“Now to the oba-elect. Whoever sits on the stool of Oyo should never be seen at weedy, seedy joints. He must speak the language of his beginning and clothe his ancestors with velvets of respect and respectability. Shameful journeys he must not make. Strange words and/or gestures that attack the reason for his stool should not be his to say or make. We have seen enough wrong persons ‘shitting’ on ancestral beds. We cannot add Oyo to that rank. There was an Alaafin Abiodun for whose reign the people till tomorrow sing songs of praise. Abiodun’s successor was Aole whose reign made refugees of the people. The choice of who to copy is for the new moon to make.”

The oba under our law is not a king; he is a chief. That is why the law governing the appointment and removal of the oba and his ìjòyè is called Chiefs Law. The colonial government made it so. The oba was not recognised as king by the law – because the English king/queen was the sovereign here, and there could not be more than one king in a kingdom. They didn’t stop at that. What the oba occupied or vacated was a ‘stool’, not a ‘throne’. Only the English king or queen had a throne. And, one more thing: the oba was allowed to raise revenue but he must not call what he did “collection of taxes”; only His/Her Majesty, the King/Queen of England had that right. The revenue-raising privilege the oba had was known and called “imposition of tributes.”

Sixty four years after the British left, the law is still Chiefs Law; what the oba occupies is still the lowly ‘stool’, not a ‘throne’. Imposition of tributes or collection of taxes? The oba lost that power to the local government council. Ìgbì Aiyé Nyí. No condition is permanent.

‘Ìgbì Aiyé Nyí’ is a Yoruba novel that teaches the impermanence of power and privileges. Authored by T. A. A. Ladele, the title literally means ‘The Tide of Life Ebbs’ – or, in simple words, the cliche: “no condition is permanent.” In chilling details, we read the story of unbridled excesses and a humbling fall. From the mountain top of privileges, we read the Alaafin of Oyo, his palace and his chiefs descending the stairs to abject subjection. It is a book for every new king to read in their period of seclusion. I particularly recommend it to the three high chiefs of Oyo who are currently talking tough against their employers (the government) over the choice of their new oba.

In a contest between egg and stone, the result is easily predictable. No oba should think himself God – or government; and no chief must act like king. The past is in the past. In the past, one vote of the palace trumped sixteen votes. That vote today belongs to the state. This is not just about Oyo State. A new Owa Obokun of Ijesaland was chosen last month. Whose call was that? You have also seen the making of the Emir of Kano by one governor and his unmaking by another. The real chiefly kingmakers lost their scepter the day the British came and took power.

There is a gain in what has just happened: Future contestants now know the abortive result in kingmakers commodifying stools and thrones. Tomorrow, no kingmaker will find intelligent buyers for what belongs to all.

No oba will also think himself God tomorrow. The king was very powerful and divine in the past. But that part is buried in the past.

I once reported this: In the West Africa magazine of March 3, 1945 was a piece in celebration of the memory of Alaafin Siyanbola Ladigbolu I (1911 – 1944) who joined his ancestors a few months earlier. “The highest oath that an Oyo man could take was to swear by the head of the Alaafin,” the magazine wrote, and added that the people believed their oba was God. The oba himself thought himself so and he said so and acted so. How?

Eshugbayi Eleko was deposed as the Oba of Lagos in 1925 by the British. He was subsequently banished to Oyo town but he didn’t go quietly into the night; he went to court. During the ensuing celebrated case, evidence on some historical issues was needed in support of the deposed oba. It was to the Alaafin of Oyo that counsel to Oba Eshugbayi went.

Oba Ladigbolu was asked to swear an oath before his evidence was taken.

Alaafin queried in anger:

“By whose name?”

“By God’s name or by the name of your idol,” the lawyer told him.

“I myself am God!” The oba thundered.

That was hubris; he was too big to know that the horse of his powers had bolted. If you doubt the reality of how the Alaafin perceived himself in the statement above, maybe you should read another case recorded for him in history. It is the account of a visit of Ibadan Councillors I. B. Akinyele and J. Aboderin to Alaafin Ladigbolu on a peace mission on 1 October, 1934. It tells of what an Alaafin thought he was – and capable of doing.

The councilors left Ibadan and reached Oyo at 4:00 p.m. They reported themselves to the Resident. With the Resident, they went to the Aafin in company of the District Officer, Mr. Jones.

