenexus between economics and humanity from a 3-dimensional perspective. Unlike mainstream economicswhich deals with the ‘’rationality’’individualism-equilibrium nexus’’, behavioural economics is moreencompassing in that it deals with the ‘’institutions-history-social structure nexus’’.In my nearly 35 years of research and teaching of

economic history, I have encountered a significantnumber of thinkers in the field whose works haveshaped fundamentally many of my own thoughts. Becausemy area of specialization lies astride two contrastingdisciplines (History and Development Economics), onecan easily be caught in the current of trans-disciplinary motions with interpretations of findingsthat tend to be tedious and confusing. Some of thegreatest economic thinkers and Historians of our timeswere economic historians. Karl Marx, Joseph Schumpeter,Samir Amin, Deepak Lal, Hla Myint, Samir Amin, BadeOnimode, Eskor Toyo, Hernando de Soto, Anthony Hopkins,Walter Rodney, Tiyambee Zeleza, Jared Diamond, RalphAusten, Fredrick Cooper, Claude Meillassoux, JeanSurete-Canale, Fritz Machlup, Catherine CoqueryVidtrovicth, Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz, and ToyinFalola just to mention a few.Many of my views on development economics has been

shaped by the works of Amartya Sen who is oftenfondly referred to as the ‘’Mother Teresa ofEconomics’’.23 His sharp focus on practical economicways of redressing poverty and thereby alleviating


human suffering has had what has been referred to asa ‘’humanizing effect’’ on economics. Nobel prizewinner Joseph Stiglitz’s major claim to fame wasthrough his contributions to the study ofglobalization, wage efficiency, and informationasymmetry. As an early thinker of the information agedriven globalization and its consequences on the globaleconomy, Joseph Stiglitz’s views on how informationand information systems affect an economy and economicdecisions (information economics), has been describedas ‘’revolutionary’’, as it disrupts mainstreameconomics presumptions on market efficiency and factorsof production such as land, labour and nearness toraw materials.24 Fritz Machlup the famous Austrian-American economist who was president of theInternational Economic Association from 1971-1974,is credited for developing the concept of knowledgeas a resource. His pioneering work in the 1960s isoften credited for laying the foundation of what isnow generally referred to as the age of knowledge-driven development or creative economics.25 What hashappened over the years, and especially with the riseof Information technology that knowledge is hasrisen from being a key driver to economic growth anddevelopment to a critical one. Hernando de Soto hasbeen credited as one of the leading economists tofocus on the informal sector. His ground-breakingwork on extra-legal imperatives of the informal economyin his native Peru and his treatise on ‘’Dead Capital’’,has deepened and broadened our knowledge on how andwhy poverty remains a hard nut to crack for economistsand governments.26


Joseph Schumpeter, Oliver North, Robert Fogel, DaronAcemoglu, Mohammed Yunus and Ahbijit Barnajee are sixeconomists who combined history and political economyto shape economic thought in the 20th and 21st centuriesdramatically. The school of economic thought whichthey represented is generally referred to as NewInstitutional Economics. Schumpeter who drawing onclassical Marxist theory, popularized the concept of‘’creative destruction’’ to show how capital oftenconstantly recreates itself by destroying oldestablished orders and providing new ways of doingold things.27 Douglass North received a Nobel Prizein Economic Sciences with Robert Fogel for theirresearch on economic history and the application ofquantitative techniques in order to explain economicand institutional change. North focused on the roleof institutions and how formal rules articulated bypoliticians and informal restrains driven primarilyby entrepreneurs influence transaction costs andeconomic performance over time.28 Daron Acemoglu ison record as one of the most cited economists underthe age of 60. His two-seminal works with JamesRobinson on ‘’Economic Origins of Dictatorship andDemocracy published in 2006 and the hugely popularbook titled ‘’Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power,Prosperity and Poverty’’ in 2012, address the challengeof economic growth and transformation of societiesfrom the singular role played by institutions andrejecting all other variables.29 Like the works ofAntonio Gramsci and his Marxist theory of culturalhegemony, Acemogolu rejects extraneous factors suchas the role of technology, resource endowments, health


and disease factors in explaining why Nation’s fail.Mohammed Yunus, Professor of Economics, Nobel laureateand founder of the Grameen bank is also a key proponentof the New Institutional School of Economics. He usedthe concept of ‘’micro-credit’’ as a catalyst tocombat rural poverty in in his native Bangladesh.This concept has since been exported to many countriesof the world with very dramatic results.30 AbhijitBarnajee an Indian Professor of Economics at MIT, isglobally recognized as the leading exponent of theeconomics of the poor and using economic laboratoriesto test anti-poverty theories. His seminal work, PoorEconomics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to FightGlobal Poverty, published in 2012, combines behavioralstudies with political economy and history to proffersolutions on how to tackle poverty.31

In interrogating the subject matter of the role ofculture, in general, and western civilization inparticular on development, Deepak Lal the BritishIndian economists who served as President of the MontPelerin Society from 2008 to 2010, provides verypenetrating insights. He weaves together factors frombiology, religion and economics to provide a compellingargument on what shapes and drives development andchange in societies.32 In the role played by agriculturein the economic transformation of societies, Lal showshow economic forces disrupted some of humankind’sprimordial instincts as it made the transition fromhunting and gathering to agriculture.33 He argueswith evidence from Neuro-psychology that a universalemotion with a biological basis (romantic love), thatis associated with increased levels of phenylethylamine


an amphetamine related compound was disrupted by thetransition.34 Because the emotion in question isephemeral, after a period of attachment, the brainsreceptor sites for the essential neuro-chemicals becomedesensitized or overloaded, and the infatuation ends.This period of infatuation has been shown to last forthree years after which both the body and brain areset for separation- divorce.35 Three years is theperiod ‘’allowed’’ by nature for copulation-pregnancy/birth-weaning to take place. A cross-cultural studyof divorce pattern in 62 societies between 1947 and1989 found that divorce tends to occur around thefourth year of marriage, lending credence to theargument that marriage as a cultural invention byhumans does not enjoy biological affirmation.36

With specific regards to democracy and development,Lal working with the famous Burmese developmenteconomist Hla Myint (who propounded the famous vent-for-surplus theory), found no relationship betweenthe form of Government and economic performance duringthe 30-year economic study of 25 developingcountries.37 For them, economic performance had moreto do with the initial resource endowment and how theefficiency of investment was managed. The politicizationof rents that natural resources yield, with attendantdamage to growth performance. Thus, resource-poorcountries, irrespective of the nature of theirgovernments, were forced to develop their only resource,namely their human subjects. Lal believes that forsuccessful development to take place, a team oftechnocrats broadly committed to an open market economyneeds to be given its head for at least a decade, and


protected from political crosswinds.38 DoesModernization Require Westernization? The answer forhim is an emphatic NO. The development trajectory ofnations must be defined in the context of theirhistory.39

The French Annales School (Journal Annales. Histoire,Sciences Sociales) through the pioneering work of thelikes of Maurice Goudelier Jean Surete-Canale, ClaudeMeillasoux and Catherine Coquery Vidtrovicth profoundlyinfluenced my thoughts on the concept of ‘’wholesalehistory’’ especially as it relates to Africa.40 SamirAmin, Walter Rodney, Bade Onimode, Claude Ake, EdwinMadunagu, Eskor Toyo, James Inikori, Toyin Falola,Julius Ihonvbere, Emmanuel Akyeampong and TiyambeZeleza noted this point in their various interventionson why Africa was lagging behind the rest of theworld in terms of development.41 I will summarize thecrux of their thinking in what I refer to as thehistory-culture-agency-matrix. Simply put, when youfactor the aspects of history of the continentespecially in terms of inter-group relations, resourceendowments, health/disease factors and internationalrelationships, with cultural variables such as riskaversion, destructive commerce, cosmological beliefsystems, (especially in terms of the ‘’tyranny of theelders and ancestors’’), and how elite formation,contestations for power and the control of institutionalframeworks interface; a multidimensional picture ofwhy Africa is where it is in relation to the rest ofworld emerges. I will use Nigeria in general andBenue State in particular to further elucidate the


conceptual postulation of many of the above scholarswhich I share.

Nigerian Ruling Class:66 Years Development andUnderdevelopmentThe discussion as to how our developmental trajectorywhose outcome has left us as a deeply divided nationhousing patriotic elements who are literally blind,ethnic and civic nationalists who can barely walk andnihilists who want to dismember the current politicalstructure and are stone deaf to any form ofconversations is a most contested one. Whether it isthe debate on the 1914 amalgamation, or the role ofnationalists during the period of de-colonization,the collapse of the first and second republic’s orthe current debates on restructuring, there is verylittle agreement on how Nigeria was built. Let usbriefly touch the subject with regards how nation wasbuilt. I agree completely with Ibrahim Gambari whenhe says; nations are built by exemplary men and womenand sustained by institutions that promote goodgovernance and thus socio-economic development.42

According to him,

... nations do not happen by historical accident;rather, they are built by men and women withvision and resolve. Nation-building is, therefore,the product of conscious statecraft, nothappenstance. Nation-building is always work-in-progress; a dynamic process in constant needof nurturing and re-invention. Nation-buildingnever stops, and true nation-builders never rest


because all nations are constantly facing up tonew challenges.43

Theoretically, building a nation is like constructinga structure and has several serious aspects. First,it is tied in with building a political element whichrelates to a given domain occupied typically bycitizens. Layered on the given territory is the secondelement, which is the establishment of anadministration, economy, the legal institutions, andcommon societal organizations. Into all these go thecitizens who are expected to share a sense of belongingto the nation and above all else, show loyalty andpatriotism to the ‘’fatherland’’. In Engineering, astructure can be defined as an assembly of variousphysical components, combined in a way which makesthem act together effectively against loadingconditions. This process of assembling or combiningvarious elements is called construction. When astructural engineer is designing any platform, heconsiders three basic principles. These are stability,strength and rigidity all based on two applied physicallaws; Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion and Hooke’s Law andthe empirical knowledge of the structural performanceof different materials and geometries. In terms ofnation-building, these universal design principlestranslate to our Constitution, our institutions andour leadership. They conform with our understandingof human existence and the biological, behaviouraland social dynamics that drive that existence. Italso manifests itself in the way we construct ourpolities. These include our biological given in terms


of physiognomy, strength and intellect; our behaviouraltendencies that are largely driven by biology interms of our wants and needs (shelter, food andprotection); and social dynamics driven byrelationships, culture, religion, trade and variousforms of connections. It is from here that we acquireour first dose of patriotism. Our sense of attachmentto our nation, our flag, anthem, colours and pledge.Our loyalty to the fatherland. History of humankindshows that where there are harmony and understandingbetween all of these, humanity makes progress. Historyis also replete with examples of persons or peopleswho attempt to alter these fundamentals and cause theintroduction of new sets of dynamics. Generally referredto as progress, and depending on which side of thedynamics you stand in, it may usher catalytic orcataclysmic changes. Much of how these happens havebeen very well captured by Acemoglu and Robinson intheir popular book, Why Nations Fail.44

Constructing the Nigerian StateNigeria, as an entity, is 105 years old. Thus about96% of what we have as Nigeria today in terms ofboundaries is over 100 years old. So how was theNigerian state constructed? The historical trajectoryof our nation-building and the hurdles we have grappledwith can be quickly summarized thus:

• The region that came to be known as Nigeria hasbeen peopled for thousands of years. They haddeveloped a plethora of cultural, political,economic, social and religious systems and had


related with each other.• The Nigerian peoples encountered external

influences driven by trade and religion firstby Arabs from North Africa across the Sahara andlater by Europeans from across the Atlanticocean.

• Over a nearly 400 year period, European impulsesas driven especially by the slave trade definedthe nature and character of relationships betweenvarious Nigerian peoples on the one hand andwith Europeans on the other.

• British imperial enterprise in what became knownas Nigeria was formalized in 1900 (using a mixof force, diplomacy and fraudulent treaties tocreate three colonial territories. (The imperialimpulses were driven largely by trade and designedto combat French and German forays into a sphereof influence controlled by London, Manchesterand Liverpool based (merchants.

• The colonial territories were integrated in 1914to secure the territory as a premium (tradercolony, that was economically viable. This wasdistinct from the British settler (colonies inKenya, Rhodesia and South Africa or theconcessionary colony of Belgian Congo.

• The political and administrative engineeringprocess of the colony was interrupted by (theEuropean war of 1914 the resolution of whichaltered some of the dynamics in terms of thenature and character of the internal andinternational boundaries of the colony.


• Between 1919 and 1929, the British attempted tounderstand the ethnic, social and culturalconfiguration of the colonized populations andtinkered with a plethora of administrativemethods, models and boundary adjustments. (Atthe core of various administrative reforms washow to achieve the most cost-effective way toexploit the colony. The so-called civilizingmission came at a price that had to borne by thecolonials.

• An unintended consequence of the colonialenterprise was the rise of an educated elite whoby the late 1930s rose to challenge the traditionalelite that the British had used as the arrowheadsof their administrative control of the colony.(TheGlobal War that began in 1939 and its resolutionin 1945 saw the emergence of two superpowersthat were opposed to colonialism from twodifferent ideological standpoints. Thus whenBritain attempted to introduce political andeconomic reforms in the colony after 1945, theywere confronted by a wave of dissent thattriggered a decolonization process. In six shortyears, their plan to exploit the colony for 500years disintegrated pathetically.

• Decolonization in Nigeria was negotiated betweenregionally based educated elites, theirtraditional rulers and Labour based Nationalists.They agreed on the need to dismantle the colonialstate but fundamentally, disagreed on thestructure of the new nation that was to beinherited at Independence. Ultimately a federal


system based on geographic regions was adopted.• It took less than six years for the contradictions

in the federalist formation that was inheritedfrom the British to collapse triggering a civilwar that lasted for 30 months. Fifty years afterthe civil war was fought, won and lost, we arestill haunted by the spectre of the contradictionsthat caused the war in the first instance.

