S. O. Adebo, a pioneer of the Nigerian Civil Service, and a former United Nations envoy and University President, died of a stroke on Sept. 30 at Sacred Heart Hospital in Abeokuta, Nigeria. He was 80.
Chief Adebo served as Nigeria’s representative at the United Nations from 1962 to 1967 and as United Nations Under Secretary General and Executive General of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research until 1972. He retired as Chancellor of the University of Lagos two years ago.
Simeon Olaosebikan Adebo was born near Abeokuta in Western Nigeria, and became an Okanlomo (Chief) of the Yoruba people like his father, a farmer, before him. He started out as a Clerk in the Nigerian Railways before joining the Government Service as a Cadet Administrative Officer in 1943.
He graduated from King’s College in Lagos, went to England to study Law and upon graduation from London University was admitted to the Bar. He then rose through the ranks in his country’s Ministry of Finance and the Treasury and in 1961 became Head of the Civil Service and Chief Secretary to the Government of Western Nigeria.Along the way, Chief Adebo acquired the reputation of a leader who would thresh out vexing policy matters and encourage his subordinates to speak their minds freely.
During his years in New York, he served as a Vice President of the Association of World Federalists, president of the Society for International Development and a consultant to the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in California.
Back home in the 1970’s, he became a business executive and head of a number of corporations and headed the National Universities Commission and the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies. Before becoming Chancellor of Lagos University in 1984, he held the same position at Obafemi Awolowo University at Ile-Ife.
Anglican and deeply religious, he was a former First Registrar of the Church of the Province of West Africa and member of the Diocese of Lagos. He also published two volumes of memoirs in the 1980’s.
He married another Chief’s daughter in 1941, Regina Abimbola Majekodunmi, who survives. He is also survived by a daughter, Funlayo Adebo-Kiencke, and three sons, Prof. Oluwole Adebo, Abiodun Adebo and Dr. Oladipo Adebo, all of Nigeria.
PostScript
Simeon Olaosebikan Adebo, born in 1913, near Abeokuta, was a Nigerian Administrator, Lawyer and Diplomat who served as a United Nations Under-Secretary General. He was the former head of the Civil Service in Nigeria’s old Western region. In 1962, he was appointed the Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations.
As a chieftain of the Yoruba people residing in the historic mountain stronghold of Abeokuta, he held the title of the Okanlomo of Egbaland.
Civil Service
After the end of the Nigerian civil war, General Yakubu Gowon instituted a commission to review wages and salaries of Nigerian workers and to look into means of ameliorating the economic conditions of workers, the importance of the commission was due to the rise in cost of living as a result of uncontrollable inflation during the civil war. Simeon Adebo was called to head the commission which later became known as the Adebo commission.
Workers who had demanded wage increases were happy for the choice of Adebo, he was seen as an apolitical administrator who could look thoroughly into workers’ plight and investigate the concerns of workers in the civil and private sector. An earlier government review of wages, which called for wage increases in 1964 had been followed by the private sector.
Workers who had demanded wage increases were happy for the choice of Adebo, he was seen as an apolitical administrator who could look thoroughly into workers’ plight and investigate the concerns of workers in the civil and private sector. An earlier government review of wages, which called for wage increases in 1964 had been followed by the private sector.In its first report, the commission under Adebo, recommended a COLA or Cost of Living Award for all workers, ranging from $10 increases to $24. However, the commission desired to work within the administrative structure of the 1960s and only focused on how to review and adjust technical problems of the structure instead of a total overhaul of the wage and salary system of the Federal Government or in totality that of Nigeria.
He was also the Chairman of a sub-committee that reached a compromise on the intractable and explosive sharia debates of the 1977 constitutional assembly in Nigeria.
