In the Western media, the concept of the ‘African Big Man’ is part of the African crisis. In that space, the ‘African Big Man’ is the personification of lawless, corrupt use of power. This view is so strongly held that it was the key message Barack Obama came with in his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa in 2009 when he argued that Africa does not need strong men but strong institutions. Time has replied Obama with the demolition of institutions that his successor has accomplished in the US. It is doubtful that he will be caught making that argument by the time Donald Trump is done with his tenure.
But Obama is not the issue here per see. Rather, what is at issue here is how no one has been forth coming regarding the fact that this phrase has another meaning completely the opposite of what the global mediaspace has popularized. Or that Big Man has actually been used to refer to an icon of the radical nationalist student movement that swept through Nigeria throughout the 1980s and up to the mid 1990s.
Cde Odah
In other words, Cde John Odah was also known and called the Tonowi or the Big Man at the University of Jos in the early 1980s where he was one of the bulldozers behind student radicalism across Nigeria. And this was not a known side of the ex-labour big wig until August 24th, 2020 when his ‘co-conspirators’ felt relaxed at his 60th birthday anniversary to talk. That is ‘Tonowi’ in the Wikipedia sense of it as “a highly influential individual in a tribe, especially in Melanesia and Polynesia. Such a person may not have formal tribal or other authority (through for instance material possessions, or inheritance of rights), but can maintain recognition through skilled persuasion and wisdom”.
“Recognition through skilled persuasion and wisdom” was the reason beneficiaries of the late Prof Omafune Onoge’s class chose the name for Odah. And the stories of how he brought so many students into radical nationalism floated throughout the three hours or so of reminiscences under the tree in front of his residence that became his 60th birthday party this time.
The agony and ordeal across the land ruled out the idea of a birthday function. The three persons in attendance before the fourth person came around were all in the house to felicitate with the wife whose junior wedded a few days before. Unfortunately, Madam was yet to return from the commitment. Then a telephone call from a former Nigerian woman journalist now in Canada came in. The lady caller who had been trying to get in touch with the wife could be heard wishing him ‘happy birthday’. It was the call that ended up provoking a birthday get-together if we can call it that.
It was a solemn occasion. The question nobody asked but which was driving the conversation is how Nigeria could be what it is now? What exactly happened?
Two members of the audience were with John from the first to the last day of their degree programme. They could have been expelled for sundry reasons, all connected with radical student unionism. But there was always a voice that would not allow that. That voice would say: No. We cannot lose these boys. They are too intelligent”.
The voice was Prof Omafume Onoge who had written a record breaking thesis at Harvard and came back to teach Sociology and Anthropology in Nigeria. He made the University of Jos his base. But he was not just a lecturer, he also had activist commitments. And his voice had authority on the campus. Although the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Jos at the time, Prof Emmanuel Emovon came from the same old Bendel State with Onoge, that was not the source of Onoge’s authority. His authority was his intellectual standing in his discipline and his deployment of it to defend the democratic right to a voice by all stakeholders on the campus – school administrators, parents, the government but, above all, students.
At that time and even now, that was not the shared value in the politics of university governance. University administrators and government officials think students have no business in the governance of universities beyond cramming their way out to the job market. Prof Adamu Baike who went on to become the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Benin and later of the University of Lesotho was one exception in this regard. And Prof Ochapa Onazi who held the forte at UNIJOS in the late 1980s. There might be a few others.
So, the two out of that set that was at the 60th birthday escaped expulsion or anything like that. Many others did not, for various reasons. The late Thompson Adanbara stands out on that list. He was, by popular reckoning, too brilliant to have escaped rustication. Unfortunately, he declined returning to complete the degree programme when the atmosphere improved. His case is thus similar to that of the equally late Abdulrahman Black but unlike that of the Issa Aremus, Tanimu Kurfi, Bala Mohammed who went back to complete their degree in a different Nigerian university.
As the Speaker of the Students Union Parliament, Adanbara gave Prof Emovon tough time. But the power of reasoning of the group he belonged was such that they compelled others to respect them. The story is that as much as Emovon would bang on the table in anger at what he considered an affront, he could do no more about Adanbara and ‘all those troublesome boys’ most of the time. Emovon’s wife and a princess of the Benin Monarchy who was lecturing in Sociology fared no better. But the students were not being stubborn for its own sake. They were rebels with a cause, backed by a manifesto which guided their actions.
Where it was all happening
The universities were the surest indicators of a nation that still had a soul in those days. The quality of the debates on the campuses was high; the perspectives canvassed were critical even if not necessarily radical and the atmosphere were much, more conducive. Issues in contention were certainly not as frivolous as today and there was not yet the phenomenon of cultism. An attack on someone’s idea did not make the attacker an enemy as it has become today.
Leadership grooming was taken seriously. The student movement provided that. It came in two forms. The first was the progressive platforms. Each campus had it’s. It served as the thinking camp for radicalism. The second was the general student union which had its parliament and conducted its elections. It was the space for learning the skills of articulating group ideals and the art of winning opponents to another side of reality. Or creative, healthy struggle for power. This was almost irrespective of the campus.
In 1994 at the Bayero University, Kano, for instance, something memorable happened. The student Union election for the year had two dominant, contending blocks: the radicals and the conservatives. The Muslim Students Society, (MSS) were not in contention because they were never likely to win a popular election. Materially, the conservatives were at advantage. The convoy of their presidential candidate alone was sufficiently intimidating. They could afford everything for the campaign, with good following among the female students who were a powerful constituency in the changing social outlook of BUK.
A caucus meeting of the radical camp had to be called because defeat was almost certain. It was at the meeting that someone came up with the idea of the presidential candidate of the radical group arriving at the grand finale of the rally on a bicycle. A bicycle, it was argued, was the best reply to the convoy of the conservatives which was bound to stretch from the new to the old Campus. The idea was endorsed. And when it was carried out, it decided the outcome of the election even before the D-Day in a Kano environment permanently in class warfare.
Unfortunately, successive governments in Nigeria always saw subversion in perfectly very civil and leadership training activities by students. Not even when a former student activist from the University of Jos rose to become the Inspector-General of Police in this country. It must be that the ruling class is happier today reaping the ‘benefits’ of what they have sown by sinking radical student activism.
Across the country, the leading individuals behind that radical consciousness are getting old. The way the radical consciousness was uprooted is such that a successor generation was not in place. The society is suffering from that today. Leadership is upside down. Quality is a forgotten issue. Sycophancy is the only industry. Localism has taken over. Thoughtlessness and fascistic treatment of the other are the norms now. The ‘Tonowis’ of yesterday are watching the values they gave their everything to build go up in flame, largely helpless as characters who are no more than mercenaries install themselves strategically.
For once, a birthday wasn’t such a great day. How could this happen to a generation? And a society?
