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I was born in Calabar, capital of Calabar Province of colonial Nigeria. My father, James Fatayo Akiwowo was an accounting officer of the Bank of British West Africa (BAWA). My mother Olawale Omolayajo was a homemaker and trader.
I started my elementary school education at the Church Missionary Society (CMS)'s Saint Paul Elementary School, Breadfruit Street, Lagos. I completed my high school education at the Lagos Baptist Academy, Broad Street, Lagos, during World War II, with a Senior Cambridge School Leaving Certificate and Exemption from Matriculation, University of London.
After a few years as a colonial civil servant, I was admitted to Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia in 1950 on an international Rotary Scholarship and graduated Cum Laude in sociology and education. Subsequently, I gained admission to Boston University, Graduate School as Research Fellow at the Institute of African Studies. I received my MA degree (sociology and anthropology, August 1954); and my Ph.D. degree (sociology and anthropology, June 1961).
It was while pursuing the doctorate degree at Boston University that I was introduced to Professor Robert S. Hartman and became an extra-mural student of his theory of the Structure of Value. When Dr. Hartman left Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the National University of Mexico, we exchanged letters on the subject of my central interest and concern: how the science of value - axiology - be applied to the discipline of sociology.
When I returned to Africa to continue my university teaching career at the University of Nigeria, Nsuka, we lost contact. But I continued privately my interest in the relationship of axiology and sociology. As an academic issue, I raised this potential contribution of axiology to indigenous sociology in my Inaugural Lecture for the professorial chair in sociology and anthropology before the intellectual community, at the University of Ife, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
Today, after some years of retirement, I am exceedingly happy to discover that the Robert S. Hartman Institute exists and is most vigorously pursuing the vision and mission of my mentor Robert S. Hartman. I look forward to contact with my fellow off-campus student of Boston days whose name and address I have lost. I hope I can spend some remaining years to explore Dr. Hartman's assertion that axiology has indeed a part to play in the intellectual development of sociology as a science of human society.
Contact Information
Professor Akinsola Akiwowo
[email protected]
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