UNILAG revives dormant 32-year-old professorial chair

The University of Lagos has revived its 32-year-old Samuel Asabia Professorial Chair in Business Ethics, which remained without an occupant for several years.

The chair was revived when the J.F. Ade Ajayi Auditorium of UNILAG hosted the inaugural public lecture of the First Bank Samuel Asabia Professorial Chair in Business Ethics recently.

The Chair, established by First Bank on February 4, 1994, in honour of the bank’s first Nigerian Managing Director and Chief Executive, Samuel Asabia, was created to promote the teaching and research of business ethics and sustain an annual intellectual conversation on ethical leadership.

The Samuel Asabia Professorial Chair was endowed with N5m when it was established in 1994, to advance Business Ethics at the University of Lagos.

However, the initiative remained largely dormant for several years as the university struggled to find a suitable occupant.

Speaking at the inaugural public lecture of the revived chair, the UNILAG Vice Chancellor, Prof Folasade Ogunsola, narrated how attempts to fill the position in 2011 attracted no applicants.

She further disclosed that another recruitment exercise in 2016 produced only two applicants, with Prof Kenneth Amaeshi emerging as the only qualified candidate.

Ogunsola, who spoke through the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Academic and Research, Prof Matthew Ilori, said Amaeshi could not take up the position at the time because of the remuneration attached to the appointment.

She said the reconstitution of the Board of Trustees in 2025 under the chairmanship of Prof Akin Osibogun marked a turning point in efforts to revive the Chair.

According to her, a fresh recruitment exercise attracted two applicants, with Amaeshi again emerging as the most qualified candidate.

She said the Board subsequently addressed the limitations that had stalled the appointment, leading to Amaeshi accepting the position.

The VC said the appointment had given concrete expression to the revival of the Chair, whose mandate included teaching, postgraduate supervision, research, industry collaboration, public engagement and an annual public lecture.

She said, “A Professorial Chair should be more than a title attached to an endowment. It should be a centre of intellectual leadership, where scholarship speaks to society, research informs practice, and the university engages courageously with the difficult questions of its time.”

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The Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Prof Akin Osibogun, said the Board’s task was not merely to administer an endowment but to restore the original purpose of the Chair.

Osibogun said the Board, following its reconstitution in 2025, returned to the founding objectives of the initiative and resolved to move it “from dormancy to activity.”

He said Amaeshi’s appointment had already begun producing results, noting that the professor taught two final-year courses during the second semester, with more than 1,000 students participating largely through virtual classes.

The courses, he said, were Corporate Social Responsibility and International Business, while Amaeshi was also supervising a Doctor of Business Administration student at the university’s Business School.

The inaugural public lecture of the revived Chair, titled “Ethical Paradoxes, Small Businesses, and the Informal Economy: Lessons for Tax Compliance and Accountability,” was delivered by Amaeshi.

In the lecture, Amaeshi examined the relationship between business ethics, taxation, public trust and Nigeria’s large informal economy.

He proposed the establishment of Tax Accountability Desks under the Office of the Tax Ombud to enable taxpayers to track how public revenue was spent.

He also advocated linking annual tax collections to specific Sustainable Development Goals, saying this could help taxpayers see the public value of their contributions.

Amaeshi argued that citizens’ reluctance to pay taxes could be linked, in some cases, to a lack of confidence that their contributions would translate into visible public value.

He also called for greater attention to African realities in the development and application of economic theories, arguing that business practices should reflect local social and cultural contexts.

The event was attended by FirstBank Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Olusegun Alebiosu; Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodinma; academics, students and other stakeholders.

Alebiosu reaffirmed FirstBank’s commitment to education, ethical leadership and financial literacy, citing the bank’s educational infrastructure programme, Future First financial literacy initiative and sponsorship of the CFA Society Nigerian Universities Ethics Challenge.

The university and FirstBank said the revival was intended to transform the Chair into a platform for teaching, research, policy engagement and ethical leadership.