The caption of our discussion today is cloned from Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, but its major thrust is not the recurrent problem of underdevelopment in Nigeria.

On a cool Friday evening, a few days after President Goodluck Jonathan had unilaterally proposed a name-change for the University of Lagos, I went to the Senior Staff Club to relax a little after spending over six hours working on a research paper I was writing.

A lot have been said and written since President Goodluck Jonathan renamed my alma mater, the University of Lagos, as Moshood Abiola University on May 29, ostensibly to honour Chief M.K.O. Abiola. According to Jonathan, the federal government believes that the late businessman cum politician deserves “recognition for his martyrdom and public spiritedness and for being the man of history that he was.”

A lot have been said and written since President Goodluck Jonathan renamed my alma mater, the University of Lagos, as Moshood Abiola University on May 29, ostensibly to honour Chief M.K.O. Abiola. According to Jonathan, the federal government believes that the late businessman cum politician deserves “recognition for his martyrdom and public spiritedness and for being the man of history that he was.”

On a cool Saturday morning of May 12, as I was jogging along the Health Centre road, University of Lagos, Mr. Adebule, a senior administrative staff of the university parked by my side and beckoned me to come. When I got to him, he requested in a very solemn voice that I should enter his car. I asked him why, and he told me that my friend, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Adetokumbo Sofoluwe, died around 12 midnight.

In addition to all the above, the Executive Secretary has consolidated operations of NICO’s affiliate offices in the six geo-political zones of the country. Ayakoroma is also working tirelessly to strengthen collaboration between NICO and other corporate organisations, state governments, and international bodies.

It is not gainsaid that the advent of both Euro-Christian and Arab-Islamic civilisations into indigenous communities that constitute Nigeria has negatively affected the cultural heritage of these communities.

Because of the incredible complexity of the factors necessary for the production of a human being with the right combination of qualities that make for peaceful, harmonious and responsible living, it is not possible to state with mathematical precision the ideal mix of such qualities in individuals.

Obviously, in spite of the social system in a given country, particularly in advanced societies with welfare programmes for taking care of infants, parents are duty-bound to provide for their children until the latter can live on their own; likewise children are expected to help their parents and look after them in old age.

The concept expressed by the word ‘family’ and its diverse manifestations in various societies throughout history have been discussed for a long time from different perspectives by anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, historians, philosophers and educators. Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary provides the lexical meaning of ‘family’ which we shall adopt as a working definition.