The family of Chief (Dr.) Busari Olaniyan Adebisi has hosted friends, associates, and well-wishers of the two-time Oyo State Secretary-General in a final-rite and reception after forty days of the demised of the patriarch of the Adebisi dynasty at the JOGOR Event Centre, Hall of Grace, Liberty road, New GRA, Ibadan, Oyo State, on Saturday.
The Mogaji Ile Adebisi Idikan and former Oyo state Chairman of NADECO passed-on on the 26th of August 2021 at the age of 84 years.
The well-attended event was opened with prayers by Sheik Isiak Gbadegesin, amid strict COVID-19 protocol, with glitz and glamour by government officials, captains of industries, family members, and other well-wishers across Oyo State, Nigeria, and abroad.
Members of the academic community and political associates rendered tributes and encomiums on the giant strides and legacies of the renowned educationist turned politician and founder of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Maiduguri. The special citation was rendered by Prof Remi Ayede, Head of Department Political Science, University of Ibadan.
The son of the Elder-Statesman, Mr. Abiodun Adebisi in a brief chat with Lagos Panorama said, “I must firstly thank God for my Dad’s fulfilled life”.
“My Dad was a loving father who taught his children positive tenets of life that enhances harmonious coexistence amongst humanity”.
“All his children and family members will forever be proud of his legacies” Adebisi averred.
Special Tribute to Dr. Busari Olaniyan Adebisi
Chief Dr. Busari Olaniyan Adebisi was born on 3rd December 1936, to Asipa Sanusi Giwa Adebisi of Idikan and Lanlatu of Okeodo.
He started his primary school at St David’s Kudeti and proceeded to Ibadan Boys High School for his O level. He had a brief stay at the School of Agriculture, Ibadan before traveling to Europe for tertiary education. He obtained D.Sc. (Pol Science) from the Afro-Asian Institute. Sofia. Bulgaria. He returned to the country in 1969 as a lecturer at the University of Ibadan.
Dr. Adebisi—husband, father, scholar, theoretician, political scientist, and politician—left an indelible model of scholarship.
Who would claim to know Ibadan in and out and does not have fond knowledge of the legendary tourist destination and edifice built by one of the earliest Ibadan billionaires, ‘Ile Adebisi Idi Ikan’?
He came into the world through the popular Adebisi clan of Idi-Ikan, Ibadan. Dr Adebisi’s father was the famous entrepreneur and one of Ibadan’s significant business elites -Adebisi Sanusi Giwa. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the emergence of three categories of Ibadan entrepreneurial and business elites. They fell into three categories. There were some of the indigenous business elites that were direct competitors with the Europeans and Lebanese. Then there were the middlemen. The third class is made up of small-scale traders.
Adebisi Sanusi Giwa’s entrepreneurial wizardry straddled the first and the second categories. From the Ile Wonuola clan, Giwa started farming at a very early age before becoming an agent for Miller Brothers, a British firm. This was the beginning of his entrepreneurial status. By the time he acquired several hectares of land for his cocoa plantation, he was already extremely wealthy.
Adebisi Sanusi was the very epitome of wealth and philanthropy.
The late Prof. Busari Adebisi was the last son of Sanusi Adebisi Giwa. And we can now begin to relate with the type of trajectory that brought the son of a wealthy entrepreneur, who disdained education, to the height of the academic profession, and even beyond it. Even though his father held the principle that the person with means will eventually employ the ones with knowledge, Dr Adebisi was called upon, by vocational imperatives, to supervise the future of hundreds of students in terms of knowledge acquisition for human development. Dr Adebisi was phenomenal both as a teacher and as a scholar.
After a most phenomenal and meteoric educational advancement, his intellectual efforts were rewarded with a DSc, and by no less a distinguished institution as the Imperial College London. And he was the first African to receive that award in mechanical engineering. It is only in retrospect, and with the award of the D.Litt to Professor Toyin Falola, by the University of Ibadan, that I had an insight that I did not have back then, as to the intellectual rigour that goes into such honour and award.
The 1980s were not just a period when Nigeria’s foreign policy template was already getting hammered to fit what was considered to be Nigeria’s leadership role in the West African region, it was also the heyday of anti-imperialist posturing, especially within the Marxian theoretical framework. That was the time when Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, V. I. Lenin’s Imperialism—The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Nkrumah’s Neo-colonialism, the Highest Stage of Imperialism, and many others such ideological books were very hot in the curriculum of political science pedagogy.
And at the University of Ibadan, Dr. Busari Adebisi was right at the center of the dissemination of these ideas to the willing ears of students who were highly ideologically sophisticated back then. While the theorization of the structural debilitation of the post-colonial African state was a subject matter that cut across the entire syllabus at that time, we got a full those of it when Dr. Adebisi explored and expounded to us the political economy of structural imperialism, especially from the popular center/core-periphery perspective central to Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory.
Dr. Adebisi retired as the Dean of Social sciences. Faculty to join politics.
He had very meritorious political experience as Commissioner for Education.
Dr. Adebisi served in many capacities. He was the Commissioner of Education in the second republic when Dr. Omololu Olunloyo was the State Governor. During the third republic, he was the founding Chairman of the Teaching Service Commission of Oyo state. He was Secretary to the State Government during the régime of Chief Kolapo Ishola. He was Chairman of Nigeria Wire and Cable PLC representing Odua Investment shares during the régime of Alhaji Lam Adesina. He was the Chairman of the State Universal Basic Education Board during the régime of Chief Abiola Ajimobi as the State Governor.
Dr. Adebisi lived a resourceful and fulfilled life as a husband, father, and citizen of Ibadan, Oyo state, and Nigeria.
