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Book review: Tunji Olaopa, The Unending Quest for Reform: An Intellectual Memoir

Document Cited in Related
Published date01 December 2024
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/00195561241277240
AuthorOlushola John Magbadelo
Date01 December 2024
930 Book Reviews
Tunji Olaopa, The Unending Quest for Reform: An Intellectual Memoir
(Austin, TX: Pan African University Press, 2023) xxiii +258 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-943533-59-6 (Paperback).
DOI: 10.1177/00195561241277240
Many books have been written on Nigeria’s Public Service Reforms, and the
subject of the book under review is the author of a good number of those books.
The Unending Quest for Reform: An Intellectual Memoir is the autobiography of
one of Nigeria’s clear-sighted and cerebral advocates of public sector reforms.
According to the author, Professor Tunji Olaopa, a retired Permanent Secretary in
Nigeria’s Federal Civil Service, the book was written to satisfy a nudging to docu-
ment his perspectives on reforms and the several steps taken and encounters he
experienced in the pursuit of his passion for the transformation of the country’s
public service for the benefit of upcoming generations of public and civil serv-
ants. As the most recent of the author’s numerous publications, it is an attempt to
draw the curtain on his pro-reform agitations and intellectual exertions over the
years on diverse aspects of public sector reforms.
The book begins with two Forewords written by Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah
and Professor Eghosa Osaghae. The Forewords praised the courage of the author for
his consistent espousal of bold ideas on reforms over the years and expressed disap-
pointment and anger at the untimely retirement of the author from the Federal Civil
Service when he was serving as a Permanent Secretary, a retirement that was
roundly condemned by the Forewords, among others, as ‘wastage of talents … on
the altar of bad politics’ perpetrated by the government in 2015.
In the Prologue, the author’s initiation into what he refers to as ‘policy profes-
sionalism’ had an impactful inuence of Professor Ojetunji Aboyade, while his
decision to publish his autobiography was to full the counsel given to him by
Chief Simeon Adebo in 1992. The justications for this memoir, according to the
author, include rendering his contributions to public administration over a given
period, providing reference resources and a generational manual that could guide
succeeding generations of public service managers on governance and institu-
tional reform to mitigate the current dearth of the same in the Public Service. He
considers the memoir as an account of his stewardship to the citizenry and a testi-
monial to the providential grace bestowed on him.
Chapter 1 describes the role that books played in the development of the author ’s
intellectual and psychological being, noting the dierent stages of his education, the
choice of books and the realisation of the impact and relevance of knowledge acquisi-
tion to the public service and the larger society in the quest for entrenching the value
of decency in human society. In Chapter 2, the impact of complexities of the triple
heritage of culture, religions and Western education on the impressionable mind of the
author was evident in the exertions of parental and societal inuences which ensured
that anywhere he went, from Okeho, Aawe, Akure, Sango Ota, Oyo, to Ibadan, he
remained focused on his purpose of acquiring education, not just for self-development
but also for making notable and remarkable contributions to the development of the

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