By Prof Hassan A. Saliu
As I indicated in the first part of this tribute, the Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA) has indeed lost a great pillar in Professor Ayo Dunmoye. Condolences have been pouring in, emphasizing various aspects of his life known to the writers. Some of our members have condoled with me over his passing, knowing the kind of relationship that existed between us when he was alive. They were right to have done so.
He was a rare gem and committed member of the association that I have the honour of leading at the moment. I am grateful to all those who have kept the association’s flag flying since 1973 when it came into being. While some elders have taken a back seat, watching our level of impact, others have advised, corrected, and commended us, believing that one is never too old to contribute to shaping the impact level of the NPSA in Nigeria and beyond.
Late Dunmoye’s base
The late Professor Dunmoye was a formidable guardian to the current leadership of our association. His role in the NPSA was consistent and historical. He had done for this executive committee what he had done for previous ones. This explains why members have been waiting for the president to comment on his contributions to the NPSA spanning over five decades before his death on August 19, 2024.
Honestly, I do not know where to start again because of the diverse contributions he had made to our association, covering many aspects. By my records, he was the most consistent attendee of our recent conferences. For instance, he attended those that held in Keffi, Port Harcourt, Abakaliki, Calabar, Ilorin, and Lokoja, providing support to successive executives.
He contentedly led the ABU delegates to our conferences. Only a few campuses can rival the Zaria campus’s level of participation in our conferences. Professor Dunmoye was a stabilizing factor in the NPSA. For example, his support for Keffi to host the Secretariat after Sokoto was initially displeasing to me, given our level of preparations for the conference.
The matter of the Keffi conference was a bit complicated as ASUU and its matters were involved. Ordinarily, there should not have been any issue, but Keffi being the host was interested in taking over the Secretariat of the NPSA, in line with a not-so-well-respected tradition of the association. Oga Dunmoye was on the side of Keffi, not for any other reason but basically for two factors. One, he detested the idea of being called ‘Saliu’s boy’ because of an event that took place at the National Defence College, NDC, in January 2015.
After much concern was expressed by members of the NPSA on the then exco for its relative inactivity for four years, I volunteered to coordinate the ensuing meeting in Abuja to chart a way forward for our association. Dr. Emeka Okereke was one of those who felt concern and poured out his mind on the matter, contrary to the insinuation that I brought the idea up for selfish reasons. What I only did was to serve as the coordinator at the eleventh hour.
Arising from my successful coordination of the meeting, I was blackmailed as having my boys in the NPSA. How Professors Alli, Dunmoye, Nwolise, Ezeani, Akinterinwa, Zabadi, Adetula, and other senior members of our association could have been my boys? I would like to ask. It was not true, but the propaganda against my efforts was intense, and it was made to appear so.
It is instructive to note that, borne out of the genuine love for the NPSA, all the attendees were responsible for their transportation, feeding, and lodging while in Abuja for the meeting. This obviously made Baba Zaria frown at my aspiration, so that the propaganda stunts would not be given the needed oxygen to make them real. The plain truth is that the meeting was like a kind of pressure point that was held in order to nudge the then exco into more activism. As soon as it came up with its plans for our next conference in Keffi, nothing was heard again about the gathering; it blew away like wind.
For the benefit of our younger colleagues, that intervention was not strange to the NPSA. A similar development had occurred in the past when for five years (1998-2003), our association was in a silent mode under an exco. This prompted Prof. Godwin Onu, a staunch member of the NPSA and currently, the Coordinator of AAPS for West Africa to write a letter to all Heads of Political Science in Nigeria on the need to arrest the state of inertia in our association in 2003. That culminated in the Zaria conference that held that year. I say dalum (thank you) to Prof. Onu for his efforts at reviving the NPSA that time. I will say more on this in my forthcoming NPSA Monograph titled: My Reflections on NPSA.
Two, was the ASUU dimension. He really wanted to be seen as ASUU compliant. Supporting my candidature at that point in time would have made him lose some goodwill, which he was not prepared to. I knew he would have rooted for me without the cobwebs/obstacles on the way.
Three, was the angle of our tradition in the NPSA. By it, ordinarily, any campus hosting our conference takes over the Secretariat. This has not been faithfully followed. It was therefore the weakest point against Ilorin’s aspiration. Consequently, our relations got strained but not for long. His stance against the Ilorin campus, which translated into my candidacy, was thus informed by three factors but they ultimately allowed me to be more prepared for my presidency that came longer than expected in 2021.