They then delivered the message of the Baale of Ibadan and of his council to the Alaafin: “In the olden time, our forefathers and your fathers were friends, and we earnestly wish that this friendship should continue. Your messengers have been treating our messengers with contempt and abusive language whenever we sent them to give you compliments and presents during the time you hold your yearly festivals. We do not like this sort of treatment any longer. If our friendship is to continue, our messengers should be treated with courtesy befitting our dignity. We do not presume that you are responsible for this kind of treatment that our messengers receive from yours. We would like you to take step to warn these messengers to stop this bad habit. We wish that we should maintain the old bond of friendship and live as neighbours in peace and harmony. Wishing you long life and prosperity. When we have delivered the above message, the Resident called upon the Alaafin to reply. The Alaafin then said that this message was not meant for him, and the Resident himself should reply to it. The Resident again reiterated the message, and explained it to the Alaafin. The Alaafin again said that the message was not meant for him. The Resident gave the gist of the message two times more and asked the Alaafin to give his reply to the message.

Then the Alaafin said: “Of all the inhabitants of Ibadan, with the exception of Oluyole, which of you has got a father? And, are you not all my slaves I used to send out on expeditions to fight my enemies?”

The Resident said that the Alaafin should not say that again, because in the Treaty of 1893 between Ibadan and Queen Victoria, his predecessor (the late Alaafin) admitted that the Ibadans are free.

The Alaafin replied:

“He! He! (Fie, Fie) I think all white men are the same. Captain Ross, my friend, had put them under me, and if you wish to take them away, you could please yourself. I know there is no else beside me but God. What shall I do with the Ibadan people? They do not work for me on the farm; they have not helped to construct roads in Oyo. What do they do for me? If any man wanted promotion at Ibadan I used to send my friend, Captain Ross, to elevate him; and if any appeared recalcitrant, I used to send my friend to punish him and remove. When I instructed Situ the Bale to promote one of my friends, and he did not listen, I worked his removal through my friend. I think you white men are the same and I think you adopt my friend’s policy, and if you do not wish to do so, you could please yourself, this means ‘Omi titun dé, eja titun dé’ (New water comes and new fishes come) Ten Kings ten times. You Resident are the new water and you are the new fish. It is your own look out, to manage the business as you like.”

The Alaafin said further:

“You, the two councillors, I want to give you a special message to Okunola who calls himself a Baale. Tell him he should remember that in his father’s family, no one has ever borne a title in Ibadan which is higher than AYINGUN. When he came to beg me here that I should give him a title, I asked my friend, Captain Ross, to go and promote him to the title of Ekerin, although he had not been a Mogaji before. When he wanted to become the ASHIPA, I again sent my friend to tell Situ, the Baale of Ibadan, that if he refused to make him the ASHIPA I would demote him and make the Ekerin Baale in his stead. When he wanted to be made the Balogun, it was the turn of Aminu, the son of Apanpa, to be the Balogun, but I took the turn from Aminu and gave him and promoted him to become the Balogun. When he wanted to become the Baale of Ibadan, I deprived Otun Ayodele who had the right to the post and made him the Baale of Ibadan. Whenever he quarreled with any of his wives, I used to settle the quarrel. If he could follow this Oyinbo (the new Resident) let him hold on to him. He should remember that when he had no horse, I gave him one. If that was the way he could show his gratitude, alright. He should remember that Situ had not done half of what he had done and he should remember how I hated him.”

The Alaafin then gave the councilors one turkey and one pound and sent them away.

The account above is as it is carefully set out on pages 933 and 934 of Toyin Falola’s ‘Ibadan: Foundation, Growth and Change, 1830-1960.’

The Alaafin who said all the above was the same Alaafin who died and was denied the customary company of courtiers on his journey back to his ancestors. You remember Wole Soyinka’s ‘Death and The King’s Horseman’? The historical incident that birthed that play happened at the exit of Oba Ladigbolu. His predecessors enjoyed the privilege of the company of their Olokunesin, the king’s horseman who must commit suicide and follow his late lord to the world of the dead. The white man said no to Ladigbolu’s Olokunesin; the king who said he was God went home alone, and lonely.

We hope the new Alaafin knows that he is appointed king and not God. We hope he learns from the tide that washed away his ancestors’ privileges. I hope he knows he is not coming in to become rich, become a pastor or an Imam. His coming is to retie the snapped rope of life of his land.

