Professor Tomilayo Adekanye Named As “Akinkanju” of Academia, March 2019

As anyone familiar with Professor Tomilayo Adekanye’s bio-data would have long known, she has been honoured with numerous prizes, awards, distinctions, and recognitions at both national and international level. Among the latest such honours was that received in the first quarter of 2019 from the DAWN Commission, a quasi-intergovernmental body dedicated among other things to honouring the history of South-Western Region of Nigeria by highlighting those individuals who while pursuing their individual endeavours have made remarkable strides in projecting the region’s development. DAWN decided on its own and without being solicited to celebrate Professor Tomilayo Adekanye as “a trailblazer and an Akinkanju”. The recognition appeared in the information bulletin of the body published on March 28, 2019 and carrying the title “PROFESSOR TOMILAYO O. ADEKANYE – THE FIRST FEMALE PROFESSOR OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS IN AFRICA”. The information used by DAWN for its piece on the candidate’s bio-data has of course been long known, and much of this available on the Internet

Comments about the DAWN recognition, communicated through phone calls, texts, and email messages sent mostly to the honouree herself and a few of these to her husband Emeritus Professor Adekanye, were uniformly positive, touching, and uplifting. The messages were from close family members, friends, and professional colleagues or associates. Among the latter were Professor Tomilayo Adekanye’s former students-now--turned-professional colleagues either teaching or researching in a number of Nigerian Universities Faculties/Research Institutes or Colleges of Agriculture; and, among these, scholars and researchers specialising in women and gender studies; as well as those engaged in various projects on women in agriculture either spread across the country or operating within the institutions or non-governmental organisations (NGOs) based in the South-West.      

While obviously thrilled by the DAWN recognition, there was something about Professor Tomilayo Adekanye’s reaction to the many messages received from friends, professional colleagues or associates, and family members who had read the piece and called to congratulate her on the DAWN recognition, which helps to bring out some of the important aspects about her personal qualities – namely, her Christian disposition, humility, and love of home and family. In the round of text messages captioned “CELEBRATING THE GOODNESS OF GOD IN MY LIFE” sent out on Thursday April 4, 2019 in response to those messages of congratulation, felicitation, and good-will, Professor Tomilayo Adekanye said It was “to God” that she owed “all the glory and adoration”; while at the same time, of course, acknowledging and thanking all the friends, professional colleagues or associates, and family relatives, as she put it, “for being part of my story and my history”. But it was to what she called “my three great families” that Professor Tomilayo Adekanye would want the conferment of the Yoruba title of “Akinkanju” in the DAWN piece, as indeed all of the honours and achievements spanning those three to four decades covered by the citation for the award, to be dedicated: namely, “my paternal, the Falohun family of Baale’s compound in Okuku, my maternal, the Ogunbiyi family of A.D. 27, Oke Iyin St, Ilesa, and my marital, the Adekanye family of Obale’s compound, Oyan, all in Osun State”.  

For, although Professor Tomilayo Adekanye was born in Ilesa, where she grew up under the care of her mother the late Chief (Mrs.) A. E. Falohun (nee Ogunbiyi), herself a trained Teacher and ex-United Missionary College (UMC, Ibadan) graduate. and the honouree had also had her Secondary School education at St. Margaret’s School in Ilesa, Professor Tomilayo Adekanye’s father Pa Niniola Falohun of blessed memory, a graduate of the old and prestigious St. Andrew’s College, Oyo (and therefore a ‘SACOBAn’), was a native of Okuku, and she is also married to a man only a stone’s throw from her paternal hometown and an equally distinguished Nigerian Scholar and Professor of Political Science, Emeritus Professor J. ‘Bayo Adekanye, from Oyan, and both towns located in the Odo-Otin Local Government Area (LGA) of Osun State of Nigeria. Those were among the particulars about the “three families” alluded to by Professor Tomilayo Adekanye in her text of April 4, 2019 responding to the various messages of congratulation, felicitation, and good-will regarding the DAWN recognition.