Professor ‘Rauf Ayoade Dunmoye: Human Capacity Developer and Political Economist: My Reminiscences (1)

By Prof Hassan Saliu

Since the news of his demise hit the airwaves, there has been an outpouring of grief from his family members, friends, students, colleagues and acquaintances. Reading through the numerous write-ups, especially those written by his former students, it is clear that he was a good mentor to those who passed under his tutelage. This tribute, however, will be different, based on the longevity of my relationship with him and the various levels I traversed with him over the years before his death on August 19, 2024.

It is difficult for me to pinpoint the exact date that marked the beginning of our relationship. One event, however, stands out as probably the starting point in our relationship. In 1990, I was recruited into the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna, as an Assistant Lecturer. There, I met the lanky Adedeji Ebo and the late Kris Obudumu, a Marxist, who were already on ground in the position I was appointed into. David O. Alabi, the prolific essayist, joined some months after my recruitment. At that time, we only had one or two seniors. Professor Ibrahim James was the Head of Department when I joined the Department of International Relations and Defence Studies. It was, therefore, pleasing news to me when Dr. Dunmoye was made our external examiner in 1991. He was not yet a Professor but was probably under consideration for the position of Readership at ABU.

Late Dunmoye’s base

The first time he appeared before us for the assignment, he was bubbly, vibrant, and full of life. He gave tips on how to be good markers and examiners. He then went ahead to offer advice on how we could make it generally in academia. We lost contact immediately after his tenure as External Examiner, though I quietly offered a prayer to God to make me more assured, versatile, and knowledgeable like him. I think he was replaced after his tenure by Professor Attahiru Jega, another academic model.

My prayer appeared to be answered as fate later put me in a position to play a role at a certain point in his career progression. How it happened that I was picked for the role, I still do not have an idea. This development subsequently coloured our relationship, though it ran into occasional turbulence. We did not allow the issues that created the disagreements between us to define our cordiality. This was the case at the Keffi conference of the NPSA and on SIRA Platform. I will return to these issues in the second part of this tribute.

Meanwhile, we were not immediately close after his tenure at the NDA when I was there as a lecturer. We occasionally met in Zaria and Kaduna during the heyday of the struggle against military rule in our country. Most writers were not aware of his activism during that time. Although he was not a regular face like Professor Tijjani Bande, another of our refined senior colleague who was always in Kaduna with us pushing the agenda for the return of democracy to the country, he was nevertheless an activist.

The opportunity to reconnect with each other again offered itself in Ibadan when we went there for the 1998 conference of the NPSA. When talks began about a new executive for our dear Association, NPSA, my expectation was that Oga Dunmoye would show interest in becoming the president, especially when it was clear that UI had no slate in the best tradition of the NPSA. He did not. Instead, he rooted for his colleague, whom he was always deferring to, Professor Paul Izah. The latter was put forward by the ABU delegates who attended the conference in Ibadan. People had whispered to me that Professor Dunmoye did not step forward because Professor Izah was his senior at ABU, and that he was happy being a kingmaker rather than being the king himself. Whatever the case, the two of them were inseparable and had gone a long way in their relationship, built on mutual respect and seniority. They fondly called each other by their first names: Ayo and Paul.

For those who do not know, a situation arose when a Professor descended heavily on one of the students being supervised by Professor Dunmoye during an internal defence and literally tore his thesis into shreds. What did Professor Dunmoye do on that occasion? He kept quiet and, after the viva, he simply told the student, “You have to go back to the field to expand the scope of your data.” Obviously, the candidate had expected a contrary position from his supervisor. He did not get it. Instead, he aligned himself with the leading methodology teacher in his department. From my base in Ilorin, I could sense the anger in the student with the turn of events as he cried profusely when telling me the story as someone who had put in a word across for him when he was seeking the PhD admission in the first instance. I had no cause but to concur with the Zaria verdict on the matter.

He was not the only one I had spoken to Professor Dunmoye and others in Zaria about PhD admissions. I did that for four other candidates, and they all obliged me with the Offa Prince having two or three of them. That was Dunmoye for all of us; he was a team player.

The lesson to learn from the episode is that whoever decides to be painstaking about a student project should not be considered a bad person. He is just doing his work, helping to improve the work presented. After all, the project, when certified to be fine, will carry the label of the department and that of the university. Another lesson is that the supervisor did not take it personal, which would have created a major division in the department. That is what it should be! Lecturers need to be together when assessing a thesis for the department and the university; they should avoid the antics of students who will not mind creating a division so far as the degrees would be awarded to them. The department can break into pieces afterwards; they care less.

Baba Zaria, as he was fondly called, had his own canny way of detecting good materials even among his junior colleagues and relating with them on that basis. I was instrumental in his appointment as external examiner during my time as Head of Department over twenty years ago (2002-2004) at Ilorin. On one occasion, as our external examiner, he brought down the scores of some projects without any drama from 70 to 50 because they did not merit the scores given to them by my colleagues in Ilorin. He politely pointed out the errors contained in the projects that did not make them merit the awarded scores. Borne out of his deep respect for me, he nominated me twice as a resource person to consultants who were working with the National Assembly in Nigeria. The first was on the security situation that was brewing and showing signs of falling apart at that time. The second was an induction programme for newly elected members of the National Assembly that held in Makurdi and Asaba in 2011. The last engagement converted me into a federal scholar from my consistent engagement with IR.

At the end of the second phase in Asaba, he called me aside and said to me, “Saliu, when did you become a federal scholar?” apparently because of the good impression I had created after the presentation. I simply told him and Professor Sam Egwu that I agreed to the temporary conversion because the pay was good. We all laughed over it.

