Nigerian parliamentarian speaks on good governance in Africa

Dimeji Bankole, speaker of the House of Representatives of Nigeria, will deliver the Oputa Lecture tomorrow afternoon from 12:30 to 2pm in 106 Osgoode Hall Law School. Bankole’s lecture, titled "Africa, Good Governance and the Next Generation" is part of an annual series of lectures presented by the law school.   

Right: Dimeji Bankole

The Nigerian-born Bankole, who was elected to his country’s House of Representatives in 2003 on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), represents the Abeokuta South, Federal Constituency of Ogun State. He has also served as a member of the Pan African Parliament, which sits in Johannesburg, South Africa. Bankole has a bachelors degree in economics from the University of Reading in England and also studied at the University of Oxford as well as Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

The Oputa Lectures are named for the Justice Chukwudifu Akunne Oputa, one of the most prominent African jurists of our time, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. Oputa was most recently the chair of the Human Rights Investigation Commission and helped launch the Supreme Court of Nigeria into its golden age in the 1980s. 

Each year, the Oputa Lecture provides a forum in which Africans who are involved at the highest levels with governance on the continent, or who have distinguished themselves in the study of this area, can interact and exchange ideas with the York University community and a larger Canadian audience. The lecture offers a mutual benefit for both Canada and African societies and provides a forum for discussion on the challenges and triumphs of governance on the African continent.

The inaugural Oputa Lecture was delivered in October 2004 by Chief Ojo Maduekwe, Nigeria’s current Minister of Foreign Affairs. Members of the York community are invited to attend this open lecture, which convened by Osgoode Professor Obiora Okafor. The invitation to Bankole to deliver the 2009 Oputa Lecture was made by Patrick Monahan, dean of Osgoode Hall Law School and York’s provost-designate, the Nathanson Centre for Transnational Human Rights, Crime & Security at York University and its director, Osgoode Hall Law School Professor Craig Scott together with Okafor. The Oputa Lecture is sponsored by the Nathanson Centre, Osgoode Hall Law School.