The people saw other trees in the forest before they settled on this òmò trunk for making the newest Gbèdu drum. The choice must always remember that fact and beat the right beat, sing the right song. When a prince is crowned king, he must never be seen again making good-luck charms – except he wants to become Olódùmarè. The one who did that was presumed seeking to be God. He should ask his predecessors for guidance.

Fifty years is a good age to enter the ancestral grove. When a child is invested with the Egungún costume, he has become an elder and must, therefore, be found with elderly conduct. Courage lives with leaders. A key wisdom the new king will hear in Ìpèbí is that one does not become an elder and yet lacks courage. Cowardice has consequences. He should ask Alaafin Ajaka.

The Alaafin institution is bigger than Oyo town, bigger than the oba and bigger than the chiefs. It cannot be abandoned as hostage to principals and principalities. What do you do when a calabash buries its face in the ground and won’t look up? The answer happened on Thursday and Friday last week. The chiefs are not the town.

Now to the oba-elect. Whoever sits on the stool of Oyo should never be seen at weedy, seedy joints. He must speak the language of his beginning and clothe his ancestors with velvets of respect and respectability. Shameful journeys he must not make. Strange words and/or gestures that attack the reason for his stool should not be his to say or make. We have seen enough wrong persons ‘shitting’ on ancestral beds. We cannot add Oyo to that rank. There was an Alaafin Abiodun for whose reign the people till tomorrow sing songs of praise. Abiodun’s successor was Aole whose reign made refugees of the people. The choice of who to copy is for the new moon to make.

n 22 August 2024, Olukayode Ariwoola, the penultimate Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) retired from the bench and transitioned into a published author. At a well-attended event in the Abuja, the former CJN beamed at the public presentation of his autobiography. Published under the title Judging with Justice*, the book was ghost written by Olanrewaju Akinsola (the author better known as Onigegewura).

 The story reveals the son of a doting and committed dad who appears to take family and his faith seriously. Judging with Justice is a deeply personal story of a judicial figure whose rise to the highest office in his country’s judicial grease pole was as improbable as his route was unusual. The author is quite open in his disclosures about his health, including open heart surgery in London in 2016.

Olukayode Ariwoola became a lawyer at 27 and a judge at 38. In the eleven years that separated his enrollment at the bar from his elevation to the Bench, Olukayode Ariwoola worked first as State Counsel in Oyo State from where he resigned into private legal practice. That stint of his professional career began in Ibadan, the state capital, under the tutelage of Ladosu Ladapo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) who twice ran unsuccessfully for the presidency of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).

After one year of practice under the Senior Advocate, Olukayode Ariwoola chose to set up his own legal practice in Oyo, not far from his beloved natal community of Iseyin. At the time, there were only five lawyers in the city. Making ends meet was difficult and his clients were mostly reluctant litigants, many of whom had to improvise in order to find the currency for transacting business with a lawyer. He stuck with it and in 1992, the year after Oyo State was split in two to produce Osun State, got propelled to the office of a judge of the High Court of Oyo State by what from his narration surely was a stroke of providential happenstance. In the cohort of six new judges, Olukayode Ariwoola was the youngest by all of nine years.

After 13 years as a judge of the High Court, Olukayode Ariwooola got elevated to the Court of Appeal in November 2005. The major actors in his elevation to the appellate Bench included Aloma Mukhtar, who would later rise to become the first female Chief Justice of Nigeria; Bola Ige, a former Attorney-General of the Federation; and Bolarinwa Babalakin a former Justice of the Supreme Court. None of these three shared the same origins with Olukayode Ariwoola. Aloma Mukhtar came from Kano; Bola Ige and Bolarinwa Babalakin both came from Osun State.

After six years on the Court of Appeal, Olukayode Ariwoola ascended to the Supreme Court in November 2011, where he served for another 12 years before becoming the CJN. In all, his judicial career spanned nearly 32 years, including two years and two months served as CJN. All his judicial elevations (except his preferment to the office of CJN) occurred in the month of November.

Judicial autobiographies, especially in common law countries, are far from easy to confection. The balance between achieving a captivating narrative and preserving the mystique of the high judicial office is hard. The temptation to deodorize the tale can be tantalising. Judging with Justice wrestles valiantly with this dilemma and not always successfully.