A textual marker of Political Science in Dunmoye’s time
Prof. Dunmoye was involved in resolving issues within the association, including those that came up in the Southeast after the elections in Abakaliki. Something happened in Abakaliki that most of our members may not be aware of. In keeping with the tradition of the NPSA to work for consensus in picking its exco members where it is possible, I was saddled with the responsibility of doing that in Abakaliki. Ten minutes to the announcement of the consensus list, Prof. Dunmoye walked in where I was carrying out the assignment and caused a disruption to the list being prepared. His message was that: ‘’Saliu, you must be the Vice-President in the next exco’’ He gave his reasons to me which were to strengthen an earlier decision taken by the NPSA at Keffi. The only snag was that I had gone far with the list, making provisions for regional representations.
On the original list, I was penciled down to be an ex-official member in the exco but with Baba Zaria’s intervention, the list had to be reshuffled to accommodate his directive. Prof. Sat Obiyan who had been penciled down as the Vice-President, representing the South-West Zone, had to be dropped from that position. He was pushed to the position of DoR which was also desired by two other persons from South-West and one person from the South-South Zone.
I was most reluctant to go with the directive for the simple reason that I did not want to be tsofo bazan (unworthy senior) by serving as Vice-President consecutively under persons who were by far my juniors in rank. However, based on the level of respect that Prof. Dunmoye enjoyed among us, we all agreed to his suggestion. The post of the VP was the only position that was contested for in Abakaliki. At Ilorin, his presence went a long way in resolving some issues associated with the transition into another executive. He was heavily involved in the constitution of a new executive for our association, which gave every geopolitical zone a fair representation.
In terms of specifics, he was the chair of the Local Organizing Committee for the Zaria NPSA conference in 2003. Prof. Dunmoye was once the Acting Director of Research and Publications during one of the trying times of the association, and he creditably discharged the responsibilities of the office, which resulted in the timely publication of our journals and proceedings.
Under Prof. Okolie, Prof. Dunmoye was made the chair of the constitutional review committee of the NPSA that produced the current constitution in use. He was equally the chair of the agenda-setting meeting for the new President of Nigeria organized by the NPSA that held in Abuja in June 2023.
Earlier, at the Ilorin conference in 2021, he effectively chaired the opening ceremony of the conference and participated actively in the remaining activities of the conference, as he had always done. Hardly can the history of the NPSA North-West Zone be written without reserving a big portion for Professor Dunmoye for the role he played in midwifing and making it functional.
At the Lokoja Conference of 2024, which was his second-last official engagement with the NPSA before his demise, his presence and those of other elders illuminated the conference. I recall that during the business session, he commended the executive for its string of achievements and later asked a question on the minutes of the last conference.
He also extended his academic services to our publications. He not only reviewed the first manuscript for our resuscitated NPSA monograph but also served as a reviewer for our other publications. He was on duty in Anyigba, his last official engagement with the NPSA, where we had gone to have a two-day brainstorming session on Nigeria’s democracy, which is under-performing.
It came up on the heels of our national conference in Lokoja in early May 2024. He effectively chaired the session. Professor Dunmoye occasionally called to offer his advice and made suggestions on how we could further raise the bar of performance. He believed in the NPSA and was never apologetic about it.
If I had my way, I would name the Secretariat of the NPSA after him, irrespective of the rotational principle involved. Wherever it moves to, it should be called the Ayo Dunmoye Secretariat as a way of immortalizing him for his demonstrable commitment to the NPSA during his lifetime.
The Prince of Offa was also a committed member of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). He was always carrying out its directives, no matter how odd they seemed. At times, he bitterly complained about some actions but never went public with his issues with the union. This was the foundation of his initial opposition to my aspiration to lead the NPSA.
Baba Zaria was sufficiently informed about the crisis that unfortunately led to the sack of 49 lecturers at UNILORIN and harboured sympathy for an alternative narrative on the matter, but his level of belief in ASUU could not make him enter into any public disagreement with it, at least over the then Ilorin matter. Even when some of his colleagues in ABU literally declared war on ASUU, he stayed put, preferring to be a dissenting voice within the union.
Borne out of his tremendous interest in ASUU, he turned down requests made to him whenever the union was in a dispute with the government. He maintained a good relationship with ASUU until he retired in 2020 at ABU in Zaria. Professor Dunmoye was not only a member of the NPSA and ASUU but also a foundation member of the Society for International Relations Awareness (SIRA), an association he committed more time to after retirement.
He remained a prominent member of the elders’ group that was working behind the scenes to make things happen. He indeed invited me into the association shortly after its formation in Lagos. As I reported in the first installment of this tribute, we did have our disagreements arising from the fact that he was not favourably disposed to my heading the association, contrary to the stand of his friend, Professor Alli, another committed member and valuable elder of our association who felt I was deserving of the position.