Development Planning in NigeriaDevelopment Planning in Nigeria can be traced to thelaunching by the Colonial government in 1946, of the10-year plan for Development and Welfare (1946-1956).However, the first national development plan was drawnup in 1962 by a team of experts under the nation’sChief Economic Adviser Wolfgang Stopler, a Professorof Economics at the University of Michigan and fundedby the World(Bank and Ford Foundation.45 The primaryobjective of the plan was to maintain and if possible,achieve an average growth rate of 4% of GDP. Thisgrowth rate(was to be driven by investments by Federaland regional governments and private sector actors.The first National Development Plan modest as it

was, was planned without some basic facts. As attestedto in his book ‘’Planning without facts...’’, Stolpercontented some of the significant challenges his teamfaced were the absence of crucial data such as censusinformation, for making informed economic decisions.46

However, beyond the macroeconomic issues were thepolitical issues of the day that ultimately degeneratedto the Nigerian Civil war. The war (1967-1970) disruptedthe launch of the second National Development after


the 1962-1968 Plan. After the end of the War, theSecond National Development Plan 1970-1974, waslaunched and implemented. This was followed by theThird National Development Plan 1975-1980, and the4th National Development Plan - 1981-1985.A common feature of all the National Development

Plans of 1962-1985 as attested to by Diejamoah wasthe role of the state as a major factor in the provisionof social over-head capital ‘’physical infrastructure,roads, airports, ports, railways, power stations andsocial infrastructure‘’ education, health, water andsanitation, as well as directly productive activitiesin all sectors, agriculture, industry, construction,etc.47 The general terminology then was the state asthe key driver of the commanding heights of theeconomy. The state was the engine of growth, and thebulk of formal sector employment was in a state-provided social overhead capital and directlyproductive activities funded and operated by the stateMinistries, Departments and Agencies. The privatesector, especially the indigenous private sector,was weak, and that was indeed a strong argument forthe state to play a leading role as the engine ofgrowth. The state as the engine of growth alsointervened actively in the market place, sometimesengaged in price controls, which drove the goods outof the market, and fixed wages through salary reviewcommissions, with collective bargaining playing aninsignificant role in the small formal private sector.It is difficult to disagree with Diejamoah when he

says:


...it must be recognized that the nationaldevelopment plans of 1962-1985 largely laid thefoundation for the current Nigerian Economy, inthe sense that virtually all the existingfunctioning assets were built through theprojects conceived and implemented in theseplans.48

The positives to be taken out of those plans is thatthey paid significant attention to sectoral strategiesand implementable projects, which are now mostly onthe ground. It must also be put on record that GDP percapita grew 2% per annum on average from 1950 to 1970when oil was not a significant factor in the economy,and by about 3.5%, 1970-1980. GDP per capita,therefore, grew from less than US$200 in 1950 toabout US$1000 in the early 1980s, when Nigeria wasclassified as a middle-income country in the world.The decisive role of the oil-boom in the 1970s shouldnot be under-emphasized, nor should the positive rolesplayed by the second and third National DevelopmentPlans.1986 marked a significant milestone in development

planning in Nigeria. The introduction of StructuralAdjustment Programme led to the introduction of annualplans and 3-year rolling plans, based on the annualrevision of annual budgets and projections for thenext two years. SAP’s long-term goal was to erode thestate’s role as the key driver of the ‘’commandingheights’’ of the economy and replace it with themarket and the private sector. I will not bore youwith the details of SAP and its outcomes as you are


all too familiar with it. The key point was that theprogramme was ‘’programmed to fail’’ as its authorsand sponsors did not quite understand the fundamentaleconomic theories and assumptions that informed theWorld Bank and IMF driven SAP’s across the world andespecially in Africa and Asia.By the turn of the century in 2000, virtually all

the economic and social projections conceived nearly20 years earlier remained unmet. From Education forall by 2000 to water and electricity, the key indicatorsshowed that indeed many of the gains from the early1980s had been reversed. For some commentators, Nigeriahad ‘’undeveloped’’ in the period 1980 to 2000.49 Itis possible to underdevelop but is it possible to‘’undevelope’’? The answer is an emphatic Yes.Situations have existed in history where glowing gainsof civilization were extinguished in a matter ofgenerations. After the collapse of the Roman Empire,Europe slid into what became known as the ‘’DarkAge’’. It took nearly 400 years before its lost gloryfrom the Greek and Roman civilizations were regainedduring the age of renaissance.Sixty years ago, the journey from Makurdi to Kaduna

or Jos, took two days. Thirty-five years ago, thesame journey took six hours. I could drive from Makurdito Lagos in 8 hours. I drove from Calabar to Otukpoand back in the same day. That represented progress.In 2019, Calabar to Otukpo now takes nearly 10 hours.How do we explain this? The type of infrastructuraldegeneracy that has occurred in this country hasparallels in conflict countries like, Sudan, Somalia,Liberia and Sierra Leone. The last civil war in Nigeria


ended 49 years ago. We may not have been fighting aphysical war of attrition, but we have been fightingall sorts of philosophical wars.The launch of the Nigerian Economic Empowerment

Development Strategy (NEEDS) 2004-2007, in 2004 isoften regarded as the starting point of yet anotherround of development planning in Nigeria. The originalNEEDS document and NEEDS-2 which was to cover 2008-2011 today constitute the building blocks on whichthe Vision 20:20:20, 7 point agenda of President MusaYar’Adua, and the Transformation Agenda of Dr JonathanGoodluck and the Economic Growth and Recovery Plan(EGRP) of the current administration are based. Theyall sought to transform the Nigerian Economy to meetthe future needs of the Nigerian people by a mix ofpolicies and reforms that target (i) Real sector,(ii) Infrastructure, (iii) Human Capital, (iv) Enablers(which include private investment, financemobilization, external economic relations anddiplomacy, etc.) The Federal Government envisagedthat by 2020, Nigeria would have made significantprogress towards achieving structural economic changeand having a more diversified and inclusive economy.50

Envisaged outcomes were to include:• A stable macroeconomic environment with a

reduction of the inflation rate of almost 19 percent to single digits by 2020. It is alsoprojected that the exchange rate will stabilizeas the monetary, fiscal and trade policies arefully aligned.

• Real GDP is projected to grow by 4.6 per cent onaverage over the Plan period, from an estimated


contraction of 1.54 per cent recorded in 2016,to 2.19 per cent in 2017, and reaching 7 percent at the end of the Plan period in 2020. Theforecast for crude oil output was a rise fromabout 1.8 mbpd in 2016 to 2.2 mbpd in 2017 and2.5 mbpd by 2020. A relentless focus onelectricity and gas was also to drive growth andexpansion in all other sectors.

• Agriculture would continue to be a stable driverof GDP growth, with an average growth rate of6.9 per cent over the Plan period boosted byexpanding crop production and the fisheries,livestock and forestry sub-sectors as well asdeveloping the value chain. Investment inagriculture will drive food security by achievingself-sufficiency in tomato paste (in 2017), rice(in 2018) and wheat (in 2020). Thus, by 2020,Nigeria was projected to become a net exporterof key agricultural products, such as rice,cashew nuts, groundnuts, cassava and vegetableoil.

• 10 GW of operational capacity of power wasexpected by 2020 with an improved energy mix,through greater use of renewable energy. Thecountry was also projected to become a netexporter of refined petroleum products by 2020.

• Investment in transportation infrastructure wasprojected to significantly improve thetransportation network (road, rail and port) inNigeria by 2020. The scale of investment requiredto deliver this outcome would create a strongpartnership with the private sector to complete


strategic rail networks connecting major economiccentres across the country, as well as improvedfederal road networks, inland waterways andairports.

• The ease of doing business would boost recoveryand growth in the manufacturing, SMEs and servicessectors, particularly in agro-processing, andfood and beverage manufacturing. An average annualgrowth of 8.5 per cent in manufacturing, risingfrom -5.8 per cent in 2016 to 10.6 per cent by2020 was envisaged.

• The plan projected to reduce unemployment from13.9 per cent as of Q3 2016 to 11.23 per cent by2020. This translates to the creation of over 15million jobs during the Plan horizon or an averageof 3.7 million jobs per annum. The focus of thejob creation efforts will be youth employmentand ensuring that youth are the prioritybeneficiaries.

• The reduction in the importation of petroleumproducts resulting from improvement in localrefining capacity following the implementationof the ERGP was projected to reduce demand forforeign exchange. The economic diversificationfocus of the Plan is also projected to translateinto enhanced inflows of foreign exchange fromthe non-oil sector.51

The internal logic that drove our NEEDS, Vision20:20:20, the Transformation Agenda, and now EGRP,has its theoretical root roots in what economistsrefer to as the ‘’Washington Consensus’’. Developed


after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the consensusare a set of ten ‘’economic commandments’’ thatincludes, amongst other things trade liberalization,liberalization of direct inflow of foreign directinvestment, deregulation and privatization.52 Thesecommandments have been described by Reinert as neo-liberal market fundamentalism that ignores over 500years of conventional wisdom and empirical evidencein development planning. In his path-breaking booktitled How Rich Countries got Rich and why poorcountries stay poor’’, he states clearly thatdeveloping nations must adopt a ‘’do-as-we-do’’attitude to western economic directions rather thanthe current ‘’do-as-we- say’’ approach that ensureswe remain a laboratory for economic pills that nevercure us of our maladies.53

The outlined vision of our leadership for the countryas documented in the Vision 20:20:20 and the EGRPdocuments when premised against the current realitiesand growth rates, requires that the nation works non-stop and in overdrive for another 50 years, before itcan achieve that vision. A few statistics will drivethis point home.• With our present population and growth rate,

Nigeria’s population is projected to be above160 million by the end of this year, and 212million in the year 2020. By the time a childborn this year turns 50 years in 2061, therewill be over 650 million Nigerians, and when webring into the equation millions of Nigeriansborn and living in the Diaspora, that figurewill be over 670 million.


• At current GDP and population growth rates,Nigeria will still be a developing country in2061, below $11,000 per capita income. Currently,Nigeria is ranked 142 out of 183 countries withGDP per capita of $2,203. At current rates, itwill take 30 years (2041) to attain currentSouth Africa’s per capita income, and 50 yearsto attain Malaysia’s per capita income.

• Nigeria currently ranks 44th worldwide and thirdin Africa in factory output. We seek in Vision2020 to leapfrog Belgium (21), Sweden (22),Saudi Arabia (23), Taiwan (24), Norway (25),Argentina (27), South Africa (28) and othersinto the 20th position.

This is indeed a tall dream, especially if oneundertakes a broad review of the performance of theEGRP in the last four years. It shows mixed outcomesfor the various policy trusts. Many public policyanalysts contend that while a measure of macro-economicstability has been achieved, specific targets havebeen missed.55 For example, while a stablemacroeconomic environment was accomplished, and theinflation rate of almost 19 per cent in 2015 wasreduced to 13 in April 2019, the plan to achieve asingle-digit rate by 2020 remains work in progress.Real GDP was projected to reach 7 per cent by 2020 butcurrently stands at 3 per cent. The forecast forcrude oil output was a rise from about 1.8 mbpd in2016 to 2.2 mbpd in 2017 and 2.5 mbpd by 2020 butcurrently stands at 1.87 mbpd. The projection that


the country will become a net exporter of refinedpetroleum products by 2020 remains in sight with thesteady progress of the Dangote Refinery project. Thecontribution of Agriculture to GDP growth declined inthe period under review to 23% with an average growthrate of 3.1 per cent. Investments in agriculture todrive food security using exclusive funding portfolioscontinue to boost production and expand value chainbut the target of achieving self-sufficiency andbecoming a net exporter of essential agriculturalproducts, such as rice, cashew nuts, groundnuts,cassava and vegetable oil, has not materialized. Soalso the target of 10 GW of the operational capacityof power that was expected by 2020, has a shortfallof 3GW. The plan to reduce unemployment from 13.9 percent in 2016 to 11.23 per cent by 2020 by the creationof over 15 million jobs envisaged during the Plan didnot materialize. From all indications, the figurerose considerably to 20.9 million. Investment intransportation infrastructure has recorded slightimprovement, especially the road, rail and portnetworks. Strategic rail networks connecting majoreconomic centres across the country, are well underwayand a few federal road networks are being rehabilitated.However, the state of roads especially in the south-South, South West, South-East and parts of NorthCentral have gone from bad to terrible.A plethora of factors can explain this mixed

performance of the EGRP. They include global shiftsin prices of essential commodities that constrainedgovernment revenue projections; a rising wave of


insecurity that required greater than expected funding;legacy bureaucratic red tapes that slowed down projectlife cycles; and very slow legislative approvals forkey reforms. However, as Charles Soludo has pointedout in his recent presentation on the ‘’Re-Designingthe Nigerian Economy with New Ideas’’,

...for the national economy, it will be difficultto have a competitive and prosperous post-oileconomy of the future (with additional hundredsof millions of citizens and dwindling land space)with the same legal and institutional foundationdesigned for consumption of oil rent. You cannotbuild a 100 storey-building upon a foundationof an old bungalow. A post oil economy requiresthat all agents maximize their fullest potentials,and what is required will be a national ratherthan a federal response.56

To break the grounds for a new economy, we must firstresolve three fundamental problems. First, thepolitical will of our leadership to construct a legaland political framework that that will meet the demandsof a 4th Industrial revolution driven world. Second,and related to the first, is the relationship betweenproductive, unproductive and destructive entrepreneursand public officials, and third is how to manage theunintended consequences of our past failures.In the book Inside Independent Nigeria: the Diary

of Wolfgang( Stopler. edited by Clive Gray, Stolperquestions the political will of the leadership toimplement the first national development plan. Fiftyyears on, the issue of the political will of our


leadership still haunts us daily. My firm belief isthat the lack of political will to deal with fundamentalproblems that block our developmental efforts isunlikely to go away soon. Only a major social revolutionthat is likely to happen in the next ten years willlead to a realignment of political will of theleadership. Second, is the relationship betweenproductive, unproductive and destructive entrepreneursand public officials and how this determines the paceand sincerity of how our development plans are producedand implemented. In the past decade, the baton hasfirmly been in the hands of the unproductive anddestructive. When one critically examines the Pension,Fuel subsidy, Capital Market scams, oil bunkering,looting of state and local government funds andpromotion of boondoggle projects like PID, we see howunproductive elements manipulate the economy for theirprivate gains. Thirdly, economists often makereferences to the Iron law of unintended consequences.The current blind spots in standard economic theorythat does not recognise qualitative differences betweeneconomic activities, diversity, innovation, synergiesand historical sequencing of processes ensures thatour stated economic objectives fall short of outcomesand impact on the mass of the people. For example,how else can one explain that a gas-fired electricityplant will be built and the pipeline to feed it withgas will not? Standard economic theory without economichistory is a recipe for failure. As long as oureconomist fail to worship occasionally in the templeof Clio, their economic seeds for development willnot bear fruits.


To summarise the broad view of our nation’s approachto development, what comes to mind is the sarcasticremark of Michael Lofchie who describes the processas akin to ‘’brain surgery being performed with anaxe. It will cut through. But messily’’.58 I mustpoint out, however, that the political neuro-surgeonholding the surgical knife and the team in the theatreare the ones that determine the outcome of the surgery.To illustrate what I mean, I will come nearer home tocompare the outcome of two actors who went into thetheatre and came out with different results.

