By Hassan A. Saliu
Hardly can one appreciate this tribute without bringing General Ibrahim Babangida administration into the centre of addressing its concerns. To start with, there are many “IBB Boys” among our first eleven Political Scientists in Nigeria. While this reality is a thing of joy for our Association, it has equally created a dilemma for the current Chief Servant of the Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA).
This comes in terms of making a definitive pronouncement on a government that many of our senior colleagues had served. I am, however, encouraged to go ahead with my semi-assessment of the regime by the virtue of the empowerment/immunity that I have as the President of our Association. More so, several years after the regime and based on the discussions I have had with some of them, I want to believe that things are relatively calmer now for a more sober analysis of major events witnessed under the regime.
Simply IBB!
I can hear the voice of the Chairman of our Board of Trustees, Professor Adele Jinadu, a notable Babangida boy and a friend to the birthday man, saying, “Mr. President, go ahead.” The Babangida administration came into office as a result of the squandering of goodwill by the Buhari government barely a few months in office, with inconsistencies and nepotism defining the administration.
Nigerians reacted to the development by somewhat withdrawing their support from the government, which rose to power through popular support due to the inadequacies of the Shagari regime. Capitalizing on this development, the Babangida coup was hatched. With General Tunde Idiagbon out of the country on Hajj, together with one or two of the suspected coup leaders, the coup plotters only had General Buhari to contend with in making the coup see the light of day.
On D-Day set for the coup, General Muhammadu Buhari was visited by not-too-strange visitors but at an unholy hour, virtually with no resistance. Majors Abdulmumini, Gwadabe, Kangiwa, and others were the unholy visitors. After the usual military salute, the young military officers took General Buhari away. He was headed to his new abode without the glamour of office to pave the way for the new rulers under a unique President.
For eight years, Nigerians lived with a new title for their military leader, President. President Babangida, who later affirmed that he is an “evil genius,” quickly turned the nation into his political laboratory for experimentation with impossibilities.
After seducing Professor Samuel Cookey, to head his political Bureau with some of our senior Political Scientists such as Profs. Eme Awa, A.D Yahaya, Oyeleye Oyediran, Tunde Adeniran and Sam Oyovbaire as members, the stage was set for an unending political transition that ultimately crashed on June 23 through an unsigned release but was eventually buried on June 26 through a nation-wide broadcast. It sought to erase everything about the June 12 presidential election won by Chief Moshood Abiola from our collective memory. In effect, a call was made for a new presidential election, which was not feasible.
In my view, the regime outreached itself with the public release. It was therefore a matter of time before it came crashing down through the anger of Nigerians. With unprecedented defiance, Nigerians rejected any notion for a new presidential election after having held a successful one a couple of weeks back that was whimsically annulled.
The Babangida administration inadvertently erected abodes on the streets for street workers. Unknown to it, citizens found them too convenient to occupy without having to worry about paying for rents. The rent-seekers or security agents too found the street living alluring for them at least in showing solidarity with the June 12 wailers, by joining the street family or somehow being lenient with them.
Then the unintended happened. The master dribbler had scored an own goal. It was time to go back to Minna and to the town General Babangida went a day before his self-appointed exit date. He left the political scene with some of his intellectual battalion officers finding their voices again. They began to tell us what had happened to the windy political transition under the Prince from the Niger when all the citizens were now awake.
One of them, Professor Omo Omoruyi, perhaps speaking either for himself or others, disturbed the citizens from their state of disbelief with a sermon: “The annulment of the June 12 election by General Babangida was unilaterally taken. At best, with a few anti-democratic forces.” He pointed in the direction of a collection of Nigerians whose views matter more than the millions that voted for Abiola and Tofa on June 12, 1993. A new definition of democracy was the offering coming out of Babangida’s political pulpit.
The disaster or the bad landing of the transition programme has raised the issue of the relevance of our senior colleagues who were literally the supporters of the regime. Informed citizens had asked about the coterie of experts guiding the transition programme when it crash-landed. Why did the derailment take place in the process? No satisfactory answer has yet been given to the question up to date except the excuse one hears from the grapevine that some extraneous factors caused the annulment, not the design itself.
The subject of today’s tribute was/is one of the Babangida boys, though with principles that made him turn down some dirty jobs that were offered to him. Prof. Oyovbaire started-off with the General Babangida administration as a member of the Political Bureau set up by it in 1986. He later served as Special Adviser and later, when he became a Minister, he combined the portfolio with his advisory role.
Professor Oyovbaire is usually a quiet person, but his pen and analyses are not gentle. They can be very sharp and cut without restraint in an overdose manner (sometimes his writings can be voluminous). He celebrated his birthday last August. So, this tribute is coming behind schedule. But as the saying goes: better late than never.
On the subject of the Babangida government, he is an unapologetic member of the group who had unhindered access to the unelected president in Lagos and later, Abuja. He began his tenure in Lagos without any serious public notice or media attention, the seed of which was sowed at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, some years earlier.
Unlike the late Professor Omo Omoruyi, another former President of the NPSA, he was never a course-mate to General Babangida. Rather, he cut friendship with him as a regular Guest Lecturer at NIPSS. He was, nevertheless, effective at his job of helping the General with his numerous state assignments.
Professor Oyovbaire was eventually appointed the Minister of Information while still overseeing the transition programme before actors and interests that lived outside the Aso Rock took control and put everything about it into the dustbin of history that eventually evicted the biggest tenant from the seat of government.
