Tunji Olaopa and his problems as an “autobiographer” By Tony Afejuku

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Caption: Tony Afejuku

Let me state urgently that I don’t know Tunji Olaopa. I have never met him physically and do not believe or expect that his path ever will cross mine. But this open factual remark does not really mean that I don’t know this young and youngish former federal permanent secretary who became a professor of political science at Lead City University, Ibadan after his unexpected retirement from the Federal Civil Service. Of course, his premature retirement we must blame on the vagaries of the Federal Civil Service of sometimes vicious politics, to put it mildly. In a place like the Federal Civil Service peopled by men and women and officers, senior and junior officers, of vicarious authority and existence one cannot but be surprised that a public servant of unquestionable critical insight such as Tunji Olaopa’s would always be viewed and treated as an aberration to be thrown out once the slightest opportunity presented itself. Now let me re-qualify my opening remark. I know Tunji Olaopa but by reputation. I have at different times read his articles published in this newspaper and other ones. Besides, this author whose newspaper articles have made serious impression on the minds of many readers happens to be a former Higher School Certificate (HSC) student of Olivet Baptist High School (Olivet Heights), Oyo which I savoured for a term and a half long before Tunji Olaopa entered the four walls of that famous college known far and wide for its academic and soccer exploits. So I know Dr. Tunji Olaopa after all – as a far younger student who never saw or caught a glimpse of my brake light, in a manner of speaking, in school and in college.

When Tunji Olaopa’s The Unending Quest for Reform: An Intellectual Memoir recently came out of the press in faraway Austin, Texas, USA, I became interested in it on the triple grounds briefly related above. I made the right effort to have a copy of it for my personal edification being a lover and critic of his kind of book – I mean of his “intellectual memoir” which he calls an “autobiography” as well. Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah and Professor Eghosa F. Osaghae who respectively wrote Foreword One and Foreword Two to the book equally followed his example to call An Intellectual Memoir an “autobiography.” Do I agree with the three of them? These three minds undoubtedly have critical and creative gifts. But are they right absolutely to call the memoir autobiography? An attempt to answer this question offers me as a reader versed in autobiography the first problem in calling and interpreting Tunji Olaopa’s memoir which it correctly is as an autobiography, which strictly it is not. To call the book “autobiography” is misleading. Tunji Olaopa realizes this hence he tries to resolve his dilemma by giving his essentially public servant’s book its correct title of The Unending Quest for Reform: An Intellectual Memoir, as already indicated. It is a captivating account of his civil service record and experience. This explains Tunji Olaopa’s concentration on what I will call here events which centre on his political memory.

Qua autobiographical work of art, Memoir as work of art cannot be interpreted as autobiography even though it rightly contains very pertinent information about his Aawe homeland origins. I am not interpreting the book, I am only trying to criticize it according to standards, in comparison to other autobiographical works of art, for instance, the Italian Michel de Montaine’s Essays whose “fancies” were not to “convey information about things” not squarely useful to his unique self. The chief task of the autobiographer is the presentation of himself. In other words, self-justification is the sole aim and concern of the autobiographer. An autobiography, an ideal autobiography, that is, does not, to all intents and purposes, represent the efforts of a series of men or of individuals each making what he or she could make out of series of events and or the work of his or her predecessors. This is within the orbit of a memoir.

Tunji Olaopa writes ambitiously which leads to other problems. The memoirist delves into history, into historical facts, which his present readers are not assumed to know. For example, the operation wetie in the Yoruba region historically called the “Wild , Wild West” on account of the violence which the political disagreement and tragic quarrel between the Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola factions of the Action Group unleashed in that part of Nigeria in the fabulous nineteen sixties. Interpretation-wise, the liquidation operation wetie engendered is not in any way different from the criminal and militant fire and chaos we have witnessed in different parts of Nigeria today.  Thus Tunji Olaopa’s book is relevant pertinently as history – which detracts from the narrator’s self. In fact, his focus on historical facts in several places in the narrative also arouses his interest in philosophy/psychology which cannot but enable one to say that the narrative is a philosophical/psychological stratification which Tunji Olaopa tends to utilize to give shape to his matter. Closely related to this is the matter of his mystical and mysterious experience at Olivet Heights and that of his Christian and spiritual advancement. His interest in Rosicrucianism, ifa, and Christianity is compelling and it enables the reader to have a thorough glimpse of his sensitive, inquisitive and penetrating mind. And his sagacity and consciousness as a bookworm that feeds on different kinds of books and the thoughts of their authors permit the reader to call him an autobiographer – as Bishop Kukah and Professor Osaghae have done!

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Am I at last guilty of the sin of contradiction engendered by our narrator’s confusion? Clearly not must be and is my answer. The problem is not this reviewer. The problem is the memoirist who also wants to double as an ‘’autobiographer’’ as I have tried to argue. As a matter of fact, he also reveals himself as an essayist as witnessed in several paragraphs in the chapters. What everything I have said so far indicates is that Professor Tunji Olaopa is a victim of autobiography because of its protean, chameleonic nature. Roy Pascal makes this plain in Design and Truth in Autobiography. Georg Misch also seemingly makes this plainer in A History of Autobiography in Antiquity.

My prime concern in this short enterprise is with the interpretation and shape rather than with the subject of The Unending Quest for Reform: An intellectual Memoir. One reason for this is that I personally have slim hope for the bureaucratic leadership in present day Nigeria. The reforms Tunji Olaopa proposes will not be allowed to flourish in this country – his country your country my country our country. The Simeon Adebo model in the Western Region and the Allison Ayida example in the Federal Civil Service have since ceased to be because of who we are. Whatever brilliant ideas patriots such as Tunji Olaopa may have will never grow, or, be allowed to see the light of day by those who will hijack them to suit their nefarious, malicious and anti-Nigerian intentions and purposes. By the way, what has become of TETFUND that the Academic Staff Union of Universities caused our federal government to establish long ago? ASUU’s brilliant ideas that gave birth to TETFUND were swallowed by would-be killers of Nigeria and of our public universities. Tunji Olaopa’s will be put through the mill by envious, jealous, lazy, dull and unpatriotic bureaucratic colleagues and leaders who have been misleading our politicians and political leaders.

A crucial statement on Tunji Olaopa’s book under review: Every lover of Nigeria should read it. It is a priceless memoir-cum-autobiography as well as  “autobiography-cum-memoir” written and designed to call our attention to the service and labours of Nigeria. In any case, I have not deliberately set out to promise, promote or recommend it. It recommends itself even though the numerous pictures that adorn the pages give the wrong impression that the book is a run of the mill portrait. It is not and it is not even a variety of it – although readers and critics may debate the importance of the pictures in the book that Tunji Oloapa wants us to accept as a portrait of the “autobiographer.” The pictures of himself and other persons of high society cogently show the narrator’s preference of mind as plainly as an intimate memoir could do. For it is not in our memoirs but in our autobiographies that we record ourselves, our true, genuine selves. In this lies the essence and true nature of the art of autobiography. But this is debatable, I must admit.

My final statement is this reiteration: Every lover of Nigeria should read The Unending Quest for Reform: An Intellectual Memoir. A great deal of the Nigerian problem is revealed in it.

.Afejuku, a poet and professor of English  can be reached via +2348055213059.