Burgomasters, Warlords and a Hostage PoliticalEconomyIn 1999, the people of Benue State elected GeorgeAkume as its governor for a four-year term. Thegovernment outlined a development agenda called theBenue Advance Plan (BAP).59 The UNDP considered it asmost impressive development plan ever put in place bystate Government in Nigeria at that time. The BAP canbe described as a masterpiece of developmental planning.More important, it was the first plan by any government,state or federal, to incorporate Good Governance asthe cornerstone of its development agenda. The UNDP,after admitting to the brilliance of the plan, however,raised a doubt as to whether the State Governmentwould have the ‘’Executive Capacity’’ to implementthe plan. I am probably the only person alive todayin this state that was part of the team that wentthrough the four stages of the plan. From the originalteam that conceived of the plan; to the expanded team


that developed the plan when George Akume adopted it;to the committee that drafted the framework; to thetransition committee of Akume when he became electedand transformed the plan into an action plan.The Benue Advance Plan Programme Document was written

as a philosophical and practical guide for theimplementation of existing and new programmes by thePeoples Democratic Party Government of Benue State.It prescribed concrete actions, schedules andpriorities for the realisation of set objectives.Using the Logical Framework planning model, theDocument gave a two-dimensional picture of significantaspects of Government concern, with the identificationof the pertinent challenges on the one hand, and thestrategic response to the challenge on the other.The strategic response defined the goals, specifiedthe purposes, and enumerated the outputs. Activityprofiles for the various outputs were then given withobjectively verifiable indicators and means ofverification. In this light, parameters for monitoringand evaluation were in-built to facilitate targetedimplementation of programmes. Most importantly, thedocument highlighted some underlying assumptions. Forexample, it assumed that there would be:-• Consistency and rationality in Government

policies and actions• Loyalty and commitment of the bureaucracy• Transparency and accountability in the government

process• Participatory and complementary action by the

populace• Due recognition of merit and professionalism


• Fruitful co-operation with NGOs, InternationalAgencies and Foreign Countries

• A strong reporting culture and feedback system.

From a panoramic viewpoint, the Document was informedby the development philosophy of ‘’Helping People toHelp Themselves’’, which saw the role of Governmentmore in terms of facilitator rather than sole initiatorand financier of development projects. The Documentalso took due cognisance of prevailing national andinternational trends as they related to developmentinitiatives.I had the opportunity to benchmark the Benue Advance

Plan in 2003 and scored the Akume led administrationa ‘’D grade’’ in terms of plan implementation. We hadhoped he would have done a lot better and made criticalsuggestions in the 2003-to 2007 revised Benue AdvancePlan. By 2007 as I indicated in a paper, I wrotetitled: ‘’Can a leopard change its spots? PoliticalWill, Self Interest and Democratic Governance in BenueState: Reflections of a Participant Observer’’, theremark by the UNDP that beautiful as the BAP was, thePDP Government led by George Akume did not possessthe executive capacity to implement the plan waspainfully true.60

Now in the same Benue State, in 2000, ProfessorDavid Ker was appointed as Vice-Chancellor of theBenue State University. Before his assumption, he onthe 14th of July 2000, constituted a team chaired byProfessor Akase Sorkaa and Professor James Ayatse, MrOrtese (as he then was) and my humble self to producea development blueprint for his tenure. To effectively


carry out the assignment, the ad-hoc committee held aseries of meetings, had consultations with a cross-section of persons in the University community andphysically inspected several facilities on the ground.The broad framework with which the committee carriedout its assignment, encompassed the expectations ofstaff and students, the vision of the Vice-Chancellordesignated as well as the vision of the foundingfathers of the University and the regime of GovernorGeorge Akume. The Benue State University Vision Plan2000-2005 was in three parts. The first part is asummary of recommendations and what we referred to asthe ‘’August Agenda’’. The second part had a modifiedlogframe which detailed the plan itself, listed thechallenges and intervention strategies in ten majorareas. These were; General Administration, AcademicProgrammes, Infrastructural development, Financier -developer projects, Internal revenue generation,Library development, Staff and Students welfare,Utilities, office-equipment, furniture and fittingsand University Staff and Demonstration SecondarySchool. The logframe also identified specificactivities, their objectively verifiable indicatorsand means of verification.The ‘’August Agenda’’ was a set of administrative

actions that only required immediate executive actionby the Vice-Chancellor. For example, the August Agendamandated The Vice-Chancellor to ensure that allelections and appointment of critical officers suchas DVC, Deans, Directors, Heads of Departments andCoordinators should be made on or before the end ofAugust; That Properly designated and furnished offices


should be made available for key officeholders.; AllDirectorates and Departments should have administrativesupport staff. Each Faculty must have an electedDeputy Dean who will be elected alongside the Dean. Aspecial Senate task force should be constituted toensure that all back-log of results are cleared beforethe end of the academic session. All backlog ofcertificates must be cleared before the end of theacademic session. In order to further motivate staff,a 30% increase in allowances for sub-degree, post-graduate, remedial and GST allowances should beconsidered.By 2003 when as Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I had the

opportunity to benchmark the plan, it had recordednearly 80% implementation. It was hardly surprising,therefore, when in 2004, the National UniversitiesCommission announced the University as the best stateUniversity in Nigeria. Mr Vice Chancellor sir, theYoruba have a saying; ‘’When you want to roast apython, you do not make the fire as long as the lengthof the snake’’. I am making the point that in thesame physical environment, and same cultural setting,the outcome of any planned action will be determinedby the nexus of the quality of the thought process,the quality of the actors saddled with theresponsibility of implementation and oversight, andprudence with which inputs are managed. I can hearsome critics howling like wolves in a Siberian forestthat the two environments I have mentioned are notthe same and thus the comparison unfair. My stoicresponse is that the logic of development planning is


a constant. The vision of where you want to go, Thinkthrough the challenges, arm yourself with History asa guide, and assemble a team of drivers with a laser-like vision on the goal. There are not only severalglobal examples to support this, but right here athome in the University, it has been proven so.When this nexus is maligned, it is very easy for a

State like Benue to be so poor because it is so rich.If an economic audit of the Benue political leadersfrom Aper Aku to Moses Adasu, George Akume, GabrielSuswam and Samuel Ortom and the elite that drovetheir development agenda is performed, it is easy tosee where our losses have come from. When you comparethe development agenda of Aper Aku to the Benue AdvancePlan, Our Benue Our Future to Our Collective Visionof a New Benue State with the last three constitutingtwenty years of continuous development planning, youcan see the difference even with a blindfold. BetweenJune 1999 and 2019, over 1.5 trillion naira had‘’visited’’ and ‘’passed’’ through Benue. That is anaverage of 75 billion naira a year. Does this statelook like a place that over 1.5 trillion naira haspassed through? Absolutely not. The money has comeinto the coffers of the state government from sevensources: Federation account, VAT, Excess crude oil,refunds on Euro Loan, Loans from financialinstitutions, grants and donations from Internationalbodies and Internally Generated Revenues. So wherehas the money gone? A large chunk of it has been usedto pay the salaries and pensions of public workers.Another chunk used to run the government and the


balance used for capital development, i.e. provisionof roads, schools, hospitals, electricity, and inputsfor agriculture.The reality however, you will all agree with me is

different. Schools have been built but the schoolsare not good enough for the children of those whobuilt and are running them. The story is the same forhospitals. The road infrastructure is a tragedy beyondbelief. If you attempt to do a panoramic balancesheet analysis of what came in and where it went to,go to Judges quarters in Makurdi, GRA’s in Otukpo,Gboko and Katsina-ala and take stock of the quantumof private infrastructural development between 1999and 2019 and compare it to the outlying communitiesand a clear picture of supra mundanic exigencies of amacro-parasitic and opportunistic elite will emerge.As alluded to by D.S. Kaplan, the so-called TEO’s(thief executive officers) who are manning the gatesof our path to development spare very little thoughtabout the polities they manage. That is why it isdifficult to understand how a hardworking people likethose of Benue can be so miserable. That is why apeople with an intuitive spirit for savings can hardlyconvert same to purposeful investments. And that iswhy our elites promote a culture of ethnic chauvinism,hostility, marginalization, nepotism, mediocrity andthe drive towards political irredentism which is sorife in our polity today.


Institutional Legacies: Benue State Universityand Historical Society of Nigeria

Fidelis Makka, Orshio Adasu and Gbilekaa Vajimeand the Citadel they BuiltSeven years into my academic career, I took leavefrom my alma mater and adopted city Calabar, to cometo Makurdi to start a new university. The Benue StateUniversity licensed by the NUC in 1992 was a productof nearly twelve years planning from when the ideawas first muted during the regime of the first executivegovernor of Benue, Mr. Aper Aku. Col. Fidelis Makkaas Military Governor of the State, dusted the reportand signed the edit establishing the University in1991. When the mantle of political leadership fell onRev. Father Moses Adasu, the preacher-teacher-politician, he made sure the University took off.Benue State University was built on a rock-solidfoundation by the visionary academic and frugaladministrator Charles Vajime. He attracted a goodcrop of academics and professionals to start theUniversity. The likes of David Ker, Abimaje Akpa,Ngwo Samba, C.I Agbo, Josiah Shindi, Emmanuel Agishi,Emmauel Abah John Sambe, Akase Sorkaa, and PaulinusAkosu were some of the academic generals that Vajimedeployed to actualize the University motto; ‘’ScientiaLiberatio Populorum’’.The academic generals were supported by top class

administrator’s like William Moze, Ralph Ogah, DominicGbakir, Stephen Tarzaan, Igbakule Utile, Ugbagir(stores officer), Philip Onyilo, Fummi Tolufashe,


Madam Akpakwu, P.K. Sende, and dedicated support stafflike Titus, the Vice Chancellor’s Secretary, Titusthe chief pilot, and Road Commanders like ‘’Sardauna’’,Chiahemba, Orgen Jumbu and Amedu. These pioneers werelater joined by James Ayatse, who is now our reveredTor Tiv, Zack Gundu our Pro-Chancellor, Ashimen Angya,former VC, Atoato Igirgi, JB Ashiko, the internationallyrecognized geologist, Solomon Abaa and several youngbudding scholars many of who are professors andacademic leaders in their own right today. The likesof Joseph Kerker, Alloy Ihuah, Edward Omudu, GowonDoki, Okpeh Okpeh, Ayati Varvar, Ebute Agaba and PaulAngahar readily come to mind.I stand tall and proud today of the University and

the department that I started with Armstrong Adejo,and Joseph Iyo. If for nothing, the sheer humanresources at the highest level that the departmenthas produced gives me immense joy. Since 1997, whenthe department started its post-graduate programmes,it has produced about 60 PhD’s many of who are plyingtheir trade in places such as Kaduna, Kogi, Nasarawa,Osun, Edo and Taraba State Universities, NDA, FederalUniversities in Lafia, Gashua, Kashere, Wukari, Dutse-Ma. Birnin Kebbi, Otuoke, University of Agriculturein Makurdi, IBB University in Niger and several privateUniversities. The NUC adjudged one of our PhD’s asthe best nationwide and across all disciplines)in theyear 2007.Looking back 25 years of the establishment of Benue

State University, it is easy to gloss over itsachievements. The contribution to the workforcedevelopment of Nigeria has been tremendous. In 1993


when the University opened its doors, you could countthe number of communities in the state that hadgraduates. Today, I can confidently say that there isno ward in Benue State today that does not have agraduate from Benue State University. It has producedVice Chancellors for five other universities; Itsalumni are in all the primary professions and haveexcelled. It possesses some globally known academicswho have won laurels at home and abroad. The WorldBank Centre of Excellence is a testimony of its researchand development prowess. The University is still verymuch work in progress.Looking ahead for another 25 years, what should be

the focus of the University.? The way I see it, Ibelieve the time has come for Benue State Universityto become a user of new knowledge as a catalyst forthe economic and social transformation of the State.The time has come for it to harness its two significantassets; the River Benue at its rear and Gboko Road atits front to not only churn out ideas but implementsame. I have told anybody who cares to listen thatthe BSU/Gboko Road economy is worth an estimated 20billion naira. The river is worth even much more. Howcan this be harnessed to grow the economy of theState.? Why will we not invest in Marine based fishfarming? What of river sand processing on an industrialscale to fill up low lying areas of the State that areprone to flooding and in the construction industry?River-based sporting activities like tourism, rowing,kayaking, and trail activities. The opportunitiesare starring us in the face but sadly, monthly salaryfrom Abuja has dulled our creative sensibilities.


The Sons and Daughters of Kenneth O. DikeIf the story of history as an academic discipline isto be told in the style of a typical oral traditionthat dwells on origins and migrations, it will readsomething like this; The putative ancestor of the MbaHistory clan was an itinerant scholar called KennethOnwana Dike. He hailed from a village in Awka andwas very wise in the ways of the whites mans education.He journeyed across many rivers, and mountains andeventually crossed the sea to the white man’s landwhere he trained to become a griot. Indeed he was thefirst African to be initiated into the secret cult ofprofessional high griots bearing the mark of Doctorof Philosophy, University of London. With this mark,Dike eventually settled in a town called Ibadan andestablished a temple to the she-god, Clio and beganto recruit and initiate new disciples. Two of hisnotable disciples were Chieka and Jacob. Dikeeventually fathered three sons who went and establishedtemples at Nsukka, Zaria and Lagos. From these threelocations, the MbaHistory clan spread all over Nigeriaand is today one of its most potent clans with over100 high priests who are training young initiates.62

The Historical Society of Nigeria is the oldestprofessional association in Nigeria. It was registeredin 1955 with Professor K.O. Dike as its foundingPresident and Abdulahi Smith as Secretary. Powered bya deep sense of nationalism and patriotism, the Ibadanschool used History as a most veritable anti-colonialweapon. Once the pride of learning societies in Nigeriawith academic giants such as K.O. Dike, JFA Ajayi,Emmanuel Ayandele, Adiele Afigbo, Takena Tamuno, Ade


Obayemi, Obaro Ikime, Godfrey Uzoigwe, Edebegri Alagoa,Jide Osuntokun, Okon Uya, Bala Usman, Sa’ad Abubakar,Mahdi Adamu, the Society by 1998, had fallen on toughtimes.63

The onslaught began in the late 1980s when a cacophonyof educational policies now required disciplines likehistory to justify their relevance. Furthermore, itwas yanked off the syllabus of primary and juniorsecondary schools and replaced by an amorphous subjectcalled social studies. At the senior secondary schoollevel, students had the option of choosing Governmentor History. Given the utilitarian nature of thegeneration of students with their minds focused onthe minimum of a credit level pass, history with itsnearly 15-page syllabus was never an option toGovernment with only a 5-page syllabus. Departmentsstruggled to attract students, and many had to undergoa sort of metamorphosis in order to remain alive.J.F. Ade-Ajayi put part of the blame on historiansthemselves. He noted that;

We have to admit that one major cause of therapid decline in the influence and respectabilityof history is that we, the academic historycommunity, failed to consolidate our initialsuccess. We behaved as if merely convincing theWestern nations that we have a history was enough,or that we did not need to do more to establishwhat that history is.64

By 2005, the fortunes of the Society had wanedconsiderably. In October of that year at the occasion


of the 50th anniversary of the Historical Society ofNigeria, Ade Ajayi himself gave the keynote addressthat x-rayed fifty years of the professional study ofhistory in Nigeria. The President of the HSN, ProfessorMonday Benson Abasiattai told the audience that AdeAjayi was his academic father who had taught him as a100 level student in Ibadan. The following day I waselected unopposed as the 9th National President.Professor Abasiattai had been my teacher in my freshmanyear in 1978 at the University of Calabar. My studentat the undergraduate level in Unical Professor IniUdoka was also in the hall when I delivered myacceptance speech. I paid tribute to Ajayi who as itwere was my academic grandfather and introduced tohim, Ini Udoka as his great-grandson. Four generationsof professors of history were in one hall on thatday. The task of rebuilding our beloved Society wouldtake tremendous sacrifice and commitment. With a newcrop of committed and dedicated historians, I jumpedinto the task headlong.By 2015, the Society was back to its feet. Its

journal was not only back up but now listed on JSTOR,and other publications were being produced. Congresseswere held annually, and its membership base had grown.More importantly, the discipline had been returned tothe curriculum of primary and secondary schools. Thus,in 15 years, my team and I combined hard work withdiscipline, a deep and sincere sense of commitment,frugal use of resources, creativity and the will toutilize new knowledge to achieve results. The bottomline Mr Vice Chancellor, when there is a will tosucceed, success will come.


