A university  lecturer,  Professor Mark Anikpo has stressed the need for sociologists to have a rethink on the discipline, its methodologies and theoretical models to conform with the realities of contemporary Nigerian society, and the challenges they pose to the relevance of the discipline.
He made the assertion while delivering the 5th valedictory lecture of the University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT) recently, to mark his formal retirement from the university.
Professor Anikpo, whose lecture was titled “Sociology in Contemporary :The Challenges of Relevance”, stressed the need for more macro-research initiatives in the discipline.
“The history and scope of the contemporary social challenges must be brought together to reveal their characteristics and patterns.
“It is only in so doing that a relevant research analysis can emerge, and appropriate prescription solution offered”, he said.
A former deputy vice chancellor (Administration) of the UNIPORT, Anikpo, who was conferred with the “Fellowship of the Academy of Social Sciences  of Nigeria” at the twilight of his formal academic career, suggested areas sociologists should focus.
“More efforts should be directed to practical areas such as conflict resolution, labour management relations, social welfare, security and crime prevention”, he said.
According to him, these areas “offered implementable policy suggestions and praxis, but only as parts of a dialectical programme”.
He noted that sociologists have stopped defining societies to reveal its contemporary dynamics and demands.
This, he continued has resulted in the decline of its relevance as a tool for understanding and solving contemporary social problems.
“Macro research endeavours have at best, merely scratched at the emerging challenges without really professing adequate solutions to them”, he said, hence the need for more macro studies based on historical dialectical transformation of society.
While noting that theoretical models have shifted to conservative functionalist models, which were unable to critically expose the ills of society, Anikpo proffered the way forward.
“More analysis from critical political economy models are now imperatives to enhance the capacity of sociology to understand and profer solutions to emerging social problems in contemporary society”, he said.
In his remarks, the VC of the university, Professor Joseph Ajienka, described Anikpo as “a seasoned academic and mentor of many scholars, who has impacted the academia in many positive ways in many years of continous engagement”.