Akin Mabogunje: Scholar-practitioner model and national development By Prof. Isaac Megbolugbe

The late Emeritus Professor Akin Mabogunje was a quintessential scholar-practitioner whose work had a profound impact on Nigeria’s development. His commitment to excellence and rigorous training enabled him to produce groundbreaking work, demonstrating the importance of continuous learning and expertise in achieving impactful research and practice. This article explores Mabogunje’s knowledge journey and how he embodied the scholar-practitioner model, highlighting his contributions to national development and the lessons that can be learned from his approach.

As he embodied scholar-practitioner, he explained this attribute masterfully in his autobiography. I hope to explicate this further in the future.  This practice model for public policy advisory work accounted much for his longevity, over a 50-year career in the service of his nation. Until I reviewed Professor Tunji Olaopa’s recent memoir, The Unending Quest for Reform and read the biography of Professor Ojetunji Abayode, A Prophet with Honor that he wrote in 1997 that I became aware of the branding of this practice as scholar-practitioner. I am reminded of the synoptic gospels in the New Testament of the Holy Bible. The biography of Professor Abayode could be dubbed the Gospel of National Development Planning according to Saint Abayode and Olaopa’s memoir the Gospel of National Development Implementation and Management according to Saint Olaopa. Both books complement each other in presenting the full and complete story about how best to practice national development planning and implementation in Nigeria including policy making, development planning, development implementation and development management including democratic governance. Professor Mabogunje embodied this practice model perfectly, although he was never an employee of the government. He remained an advisor and refused to assume the role of decision making or served to custode or use government authority.

National development practice unfolds in phases. Phase 1 is problem framing and solution incubation. Phase 2 is solution refinements and policy making. Phase 3 is development plan preparation. Phase 4 is implementation and management. Abayode developed the framework and architecture for the first three phases. Olaopa in his memoir discusses a reform agenda that embeds the framework and architecture for development implementation and management.

Figure 1 – Phases of National Development Planning and Implementation

The first phase of national development planning is exploration research to frame  the problems that the plan seeks to address.  Solution incubation consists in framing the problem and developing the rudiments of a potential solution design for the development plan. The various problems in focus can be framed in different ways with each frame indicating a unique solution.  But this is nothing less than the very essence of ill-structured problems of development: they are in a sense underdetermined, that is, there are multiple ways of framing national development problems. Key to the development of genuinely novel ideas lies in the capacity to make use and combine the insights of multiple disciplines. Solution incubating calls for developing a synthesis from multiple disciplines or, at the very least, applying the expertise and insight from one knowledge domain to another. The ability to combine insights from multiple knowledge domains is intimately related to the professional skills and backgrounds of the team tasked with the responsibility to explain the development problems of the country to the bureaucratic and political leadership of the nation.

Olaopa discussed how phenomenal Aboyade was in leading this phase of national development planning with intelligence and tact. He said about Abayode in1997 this : “In the arena of policy formulation, he was able in a masterly way to arrange elements of a problem into a framework that facilitates resolution. He was a leading light that can transform complex permutations of difficult choices into well thought scenarios, using quantitative analyses that mundane thinkers would toss out as “too technical.”’ This is what we might call development practice acumen similar in style and substance to clinical acumen in medical practice. The ability to connect different knowledge domains and see commonalities between them makes use of abduction, a form of reasoning fundamentally distinct from induction and deduction. Olaopa praised consistently masterly performances from Abayode in whatever work assignments came up in his national development practice. He detailed in the Abayode book how Abayode prepared himself intellectually, professionally and temperamentally. He also discussed the contextual factors both in Nigeria and throughout the larger world that shaped the extraordinary grounding and seasoning that Abayode accomplished through a combination of his education, work assignments, mentorship, tremendous work ethics, discipline and impeccable standards of self-control and management. All these attributes were very much shared among the founding fathers of social science disciplines at the University of Ibadan anchored by  their shared commitment to a development ethos with respect to the Nation.

In the second phase of national development planning, the rudimentary solution design is subjected to empirical testing. This is more of a trial-and-error– type iterative process. The refinement phase is a combination of design improvements, implementation, and evaluation and often makes use of the more familiar plan designs and reasoning. However, in trying to pinpoint the sources of the unintended consequences, abductive reasoning and further detective work may be required. Because development of solutions is always partly a political process, it is important to identify potential problems arising from different parties having different interests. Phase three is more of a technocratic phase with different moving parts that have to be coordinated and perfectly harmonized in a manner that leaves the best of  conductors of first rate  orchestras in the dust. The Second National Development Plan (1970-1974) epitomized the embodiment of a magnificent monument to national development planning in Nigeria, nothing before it came close and nothing since then has been able to rise up to the mezzo-soprano of the plan.

Olaopa picked up where Abayode stopped. Olaopa faulted Abayode for refusing to get involved in implementation and management of national development plans. He cited Abayode’s records of demonstrated competence in executive capacities to validate his executive management credentials and political skills that would have allowed us to witness and capture his  framework and institutional architecture  for implementation  and management of development plans in Nigeria. Olaopa took the baton and continued the race. With this memoir Olaopa has informed the Nation that he has finished the race. The ball is now in the proverbial   court of the Nation.

