In the long arc of any country’s history, many men and women hold offices and titles in public life.
In Nigeria, that is the claim to fame of many such personalities. But if their value addition, individually and collectively, had been significant, our country would have been in better shape than it is today
For few have transcended “being” to “doing”, leaving behind indisputable, inspirational legacies. Few have the capacity for ideas – a deep, reflective intellectual mind as a basis for policy actions, decisions and recommendations that create the kind of impact that outlives them. Even fewer still can reinvent themselves after office and remain relevant long after they have been has-beens in government.
Akinwande Bolaji Akinyemi CFR, Professor of Political Science, director-general of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs from 1975 to 1983, minister of Foreign Affairs of Nigeria from 1985 to 1987, member of the Justice Mohammed Uwais Electoral Reform Committee in 2007 and deputy chairman of the 2014 National Conference, is one of such men. Born in llesha in today’s Osun State on January 4, 1942, the son of a famous school Principal father, the Rev. James Akinyemi, Bolaji Akinyemi turns 80 two days ago.. My task here, as a younger friend for whom he was a role model in my teenage years, and as a citizen who has known him for 32 years, is not to recite his long and illustrious curriculum vita. It is to interpret that CV and its owner, to give my view of why and how Bolaji Akinyemi accomplished the feats he did and what they mean for Nigeria, Africa and the black race, and why he still commands strong public influence and attention long after he left public office.
This man’s knowledge of the world is encyclopedic. He is nothing short of Kissingerian in his impact on Nigerian foreign policy at a time when our country still had a strong presence in world politics. That impact, in a relatively short period of two years as foreign minister, was no accident. Although he previously headed the NIIA for eight years and so was already well known in foreign policy circles, preparation and hard work met opportunity and, combined with a keen intellect and strong worldview, created an eventful career in foreign policy.
After secondary school at Igbobi College in Lagos and Christ’s School, Ado Ekiti, Akinyemi obtained his bachelor’s degree in Political Science at Temple University in Philadelphia, USA in 1964. At the time, America was neck-deep in a Cold War with the communist Soviet Union, the Vietnam War was raging and America’s controversial deployment of its troops to the Asian conflict was becoming a foreign policy quagmire, and the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act had been passed in quick succession as monumental breakthroughs in political rights for black Americans in the Lyndon Johnson presidency. These events formed a momentous backdrop for a serious African student of the world and the place of his race in it.