The author offers about the Supreme Court that it is “more than a court of law. It is the tradition that the Supreme Court is regarded as a court of policy.” Having said this, the book offers no insight as to how the Supreme Court on which he sat for 13 years or the office of the CJN which he occupied for over two of those years, articulated or advanced this idea of the Supreme Court as a court of policy. If anything, the court did the opposite under him.

The best that can be said of the book and about its author is that they chose to be economical with any indication of a coherent judicial philosophy. Entirely in keeping with this, the author writes with what appears to be some pride that he never “had any cause to write a dissenting opinion be it at the Court of Appeal or at the Supreme Court.” He spent a combined18 years in both courts.

The author, nevertheless, drops hints of inspiration. He counsels, for instance, that “a judge must not frequent social events where litigants and lawyers congregate.” Those who read this may wonder whether he remembered it when he showed up in Port Harcourt in November 2022 to serenade politicians (many of whom had cases before his court) in their quest for electoral victory in elections that were then impending.

Many who were witness to Olukayode Ariwoola’s tenure as CJN will wonder when he came to what he claims in the book to be his long-held belief “that the judiciary is an independent and separate arm of government and should not be regarded as an appendage of the Executive or the Legislature”. The disposition of his entire term appears to have been the very opposite of these sentiments.

Judging with Justice is littered with a few more examples of warm and comforting shibboleths. Yet, it is what the book omits that is most telling.

The author thanks “God for the privilege to have been instrumental in the appointment of people into positions of responsibility”. As CJN, he sure had a lot of practice at this. He also claims that he always “ensure(d) that the persons to be nominated are credible, qualified, and people of proven integrity.” His record as CJN will show this claim to be worse than bogus.

At the end of his narration, the author tells with pride his achievements as CJN. Among these, he lists attainment at the beginning of 2024 for the first time in the 70-year history of the Supreme Court of full judicial establishment size of 22 (including the CJN). He also points to the appointment since 2023 of new judges to the various courts, including the Court of Appeal, the Federal High Court and the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory.

In Judging with Justice, Olukayode Ariwoola is punctilious in listing all the people whom he processed for appointment in that frantic sequence of judicial elevations that occurred during the year preceding his retirement as CJN. He takes fulsome paternal pride in the fact that his son – also named Kayode Taslim – “is a jurist like Judge Taslim Olawale Elias he was named after”, but omits to disclose that it was him, the father, who appointed the son to the role of judge (with no need for the helping hand of a Holy Ghost). He did not stop there, he also appointed his own daughter-in-law as judge, as well as the daughters of the President of the Court of Appeal; of the Chief Judge of High Court of the FCT; the daughter of his predecessor in the office of CJN; the wife of the Minister of the FCT; and many more high-up insiders too numerous to mention.

Judging with Justice missed an opportunity to show how a judiciary of sons, daughters, wives and even a few mistresses, meets the standard of “credible, qualified, and people of proven integrity.” He may have been closer to the mark if he had chosen to title the book “A Convenient Memory.”

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu

• Olukayode Ariwoola, Judging with Justice: The Autobiography of Hon. Justice Olukayode Ariwoola, GCON, The Chief Justice of Nigeria [As Narrated to Olanrewaju Akinsola, (Onigegewura)], (Lagos, Asco Publishers, 2024)

This piece is one of the technical notes that I used in some seminal conversations before now, one of many others that I consider should be shared, in spite of its seminal tone, for the benefit of public managers-learners who are spread all over the nooks and crannies of Nigeria and beyond, and for public education, In penning this contribution, I am interested in a sort of agenda setting that has the capacity to generate discourse around public cum civil service institutional reformulation and its framework of relevance especially in a postcolonial context like Nigeria. All across the world, public administration serves the purpose of outlining and concretizing the administrative agenda that allows the state intervene positively in the lives of the citizenry. This therefore places a huge responsibility on the public service—and the public administration scholarship and communities of service and practice—to get up to speed in outlining a pathway that will transform the professional endeavor into a sturdy representative of state activities and responsibilities to the people. Like every other endeavor, public administration must necessarily respond to the multiplicity of events, circumstances and occurrences that have come to define the world in the twenty-first century.  

