Scholarship

Bawa was a self-made scholar. Within the constraints of his administrative duties, he managed to conduct an anthropological research with a visiting British anthropologist, Ms Eva Askaris. The latter provided him with the state of the art technology - a real audio tape recording instrument with which he documented many aspects of the culture. The product of that research is his compilation of The History of Ogori which was posthumously published in 1970, a year after his death. A comment on the book by a reviewer filed in the School of Oriental and African Studies London library states that the work he did was enough to award him a Doctoral degree (PhD)

Bawa Akerejola spoke and wrote an impeccable English. His library of files and documents is a rich resource for anyone who, among other things is interested in the study of English for Academic Purposes (ESP). When he wrote to a lawyer, he wrote like a lawyer; when he spoke to a health officer, he used their jargons too. What you read in each official document he wrote was one of legalese, bureaucratese, journalese, etc. in summary he was a good communicator and of a rare kind.

He encouraged parents to send their children to school and assisted some with school bills. Letters of appreciation from some of such beneficiaries in his files attest to this. Ironically, his insistence that parents stop elaborate, prolonged and expensive burial ceremonies to send their children to school instead, was one of the reasons for his collusion with the community.