Knowledge as an Economic ResourceCognition as a human agency is perhaps the mostintriguing part of the evolution of the human species.From our evolutionary history, we know that theHominidae separated from the Pongidae nearly six millionyears ago. We also know that the Hominidae representedby species such as Austrapophitcus Africanus andParenthoprus Robustus developed cognitive capabilitiesthat enabled their survival. By the time the homohabillis and Homo Erectus arrived on the evolutionaryscene, the aggregation of knowledge to promote thegroup and individual interests of humankind had beenfirmly established. The quest to seek, know, understandand apply knowledge to all aspect of human endeavouris the taproot of human existence and is firmly rootedin our biological construct. Philosophy and Historyare foundations on which all knowledge is built upon.The homo sapiens as a thinking man aggregates knowledgeover time and utilizes history to advance it. Everyso often, new knowledge emerged and acts as a catalystto transform human society. Various forms of propulsiontechniques turned early man from a scavenger to asuper hunter. Domestication of plants and animalsopened the pathway to sedentary living and from thenon, the foundations of science and technology werelaid. A brief look as two forms of ‘’new knowledge’’and how they are enabling us to develop new ways ofdoing old things will better illustrate my point.About 50 years ago, the eminent English historian,

C. P Snow lamented that academics in the two major‘’cultural’’ gulfs (humanities and science) hardlydialogued with each other. They spoke different


‘’languages’’, posed different questions, wereconcerned with different issues and in general, sawthe world differently.65 The level of ignorance ofdevelopments and advances in Science and technologyby practitioners of the humanities was unbelievable.While the scientists think they can solve all ofhumankind’s problems by talking to themselves, thosein the humanities scoffed at the intellectual arroganceof scientists.66 In the fifty years since Snow madehis observation, the congruence between the humanitiesand sciences has narrowed considerably. Most academicswill agree that the advent of the personal computerand the World Wide Web has contributed more thananything else to facilitating this congruence. Beyondenabling us to read and participate in debates acrossdisparate disciplines casually, both tools enable usto connect to knowledge portals and academic databasesin which embedded relationships are intrinsic. Thus,developments and findings in one field are widelydisseminated quickly; their applications and usefulnessin other disciplines will equally be rapidly deployedwhile cross-disciplinary debates will rage on bulletinboards across the globe.

New Knowledge: Biology and HistoryAs a study of living organisms, biology is a corelife science. It simply means the study of life.Beyond studying the morphology, physiology and anatomyof living organisms. Biologists are also interestedin the origin, distribution and behaviour of organisms.While modern biology as we know it today dates backto the early 19th century, its antecedents go back


thousands of years. My focus will be on just oneaspect of biology, namely genetics. Historians nowknow that sure path leads from Biology in Science toHistory in the Humanities via Archaeology andAnthropology. Historians are interested in the studyof man and his existence on earth through time andspace. Biology is the study of life. One would haveimagined that the cross-disciplinary conversation wouldhave been very robust. However, given the ‘’language’’and culture of science as distinct and different fromthe humanities, this conversation especially in Africadue to lack of access to the Internet and multi-disciplinary journals on the subject remained only atthe level of whispers, until fairly recently.

Applied Historical GeneticsTwo significant forces have driven the application ofgenetics to history in the last 40 years. First wasthe use of supercomputers that helped crack the geneticcode. Indeed, it has been opined that without the useof mainframe computers, cracking the genetic codewould have been impossible as at the time it wasdone.67 The second was the launch of two global geneticprojects viz: the sequencing of the Human GenomeProject and the Haplotype Mapping Project. The public-private consortia that powered both projects(International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium andCelera Corporation, and the International HapMapConsortium) released vast amounts of data toresearchers who began to map genetic footprints acrossvarious disciplines systematically.68 The ongoing five-year Genographic project launched in 2005 by the


National Geographic Society and Computer Giant IBM inpartnership with University of Arizona had by 2007,mapped over 300,000 persons across the world.69 As of2018, almost one-million participants in over 140countries have joined the project.70

Understandably, biologists were the first to takeadvantage of these data and began to initiate cross-disciplinary conversations with anthropologists,archaeologists, linguists and cultural historians.Historians began to develop a keener interest ingenetic research when research findings from populationgenetics began to produce empirical evidence formigrations and settlement of human populations acrossthe world. The first significant synthesis in thisregard was ‘’The History and Geography of Human Genes’’,published in 1994 by Luca Cavalli-Sforza and hiscolleagues.70 They primarily studied the geographicaldistributions of gene frequencies for each continent,using statistical methods to clarify the spatialpatterning.By sampling genotypes from peoples across the globe,

geneticists have reconstructed the significant featuresof the history of humankind. They have firmlyestablished Africa as the home of modern man. Theyhave tracked the migrations out of Africa andresettlements in Eurasia and Oceania as well as thepeopling of the Americas. As the technology has matured,new DNA markers such as; Blood groups; Proteinpolymorphism; MitoChrondal DNA sequencing; Y-chromosomes Haplotypes; Highly Variable nucleusmicrosatellites have contributed to extending thefrontiers and deepened the context of the application


of genetic evidence to history and other disciplines.What is the current state of historical genetics

research in Africa? Have these added any significantvalue to our knowledge of the history of the continent?What issues and challenges exist in the applicationof genetics to the study of history and archaeologyin Africa? Given the reinforcing of fossil evidencewhich mitochondrial DNA in Africa provided, scholarsworking in Africa have been able to apply geneticinformation to several aspects of African studiessuch as mapping the origins and relations of Africa’soldest populations.72 These populations are from threemajor families or haploid groups or clusters ofmitochondrial DNA from western and eastern Africa andconsisted of three language families: Niger-Congo,Nile-Saharan and Afroasiatic or L0/1, L2 and L3. Theoldest mitochondrial lineage is L0 and L1. It expandedabout 100 - to 150,000 years ago.73 The NationalGenome Project has dated the divergence or expansionof L3 to about 70- to 80,000 and L2 to about 60,000.74

Two major projects signified the coming of historicalgenetics project in Africa. The first was the ‘’Outof Africa project’’ which attempted to track thefirst wave of human migrations.75 Using mitochondrial(mtDNA) data sets, the project concluded that 100,000years ago, the first set of humans migrated out ofAfrica to populate other parts of the world. Furtherresearch ‘’identified’’ the genetic ‘’matriarch’’ ofall modern human populations who lived about 160,000years ago.76 Similarly, Y-chromosomes have also beenused to identify an ‘’Adam’’ who lived at about 60,000years ago.77 Indeed for some, the identification of a


mitochondrial ‘’Eve’’ and a Y-chromosome ‘’Adam’’practically corroborates the biblical version of thecreation of man.78

Another major project has attempted to find thegenetic footprint of early African peoples. Generallyreferred to as pygmy genetics, these studies, mostlymapped the relationship between speakers of Africa’soldest languages like the San, the Hadazabe, Sandawe,Biaka, Baka and Mbuti and their relationships withtheir agrarian neighbours.79 The genetic mapping ofnomadic Fulani also seeks to find out theirrelationships with neighbouring sedentarypopulations.80 Other studies include the applicationof genetic evidence to isolate the genetic footprintsof the Bantu migrations and test same against some ofthe long-held beliefs about the nature and directionsof these migrations.81 The Nile Valley Genetic projectattempts to answer the question as to whether theriver was a ‘’genetic corridor’’ or whether thecultural and linguistic differences of the populationsalong the river posed a barrier to migrations.82

Essentially these studies set out to revisit some ofthe assumptions that held sway by testing them against‘’genetic’’ evidence.83 In some cases, the initialconclusions are consistent with ‘’non-geneticevidence’’ such as oral traditions and fossil evidencefrom archaeology.84

Historical Genetics Research in Nigeria: Issuesand Challenges for a Research AgendaFrom my preliminary research, while genetics research,in general, is quite active in Biology laboratories


in Nigeria, very little research has been done or isbeing done using genetics as a tool for historicalreconstruction. Indeed until very recently, very fewhistorians practising in Nigeria were involved in anycollaborative effort with colleagues in Biology athome or elsewhere.85 The reasons for this are notfarfetched. First historical genetics is an expensiveventure. While the process of collecting DNA sampleshas become more accessible and cheaper, the number ofsamples that need to be collected and the processingis a major undertaking in terms of costs. Second isthe requisite expertise that does not exist in largenumbers. The field of molecular genetics itself isrelatively new, and the grounds to conquer is incrediblyvast. With competition from agriculture (GMC), geneticengineering and bio-medical/mechanical engineering,the experts in the field are few and in-between.Third and perhaps most important is the fact thatHistory itself, until very recently was not a prioritysubject in Nigeria.Assuming the funds and expertise were available,

what benefits will historical genetics confer to ourunderstanding of aspects of our history? What arethe social and political implications of genographicgenealogy, for example in a country like ours withdeep ethnic and other primordial divisions?.Furthermore, given the history of misuse of geneticideas, especially to reinforce stereotypes, willhistorical genetics in Nigeria not open a pandora’sbox that will cause more problems than it will solve?How also do we deal with the ethical, moral and‘’religious boundaries’’ of genetic research such as


stem cells, gene splicing/editing and cloning anddevelopment of genetically modified organisms?The problems noted above are significant but not

insurmountable. The private-public sector model thathas been used to drive genomic research has contributedin no small measure to improve funding. Given thecross-disciplinary nature of genomics, pooling offunds from a multiplicity of sources has ensured thatfunding is available primarily for projects that aimto fill significant gaps in the global effort. Alongsidethis is the private business element that has seengenetic genealogy, for example, emerging as aprofitable business. Private laboratories provideancestry solutions for fees as low as $100.86 As abusiness whose outcomes are anchored on hard scientificevidence; genetic genealogy is currently a multi-billion-dollar business in Europe and America. Thereis no reason why Biology Departments in any NigerianUniversity cannot set up a laboratory to engage inthis for research purposes and as a business. I amnot aware of any laboratory doing this in Nigeria.Indeed, the Biology Department can setup a bio-informatics unit and network with other laboratoriesacross the world to map some of the remaining gaps ingenome research in Africa.87

Will Nigerians patronise this business? They arealready doing so but mainly for paternity tests. Iimagine that politicians interested in knowing thepaternity (and hence the ethnicity) of their opponentswill patronise this service. On a more serious note,I strongly believe that genetic data if applied tothe study of inter-group relations in Nigeria, will


considerably reduce the level of inter-group suspicionsand hostility. For example, applying genetic evidenceto the once vexed issue of Ife/Benin, Efik/Ibibio orTiv/Jukun and Tiv/Fulani relations will providefascinating reading. So also, will be the geneticevidence for the peopling of middle/lower Benue Valleyand the relationship between the Tiv, Jukun, Idoma,Etulo, Nyifon, Ebira and Igala. Mitochondrial DNAevidence can also be applied to test oral evidencefor peoples who claim maternal links with otherswithin the region like the Etulo, Akweya, Jukun,Igede and Idoma. I have a powerful feeling that theconclusions that will be reached from applying geneticevidence to our current knowledge of the historicalorigins and inter-group relations in Nigeria willfundamentally change.Regarding the misuse of genetic evidence, while

agreeing that identity markers such as race andethnicity and their accompanying prejudice do notrequire rational basis let alone a scientific one,the existence of scientific evidence, I believeconsiderably narrows the contention ratio with thosewho subscribe to such views. In paternity and criminalcases in the law courts, DNA evidence usually shutsthe case for the prosecutors because of its scientificvalidity. I see such evidence providing a similarvalidation for inter-group relation studies, migrationsand settlements and antiquity of languages.Finally I must stress that for a sub-discipline

that is less than 30 years old, and driven fiercelyby bio-informatics; and from which new informationpractically comes out with frequent regularity as


various research groups use the vast database that isfreely available to test their assumptions; theinterpretation of results that has divided many projectresearch teams especially against the backdrop ofdifferent disciplinary perspectives and/or specificmethodological or theoretical positions; Genetics hasdone extremely well. Many of the findings from geneticshave shaken the foundations of existing knowledge inmany disciplines. From when Charles Darwin publishedhis study on the Origins of species, to this day whenstem cell research is literally creating ‘’human spareparts’’ evolutionary biology and genetics became‘’marked persons’’ for religious dogma. The ethicaland moral argument will always remain and cannot bewished or explained away. Our responsibility asresearchers and custodians of knowledge for societymeans we have to be very careful with the sensibilitiesof the wider society that we are thinking for.

Digital Humanities and the Making of the ‘’HomoDigitalis’’The digital historians of Nigeria are the childrenfathered by those nourished by the milk of the seminaltext; Groundwork of Nigerian History edited by ObaroIkime and published in 1980.88 They are found invirtually all of the fifty five departments of Historynationwide. They have strategic alliances with theirkith and kin in diaspora and have blazed the trail inresearch into many aspects of history that many of uswill wonder. Their preferred subject matter are theso-called auxiliary historical sciences such as;


Historiometry, the historical study of human progressor individual personal characteristics, usingstatistics to analyze their statements, behaviourand discoveries in relatively neutral texts.Historiometry also combines techniques fromcliometrics, and from psychometrics which is thepsychological study of an individual’s personalityand abilities. Other Auxiliary sciences of historyinclude, but are not limited:• Cliometrics (which we discussed earlier)• Codicology, the study of books as physical objects• Epigraphy, the study of ancient inscriptions• Faleristics, the study of military orders,

decorations and medals• Genealogy, the study of family relationships• Heraldry, the study of armorial devices• Numismatics, the study of coins• Onomastics, the study of proper names• Philology, the study of the language of historical

sources• Prosopography, the investigation of a historical

group of individuals through a collective studyof their lives

• Sigillography, the study of seals• Statistics, the study of the collection,

organization, and interpretation of (historical)data

• Anthropometric history is the study of the historyof human height and weight and its relationshipto economic development.


Of these auxiliary sciences of history, DigitalHistory and Genetic History fascinates me the most.Digital history because it has the capacity to energizeinterest amongst the digital generation that has emergedand genetic history for its ability to give scientificvalidation to aspects of our oral traditions, especiallythose dealing with origins and migrations andintergroup relations. Some of the tools used by digitalhistorians to reconstruct their subject matter include;Virtual, augmented and mixed reality solutions;Computer Generated Imaging (CGI), GeographicInformation systems; Reverse Imaging (used to detectfake photos); applied Artificial Intelligence fordata aggregation/analytics and text mining forliterature review and language reconstruction; anddigital archives.