On my part, I reciprocated by using my influence to get one of his sons to gain admission to read engineering at Ilorin. At a point when his promotion at ABU was developing a hitch, I offered to initiate a process of making him a Professor in our University in Ilorin. He initially agreed to the move but later withdrew his interest when he told me that he would like to be a Professor in ABU, not Unilorin. That did not mark the end of my pressure on him to relocate to Ilorin or any other place closer to his Offa roots. I had made the passionate appeal that, having become a Professor at ABU, he should consider coming back home and relocating to any University of his choice around Ilorin.  More so, as a Prince who should be interested in the happenings in the royal court.  I also informed him that there are two universities in Offa town, if Ilorin was not appealing to him. He heard me out but was unable to do anything about it before he died.

Where Prof Dunmoye also was

I even used his age as a compelling reason for him to relocate home, but he declined. Perhaps this informed his another name call, Baba Zaria, that was invented by Professor Bola Akinterinwa at the gathering of Political Scientists that was convened at the National Defence College to ginger the NPSA into more activism after a lull in its activities in 2015. I will say more on this when discussing his contributions to the NPSA in the second installment of this tribute.

As a beneficiary of his human capital development efforts, I am in agreement with others that, in our recent history, Professor Dunmoye was a reference point on sudents’ projects supervision, informed by his high productivity on that score. Some writers have put the number of his PhD supervisees at 47. It is likely he had done more than that figure before his death. I know his first PhD student to be the late Professor Andrew Ohwona, who later served as the Treasurer of the NPSA under Professor Izah’s presidency. We have two of Professor Dunmoye’s brought-up Doctors in our department in Ilorin: Dr. Modupe Ake and the current Treasurer of the NPSA, Dr. Abdulrasheed Mohammad.

Professor Ebenezer Ejalonibu, a former staff at UNILORIN who is now with the Federal University in Lokoja, was another whom I took to Professor Dunmoye at the Queens School in Ilorin for his PhD supervision. He obliged the request. Given his dexterity and high record of successful supervision of numerous doctoral theses, I was prompted to once ask him about his success at doctoral supervision. He said something to me to the effect that his commitment and patience with which he carried out the academic responsibility were the secrets of his success in students’ project supervision. Most times, he would go out of his way to help students in finishing up their projects by putting deserving pressure on them to be on the course of their projects. I therefore say that without any iota of doubt that his supervisory roles, more than anything else, defined him as a scholar, in addition to his advocacy for a new social order in our country through public platforms he had utilized in disseminating his research findings.

He began his career like his friend, Professor W.O. Alli, as a Marxist scholar, speaking the language of Marxism. In the course of doing my doctoral work, I ran into his earliest write-ups, and they were full of the jargons of Marxism. He could not have done otherwise, being a political economist and given the thriving Marxist culture in ABU with Drs. Bala Usman, Beckman, Patrick Wilmot, and others leading the charge in cultivating and advocating for the Marxist order in the country, though with differing flavours of the tradition. Professor Dunmoye keyed into the frame but before his death, he least spoke the language of Marxism, while he was still committed to the school of thought.

As a Prince, he was a cultural ambassador. This showed in his mode of dressing, which depicted Yoruba attires and the northern mode of dressing, reflecting the two cultures that people of his native area project. He told me of a book he wrote on Offa, his hometown, where he had delved into the history of royalty of the town. The book was later found useful by the courts when adjudicating on the stool of the town sometime in the past. It is necessary to inform the reader that the subject of this tribute was a God-fearing man. He would not like to hurt a fly talk less of a human being. But when it did happen, he would try to make it up whenever he had the opportunity.

It is relevant here to recall an incident that happened between us on the platform of the Society for International Relations Awareness (SIRA). When it was apparent that I was going to be the president of the association, Professor Dunmoye appeared on the scene to prevent me from being the president of SIRA. In the course of wondering why he was opposed to me, he summoned me and said that in his judgement, it would be better for me to be the president of the Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA) than being the president of SIRA. He therefore went round all the major leaders that they should excuse Saliu from SIRA’s exalted position, as he was being prepared for the presidency of the NPSA. Truly, he was personally in Ilorin in 2021 to make it happen.  Prof. Dunmoye was indeed a man of his words with strong convictions

He lived his adult life in the north. He schooled and worked in Sokoto before he was admitted and recruited as a lecturer in ABU in 1976 upon graduation in 1975 with a BSc in Social Sciences in the Second Class Upper Division. Some would wonder why Social Sciences? All disciplines in the Social Sciences were grouped together under the rubric of Social Sciences, and students were only allowed to major in any of the fields. The tradition continued until later when it was changed, and individual departments were created for each of the subjects. He did his MSc in Political Science from the same school in 1980.  After teaching for some years, he went to Canada, the real Toronto University, for his PhD and returned to his department in 1986 with the determination to make his mark in academia. He became a Reader in 1993 but had some delays before he became a Professor in 2005, though his promotion to the rank was backdated.

Before his death, he was a resource person to the National Defence College, Abuja, Foreign Service Academy, Badagry, Institute of Security Studies, Abuja, Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna, I Division of the Nigerian Army, Kaduna, among others. He had gone on sabbatical to UNILAG, UniAbuja, and the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna, where he made his impacts in curricular development and supervision. Before his retirement in 2020, he had contributed to manpower development for the Nigerian nation and beyond. Until his death and upon retirement, he was associated with some universities where his efforts at human capital development cannot be forgotten in a hurry.

Adieu, Professor Dunmoye, the Prince, Baba Zaria, notable political economist, and lover of the adage “young shall grow.” Rest well our teacher, mentor and confidant of no mean stature.

The author is the incumbent President, NPSA.