At Crescent University’s 20th Founders’ Day, the awardee turned a personal honour into a public charge: defend the classroom as a public good.
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ABEOKUTA — Asiwaju Kamal’deen Akintunde did not come to celebrate an arrival. When he rose on Saturday to accept the Bola Ajibola Community Service Award, the former NACOMYO National President reframed the honour itself. “I accept this award not as a ‘Destination,’ but as a Mandate ” he told dignitaries at Crescent University’s 20th Founders’ Day.
For Asiwaju Akintunde, a prize bearing the name of the late Prince Bola Ajibola — ICJ judge, former Attorney-General, and founder of the university — was not a medal to hang, but a call to deepen the work of the “Intellectual Mujahid”: using knowledge to liberate communities from ignorance.
His sharpest warning targeted the slow erosion of public education. “We must resist the temptation to ‘commodify’ basic education,” Akintunde said. “The strength of a nation is not measured by the height of its private towers but by the accessibility of its public classrooms.” To cede public schools to sectarian or commercial interests, he argued, is to invite “a future of social exclusion and a spike in our out-of-school population.” In a country where education remains a battleground for equity, he cast citizens’ duty as clear: defend education as a public good, open to every child regardless of faith or parentage.
He praised the federal reforms in technical and vocational education and the shift toward consolidating universities for quality over quantity. Yet he pressed a caveat: “Policy is only as good as its impact. Our policies must not just exist in the corridors of power; they must be felt in the lives of students and the efficiency of teachers.”
He dedicated the award to Prince Ajibola’s memory, the Muslim youth of Nigeria, and the Ogun State Muslim Council Secretariat.
To Crescent students, he was direct: “Excellence is not a coincidence; it is a habit.” For Akintunde, the day drew a line from The Hague to Kuto, Abeokuta. Prince Ajibola served on the ICJ, chaired the Nigeria-Cameroon Mixed Commission, and founded a university to “liberate through knowledge.”
His awardee now contends that Nigeria’s own rules-based order — its constitution, its education policy, its social contract — stands or falls in public primary schools.
His Nigerian corollary: to abandon public education is to abandon the common man. The award, then, was not a full stop. It was a comma. The mandate, as he put it, continues — through NACOMYO, MUSWEN, NSCIA, IMA, and OMC. And through every classroom where policy meets a child.
Earlier, guest lecturer Prof. Abdulkadir Ibrahim Abikan, Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Abuja, interrogated the
“Collapse of the Rule-Based World Order.”
Prof. Abikan argued that the international system is not dead, but uneven. “Powerful states still weaponize interdependence,” he warned, adding that “integration without leverage results in subordination.”
His prescription for Africa was blunt: build material sovereignty — food security, energy autonomy, industrial capacity — so legal rights move from abstraction to tools. “To abandon the system entirely would risk a far more volatile arena of raw power,” he said. Akintunde echoed that logic, turning the global lens inward to classrooms and policy gaps.
The ceremony was a roll-call of legacy. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo called Ajibola “a global icon who made Nigeria and indeed Ogun State proud.”
The Vice Chancellor Prof. Ibrahim Gbajabiamila urged philanthropists to support infrastructure to sustain the founder’s vision.
Traditional weight filled the hall: the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo; the Olota of Ota, Oba Abdulkadir Obalanlege; and Ogun Chief Judge, Hon. Justice Mosunmola Dipeolu, were present. The
-By Waheed Ogunjobi, Ph.D
Journalist, Author, Academic Researcher, PR Consultant_
08035004741 | waheedogunjobi@gmail.com_
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