Posthumous tributes are always so difficult and traumatic to write. The one who feels the weight of writing such tributes is left to wonder whether she is giving credence to the Yoruba saying that we are only deified when we die; humans are not worth anything alive (Ọjọ́ a bá kú là ń dère; èèyàan ò sunwọ̀n láàyè). Did we really fathom the worth of Prof. Malomo while he was still here with us and rearing to offer his entire capabilities for the sake of his beloved country? Or are we only now just realizing what we have lost in the distinguished scholar, patriot and visionary?
This is one death that touched me at a personal level. And the reason goes beyond the fact that I am a bona fide part of the Irelewuyi royal family of Eripa in Osun State by adoption, and through my lifelong friendship with a dear brother for all time, Oyetunji Irelewuyi, an unusual chemistry in friendship which earned me and my family the bond of love of Broda Siyan and Sister Jibola Malomo from the campus of University of Ife (now OAU) and in perpetuity. This relationship with Oyetunji and the Irelewuyi family, sealed during my first encounter with late Papa Prince Emmanuel Oyetade Irelewuyi, a contemporary of my late uncle, Chief Alfred Adejumo Olaopa, in 1981, is a story for another day. The more significant issue is the fact that Nigeria has lost a genuine and formidable reformist and intellectual in Prof. Malomo. And this is especially saddening because his expertise is most needed in Nigeria’s mineral sector, that underrated and under-utilized sphere where Nigeria’s development agenda could take a significant cue in her bid for industrialization.
Compared to her oil and gas reserves, Nigeria’s solid mineral resources has only received 30% of national exploitation, leaving 70% of these resources still lying in the ground. So, if only 30% of the exploited minerals could earn about $89 billion annually, how much will the exploitation of 70% contribute to the totality of Nigeria’s infrastructural development? I do not know what motivated the late Malomo, but what else could motivate an outstanding professor who could have sought a better professional life elsewhere to go where even angels fear to tread? Any desire to serve within Nigeria is fraught with dangers, occasioned by what we call the Nigerian factor. There is, for instance, the complacent acceptance not only that “Sebi this is government work,” but also that once you are working for the government, it is an instant avenue to instant wealth.
And yet, Prof. Malomo not only accepted to work for the government, he seconded his expertise to a sector that has suffered neglect in the shadow of the oil and gas. I understand this lonely figure of the reformer working where no sense of self-gratification is needed, and by someone who does not want to self-gratificate in the first place. As permanent secretary, I had been seconded to ministries where some had felt sorry for me, and that, because there is nothing “sumptuous” about those ministries. For an institutional reformer, what is seen is not the prospect of the loot but the dysfunction that could be corrected for national and institutional renewal. That was what Prof. Malomo saw in the Nigeria Geological Survey Agency (NGSA) years before the agency was recognized constitutionally. From 2003 to 2006 when the NGSA bill was passed, and he became the pioneer Director-General, on till 2013, Prof, Malomo toiled with a vision to transform the solid mineral sector as a viable component of Nigeria’s development agenda.
His reformist vision enabled him to triangulate successfully his unwavering commitment to NGSA, his professional and scholarly distinction as a geologist, and a pragmatic structural networked connection with geological institutions from Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society to the Geological Society of Nigeria. And at that without any underestimation of his commitment to his family and societal obligations and duties as husband, father and other multiple social roles. Rarely, it has been argued, do you see scholars and intellectuals making the most of administrative acumen to transform their contexts. But then, Malomo is an exception in a long line of exceptions that range from Kenneth Dike to Ojetunji Aboyade, all excellent scholars and successful administrators. And unfortunately, all late.