Higher Education, New Knowledge and the Knowledge-EconomyWalter W. Powell and Kaisa Snellman define the knowledgeeconomy as products and services based on knowledge-intensive activities that contribute to an acceleratedpace of technological and scientific advance as wellas equally rapid obsolescence.89 The critical componentsof a knowledge economy include a greater reliance onintellectual capabilities than on physical inputs ornatural resources, combined with efforts to integrateimprovements in every stage of the production process,from the R&D lab to the factory floor to the interfacewith customers. Fritz Machlup, the famous Austrian-American economist, was one of the earliest scholarsto propound the theory of knowledge as an economic


resource.90 A corollary of the knowledge economy isthe creative economy commonly referred to as theideas business. According to John Howkins ‘’author ofthe famous work ;The Creative Economy: How peoplemake money from ideas published in 2001, worldwide,the creative economy was worth about 2. 2 trillionUnited States dollars in January 2000 and was growingat 5% a year. 91 knowledge-as-a-service now occupiesa prominent spot on the global economics index.The critical driver of the knowledge economy,

however, is higher education. The significant debatecurrently raging in the higher education sphere ishow will the University system confront the challengesand changes occasioned by globalization, Informationtechnology and data as an economic resource. Asacademics in the higher education space, we are privyto the disruption of education that is currentlyongoing. I will point out just a few of them to highlight our case.• Universities and Academics are no longer the

sole custodians of knowledge as we know it.Knowledge creation has been privatized andsocialised. It is available for free or for afee and on multiple channels.

• New knowledge in terms of academic disciplinesand or sub-disciplines, specializations, contentcreation, and generation are no longer solelyproducts of academic institutions such as thetraditional Universities. CorporateUniversities, publishing houses, researchcentres, think tanks, Analytical and Knowledge-as-a-Service firms and non-governmental agencies


are now hubs for generating new knowledge.• The ubiquity of education is now the buzz word.

Face-to-face, Distance/Online/Blended learning.Education anytime, anywhere.

• The 4th Industrial Revolution is changing thenature and character of the ‘’world of workradically’’. Competency, flexibility, and multi-tasking now drive that world more than anythingelse.

• Creative thinking and problem-solvingcapabilities, team play, analytical/communication skills and value addition to the‘’bottom line’’ are now more important toemployers of labour than core subject matterknowledge.

• Collaboration and sharing of knowledge sets,information, and skills, across multipleplatforms in the electronic domain is becominga dominant mode of academic engagements.

• Individual courses rather than the degree itselfhave become more critical in the world of blendedlearning. The rigid academic compartments, pre-requisites and entry qualifications are givingway to individual interests, aptitude andcreativity, forcing traditional Universities tounbundle their services to serve these needs.

To contextualize all these, some of the biggestcompanies in the world in terms of valuation, such asGoogle, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, have stated thatthey now no longer require University degrees as


entry requirements to work there.92 Moreso, ten ofthe top twenty in-demand jobs, did not exist tenyears ago.93 Most of these jobs have developed notfrom within the traditional academic systems/ researchoutcomes, but mainly as a result of cross-applicationof ideas from widely disparate disciplines. The rigidacademic compartments that we used to know are givingway to functionalities that are geared towards solving21st century problems. Indeed, it has been opinedthat in another ten years, what we need to know tooperate as knowledgeable/educated citizens would haveradically changed. Parinita Gohil Co-Founder, LearningDelight, an Indian based company, contextualizes thischange very well when she notes that;

The relationship between students and teachershas undergone a complete transformation eversince the advent of technology. This is becausetoday’s student has access to a variety of sourcesfor information, as opposed to simply learningwhat is being taught at school. The methodologyof teaching for such curious minds, therefore,is evolving as well, and becoming more and moreinteractive and engaging, thanks to digitalmeans.94

Google Classroom is currently one of the most widelyused online educational tools, with more than 30million users and growing, where teachers, students,and parents manage class assignments, quizzes anddiscussions.95


Ronald Barnett, Emeritus Professor of HigherEducation at University College London Institute ofEducation, is one of the leading theorists who hasattempted to provide a philosophical underpinningfor the identification of concepts and principlesthat offer ways of enhancing universities and highereducation in an uncertain age.96 In three of hisbooks that attempt an understanding of the university:Being a University (2011), Imagining the University(2013) and Understanding the University: Institution,Idea, Possibilities (2016), he argued that theuniversity in the public domain is hopelesslyimpoverished. ‘’Impoverished’’ because they are undulyconfined to a small range of possible conceptions ofthe university; and ‘’hopelessly’’ because they aretoo often without hope, taking the form of eitherhand-wringing over the current state of the universityor merely offering a defence of the emerging natureof ‘’the entrepreneurial university.97

It is in this regard that I strongly share DavidStaley 2015 prediction on the future of the University.In his article on ‘’Speculative Design for Innovationin Higher Education’’, he notes that; ‘’ideas aboutinnovation in higher education focus too narrowly ontechnological disruption and the resistance toinnovation and disruptive change.98 His proposed fivemodels of innovation in higher education that expandsour ‘’ideas of the University’’ are as innovative asthey are radical. The first is the adoption of aspeculative design that targets institutionalpedagogical outcomes which in turn shapes thebehaviours of students, lecturers and governance team


leaders; the curriculum; the movement of knowledgeand the kind of knowledge exchanged.99 The second isthe concept of a Polymath University built on theeducational philosophy that creativity and innovativethinking emerge from the mashing-up of disparate ideas,from the ability to make connections between whatappear to be different concepts. Here, students chooseone each from a ‘’menu’’ of three majors: theprofessions, the sciences and social sciences, andthe arts and humanities.

Table 1. Polymath University triple majors

Thus, in a polymath University, a student cannotmajor in English, History, and Philosophy, or Finance,Marketing, and Accounting. Instead, they would choosetriple majors in History, Accounting, and Biology,for example, or Finance, English, and Chemistry.100

The third is the concept of the Nomad University. Ina world of live-study-work-from anywhere any time,the Nomad University shifts attention from theclassroom to the ‘’real world’’. As Pieter Spinderputs it; ‘’Why work with case studies in books, whenone can learn from real challenges, real-lifeassignments, with companies, interactions withgovernments, and work with non-governmentalorganizations?’’101 Thus each ‘’course’’ at Nomad

Professions Sciences/social sciences Arts and humanitiesAccounting Physics HistoryEngineering Chemistry EnglishBusiness Sociology PhilosophyEducation Political Science ArtFinance Astronomy Religious StudiesArchitecture Biology Theatre


University is organized around a specific problem.The lecturer/Mentor/Coach identifies a problem,grounded in a specific research question and then viaa virtual network, the students and the professordecide on the nature of the problem and the outcomesfor completion (success). They assemble at a locationdetermined by the professor, where they will worktogether on the problem for a specified period. Whenthe participants and their clients are satisfied thatsome equilibrium solution has been achieved, thestudent-faculty ensemble disassembles until they meetagain in another location to work on a new and differentproblem.102

Perhaps the most radical of his proposed innovationis the suggestion of an Interface University whichpresumes that humans and computers thinking togetherare better than humans or computers thinking alone,and that thinking with machines allows students toengage in a level of cognition not possible with thehuman brain alone. Thus, at Interface Universitystudents will learn how to ‘’think with computers.’’Lecturers and students treat the computer not as atool but as a ‘’third hemisphere’’ of the brain, andhigher learning means developing a metaphorical‘’corpus callosum’’ with this digital hemisphere.103

From ethology and evolutionary anthropology, weknow that humans have always had hybrid minds. Longbefore the invention of the computer, human beingsengaged in cognition coupled with external tools. Thedevelopment of writing, propulsion and lift systems,for example, were not mere tools: They were levels ofcognition unattainable to pre-literate humans. Thinking


and cognition are functions of the externaltechnological prosthesis we as humans employ. Thenetworked computer represents the next great cognitiveprosthesis.104 Thus, the Interface University revolvesaround intimacy with tools while assuring lecturersand students that the homo sapiens can only be enhancedand cannot be replaced by the homo digitalis drivenby computers and other machines.A survey conducted by three leading global HR firms

found that a large majority of employers look foruniversity graduates with oral and writtencommunications, creative and critical thinking skills,numeracy and problem-solving skills, and those takeresponsibility and demonstrate ethical judgment andintegrity.105 The Institute of the Future has identifiedten work skills for the future: ‘’Rather than focusingon future jobs, this report looks at future ‘’workskills ‘’proficiencies and abilities required acrossdifferent jobs and work settings.’’106 They include;• Sense-making: the ability to determine the more

profound meaning or significance of what isbeing expressed

• Social intelligence: the ability to connect toothers deeply and directly, to sense and stimulatereactions and desired interactions

• Novel and adaptive thinking: proficiency atthinking and coming up with solutions andresponses beyond that which is rote or rule-based.

• Cross-cultural competency: the ability to operatein different cultural settings.


• Computational thinking: the ability to translatevast amounts of data into abstract concepts andto understand data-based reasoning.

• New-media literacy: the ability to criticallyassess and develop content that uses new mediaforms, and to leverage these media for persuasivecommunication.

• Transdisciplinarity: literacy in and ability tounderstand concepts across multiple disciplines.

• Design mindset: the ability to represent anddevelop tasks and work processes for desiredoutcomes.

• Cognitive load management: the ability todiscriminate and filter information forimportance, and to understand how to maximizecognitive functioning using a variety of toolsand techniques.

• Virtual collaboration: the ability to workproductively, drive engagement, and demonstratepresence as a member of a virtual team.107

From the above predictions of the near future and hownew knowledge will shape higher education, we canisolate four major trends that are impacting on thetraditional role that Universities use to play interms of knowledge production and dissemination. Theseare Data Aggregation; Artificial Intelligence; Testand Measurement and the role of knowledge as an economicresource.

Data as the crude oil of the Information AgeIn a 2017 publication, the globally renowned magazine,


the Economist wrote that a hundred years ago, oil asa resource, emerged as the primary driver of economicactivity. Today, however, data, is the oil of thedigital era. Global giants like Alphabet (Google’sparent company), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsofthave replaced Standard Oil, Shell-BP. Exxon Mobil andTotal as the most valuable listed firms in the world.108

Collectively the net profit of these technology firmsstood at $25bn in net profit in the first quarter of2017.109 According to Donald Feinberg, Vice Presidentand distinguished research analyst at Gartner, theglobal consulting group, ‘’the continued survival ofany business will depend upon an agile, data-centricarchitecture that responds to the constant rate ofchange.’’110 To give us a perspective on this, let usput some raw numbers up. It is estimated that by2020, 43 trillion gigabytes of data would have beencreated worldwide by six billion persons using mobiledevices. This represents a 300% increase from 2005.The current average data creation on a daily basis is2.3 trillion megabytes of data, while the averagedata size of most companies in the United States is100 terabytes. So if such big data is the grease ofthe wheels of the digital economy, in terms of volume,variety, velocity and veracity, how do we analysethem and make informed decisions? What are theopportunities and threats.? Data Science is now arapidly evolving discipline with sub-specialitiessuch as;• Augmented data management and analytics• Continuous intelligence


• Explainable AI• Conversational analytics• Commercial AI and machine learning• Distributed Ledger Processing (block chain)

It is clear that both the challenge and opportunityof data is immense. By the time we throw in thephenomenon of Artificial Intelligence, whose primaryfeedstock is data, the equation changes dramatically.Simply put, Artificial intelligence (AI) is an areaof computer science that emphasizes the creation ofintelligent machines that work and react like humans.Some of the activities computers with artificialintelligence are designed for include:(Speechrecognition, Learning, Planning and Problem-solving.When applied to data, Artificial Intelligence changesthe equation dramatically in virtually all academicdisciplines from fine and applied arts to clinicalpathology. According to David West, CEO of Proscia;‘’AI-powered digital pathology, changes the game andhelps fill the shortage of pathologists, who areneeded to diagnose millions of cancer cases everyyear accurately.’’111 He foresees this trend gainingground as ‘’as health care organisations upgrade toelectronic health record systems, which potentiallysupport more data accessibility and interoperability‘’two technology trends necessary for successful AIadoption.’’ 112 Robotic Process automation usingsoftware or AI Robots to automate data processing israpidly replacing Business Process Automation.


Assessment MethodsThe new knowledge of the information age emphasisacquisition of holistic skills development as acritical work tool. Besides mastering your subjectmatter, additional skills set are required to make animpression. Some of these include effective verbalcommunication and presentation, creative and analyticalthinking, problem-solving and teamwork. To determinethese plethora of skills, most organisations, nowuse the Assessment Centre Method. ACM tests theprospective employee across ten major determinants.These are;• Group discussions on an advised topic based on

Discipline• Test of writing skills• Psychometric Test (online)• Group Presentation Skills (using PowerPoint)• Interviews• Numeric skills test (irrespective of Discipline)• Verbal reasoning skills test• Group case study• Saville & Holdsowrth Ltd (SHL) Occupational

Personality Questionnaire Test (online)• Group exercise

The student is expected to pass at least 7 to beregarded as qualified. Now the big question is how wein the traditional University system are preparingour students for this? Is our current methodologydesigned to test students across the pedestals thatemployees of labour seek? Are we able to implementACM for at least our graduating students to keep them


abreast with the basic requirements of the world ofwork they would meet upon graduation?In all the above, the concern and interest of

Nigerian Universities should be how to positionthemselves to utilize new knowledge for development.In the new world of work, we are clearly laggingbehind in the sense that the basic work tools of thisindustry are grossly lacking. The workforce, thetechnology, skills and most important the funding tobuild the required framework for this industry remainsa significant challenge for us. New academicdisciplines such as Service Sciences, System Sciences,Decision Sciences, Data Science and Creativity Studiescurrently do not exist in our education space.Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, the points I

have raised here on new knowledge should becontextualized against the backdrop of our evolutionas a species. Humanity has come this far because ofknowledge. From our study of Ethology, we know thatthe genius homo sapiens has used its superior thinkingpower and ‘’restlessness’’ to lay claims as to themaster of the universe. Similarly, over the millennia,it is the acquisition, harnessing and utilization ofknowledge that has separated one human group fromanother in terms of development. As Bjorn Lomborg’spoints out in his book, The Sceptical Environmentalist’,‘’The Stone Age did not end because we ran out ofstones, and the petroleum age will not end because werun out of petroleum’’.113 The renewable energy industryis fast becoming mainstream because it represents abetter, cheaper and sustainable alternative to fossilfuels. We are fortunate that we are witnessing first-


hand how Humanity is re-inventing itself by usingexisting knowledge as building blocks for newknowledge.It is in this regard that those of us in the

