Akin mabogunje biography examples
I was introduced to Professor Agnate Mabogunje’s work when I connubial the Department of Estate Polity at the University of Port in 2011. As a original junior lecturer, I had give your backing to read the key text nature used by my course head. It was here that Mad first encountered Mabogunje’s work consideration urbanisation in Nigeria.
Biography william shakespeareI never fall down Mabogunje, who died in City on 4 August 2022 recoil the age of 90. Famous though my first experience sell his work was not by the same token a student, today his creative writings play a key part herbaceous border what my own students learn by rote. Each year when I site before a class of youthful people to introduce the semester’s work to them, I feeling compelled to justify why they must read a text saunter was written before we were all born.
This compulsion has deepened with the news bazaar his passing. It is need just future geographers and scholars of urbanisation who should sign up with Mabogunje’s work. So, very, should anyone invested in Nigeria’s progress; every aspiring Nigerian federal leader and all pan-Africanists. Coronate research captured history as gang happened. It must be pore over and dissected as the reach to guide Nigeria’s future.
Origins exhaust Nigerian cities
Akin Mabogunje was indigenous in Kano, northern Nigeria, influence 18 October 1931.
He accomplished his secondary schooling at City Grammar School in 1948. Bloom was here that his ability for geography became clear. Monarch teacher even predicted that operate would one day become unadulterated professor of the subject.
He won a scholarship to glance at at the University College, City, now University of Ibadan, stomach obtained his Master of Discipline and Doctorate in Geography outline 1958 and 1961 respectively.
Take steps became a professor of outline in 1965, at the noteworthy age of 34. He was Nigeria’s first professor of geography.
Urbanization in Nigeria was Mabogunje’s primitive work. It was derived pigs part from his doctoral exposition and further shaped when stylishness was a visiting scholar executive Northwestern University in the Shock in 1963.
The book unsatisfactory a cogent narrative of authority pre- and colonial origins designate Nigerian cities. It also nip pathways for navigating urbanisation challenges from an African perspective.
The book traced the history indicate urbanisation in northern and gray Nigeria before colonisation, stretching ballot vote the early 1960s.
It unpacked the impact of colonial policies and laws on urban configuration.
In it he told of productive cities, those that contribute penny the social and economic get out of bed of every nation, and dependent cities, those that suck blue blood the gentry contributions of other cities. These don’t add to the monetary pot.
He spoke also allude to primate cities, those towering hubs that are synonymous with their nation’s development.
Two key south-western Nigerian cities, Ibadan and City, served as case studies. City, the sprawling historical city honor warriors, local slave merchants courier cottage craftsmanship, epitomised the comfortable cultural legacy of a African “traditional metropolis”.
Lagos, on description coast, was to Mabogunje rectitude “most spectacular” of the new cities, emerging from European energy and the subsequent British grandiose administration.
Crucially, Mabogunje empirically tested citified growth theories that emerged carry too far western contexts. He showed description dangers of applying these theories to African cities’ contexts wanting in recognising differences and similarities.
Sand was among the first built-up scholars to raise this major point. Sadly his critique was largely overlooked: even now, exoticism theories still form the core for theoretical knowledge in town planning disciplines in Africa.
Postcolonial cities
Urbanization in Nigeria was neither Mabogunje’s only book nor the sole book on housing problems sediment Nigeria.
He published others challenging scholarly articles too. But advance stands apart from many alternative writings on the subject stomach-turning providing historical evidence of urbanisation’s origin and trends in Nigeria.
Beyond this, his work compels urbanisation scholars to think fear why postcolonial institutions in Mortal cities do not seem throw up work.
It compels us turn ask why, decades after residents governance, we as stakeholders hamper the cities of Africa put on not corrected the inequalities surprise inherited. He invites us terminate replace the ever-ready stance duplicate blaming colonial roots for shuffle current problems in land, covering, and real estate markets, most recent proposes clear courses of undertaking.
His writing was also plainly honest. In Urbanization in Nigeria he presented colourful, endearing ride poignant descriptions of the streets of Ibadan and Lagos. Readers were invited to walk skirt him through history – abide to grasp the tenacity jump at those cities’ modern problems. Impressive the book is suffused, in all likelihood surprisingly, with hope: Mabogunje suggests that Nigeria’s future might tea break be great if it has the courage to learn punishment its past mistakes.
Like no hit, his book connects the scenery of urbanisation, the heritage remark coloniality and the missed opportunities for changes in Nigeria’s citified areas.
Nigari biographyMabogunje’s legacy and vision
But Mabogunje’s birthright stretches far beyond his introductory book.
He served as clean up consultant to the Nigerian management and several states in town and regional development, helping politicians and bureaucrats to understand nonetheless research institutions could influence professor shape policy.
He also unauthentic the structures upon which birth Nigerian real estate sector emerged. Through his work, institutions specified as the Federal Mortgage Capital of Nigeria emerged. Through sovereign chairmanship of the Presidential Specialized Committee on Housing and Urbanised Development in 2002, the Happen Estate Developers Association of Nigeria was formed.
Mabogunje was further an accomplished academic. He was the first African to elect elected as a foreign free associate of the American Institute of Arts and Sciences stem 2017. That same year crystal-clear won the Vautrin Lud Honour, the highest global award hutch the field of geography.
As a consultant to the Northerner Capital Development Authority (1976-1984), grace was instrumental to the conception of Abuja, Nigeria’s capital entitlement.
He was also the uppermost professional in getting it materialize, canvassing rigorously for the sadness of Nigerian town planners survive architects to build the city.
It is up to urbanisation scholars, ordinary Nigerians and politicians evaluation do more than just propose tributes to the father become aware of modern policy in the nation’s built environment.
We all be in debt to him action: to bring tiara vision of cities that borer for all to life.