Public administration has come a long way since its first documented formation, with the rudimentary but fundamental beginning in the ancient pharaonic Egypt through to the high political intrigues and engineering feats of the Roman society to the exigencies of the industrial revolution of the nineteen century. In the twenty-first century, and all across the world, public administration is even more challenged by current circumstances shaping not only national administrative imagination but also international and global relations. In the first place, public administration is today immersed in what has been called a VUCA environment. This implies that public administration and its processes, procedures and institutional operations must be factored into an environment that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. The VUCA world implies the myriad degrees of shocks, threats, cynicism, turbulence and challenges that governments all across the world must have to respond to in order to design and formulate policies that will resonate with the yearnings of an increasingly politically sophisticated citizenry. The VUCA environment is aggravated by what has come to be called a polycrisis, a fundamentally complex situation as a result of many crises, conflicts and complex issues reinforcing and complicating one another in sequences that aggravate any existing circumstances that humans and states find themselves. In such a situation of a polycrisis, the overall consequences and impacts of the complex crisis is greater than the sum of all the variables making it up. For example, poverty in the world today is now a function of climate change, economic recession, natural disasters, bad governance and political instability.  

Within a VUCA environment, policies and their trajectories and dynamics cannot be considered as simplistic and linear endeavors. This is compounded by the fact that the status and role of the public manager, as the administrative and policy craftsman, has kept changing: (a) the ‘I am directed’ rule-oriented bureaucrat (public manager 1.0), (b) business-oriented and performance-focused manager (2.0), and (c) networking and relations-focused collaborator (3.0). This transition reflects the transformation of thinking about public administration and the public service from Max Weber to Woodrow Wilson and from the new public management (NPM) to the idea of new governance. The VUCA environment within which the twenty-first century public manager is expected to effectively and efficiently function is further complicated when it is considered from the perspectives of a postcolonial context like Nigeria. Africa is often considered as the most difficult administrative context in the world. And that is essentially because the organic maturation of public administration had been disrupted not only by colonial rule but also postcolonial consequences of a logic of extraction. This therefore implies that public administration and the public manager in Africa must not only anticipate and preempt current and recurrent challenges that ails governance on the continent, but must also be conversant with emerging trends and paradigms shifts that are determining the trajectory and possible directions that public administration is taking in the evolving fourth revolution and knowledge society mediated by digital and destructive technologies, from the blockchain and robotics to enterprise resource planning and big data.

Trend analysis therefore becomes a necessary and inevitable tool for prospecting for patterns, scenarios and variances in order to determine future prospects and achieve strategic decision-making. Trend analysis rely essentially on empirical and historical data and evidences to determine, monitor and forecast short- or long-term institutional changes that could constitute downtrends or uptrends for any particular endeavor. In public administration, it involves gathering historical and current data on emerging trends that could get the public managers to make decisive and evidence-based strategic decisions that would get the public service to perform more effectively and efficiently for better service delivery. This serves the purpose of empowering the public managers and public administration scholars and experts to gather valuable insights on how far public administration practices have come, the emerging developments that are shaping the practices, and the future prospects in the profession. It also enables public managers to generate crucial understanding of performance metrics that could keep pushing the boundaries of the operational functionality of the public service for optimal performance and productivity.

The most recent source of polycrisis all over the world was the COVID-19 pandemic that decimated millions of lives across the globe and facilitated in its wake what is now called the “new normal” in terms of human social relations, societal dynamics and structural cum institutional realignments. Humans have been forced to reassess normal patterns of doing things at some professional levels. We now work from home, adapted to a blended educational schedule, attend conferences and symposia virtually, and so on. In economic, social, political and even spiritual terms, there are now dramatic transformations that were instigated by the precarious developments of the COVID-19 pandemic. The new normal is enabled by digital and other new technologies and the new information dispensation to disrupt the usual dynamics of social, cultural and professional lives. The pandemic triggered a deluge of challenging situations for public administration and the public service to deal with. This can be likened in a sense to the administrative challenges that the Nigerian Civil War posed to Nigeria’s public service and those we now call the “super permanent secretaries.”

The COVID-19 pandemic struck most governments and their public administration dynamics at this critical service delivery point. And the tragedy of the pandemic is that it caught the entire world at varying administrative stages and phases of the normal. This is even worse for the third world countries, and Africa especially. Before the COVID-19 lockdown, the Nigerian public service system had been afflicted by a bureau-pathological protocol defined by a collusion between what we all know as the “Nigerian factor” and some damaging systemic debilities. The tragedy of the pandemic and of Nigeria’s unpreparedness for it has presented the public service system with a unique opportunity to reflect on and rethink its governance and administrative policies. And so, with the sudden transformation of the way we look at work and the workplace dynamics, the public service had to forcefully embrace what used to be the staple of administrative conferences and forecasting.