His public reason was that the NPSA’s platform was bigger and wider for the kind of impact he was expecting from me when I mount the position, not SIRA, which was equally good for visibility. I must remark it here that it was a difficult position for me to accept, as there was a wide space of time between when SIRA’s position was vacant and when that of the NPSA would be up for contest.
Anyway, he had others sharing his views on the matter. Until his death on August 19, 2024, he remained one of the sources of influence and direction in the association. Some weeks before he fell sick and died, he was on duty for SIRA as the chair of the session in SIRA’s outings.
More on my personal relationship with Professor Dunmoye. In June 2023, at Abuja, when I visited him in his hotel room before our programme commenced on agenda-setting for the new President, he confessed to me that it was good he stopped me from mounting the SIRA throne, as the capacity I was displaying at the level of the NPSA would not have been seen by all.
He later commended me, especially after briefing him on the preparations we had made for the meeting enabled by the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), under the tireless Auwal Musa Rafsanjani. To quote him verbatim, he had said that: ‘Walahi, you are trying fa, as the president of the NPSA. Your performance beats my imagination. Keep it up.’
I want to believe that the numerous invitations I got from the military establishments in Kaduna and Jaji were at his instance. Both Professor Alli and I converged in his hotel room in 2021 during the NPSA conference that was held in Ilorin. The two used the chance meeting to give advice to me at a personal level on an individual I was counting on for support.
In Prof. Dunmoye’s characteristic manner, he had said it in Yoruba thus: ‘Saliu, ma reti ikan kan lodo…Koni se ikan kan fun o’ Meaning, nothing will ever come from that person that you are counting on. Try to face another direction for help. As events later played out, he was quite prophetic in his admonition to me on that occasion.
Aka Baba Zaria
He once wrote a letter to me supporting a candidate from his department. And when I asked him why? He said he was just assisting the candidate by appealing to me to do the assessment in good time. He was known to care for his colleagues in ABU and elsewhere. I also recall an event in Abakaliki in 2018 when he submitted a name to me from ABU that he wanted him included on the exco list. When I made an observation on the post being proposed for the fellow, his response was that he knew his colleagues in ABU more than me and I should just go ahead to give the post he had requested for, not the one I had in mind. It is pointless saying that I was in Zaria on countless occasions at his instance to examine postgraduate projects for his department, as well as serving as an external examiner.
Let me at this point try to draw a few lessons from his life for our members. First, is his simplistic lifestyle. He was dressing simply without any flamboyancy, which made him fit into any situation he found himself. For instance, he was always travelling in the same bus with his junior colleagues to attend NPSA’s conferences, no matter the distance. Prof. Dunmoye would not rest until all his colleagues had been taken care of.
Two, he was deep in his thinking and in relating with fellow human beings. For instance, he once complained to me about the attitude of one of my mentees who was under him for his PhD. However, instead of him getting angry about it, he would say he only told me to talk to him to change and finish up his project.
He definitely had seen the potential in him and was ready to be patient in realizing the potential he had found out in the student. Three, he had a number of wealthy persons around him, but he was always hesitant in approaching them for life support. Rather, he would live within his means.
Four, as a member of the royal blood, he did not allow his royal background to define him. That was why most people did not know that aspect of his background. Five, he was a good supervisor who derived joy in bringing up others. And when good points were made on the projects he had supervised, he would not go personal with the person making the observations. Six, he loved teaching, even with its poor pay. Hardly would he turn down any academic engagement without a cogent reason.
Seven, he accorded respect to his teachers and seniors. Our highly regarded elder, Professor Adele Jinadu, was his project supervisor at the undergraduate level, and until he died, he was giving him his dues. Eight, he was more concerned about his impact level, not so much occupying leadership positions.
He would have been the president of both the NPSA and SIRA, but he chose to be at the background, making his impacts. Nine, hardly did any person become a Professor in his department in Zaria, at least in recent times, without his input. He was always out to facilitate the attainment.
Ten, he was humorous, who made difficult situations looked lighter by his humour. For instance, he used to crack a costly joke that Nigeria should not face any crisis as his tribal marks would easily give him out; there would be no hiding place for him in such a situation. Eleven, he actually died as a rich man because of his investment in human capital development.
On behalf of the exco and the entire NPSA family, I pray for his repose and urge those he has left behind to take heart and remember that we cannot query God on anything. He is surely the extreme comforter in this circumstance. Adieu, our teacher, mentor, father, grandfather, supervisor, and a strong believer in the Nigerian nation.
The author is the president, NPSA
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