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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. |