The transformation of the workplace, as part of the key reform for preparing public administration to manage the fourth industrial revolution especially in Africa, demands the deployment of human resource management to achieve performance and productivity. The transformation of the workplace and work ethics gives the public service the capacity to recruit a global workforce and create incentives that increase employee loyalty and commitment, and collaborations that generate productivity. This gives room for the achievement of a better work-life balance deriving from freer time and flexibility to work. It also crucially facilitates the acquisition of “twenty-first century literacies”: (a) interpersonal skills: facilitation, empathy, political skills; (b) synthesising skills: sorting evidence, analysis, making judgements, offering critique and being creative; (c) organising skills: group work, collaboration and peer review; and (d) communication skills: better use of new media and multi-media resources. The smart public manager must also factor into the mix the unique cultural and sociological demands that the emergence of the Gen Z, Gen Alpha and Gen Beta are bringing or will bring into the constitution of the workplace as a technology-enables space with its own peculiar generational dynamics. No conscious public manager will ignore the demands of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in making the workplace more broad-based and strategic.   

Apart from the immediate need for flexible and remote work protocols that transformed the workplace and its dynamics, the imperative of open government suddenly got a new lease on life. Since the emergence of the new public management and the managerial revolution that drove it, the objective has been to achieve a government that is FAST—flatter, agile, streamlined and technology-enabled. And one way to do this is not only to install a performance management system, but to also facilitate an open government framework that allows for the co-creation of values through citizen engagement. For instance, a flat government demands that the distance between government and the citizens be decreased through the deployment of digital technologies and the social media and mobile technologies that increase the participation of citizens in administrative and decision-making processes. Open government therefore increase transparency and accountability in government decision making, remove red tape and hierarchies, and enable cross-sectoral collaborations.

The open government initiative also makes possible an open data platform that governments across the world are deploying to further facilitate citizens engagement and interactions with the policies of government. Through emerging communication and information technologies, governments make available data and information that the citizens can use. Tracking and mapping systems also help the citizens to interrogate government’s expenditures and decision dynamics. Open government and the open data initiatives are made possible by the right to information legislation that makes it imperative for the government, through its MDAs, to share critical information about its processes and procedures with its citizens. the open government partnership plays a crucial role in grounding the significance of the public-private partnership. This is achieved through a networked dynamic that open government and its deployment of communication and digital technologies make possible. The government can now draw the private sector into a governance space for tackling challenging administrative and governance issues that the government or the private sector could never tackle on its own.

The idea of open government and its potentials for making public administration more effective inevitably raises the specter of cybersecurity with regard to the value of big data, data sovereignty and how this could be compromised. For example, data sovereignty gives a government the control over sensitive information and data that its public administrative institutions and processes require to function effectively. It also prevents these data and information from unauthorized access or information mining and misuse that could compromise the significance and values of these data and information. Hence, governments need to manage the circumferences of its data sovereignty by monitoring and anticipating data breach and vulnerability. Public managers will therefore be tasked with the imperative of thinking more strategically about the critical relationship between open government, open access to big data, administrative efficiency and the threat of data breach through cyber-attacks. This inevitably demands the significant role of cybersecurity professionals who can anticipate and deal with cyber-threats as they emerge.

The reforms that will shape public administration of the future will be determined significantly by the capacity of public services across the world to leverage digital, communication and information technologies to both create strategies and be strategic. Creating a strategy, on the one hand, is a process of translating a plan into a set of results. On the other hand, however, being strategic is a competence that involves critical thinking. The two point at the urgent need for the public service to generate strategic thinking required for the change management that will move the institution forward into more optimal functionality and productivity. Both must be channeled institutionally to the most central process of strategic decision making. Creating strategies and being strategic in administrative decision-making demands the deployment of new thinking and developments in decision science.

Decision science has become a critical field that has integrated cognate developments from artificial intelligence, organisational psychology, systems thinking, machine learning, probabilistic modeling, scenario analysis, big data analytics, and many more to become a key area that the public service must buy into to push forward its policy intelligence that strengthen decision-making. Modern policy making that has taken cognizance of decision science will most likely possess nine fundamental features: (i) forward-looking; (ii) outward-looking; (iii) innovative, flexible and creative; (iv) evidence-based; (v) evaluation; (vi) review; (vii) joined-up; (viii) inclusive; and (ix) learned lessons.

