By Clifford Ndujihe, Olasunkanmi Akoni & Monsur Olowoopejo
LAGOS—AFTER playing key roles in laying the foundation for Nigeria’s post-independence education sector, former Education Minister, Prof. Aliu Babatunde Fafunwa, yesterday, bade the living goodbye.
He died at the Hilton Transcorp  Hotel, Abuja, 18 days after his 87th birthday. Fafunwa was in Abuja to give the keynote address at the Open University convocation in Abuja and also receive a honorary degree.

His son-in-law, Okey Ndibe, an assistant Professor of English at Connecticut College, USA, who also confirmed Fafunwa’s death, said he would be remembered for three things: “First, for his great sense of humour.

Ndibe said: “He had incredibly funny stories to tell; he would rock with great laughter as he told the stories. The second thing is his great intellectual energy, which he deployed by reading lots of books, while the third attribute was his humility in spite of his outstanding accomplishments.”

ASUU, NUT, others  mourn Fafunwa
Reacting to Fafunwa’s demise, Lagos State Publicity Secretary of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, Mr. Joe Igbokwe, described him as “the pillar and the icon of education in Nigeria” and prayed his “huge but gentle soul” to  rest in perfect peace.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU and Nigeria Union of Teachers, NUT  have described the death of Prof Fafunwa as a great loss to the country. ASUU President, Professor Ukachukwu Awuzie in a phone chat with correspondents said that the academic circle would miss Fafunwa
dearly.

He said: “Ah, is he dead? This is a great loss to this country. We just discussed how he could speak at an education summit on the history of Nigeria education: where we got it wrong and what could be done to revive it. But he is gone.”

Mrs Joan Eze signing the Condolence register at the Residence of Late Babatunde Fafunwa at Bendel Close , Off Bishop Aboyale Cole Street, Victoria Island Lagos...yesterday

Awuzie, who described Fafunwa as a father and a great educationist who had done much for the country but that the government failed to implement his idea, said that, “Fafunwa’s design on education in 1992 was a great idea that would have helped this country tremendously but it is a pity that we lost a good man of enormous wealth of idea.”

Similarly, the Nigeria Union of Teachers, Lagos wing described the death as a big loss.
The Secretary of the union, Comrade Jamiu Idris said that the former minister lived a worthy life with so much achievement.

According to him, “Fafunwa was an outstanding Nigerian. He was an educationist par excellence. Our hope is that the implementers of the country’s educational policies look and use his model.

“Fafunwa was the apostle of the use of indigenous languages for teaching in the country. This is a great postulation that the policy implementer must use perhaps to immortalise this great Nigerian.”

Idris explained that Fafunwa singlehandedly formulated the 6_3_3_4 educational system, which successive governments in the country failed to adequately implement. The NUT and teachers will remember him for his love for education and the country. We will miss him. He was a father to us all.”

Fafunwa was widely regarded as Nigeria’s foremost authority on education and had a hand in virtually all National Policies on education. As minister, he was in charge of the biggest school system in Africa. He was known for his early writings on the need to re_appraise the inherited colonial epistemological system in Nigeria and to introduce relevant cultural goals, subjects and local languages into the system, to accommodate the developmental and cultural pattern of the country.

Fafunwa CON, was a notable authority on the history of educational planning in Nigeria. Prof . Fafunwa was a man of many achievements who contributed greatly to the development of education in Nigeria.

He wrote several books, among which are New Perspectives in African Education, History of Nigeria Higher Education, History of Education in Nigeria, Co_author in Mother Tongue and Memoirs of A Nigerian Minister of Education, among others.

Born September 23, 1923 in  Isale Eko, Lagos, Fafunwa had his secondary education at the CMS Grammar School, Lagos between 1937 and 1943. He obtained his first degree from Bethune Cookman College, Florida USA in 1950 as well as an M.A (Cum Laude) in Administration and Higher Education in 1955.