There’s something pleasantly elusive about greatness, the greatness of an individual. Like the elephant in the blind men’s imagination, we all come at it from different perspectives and yet we still each conceive enough of it to be differently credible.
Ake was not blessed with Pius’s charisma, wit or gift for brilliant satirization, but like Pius he was concerned about the condition of African scholarship and he went out to do something about it with the establishment of Centre for Advanced Social Science in Port Harcourt. Like Pius, he spoke truth to power. He was a member the Steering Committee of the Niger Delta Environmental Survey, but he resigned to protest the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa along with eight other Ogoni activists in 1995.
Adesanmi started by talking about his paternal grandmother who had died in February that year at the ripe old age of 98. Pius said this got him thinking about some of the things she’d taught him and some of the stories she told him growing up because she sort of co-raised him with the parents who were often absent due to study commitments. They were a Catholic family, but for grandma, Catholicism didn’t stand in the way of her traditional beliefs.
“Human agency is fundamental so that in this culture, in this worldview, everything you do is supposed to enhance the instrumentality, the life, reinforce it, you know, the centrality of human agency. So, when we are talking of these African concepts - Ubuntu, togetherness, community and all that, fundamentally - we are talking about human agency.
Adesanmi’s vision of Africa’s development is one that can only be achieved if the continent leaves its prostate position. It’s one it must achieve with confidence and bloody single-mindedness. Exactly three years ago, in a lecture he delivered at the 5th Innovation Series of Verdant Zeal Group at the Civic Centre, Victoria Island, Adesanmi laid it bare. The theme of the talk was “The Next Big Thing – Identifying Africa’s Untapped Potential”.