Artificial intelligence plays a critical role in decision science and strategic decision-making for the public administration of the future. AI possesses a huge significance for the objective of making the public service an efficient institution for democratic service delivery that optimize democratic governance. AI not only makes possible the digitization of crucial data and information, it simplifies routine and tedious tasks, and fast tracks data analysis. It is also inevitable in facilitating the open government and open data aspiration that transform public administration. However, in deploying AI in public administration, the public manager must factor the multiple ethical and legal concerns, especially in terms of human rights issues that links AI to labour issues and industrial relations.

The last fundamental trend that public administration must factor into its reform is the emergence of a flexible, updated and up-to-date curriculum that benefits from the contemporary discourses on public administration, current administrative practices, and also feeds administrative education and training. The curriculum will feature syllabus on artificial intelligence and its critical significance, the role of new technologies in public service efficiency, human resource management and the new workplace, the imperatives of open government, etc. The curriculum, for example will explore the relationship between the public service and commercial/market tools, analysis, techniques and models for gathering commercial data that will enhance the effectiveness of the public service in terms of project management, asset and facility management, outsourcing, contract awards, and so on.     

It was in the late hours of the night. I was scrolling through my YouTube feed, a space I rarely find myself aimlessly searching through. But this night was different; I hadn’t gone too far when I saw the familiar face on the thumbnail of one of the suggested videos. It was Olajumoke Oniburedi.

I was immediately interested. I had thought about her not too long before that fateful night and wondered what happened to her after her sudden “grass to grace story”. If you’re unfamiliar with her story, Olajumoke is the popular bread seller who stumbled into TY Bello’s photoshoot with the British Rapper, Tinie Tempah and got captured in one of the pictures.

Suddenly, Olajumoke was a sensation. From gifts of a rented apartment to a launch into a new modelling career with local and international appearances and an opportunity for adult education, her story became a modern-day fairy tale. Many started praying for their own “God of Olajumoke” moment.

However, over the last few years, Olajumoke vanished from the public space, warranting curiosity about what had happened. That was why I couldn’t ignore the YouTube video—a City FM interview where she shared her side of the story. What I heard was heartbreaking: a mix of domestic abuse, poor decisions stemming from a lack of education and exposure, and exploitation by others had derailed her once-promising new life.

As I watched, I couldn’t help but wonder how differently things might have turned out if Olajumoke had been properly educated. It hurt to learn that she dropped out of the adult education programme she started during her rise to fame. I wondered how different some of her choices might have been if she had some form of education. Toward the end of the interview, she reflected on her experiences, acknowledging how her lack of education made her vulnerable to predators and poor decisions. Now, she’s committed to prioritising her education moving forward.

Her story reinforced to me that education is about so much more than professional or technical skills. It shapes how we see ourselves, the world, and the choices we make in every area of life. Aside from knowing this from research and observation, I also know this from personal experience. While my education certainly advanced my career, its most profound impact has been on my personal life. It’s helped protect me, guide my decisions, and expand my worldview.

In a previous article, I argued that the benefits of education go far beyond academic or industrial success. It develops personal, social, and intellectual capacities that influence every aspect of a person’s life. Education advocacy must be expanded beyond touting education only as a tool for the economic and industrial advancement of nations. Although education plays a huge role there, it also has way more implications than only equipping people to get a job.

Olajumoke’s journey is a powerful example. Although her education wouldn’t have made her stumble into Ty Bello’s photoshoot, it might have helped her sustain and fully maximise the opportunity when it came. And it might equip her with the worldview she needed to protect her from unnecessary pain. The silver lining in her story is that she’s getting a rare second chance. I love how much she now values education and is actively pursuing it.

Olajumoke’s story also highlights the growing importance of adult education, a cause that often gets overlooked in favour of advocating for young learners’ education. While that’s essential, Olajumoke reminds us why adults, too, need access to formal education—no matter their background or past experiences.

Education truly is for everyone. It’s not a scam, even for those whose careers may veer away from their academic training. It’s a tool for personal growth, second chances, and reshaping lives. My hope is that we continue advocating for education in ways that show its multidimensional contributions to human life and make it accessible to all—regardless of age, background, or the twists and turns of life. After all, Olajumoke has shown us that it’s never too late to learn, grow, and rewrite your story.

Oluwatoyin is a STEM education doctoral researcher, social impact founder and education policy advocate. She writes from Nigeria and the United States.