‘’knowledge business’’ should see our role in thedevelopment of society. For those of us who harbourgrave concerns, fears, or scepticism about thedisruption in the education industry, I urge them toreflect on three major disruptions that have happenedin our lifetimes’ in the last 15 to 20 years. Theseare the ‘’on-demand’’, ‘’sharing’’ and ‘’crowding’’services. The common thread that made these ‘’oldways’’ of doing things disruptive is the applicationof information technology. As humans, we tend to seethe change in a negative light. However, itsinevitability confronts us in all directions. We,therefore, must see the need to change our knowledgegeneration process and make it more relevant to theneeds of society. For higher education, in particular,the disruptions are imminent. In all fields ofscholarly enquiry, there is a crumbling of disciplinaryboundaries and interdisciplinary configurations thatrequires new ways of doing old things. We have farmore internal and external competitors who arecontinually raising the bar. That technology is alreadydisrupting how we teach, learn, conduct research andcommunicate, is not in doubt. The big question is howfurther will this go and how ready are we to engagepositively in this space in terms of taking advantagesof the opportunities and managing the challenges? Asattested to by the global GDP on education, our worldis rapidly knowledge-driven. Spending on education


alone in 2017 stood at 5.0 trillion US dollars or8.6% of planetary GDP.114 The investment in educationaltechnology alone is estimated to reach 250 billion USdollars by 2020.115

What does this mean for those of us in the educationbusiness? It merely means we cannot wish the adventof technology away. The educational technology ecosystemis here to stay, and we must all exist in it. It alsomeans that it cannot be business as usual. As academicswe must adopt new ideas that are driving the systemand reject the ones that have become obsolete. Weknow that universities, by their very nature, areconservative institutions. On the one hand, they profferthe ideas that change society but on the other hand,they hold on to traditions that may have little or nobearing to current societal realities. Inherent inwhat looks like a contradiction lies the power ofUniversities to use their histories as a ‘’rear-viewmirror’’ to move societies forward while continuallylooking backwards. Indeed as Winston Churchill putsit, ‘’the further back we can look, the further forwardyou can see’’116 We will have to adapt or get leftbehind. We are indeed already far behind in a globalworld, but spaces are still available in our localworld

What is our prognosis for the future?Virtually all my teachers taught me that the businessof a historian effectively ends with his or her versionof explaining what happened in the past. A historianhas no business with trying to prognosticate thefuture. Indeed the Kanuri proverb which states that;


‘’No matter how the long the neck of a bird is, itcannot see into the future’’, seems to have beentailor-made for historians. For a long time, I believedin that time tested injunction. Midway into my career,I stumbled into the world of Future studies. Futurologyas it is also called, is the study of postulatingpossible, probable, and preferable futures and theworldviews and myths that underlie them. It isconsidered by some as a branch of the social sciencesand parallel to history. In the same way that historystudies the past, futures studies consider the future.Part of the discipline thus seeks a systematic andpattern-based understanding of past and present, andto determine the likelihood of future events andtrends. Going back to the future may sound a bitstrange and contradictory to some people. Forhistorians in general and futurologists in particular,many aspects of our future are behind us. We buildour future from our past. In his 1969 essay Discussionon Future Research, Ossip Flechtheim explained that;

it ... was the attempt to discuss the evolutionof man and his society in the hitherto forbiddenfuture tense. I held that, by marshalling theever-growing resources of science andscholarship, we could do more than employretrospective analysis and hypotheticalpredictions; we could try to establish the degreeof credibility and probability of forecasts.117

Three factors usually distinguish futures studiesfrom the research conducted by other disciplines.


First, futures studies often examine trends to composepossible, probable, and preferable futures along withthe role ‘’wild cards’’ can play on such scenarios.Second, futures studies typically attempt to gain aholistic or systemic view based on insights from arange of different disciplines, generally focusingon the Social, Technological, Economic, Environmentaland Political. Third, futures studies challenge andunpack the assumptions behind dominant and contendingviews of the future.118 The future thus is not emptybut fraught with hidden assumptions. For example,many people expect the collapse of the Earth’s ecosystemin the near future, while others believe the currentecosystem will survive indefinitely. A foresightapproach would seek to analyze and highlight theassumptions underpinning such views. The futures fieldalso excludes those who make Nostradamian typepredictions through professed supernatural means. YuvalNoah Harari, 2016 book titled, Homo Deus: A BriefHistory of Tomorrow and David Stanley’s History andFuture: Using Historical Thinking to Imagine the Future.are two outstanding texts that I recommend for anyonewho is interested in future studies.119

ConclusionEach generation of actors have a special attachmentto life lived in the past, which with the passing ofyears they tend to glorify. We often refer to ‘’thosegood old days’’ with nostalgia when we remember ouryouthful days, school days etc. Mirrored against thepresent, those days appear to be much better than thepresent. Quality of education was better (even though


there were no computers/Internet), travel was safe(even though it took a much longer time to get frompoint A to B), security was much better (few cases ofarmed robbery or terrorists), entertainment was better(no DSTV or 24 hours television and MP3 music). Ifthe old days were so good, why is it bad now?Our calling as professional academics is a

particularly difficult one. We are difficult to manage,to please and to impress. Our range of standards areextensive. From the very laughable mediocre individualswho have no business being in the profession in thefirst instance, to supercharged thinkers who areconstantly innovating and adding value to theirdiscipline and societies. We also have some who canbe likened to Ocol in the celebrated book by Okotp’Bitek that have ‘’read many books among white menand those books have not helped them. Instead, theyhave lost their heads, ‘’In the forest of books’’,their manhood finished in the classrooms, theirtesticles smashed with large books!120. We also havea section of the elite who again like Ocol, pose therhetorical question, ‘’What is Africa?’’ For them, itis;

‘’Blackness, Deep, deep, fathomless Darkness.‘’Africa. This rich granary, Of taboos, customs,Traditions...They cry and ask, Mother, Mother,why, why was I born black? 121

Such elites seek to destroy all things African,anything that reminds them of their African past.They would rather erect monuments to the architects


of African colonialism-Bismarck-Taubman Goldie, LordLugard and others, and:

...send to the gallows all the Professors ofAnthropology and teachers of African History...wewill set a bonfire to destroy all the anthologiesof African literature and close down all theschools Of African studies’’122.

From Khemetic philosophy, we are told that the bestand shortest road towards knowledge of truth isNature.123 True teaching is not an accumulation ofknowledge; but an awaking of consciousness that goesthrough successive stages. That the way of knowledgeis narrow and that although our body is the temple ofknowledge, Knowledge is not necessarily wisdom. Weare also told that the first thing necessary in teachingis a master; the second is a pupil capable of carryingon the tradition. However, Teachers can only open thedoor; pupils will have to enter by themselves. We arealso told that every person is rich in excuses tosafeguard their prejudices, instincts, and opinions.And that two tendencies govern human choice and effort,the search after quantity and the search after quality.They classify humankind. Some follow Maat; othersseek the way of animal instinct.124

Should a historian tell his own story? For me as anactive historian, the answer is yes. It is from my-history, his-story, her-story and our-stories thathistory gets made. Historians have traditionallyrejected the idea that we can use the study of historyto think about the future. Historians have continued


to apply their method to a broader variety of subjects.Regardless of the topic, historians ask questions,seek evidence, draw inferences from that evidence,create representations, and subject theserepresentations to the scrutiny of other historians.A Historian is inherently a Janus the double-facedGreek god with one face looking backwards (i.e. thepast) and another looking forward (the future). He isalso someone who must possess ‘’the patience of avulture, the cunning of a fox and the memory of anelephant’’ to ply his or her trade successfully.125

But ultimately, it behoves on us as academics andintellectuals to use our knowledge as a guidepost fora better future. Aspects of our historical given interms of ethnic and linguistic identities, originsand migrations, cultural paraphernalia, will remainas reminders of our unique past. Moving forward, wewill only be able to address contemporary challengesby reconstructing a charter of citizenship thatidentifies and rewards hard work, competence,creativity, capacity and character. We must also upscalethe investments in our youths and leave a stronglegacy for them; otherwise, they may decide to adoptthe action by the young rabbits that I mentioned atthe beginning of the story. Some of them are alreadyreflecting deeply on the reading from the Holy Bible’sBook of Lamentation chapter 5 verse 7 which says;‘’our fathers have sinned’’ and we have borne theiriniquities’’. Our people and especially our youthsare not lazy. Laziness is not an African disease asSamuel Cartwright, an American medical doctor whopracticed in the antebellum South of the United States


in 1858 to 1863, would want us to believe.126 Accordingto him, the ailment ‘’dysaesthesia aethiopica’’ wasuniquely African. Some of its symptoms were thatAfrican slaves were often in a state of being halfasleep and half awake, and they liked to ‘’do nothingsix days in a week and rest on the seventh day’’.The future that I see will be driven by strong

willed and principled persons who lead and managestrong governance institutions. Our youths and theuse of technology will also act as catalysts. Thenext biggest earner for Nigeria will be its humancapital. In 2018, according to data from PriceWaterhouse-Coopers, remittances from 1.24 millionNigerians in the diaspora, topped 23 billion UnitedStates dollars representing 6.1% of GDP.127 This figuretranslates to 83% of the Federal Government budget in2018, and eleven times the Foreign Direct Investmentflows in the same period. It was also 7.4 timeslarger than the net official development assistance(foreign aid) received in 2017 of US$ 3.4 billion.This figure is projected to grow to 34 billion UnitedStates dollars by 2023.128

Even though our current net investment in peopleand technology is extremely poor and our institutionsare both obsolete or inappropriate, the iron law ofunintended consequences will catch up with us verysoon. From History, we know that social formationsthat thrive on injustice do not last. We will neverbuild a secure and prosperous Nigeria if our claim tofame is wazobia. Similarly, we cannot build a strongBenue if our sense of identity remains, Ugboju andAdoka, Orokam and Igumale, Oju and Agatu or Kparev


and Iharev. Affirmative action is the way to ensurethat no one gets left behind. What we have now holdsdown people for others to catch up. Nature did notdesign us like that. Once the motions for change setin, it is only a matter of time for change to occur.From History we know this.Mr Vice Chancellor sir, distinguished colleagues,

ladies and gentlemen an Ijo proverb made popular bythe cerebral Nigerian historian E.J. Alagoa says; Ikilled an elephant may be true. I carried it on myshoulder and took it home is certainly not true. Thestory is also told of a virgin girl who in a bid tocover her shyness from the prying eyes of some youngmen in a motor park, pulled up her skirt to cover herface. What of the factual statement about how thegrass suffers when two elephants fight. I often wonderwhat happens to the same grass when two elephantsmake love? One of the best-known economists of ourtime, Joseph Schumpeter once told his audience thatthey will have to make up their mind whether theywant simple answers to questions or useful ones andthat in most economic matters they cannot have both.129

History exists to serve as societal guideposts. Manyat times we learn nothing from it. Where we do notstudy it at all, the fate that befell the ‘’rabbitkingdom’’ stares us in the face or worse still; wewatch helplessly as we repeat grave errors from thepast. I hope I have provided you with some usefulanswers to some of the questions on why we are laggingbehind the rest of the world with respect to theeconomic challenges of our time.


AcknowledgmentsAn athlete runs in the outer world; a seeker runs inthe inner world. Now, for an athlete, the marathonis the longest race in the Olympics. It is twenty sixmiles. In the inner life, it is not twenty six milesbut million and billion of inner miles that a seekerhas to travel before he reaches his Destination.Since we have to cover a very great distance, thesooner we start running along the path of Eternity,the better. (Guru Sri Chinmoy 1974)My race in the inner path of life began on the 24th

of October 1960. As at today, I have spent 524,160hours on this earth. Growing up in the Nigeria DefenceAcademy Barracks in Kaduna, I was a precocious child.I was privileged to be a child of an independentNigeria. I started primary school at the Army ChildrenSchool Dan-Tunku Road in Kaduna and finished at St.Bernadette’s Private School Ibara, Abeokuta. Growingup in Kaduna in general and within military circlesin particular, was fun. I have vivid memories of thepogroms and the subsequent war as my father, a soldier,was in the thick of the war effort. Abeokuta was anexperience entirely. Life in the boarding house as a7-year-old was pretty tough. One had to cope withtough seniors, ‘’strange’’ cultures and a totallydifferent environment. I learnt how to sing the Egba‘’national anthem’’, eat fufu and efo, ewa and gbegiriand hated lafun and ewedu. For secondary school Ijoined my elder brother in Zaria at the famous StPaul’s College, Wusasa (now Kufena College). Sadly Isuffered serious health challenges prompting my mother


to force my father to relocate me to Lagos. I arrivedat St Gregory’s College Obalende in 1973 and spentthe next four years of my life in a school that shapeda good part of my worldview. As the oldest CatholicSecondary School in Nigeria, St Gregs had a verystrong tradition of academic work, sports and extra-curricular activities. Under the leadership of Mr.Paul Amenechi (aka Paulo) and great teachers like Mr.Bruce Onobrakpeya, Mr Adikibe (aka Jango), Mrs.Quenell, Ms. Ojehomon, and others better rememberedby their nicknames like, Alabama, Batter and Awuff.On our part as students, we also ensured that pranks,esoteric nicknames, business ‘’deals’’ and big fightswere part of our baggage.I was amongst 113,000 Nigerians who wrote the

University Matriculation Examinations for the firsttime in March of 1978. The results published in theDaily Times in September of the same year placed meamongst 13,000 students who gained admission to oneof the 11 universities that were in existence then. Iwas admitted to read B.A. History at the Universityof Calabar. As an original ‘’jambite’’ we were thebutt of all manner of jokes by Malabites and Angolans(as the male and female Unical students were thenreferred to). Unical was in its third year of existenceunder the able leadership of Professor EmmanuelAyankanmi Ayandele, Commander of the Order of theNiger, Odofin of Ogbomosho and Professor of History,University of Ibadan. As his ‘’academic mandarins’’,we were proud, rambunctious, and quick to show Unical‘’power’’. I was tutored by a world-class multi-


national faculty and mentored by the likes of GodfreyUzoigwe, Okon Uya, Geoffery Nwaka, Monday Abasiatai,Monday Noah, Handerson Tapela, Divendra Misra, JaneMartin and the ultra-versatile David T. Lloyd.At Unical, I was a very active sportsman. I was the

captain of the University Judo team in 1981 and wontwo silver medals at the Nigerian University Gamesheld in Zaria in 1982. I was also a member of thecricket and basketball teams. I combined my academics,with sports and campus politics very well and graduatedtop of my class and second best in the entire facultyin June of 1982. National service saw me in Funtua,Katsina State teaching at Government Day SecondarySchool. I taught History, English Literature andGeography and my students were the first set of theschool that wrote the West African Examinations. AfterNational Service, I had the good fortune of winning aprivate scholarship to study at the University ofBirmingham where I majored in African Economic Historyand Political Economy.At the age of 25 I returned to Nigeria with a

Masters Degree and got a job at my alma mater as anAssistant Lecturer. Under the able mentorship of thelikes of Professor Godfrey Uzoigwe, Late Okon Uya,late Erim O. Erim, late Monday Abasiatai within theDepartment, and the likes of Eddie and Bene Madunagu,Akpan Ekpo, Alozie Princewill, and Eskor Toyo and AdaUgah (of blessed memory). Outside the Department, Ibegan to build for myself a career in academics. Withcolleagues such as Stella Attoe, Oden Ewah, OffiongAbia, Aloy Chife, Baffoe Maison, Effiong Edunam, and