Malomo embodied the very essence of the reform-minded public servant Nigeria needs to make a steady transition out of the woods of underdevelopment. Lee Kuan Yew once remarked, when asked about his runaway success with statecraft that transformed Singapore, “I had some very powerful minds working with me.” Prof. Malomo qualifies as one of such minds that facilitate change within the change space of any country. His range of experience alone is awe-inspiring, and sufficient to bring a resounding expertise to the dysfunctional postcolonial context like Nigeria. Handing over to him the technical backend of the mineral cum mining sector was a very smart institutional move by the government. An institutional similitude of Malomo in every critical sector of the Nigerian governance space—education, health, economy, internal affairs, employment, security, etc.—is all that is needed to bring a drastic transformation to Nigeria’s policy architecture. Prof. Malomo instantiated what it means to be a public servant, a person who serves with public spiritedness and professionalism and patriotism.
When the federal government unveiled the litho-structural map of mineral resources in Nigeria—the Airborne Geophysical Survey Digital Data—in 2008, we immediately see the pioneering genius of Malomo and his cadastral instinct that necessitated mapping Nigeria’s underground resources as the precursor to the policy intelligence and political will to diversify the Nigerian economy away from oil and gas. And that mapping had continued in 2012 and 2016. The idea behind the survey mapping is to search and find those minerals Nigeria needs to jumpstart its comparative advantage and fuel its development agenda. Prof. Malomo drove the NGSA into constitutional reckoning, and into a full-fledged agency that had to fulfil its constitutional and development responsibility as a critical sector.
The crowning glory of his effort, as the D-G of NGSA and as co-chair, was the publication of the “Roadmap for the Growth and Development of the Nigerian Mining Industry” by the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development in 2016. The grand objective of the critical document is to “Build a world class minerals and mining ecosystem designed to serve a targeted domestic and export market for minerals and ores.” And this is to be achieved through (a) rebuilding confidence in the minerals and mining sector, (b) expanding the mineral asset processing industry, and (c) return to the global mineral and ore market as a formidable competitor. The document is a well-laid out framework with the capacity for transforming that sector as a significant development agent. But as the late Malomo and the other co-chair of the committee stated, “The report detailed a comprehensive set of initiatives, which the committee believes, if implemented, will drive growth of the sector in Nigeria for years to come.” The key issue here, as in the case of many other beautiful roadmaps in Nigeria, is policy implementation—and the devil in the details.
But no reformer could ever hope to succeed as a lone ranger. I have many battle scares to back up this assertion, and claim my position as a kindred spirit with the late indefatigable geologist. A fully functional and optimal NGSA is just one agency in the sea of dysfunctional others. And one solidly committed and patriotic Malomo is just the exception within a landscape of greed and gratification. In the final analysis, the institutional reformer would have resigned himself to the maxim of doing the best one can and letting others pick up from there. And yet, such a reformer is not comforted by the assurance that the ones taking over has the same breath of competence and patriotic stature to stay as focus and carry forward the task of institutional transformation. I wonder if Prof, Malomo struggled with the messianic syndrome. I wonder what weighed heavily on his mind when he was leaving NGSA, with the knowledge of the Nigerian governance situation and Nigerian factor. I wonder what weighed on his soul as he laid sick on his deathbed, reflecting on time gone by and what could have been done.
If Prof Siyanbola Malomo had written a memoir, like the late Prof. Akin Mabogunje did, we would have been treated to a narration of the commencement optimism of a charged scholar surveying the Nigerian geological predicament and brimming with confidence. The narrative would have included a section that detailed his struggles within the corruption-soaked mineral sector of the Nigerian economy. And, being an incurable reformer, like Mabogunje, Prof, Malomo would have buckled down in more optimism about what Nigeria still has the chance of becoming if we are careful enough to move beyond the digital data mapping of the mineral resources of the Nigerian state—the blessing of providence for national development and greatness—and carefully and with political will take the bull by the horn and push beyond our hesitancy in giving policies the firm push and competent execution they need to become tangible infrastructural demonstration of good governance. I hope the Nigerian leadership will become the manifestation of the third part of Malomo’s unwritten memoir.
Prof. Tunji Olaopa
Retired Federal Permanent Secretary & Professor of Public Administration
tolaopa2003@gmail.com