In his recent commentary about the Olaopa memoir, Professor Adeshina Afolayan, Head of Department of Philosophy, University of Ibadan said something that I think is appropriate to share here.  He commended Olaopa for possessing a strong sense of inner worth and significance fortified and reinforced by his upbringing and fabulous relation with his social environment. The mentoring of a network of great men have also proved to be substantively definitive. He has been disciplined by his conscious practice of becoming who he was born to be- an intellectual. Aboyade became a scholar- practitioner. He molded himself in his image and became a scholar- practitioner too. Like Afolayan said, Olaopa has the potential to achieve transcendent transformation in connecting himself to the Nation’s struggle for realization of emergence as a capable developmental state. Professor Mabogunje’s intellectual work offers a wealth of insights and ideas that can inform our understanding of development. By engaging with his intellectual legacy, we can unlock new perspectives and approaches to addressing Nigeria’s development challenges.

The Abayode-Olaopa national development practice model is akin to the framework of a doctoral program at Northeastern University, USA. As shown in Figure 2 below. The national development practice model captures some of the stresses scholar-practitioners might go through to complete such a doctoral program.

Figure 2 – Abayode-Olaopa Practice Model for National Development

Source: Adapted from Northeastern College of Professional Studies

This model represent the fact that it is the person who is the scholar practitioner embedded within the process of the scholar practitioner and so when we consider the skills, knowledge and dispositions of a scholar practitioner these categories aren’t really mutually exclusive because what does it mean to find knowledge as opposed to what does it mean to have knowledge and certainly scholar practitioners is somebody who’s dedicated to understanding what is known in addition to having a sense for how to go about finding out some more and in addition to that some of the dispositions aren’t just about scholarship but rather some of those dispositions include things like collective work capacity for collaboration engagement with curiosity and wonder and considering practice from that Vantage of what else might he be doing as opposed to what is it simply that  he is  doing. The process by which a scholar practitioner exists is cyclical in nature in that it begins with the definition of a problem.

Then you can address the problem in a systematic way moving forward so looking at a problem of practice and identifying that also from the component of dispositions suggest that we’re looking at it from myriad angles whose perspectives have historically been omitted from these conversations that we can draw upon so that we’re collectively identifying these problems in a very careful thoughtful way so that as we look at the problem of practice we investigate what’s known different lenses that have been applied to it.

We are able to sort of investigate further within our own practice gathering rigorous rigorously gathering data conducting analyses and answering our own research questions so that we can further our own process in our own practice toward an improvement in practice only to find out that we are left with yet another problem of practice and question to answer and so the cyclical nature of those skills dispositions and knowledge or the way that those are those are activated through the process of the scholar practitioner allows us to be really systematic and deliberate about the ways that we affect change.

Professor Mabogunje’s knowledge journey is instructive about how he embodied the model knowledge architecture that the scholar-practitioner needs to practice effortless and learn profusely in understanding Nigeria’s development. He began with mastering historical methodology in geography perfecting his observational expertise and absorbing the essence of the anthropology of a society and its institutions. For example,  he observed land use patterns in Britain, noting the importance of community control in rural areas. Recognizing the limitations of his historical perspective, he pursued a PhD to master research methods. He realized that expertise beyond his current knowledge was necessary for policy advisory work. After further post-doctoral training in the US, he mastered spatial science, theoretical, and quantitative education. This led to his seminal work, “Urbanization in Nigeria” (1968), which provided a theoretical framework for understanding Nigerian urbanization and the linkages to development from urban, regional and national scale.  His insight, validated by urban science, highlighted the global forces of urbanization and their varying intensities, shaping urban systems and individual urban centers. Mabogunje’s commitment to excellence and rigorous training enabled him to produce groundbreaking work, demonstrating the importance of continuous learning and expertise in achieving impactful research, attributes that are broadly befitting scholar-practitioner worldview.

Professor Mabogunje’s intellectual legacy offers a wealth of insights and ideas that can inform our understanding of development. His commitment to excellence, rigorous training, and continuous learning enabled him to produce groundbreaking work that has had a lasting impact on Nigeria’s development. The Abayode-Olaopa national development practice model, which he embodied, provides a framework for understanding the complexities of development and the importance of a scholar-practitioner approach. As we reflect on Mabogunje’s contributions, we are reminded of the importance of embracing a scholar-practitioner mindset, one that combines theoretical knowledge with practical expertise, to address the complex challenges of national development. By doing so, we can unlock new perspectives and approaches to achieving impactful research and meaningful change.

Professor Isaac Megbolugbe, PhD, FRICS, former practice leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, retired professor at Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University, and fellow at Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, was a former student, mentee, and colleague of Professor Mabogunje. He is also one of his intellectual disciples. He is resident in the United States of America.

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