Simon Majuk (of blessed memory), we ensured that theflag of history in Unical flew steadily. As ASUUUnical Branch Treasurer I also had the opportunity tomeet with academic activists in other universities.The likes of Attahiru Jega, Dipo Fasina, FrancisAsobie, Toye Olorode, Ogban Iyam , Julius Ihonvbereand the late Festus Iyayi, were to positively impactmy worldview and perspectives of many aspects ofNigeria’s social realities.Calabar was my first home. It was my first abode

outside my parent’s house where I spent the nextseven years of my life. In 1992 my friend and colleagueAda Ugah drew my attention to the fact that a newUniversity was being established in Benue and thatthe Chairman of Council Ambassador Edwin Ogbu (ofblessed memory) had specifically requested that I beinvited to be part of it. I arrived Makurdi and afterdiscussing with my good friend Joe Iyo, I decided totake the job. The task of building a new Universityfrom scratch and working in my home state for thefirst time in my life excited me. I was charged withacademic and administrative responsibilities, whichI had to rise to. With help of the likes of ArmstrongAdejo, Joe Iyo, Atoato Igirgi (of blessed memory),Zack Gundu, Varvar Ayati and Okpe Okpe the HistoryDepartment of Benue State University, became one ofthe strongest departments in the University.The first set of students we produced are ‘’big

men’’ in their own right today. The likes of TerhembaWuam, Wilfred Uji and Sylvester Ugbegili are AssociateProfessors of History, while Martin Kpoghol and Terwase


Dzeka are senior lecturers. Others like Nina Wapela,Terwase Swande, Ben Pever, Qrisstuberg Amua are verystrong professionals in their own right. I am so veryproud of my other academic children and grandchildrenwho are too numerous to mention and who are today myfriends and colleagues. Dr. Sandy Onor, AssociateProfessor of History at Unical and current Senator ofthe Federal Republic, Professor Ini Udoka, ProfessorDan Chukwu, Professor Winifred Akoda, Professor AdoyiOnoja, Dr. Mfon Ekpootu, Dr. Faith Akor, Dr. DonaldOmagu, Dr. Patrick Ukase, Dr. Ogaba Adadu, Dr. DavidImbua and Dr. James Ewah of blessed memory.In Makurdi I also started a family. In 1994, I

married my friend and my love, Hilda Ihinwa Onyemenem,who I met at the University of Calabar in 1988. Ourson Anyebe Tochukwu Felix (ATF) arrived on the 24th

of October 1995 and his sister Ahmara Enode(Muushu)arrived in April of 1998. Hilda is today aninternational development worker and the unofficialqueen of anti-tobacco forces in West Africa. Withtheir brother Rufus Otanwa, Anyebe and Ahmara havemade us very proud parents. In Makurdi I also began to improve on my knowledge

of IT. I had started using computers by 1989. Usinga platform provided by my father, I built a modestInformation Technology company called Orbit Computers.I also established Aboki Publishers with my student,Terhemba Wuam. In Makurdi, my pals included, Joe Iyo,Tirfa Addingi, Paul Angya, Victor Uye, Latti Allen,Terhemba Isegh, Dave Orshi, Ijokimbi Abaagu, ChrisUloko and Adikpo Agbatse to mention a few. Also inMakurdi, I was introduced to the politics of Benue


State by Tehemba Shija working first with Paul Unongoand later by Shima Ayati, who introduced me to GeorgeAkume.After 14 years in Makurdi, and 20 years in the

University system, I needed a break. I had since 2000worked with Professor David Ker who as Vice-Chancellorfirst appointed me Dean, Student Affairs, and then in2001 as Deputy Vice-Chancellor. We both workedtirelessly to expand the academic space and upgradethe learning environment in the University. The effortspaid off as Professor Ker won the prize as the BestVice-Chancellor of State Universities in 2003. I tooka shot at the position of Vice-Chancellor when itbecome vacant in 2005 but lost in the final round ofthree.In the same year however, I was elected unopposed

as National President of the Historical Society ofNigeria during the 50th anniversary celebrations ofthe Society at Ibadan. The Society, which is theoldest professional society in Nigeria, as I noted inmy lecture, was in very bad shape and fixing it wasgoing to take a lot of time and effort. I therefore,took a sabbatical leave from Benue State Universityto work full time on reviving the Society. With thehelp of the likes of Chris Ogbogbo, Olayemi Akinwunmi,Sati Fwatshak, Okpeh Okpeh, Nkem Onyekpe, OdigweNwaokocha, Talla Ngarka, Dan Chukwu, Ajayi, M.S.Abdulkadir, David Koroma and Winifred Akoda, we wereable to rebuild the Society. I combined this effortwith working for a then budding Software Companycalled Socketworks founded by my former student atUnical, Aloy Chife. The period I spent at Socketworks


gave me an insight to how the private sector inNigeria operated and the nature and character ofinformation technology deployments within the Nigerianhigher education system. In Socketworks, I met andworked with many bright young men and women whothoroughly impressed me by their deep technicalknowledge, versatility, hard work, dedication to dutyand entrepreneurial spirit. The likes of PiusOnobahyedo, Jide Bamisaye, Dami Bamiro, Chibuzo Ike,Kalu Okorie, Francis Chiejine (who was with ZenithBank), Patrick Obilikwu, and Dowuese Lanshima, wereamongst some of the brightest people I worked with.In 2008, in tandem with two ex-colleagues inSocketworks, Jide Bamisaye and Collins Nkworji, I co-founded a technology company called Novasys. The companyhas over the years, delivered some cutting-edgeprojects in biometrics enabled payroll systems, GISembedded property valuation systems and EducationalManagement Solutions across Nigeria.The five years I spent in Wukari as Vice-Chancellor,

Kwararafa University was a most challenging one. Iworked with a great team that had Professor JerryGana as Chairman and Pro-Chancellor. His Majesty,Shekarau Angyu Masa-Ibi, Kuvyon II the Aku Uka ofWukari, remains a father figure and an epitome of aRoyal who understood that education was a criticalvariable in the liberation of the mind. His RoyalHighness, Alhaji Ahmadu Oga Onawo, the Andoma of Domawas the Chancellor of the University who went beyondperforming his ceremonial role during convocation tobeing a very active promoter of the University. JoshuaSangari and Japhet Hikon supported me as Registrar


and Bursar respectively. I worked with several youngmen and women who assumed responsibilities far abovetheir age and pay grade. They believed in me andserved diligently despite the lack of steady salariesand the several waves of communal and religious crisis.Professor Mohammed Kida, Dr. Donald Omagu, Mr. TonyAgbor and John Ogidi, showed deep commitment andcreativity while Ngohide Gbayange was the ‘’Manager’’of the Vice-Chancellors Office. General TY Danjuma,the Abonta of Wukari was a very kind benefactor and Ihad the singular honour of ‘’dragging’’ him to Wukaritwice in two years. Chief David Sabo Kente, lateChief Jibrin Amfani and his son, Abdulazziz ‘’Big-Man’’ Amfani contributed in no small measure to makingWukari a second home for me. My student and politicalelder Chief Shima Ayati made available to me hiscountry home in Zaki Biam to escape lonely weekendsin Wukari. Together with my childhood friend turnedbrother, Chief Obande Ogbole, I always savoured thosemoments.In my 59 year stay on this earth, the demise of six

persons have had a devastating impact on me. Firstwas Yakubu Ibrahim an immigration officer who died ina car crash in Calabar. The third and fourth were myfriend and colleague, Aliyu Idrees and Atoato Igirgiwho died of complications from typhoid fever and afreak football accident respectively. James Ewah andOkon Iyanam were my students who became my very closefriends. On the 25th of November this year, it willbe twenty years to the day that my father was shot andkilled by assailants in Otukpo. I remember all six


quite often wondering what they would be by now ifthey had not died when they did.I have been to all the 36 states of Nigeria, visited

29 countries in Africa, Europe, North America andAsia and have made friends from all over the world.My children have Idoma, Igara, Igbo, Igala and Yorubabloods flowing through them. They have over 500 firstcousins spread all over Nigeria and the world. Manyof their cousins are of Idoma, Tiv, Igala, Nupe,Ibibio, Edo, Akoko-Edo, Hausa and Birom origins. Someof their cousins are of Cameroonian, Egyptian, Zambian,Belgian, Ghanaian, Liberian, Senegalese, Jamaican,American and British extractions. My brothers andsisters Dr. Oche Ochefu, Mrs Enode Egwu, Mr. Hassan,Barrister Ochee Bamgboye, Engr. Ediga and Mr. TomOdeh have been wonderful to me all these years. Ourmother Mammy (founder of Mammy Market) will be 80 in2020. We pray God to keep her well so that we willcontinue to celebrate her wonderful life. My uncles,Dr. Yakubu Pius Ochefu, (who I am named after), Lt.Col Fidelis Ogili Ochefu and my auntie, Mrs. JumaiAdejo-Ogiri have filled gaps in my life with theirwarmth, advise, care and sense of family. My fatherin-law, Igwe Felix Onyemenem, has quietly supportedme with prayers, words of advice and encouragement.My two brothers-in-laws, Tony Egwu and Dola Bamgboyehave raised the quality of friendship to a very highpedestal.My fiercely loyal ‘’special family’’ consisting of

Dr. Emmanuel Ejembi, Mr. Apake Asemanya, (aka Gadaffy),Engr. Idoko Egbe, Ms. Kumawuese Gloria Bernie Kurga(aka KGB), John Achoda Odey, Engr. Ngbede Adah, and


my adopted children Celestine Dennis, Msendoo Tume,Friday Onuh in Ayingba and Simeon Sor who is the sonof my late former driver Orgen Jumbu, have allcontributed to making aspects of my life worthwhile.My back office team at Aboki Publishers made up ofBanke, Tina and Usha, I remain ever grateful of yoursupport and commitment.Since I left Wukari in 2017, I have been busy

multitasking and experimenting with new ideas. Inaddition to giving traction to the Open and Distancelearning programme at the Benue State University whichmy dear Vice Chancellor, Professor Musugh Kembeentrusted me with, I have been supporting myprofessional colleague, friend and brother of over 30years, Professor Mohammed Sanni Abdulkadir, ViceChancellor, Kogi State University, as Special Advisorand IT Consultant. I salute him and his hard-workingteam for turning around the fortunes of the Universityunder very trying circumstances. The Vice Chancellorof my alma mater studiorum , and first alumnus ViceChancellor of the University, Professor Zana Akpagumy school mate and friend has also been very supportive.As National President of Unical Alumni Association, Iam saddled with the responsibility of galvanizing thealumni world-wide to give back to our alma mater atoken of what she gave us. I salute you and Malabitesworldwide. I have also been consulting for ChiefSamuel Maduka Onyishi, Chairman Peace Mass Transitwho is building a University that will drive a visionof University education in Nigeria that I have hadfor years.


If life were to be a football match, I would havebeen fourteen minutes into the second half by now. Ihave had a tremendous first half and with approximately‘’thirty minutes’’ to go (baring any ‘’substitution’s’’made by the ‘’Coach’’), I expect to make the finalninety minutes and leave the field of play with loudovations. I give thanks and praise to the greatest‘’Coach’’ of them all for allowing us play the gameof life this far.

End Notes1. Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas The Wise Men:

Six Friends and the World They Made; Simon andSchuster, 1986.

2. A.G. Hopkins, Globalisation In World History,Random House, 2011.

3. Rkhty Amen, WRITING SYSTEM OF MEDU NETER,Institute of Khemtic Philology, 1987

4. Ibid.5. Erik Grimmer-Solem The Rise of Historical

Economics and Social Reform in Germany, 1864-1894, Oxford University Press, 2003.

6. Charles P. Kindleberger, Historical Economics:Art or Science?. University of California Press,1990

7. Ibid.8. Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, Vol.1,

Macmillan and Co, 1890, and Joan Robinson,Economic Philosophy, Transaction Publishers, 1966

9. Charles P. Kindleberger, Historical Economics:Art or Science


10. ibid.11. McCloskey, Donald N. ‘’Does the Past Have

Useful Economics?,’’ Journal of EconomicLiterature, 14(2), June 1976, pp. 434-61.

12. Anatole Kaletsky, Goodbye, homo economicus, Real-world Economics Review, issue no. 50, p.151

13. Ibid.14. W.N. Parker, Economic History and the Modern

Economist, B. Blackwell, 198615. John S. Lyons, Louis P. Cain, Samuel H. Williamson

(eds.), Reflections on the Cliometrics Revolution:Conversations with Economic Historians, Volume38 of Routledge Explorations in Economic History,Routledge, 2007

16. Ibid.17. Ibid.18. Ibid;19. Geroge Katona and James Morgan,’’Essays on

Behavioral Economics’’ Survey Research Center,Institute for Social Research, University ofMichigan, 1980

20. Ibid.21. Ibid.22. World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society,

and Behavior23. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, Oxford

University Press, 200124. Joseph Stiglitz, Selected Works of Joseph E.

Stiglitz: Volume I: Information and EconomicAnalysis: Volume I: Information and EconomicAnalysis, Oxford University Press, 2008


25. Fritz Machlup, Knowledge: Its Creation,Distribution and Economic Significance, PrincetonUniversity Press, 2014

26. Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital,Transworld, 2010

27. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Can CapitalismSurvive?: Creative Destruction and the Futureof the Global Economy, HarperCollins, 2009

28. Douglas C. North, Institutions, InstitutionalChange and Economic Performance, CambridgeUniversity Press, 1990

29. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why NationsFail: The origins of Power, Prosperity andPoverty’’ Profile Books, 2012

30. Mohammed Yunus, Creating a World WithoutPoverty: Social Business and the Future ofCapitalism, Public Affairs, 2009.

31. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, PoorEconomics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way toFight Global Poverty, Public Affairs, 2012,

32. Deepak Lal, Culture, Democracy and Development. NCAER, Lecture, New Delhi, 1998. Also seeSalim Rasheed, Economics and Culture: DeepakLal on the West vs the Rest, Journal of AsiaPacific Economy, 8,3, 2003

33. Ibid. p.2234. Ibid. p.2235. Ibid.p2236. Ibid. p.2237. Deepak Lal and Hla Myint, The Political Economy

of Poverty, Equity and Growth: A ComparativeStudy, Oxford University Press, 1998


38. Ibid. Deepak Lal, Does Modernization RequireWesternization? The Independent Review, vol,2000. Also see, Y. Ochefu, ‘’Democracy anddevelopment in West Africa: how integral is therelationship?’’ NESG Economic Indicators 2007,13, 1,

39. For a detailed exposition of the Annales School,see André Burguière, The Annales School: AnIntellectual History (translated by, Jane MarieTodd), Cornell University Press, 2009.

