Career
As minister, he was involved in the promotion of an agriculture settlement scheme that would employ and pay an initial amount of capital to new graduates from an established agriculture training college. The graduates would engage in farming. This settlement scheme was borrowed from an Israeli agriculture development scheme, Moshav.
The scheme was partly initiated to arrest a tide in the movement of young men and women to the urban areas where farming is hardly a career choice.
Akin Deko was born in Idanre, Ondo State, Nigeria. He attended Street Peters, Lagos, for primary education and for secondary education, he went to Government College Ibadan (General Communication Incorporation), he completed his studies in Nigeria at the Yaba Higher College in Lagos where he obtained a teaching certificate.
He started work as a teacher at the Government College, in Ibadan, teaching mechanics and applied mathematics. In a few years, he developed an interest in building and in 1947 went to the Brixton School of Building in London.
He later started his own building contracting firm.
Later in his career, he was the African regional representative at the Food and Agriculture Organization and he was also the pioneer Pro-chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Akure. He also served as the Pro Chancellor of University of Ibadan and the University of Benin.