1. Academic career

2. Later life, and death

3. Claude Ake Visiting Chair at Uppsala University

4. Selected works

5. References

6. External links

Academic career

Before becoming a dean at Port Harcourt, he taught at universities in Canada, Kenya and Tanzania. Afterward, he held a variety of posts, at the African Journal of Political Economy, on the Social Sciences Council of Nigeria, and elsewhere.

At Yale, he taught two political science courses—one, called State in Africa, which was for undergraduates and graduate students, and another for undergraduates, about aspects of development and the state in Africa. While teaching at Yale he lived in temporary quarters on the Yale campus.

He wrote in 1985, in an essay on the African state: "Power is everything, and those who control the coercive resources use it freely to promote their interests."^[4] George Bond, the director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University's School of International Public Affairs, said: "He was one of the pre-eminent scholars on African politics and a scholar-activist concerned with the development of Africa. His concern was primarily with the average African and how to improve the nature of his conditions."^[5]

Later life, and death

On November 16, 1995 Ake resigned from the Steering Committee of the Niger Delta Environmental Survey.^[8] He did so to protest the execution of a minority rights activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa.{{citation needed|date=February 2014}} Ake was a critic of Shell and the oil industry. He is quoted as saying, "In Nigeria, companies like Shell are struggling between greed and fear."^[9]{{Quote without source|date=September 2018}}

In 1991 Ake founded and became the director of the Center for Advanced Social Science, headquartered in Port Harcourt. The center is a think-tank for social and environmental research. It also played a practical role, functioning in the early 1990s as an honest broker concerning oil revenues and environmental issues between local officials and representatives of several minority groups in the oil-producing area in southeastern Nigeria. Other tasks set for it were to apply scientific knowledge to actual developmental problems in Africa and to enable Africa to become more of a producer of knowledge. When the center was founded, its sole supporter was the Ford Foundation. It is now supported by the Ford Foundation and other donors in the United States and elsewhere. Mora McLean, a former Ford Foundation staff member who is now the president of the Manhattan-based African-American Institute, said that."{{Quote without source|date=September 2018}}

Ake was one of 142 people killed when flight 86 between Port Harcourt and Lagos in Nigeria crashed.^[2] The plane was operated by a local airline, Aviation Development Company (ADC Airlines). His death was widely believed to have been orchestrated by the then military junta of Gen. Sani Abacha, of whom Ake was an uncompromising critic{{Citation needed|date=March 2017}}. This is in addition to the fact that Ake was a mentor to slain author, Ken Saro-Wiwa and a brain behind the Ogoni agitations against exploitation. His survivors included his wife, Anita, and three sons: Mela, Ibra & Brieri, all of who live in Rivers State.

Claude Ake Visiting Chair at Uppsala University

In 2003 the Claude Ake Visiting Chair was set up at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, in collaboration with the Nordic Africa Institute, to honour the Ake's memory. The Chair is open to social scientists researching at African universities on issues related to war, peace, conflict resolution, human rights, democracy and development on the African continent.

Selected works

• Social Sciences as Imperialism (1979)
• Revolutionary Pressures in Africa (1978)
• A Political Economy of Africa (1981)
• Democracy and Development in Africa (1996)
• The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa (2000 - published posthumously)

References

External links

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20051204171947/http://www.yale.edu/opa/ybc/v25.n13.obit2.html Yale University obituary]
• {{cite web |url= http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.1/mwalilino.pdf |title= Interview with West Africa Review |deadurl= yes |archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20060527184547/http://westafricareview.com/vol2.1/mwalilino.pdf |archivedate= 2006-05-27 |df= }} {{small|(145 KiB)}}
• In Canada, he taught at Carleton University, in Ottawa.
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20151201060200/http://www.nai.uu.se/about/partner/claude_ake/ Claude Ake Visiting Chair in Uppsala, Sweden]

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