40. Samir Amin, Capitalism in the Age ofGlobalization: The Management of ContemporarySociety, London, Zed Press,1997; Walter Rodney,How Europe Underdevdeloped Africa, reprinted byFahamu/Pambazuka, 2012; Bade Onimode, Imperialismand Under-development in Nigeria: The Dialecticsof Mass PovertyMacmillan Nigeria,1983 also seehis Political Economy of the African Crisis,Zed Press, 1988; Edwin Madunagu and Biodun Jeyifo,Understanding Nigeria and the new imperialism:essays 2000-2006, Clear Lines Press, 2006; EskorToyo, Working Class, Democracy, and PoliticalPower. Published by M.E. Kolagbodi MemorialFoundation (KMF), 1997; James Inikori et.al,(ed.), The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects onEconomies, Societies and Peoples in Africa, theAmericas, and Europe, History: African Americanstudies, Duke University Press, 1992; ToyinFalola, Key Events in African History: A ReferenceGuide, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002; EmmanuelAkyeampong, Robert H. Bates, Nathan Nunn, JamesRobinson (editors), Africa’s Development in


Historical Perspective, Cambridge UniversityPress, 2014; Emmanuel Akyheampong, Drink, Power,and Cultural Change: A Social History of Alcoholin Ghana, C. 1800 to Recent Times, Boydell &Brewer, Limited, 1996; Tiyambe Zeleza, A moderneconomic history of Africa, Volume 1; Codesria,1993; Claude Ake, Political economy of Nigeria,Longman, 1985; Julius Ihonvbere, Africa and theNew World Order, Peter Lang, 2000.Y. Ochefu. ‘’Historians and AfricanistHistory: A Critique’’, in Terhemba Wuam andPhilibus Nwamagyi (eds.) Perspectives inHistory, Development and InternationalRelations: Festschrift in honour of ProfessorIbrahim James, Aboki Publishers, 2018.

41. Ibrahim A. Gambari, ‘’The Challenges of NationsBuilding: The Case of Nigeria First YearAnniversary Lecture, Mustapha Akanbi Foundation,Abuja, February 2008.

42. Ibid. Also see; Y. Ochefu Blind Patriots, LameNationalists, Deaf and Dumb Nihilists:Cogitations on the Nexus between Patriotism andNation Building in Nigeria, the HistoricalManifestations and Prognosticating near futures.Lead paper presented at Nigeria Academy of Letter,2017, Convocation, University of Lagos.

43. Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why NationsFail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity andPoverty, New York, Crown Publishers, 2012. Alsosee; Acemoglu, Daron; Johnson, Simon; Robinson,James A. (2001). ‘’The Colonial Origins ofComparative Development: An Empirical


Investigation’’. The American EconomicReview.91 (5): 1369-1401.

44. Sayre P. Schatz, Nigeria’s First NationalDevelopment Plan (1962-68): An Appraisal,Nigerian Institute of Social and EconomicResearch, 1963

45. Wolfgang Stopler, Planning Without Facts, HarvardUniversity Press, 2014.

46. V.P.Diejamoah and Henry Bienen, The PoliticalEconomy of Income Distribution in Nigeria, Holmesand Mier, 1981.

47. Ibid.48. Ibid.49. For a very deep perspective on this, see, Jared

Diamond 2017,Guns, Germs, and Steel. W.W Norton& Company, Ltd New York, London.

50. Economic Growth and Recovery Plan Nigeria https://statehouse.gov.ng/policy/economy/economic-recovery-and-growth-plan/

51. Ibid.52. Narcís Serra, Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Washington

Consensus Reconsidered: Towards a New GlobalGovernance, OUP Oxford, 2008.

53. Erik Reinart, How Rich Countries Got Rich ...and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor, PublicAffairs,2019

54. Y. Ochefu Back to the future: HistoricizingNigeria’s Development Plans from the era of‘’Planning without Facts’’ to the TransformationAgenda. Paper presented on the Occasion of BookLaunch,


55. Report of the Team from the Academia on PolicySuggestions to the second term agenda of PresidentMuhammadu Buhari’s Administration, June 2019

56. Charles Soludo, ‘’Re-Designing the NigerianEconomy with New Ideas’’; The Covenant Place,Beside the National Theatre, Iganmu; October 1,2019.

57. Wolfgang Stolper. Back to the future.58. Cited in F. Cooper, Africa and the World Economy,

The African Studies Review, vol14,no8, 1981,p.56.

59. Y. Ochefu, ‘’Development Planning in an era ofDemocratic transition: An Assessment of the BenueAdvance Plan’’, African Journal of Societyand Economy, vol. 6. 2004.

60. Y. Ochefu, ‘’Can a Leopard change its spots?Political Will, Self Interest and the Challengesof the 2007 Elections’’, Commissioned Lead paperto a Stakeholder Meeting on the 2007 Electionsin Nigeria, by the International RepublicanInstitute, Abuja, 2006.

61. You can calculate this figure by using data fromGoogle Datasets. https://toolbox.google.com/datasetsearch.

62. ‘’Dike begat Ajayi who begat Abasiattai whobegat Ochefu and who begat Akoda’’. FiveGenerations of Nigerian Historians and thehistory they ‘’made’’. K.O. Dike MemorialLecture, 60th Congress of Historical Society ofNigeria, University of Abuja, 2014.

63. Listed as follows are the names of Presidents ofthe Society since Professor Dike’s era, and the


years in which they served: Professor JacobFestus Ade-Ajayi (1966-1968); Professor SaburiOladeni Biobaku (1968-1971); Professor EbiegberiJoe Alagoa (1981-1983 and 1992-1994); ProfessorObaro Ikime (1984-1988-two tenures); ProfessorGodfrey Nwanoruo Uzoigwe (1988 ‘’ 1992); ProfessorAbdullahi Mahdi (1994-1999); Professor MondayBenson Abasiattai (1999 - 2005); Professor YakubuAboki Ochefu (2005 -2009), Professor OlayemiAkinwunmi (2010- 2014, Professor C.B.N Ogbogbo(2014-2018) and Professor Okpeh Okpeh 2018 - tothe present.

64. Cited in T. Olali, A History of the HistoricalSociety of Nigeria, in press.

65. C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the ScientificRevolution, The Bede Lecture (Cambridge Univ.Press, New York, 1959.

66. Ibid.67. For details on how super computers have been

used in the cracking of the genetic code, see;https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/2018/06/08/genomics-code-exceeds-exaops-on-summit-supercomputer/

68. For a summary of the initial findings see,International Human Genome Sequencing ConsortiumInitial sequencing and analysis of the humangenome. Nature, vol. 409, 2001. Also,International HapMap Consortium The InternationalHapMap Project. Nature 426, 2003.

69. See Report of The National Genome Project. Alsosee Noah A. Rosenberg et.al ‘’Genetic Structureof Human Populations’’, SCIENCE, VOL. 298, 2002(www.sciencemag.org)


70. Ibid.71. Cavalli-Sforza LL, Menozzi P, Piazza A, The

history and geography of human Genes. PrincetonUniversity Press, Princeton, 1994.

72. Harpending HC, et.al ‘’Genetic traces of ancientdemography’’. Proceeding of the National Academyof Science USA, vol 95, 1998. Also see, AlecKnight, Peter A. Underhill and Holly M. Mortensenet.al, ‘’African Y Chromosome and mtDNADivergence Provides Insight into the History ofClick Languages’’, Current Biology, Vol. 13,2003

73. Ibid.74. See Report of The National Genome Project. Also

see Noah A. Rosenberg et.al ‘’Genetic Structureof Human Populations’’, SCIENCE, VOL. 298, 2002(www.sciencemag.org).

75. Donald Johanson, ‘’An Origins of Modern Humans:Multiregional or Out ofAfrica?’’,ActionBioscience.org.www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/johanson.html.

76. Oppenheimer, S, The Real Eve: Modern Man’s JourneyOut of Africa. New York, NY: Carroll & Graf.2004,

77. Also see, www.thegeneticgenealogist.com/2007/07/20/mitochondrial-eve-and-y-chromosomal-adam

78. www.biblicalcreation.org.uk/origins_archaeology/bcs023.html.

79. 21 Patin E, Laval G, Barreiro LB, Salas A,Semino O, et al. ‘’Inferring the DemographicHistory of African Farmers and Pygmy Hunter‘’Gatherers Using a Multilocus Resequencing Data


Set’’. Journal of PLoS Genetics 5(4), 2009.Also see Alec Knight, Peter A. Underhill andHolly M. Mortensen et.al, ‘’African Y Chromosomeand mtDNA Divergence Provides Insight into theHistory of Click Languages’’, Current Biology,Vol. 13, 464-473, March 18, 2003.

80. Cerrxiv et.al, ‘’MtDNA of Fulani Nomads andtheir Genetic Relationships to neighbouringSedentary Populations’’, Human Biology, vol.78, no1, 2006.

81. Tishkoff SA, Williams SM, ‘’Genetic analysisof African populations: human evolution andcomplex disease’’. National Review of Genetics3:, 2002. Also see Cavalli-Sforza LL, FeldmanMW The application of molecular geneticapproaches to the study of human evolution.National Review of Genetics 33, 2003

82. Kelly Owens and Mary-Claire King ‘’Genomic Viewsof Human History’’, SCIENCE, Vol. 286, October1999, www.sciencemag.org.

83. Cavalli-Sforza LL, Menozzi P, Piazza A, Thehistory and geography of human genes.

84. For example, Genetic evidence supports the oraltradition that the Lemba, who are now Bantu-speaking people of southern Africa, derive fromJews who migrated from the Middle East to Yemen2700 years ago and from Yemen to southern Africa2400 to 2000 years ago. More than 50% of Lemba Ychromosomes carry haplotypes that are commonamong Jewish populations but absent in theirAfrican neighbors. See Spurdle B.A and T. Jenkins,T, American Journal of Human. Genetic. 59,


1126 (1996).85. Nigeria is one of the countries involved in the

Human Genome mapping projects. 39 families fromIbadan were sampled. Data from over 1500 Nigerianscurrently sit on their server. For these detailssee www.nationalgenomeproject.org.

86. For details of this project, seewww.genographic.nationalgeographic.com.

4. See for Example, The African Genome VariationProject; https://www.sanger.ac.uk/science/collaboration/african-genome-variation-project;The Genetic Society of Nigeria has been exploringcollaborative research on genetic mapping inNigeria. Also see; Y. Ochefu, ‘’Social Biology,Cliogenetics and Archaeogenetics: An Expositionof some current trends in the use of AdvancedScience and Technology for Historical Researchin Africa’’, Paper presented on the occasion ofthe Professor Bassey Andah Memorial Lecture,Calabar, 16th January, 2010.

87. Obaro, Ikime, Ground work of Nigerian History,Hienemann, 1980

88. Walter W. Powell and Kaisa Snellman, TheKnowledge Economy, Annual Review of Sociology,Vol. 30, 2004. 30:199-220.

89. Fritz Machlup, Knowledge: Its Creation,Distribution and Economic Significance, PrincetonUniversity Press, 2014.

90. John Howkins, The Creative Economy. How peoplemake money from ideas, The Penguin Press, 2001.

91. Deloitte (2014) Industry 4.0 ’’Challenges andsolutions for the digital transformation and


use of exponential technologies -http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ch/Documents/manufacturing/chen-manufacturing-industry-4-0-24102014.pdf.Foresight (2013) The Future of Manufacturing: Anew era of opportunity and challenge for the UKProject Report. The Government Office for Science,London.Green, A; Hogarth, T; Kispeter,E; Owen, D (2016)The Future of productivity in manufacturing.Strategic Labour Market Intelligence Report.Institute for Employment Research, Universityof Warwick: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ier/r e s e a r c h / s t r a t e g i c _ l m i /ier_2016_manufacturing_sector_productivity_report.pdf.World Economic Forum 2018 Report on the Futureof Jobs.

92. New Knowledge ‘’in the Information Age. TheIssues, Challenges and some ContemplativeThoughts. Also see Y. Ochefu’’, Perspectives ofDigital Academics: Teaching, Learning, andMentoring’’, 2018 Commencement lecture for Schoolof Post Graduate Studies, Benue State University,Makurdi

93. Parinita Gohil, ‘’Digital Education-The Futureof Learning.’’ (https://www.entrepreneur.com/author/parinita-gohil).

94. www.classroom.google.com95. Ronald Barnett, Understanding the University:

Institution, idea, possibilities, Routledge,2015.


96. Ibid.97. David Stately, Alternative Universities:

Speculative Design for Innovation in HigherEducation (https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/alternative Also see, The subject matterof Disruption of Education is well summarizedin the edited volume by Deborah Lupton, IngerMewburn and Pat Thomson (eds.),The DigitalAcademic: Critical Perspectives on DigitalTechnologies in Higher Education,Routledge. 2018.

98. David Stately99. Ibid.100. Pieter Spinder, http://www.knowmads.nl/faculty/

pieter-spinder/101. Ibid.102. David Stately, Alternative Universities.103. Ibid.104. The Institute for the Future, Future Work Skills

2020, Also see, Jenny Andersson, The Future ofthe World: Futurology, Futurists, and the Strugglefor the Post Cold War Imagination, OUP Oxford,2018

105. David Stately, Alternative Universities.106. Ibid.107. Ibid.108. (https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/05/06/

the-worlds-most-valuable-resource-is-no-longer-oil-but-data)

109. Ibid.110. Donald Feinberg ‘’The Future of the DBMS Market

Is Cloud’’ https://blogs.gartner.com/adam-ronthal/2019/06/23/future-database-management-


systems-cloud/111 David West, ‘’AI-powered pathology is

transforming cancer care’’ https://venturebeat.com/2017/10/19/ai-powered-pathology-is-transforming-cancer-care/

112 Ibid.113. Bjørn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist:

Measuring the Real State of the World, CUP,2001.

114. National Intelligence Council, Global Trends2025: A Transformed World, 2010.

115. Ibid.116. Winston S. Churchill (edited by) Richard M.

Langworth, Churchill by Himself: In His OwnWords Rosetta Books, 2013.

117 Ossip K. Flechtheim, History and Futurology,Hain, 1966.

118. Ibid.119. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Harper,

2017 also see his Sapiens: A History of Mankind.HarperCollins Publishers, 2015.

120. Okot p’Bitek, Song of Lawino, reprint edition,East African Publishers, 1995 p.117.

121 Okot p’Bitek, Song of Ocol, reprint edition,East African Publishers, 1995 p.126.

122. Ibid. p.129.123 Ras, Nahmir Amun, The Neter Sesen, Lulu.com,

2014124 James Hardley Chase, The Vulture is a Patient

Bird, reprinted by Orion Publishing Group, 2013125 Quoted in Kemi. K. Bankole, Slavery and Medicine:

Enslavement and Medical Practices in Antebellum


Louisiana, Taylor & Francis, 1998126 Strength from Abroad: The Economic Power of

Nigeria’s Diaspora, 2019 Report byPricewaterhouseCoopers Limited.

127. Ibid.128. Ibid.129. Quoted in Erik S. Reinert ‘’The Visionary Realism

of German Economics’’: From the Thirty Years’War to the Cold War, Anthem Press, 2019.