General Babangida was thus the main casualty of the irrational political decision of cancelling the election without minding the number of Nigerians who turned out to vote on June 12, 1993. Personally, I want to observe that by that singular act, General Babangida has removed himself from the list of democratic heroes in Nigeria despite working for that through some programmes.
The debate that won’t go away!
Our revered Professor Oyovbaire obtained his first degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1969, his Master’s from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 1970, and his doctorate from the University of Manchester (UK) in 1974.
He began his teaching job at the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, in 1971 with his Master’s degree but won the scholarship of the Midwest State for his Ph.D. while still at Zaria. He stayed in the services of the university for twenty-two years, rising to become a Reader in the Department of Political Science.
He served as Acting Head of Department and later as Head of Department. For the purpose of this tribute, two events, among others, signposted his ABU story. One was the opportunity he had to recruit some academic staff for the Department of Political Science, even in acting capacity.
In 1977, the then Head of Department at Zaria, the late Professor A. D Yahaya was out of station together with the late Solomon Lar and had an accident, enabling Professor Oyovbaire to step into the office of the Head of Department in an acting capacity. During this time, Professor Ibrahim Gambari applied to join the department as an academic. The process of recruitment was consequently presided over by the subject of this tribute.
The second event, perhaps more widely reported and documented, was the debate that squared up Dr. Bala Usman with the former presidents of our Associations. People will wonder what point I am making. I am simply saying that Professor Oyovbaire has had the rare privilege of heading both the Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA) and the Nigerian Society of International Affairs (NSIA).
The debate was intense, and it later drifted into issues that some persons were not too happy about. The substance of the debate had to do with the conference paper read at the Ibadan conference of the NPSA by Prof. Oyovbaire in 1978, titled: “The Responsibility of Political Science.” His decision to represent the same paper at the Faculty’s seminar in Zaria brought Dr. Usman into the issue of the paper by opposing its main thesis with his ideological biases. Our celebrant of today responded, and there ensued a debate, drawing other persons into it.
The defunct Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in ABU was polarized along the two perspectives in its major outings then. Seminars, other academic discussion forums, and the Staff Club instantly became the arena for discussing the papers. These platforms were defined by the substance of the debate, with the potential of drawing other persons and issues into its equation.
As a fallout, it fed the suspicion that saw Professor Oyovbaire later discovering the compass with which he navigated back to his then-native Bendel State, porting first at UNIBEN, and finally to his more native state, Delta, where he has become an eminent elder. Perhaps it was a blessing that Oga Oyovbaire raced back to Bendel and later Delta, as all that was assumed to have been denied him while at ABU were within his reach under Prof. Adamu Bakie as the Vice-Chancellor of UNIBEN. For instance, he became a Professor at UNIBEN in 1983, where he eventually retired from.
Somewhere along the lines, Professor Oyovbaire caught the political bug and became a formidable member of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), a party he has sought to fly its flag in Delta State at the gubernatorial level. Things have not worked out, but no one can claim that no effort has been made.
Meanwhile, our double president was appointed as a member of the Governing Council of the Delta State University, Abraka, for eight years and as the Chairman of the Council for another eight years. On each occasion, Professor Oyovbaire made good interventions that have, in a way, stabilized the university. Little surprising, he was awarded a doctorate degree by the university in 2024.
Let me reiterate that Professor Oyovbaire has served as a Minister and stayed for a reasonable length of time in the corridors of power in both official and unofficial positions under the much-hyped Babangida’s military regime, which many Nigerians would arguably say delivered below its promised level.
He has been honoured and won some recognitions. Quite a number of them have been bestowed on him. For example, he is a community man because he holds some traditional titles of Ogbiroro of Okpe Kingdom; Oruese of Oghara Kingdom; Ogdigbo rebe of Olomu Kingdom; and Oruese Rovie of Effuruntor Kingdom. Professor Oyovbaire is a well-respected elder in Delta State. He currently leads a 44-member Advisory and Peace-Building Council constituted by the state government, a position he has held for eight years.
Prof. Oyovbaire is a mentor to so many individuals in and out of the University System. While at Zaria, he left an indelible mark as a rigorous liberal scholar. He is generally in the sub-set of Comparative Politics, an area he is a leading authority. He continued with the same zeal at UNIBEN and became a household name. Some of his mentees can be found everywhere doing great things.
As a foremost scholar, he has published extensively, having over 125 publications to his credit. However, on this occasion, I will concentrate on two of such publications for convenience. First, is the “Foundations for a New Nigeria,” published in 1993, which he co-authored with Dr. Tunji Olagunju. The slim book was produced to show the contours of the new foundations that were being laid under the Babangida regime, in seeking to present an alternative narrative on the regime. Incidentally, I reviewed the book for a journal at the Bayero University, Kano, in 1994.
The second book was produced much later (2008) and it attempted to compare Babangida and the second Obasanjo governments. Contributed by some of our members but it was edited by Professor Oyovbaire. The conclusion of the book on the Obasanjo civilian regime was not a cheering news, as its flaunted democratic and impactful levels received an all-round rejection in the book.
He was awarded a fellow of the Nigerian Political Science Association, NPSA, this year at our Lokoja conference. He was on duty for the NPSA in 2016 when he presented the Annual Billy Dudley Memorial Lecture at the Electoral Institute in Abuja. Professor Oyovbaire is a major contributor to our Association that he is very passionate about. He once headed our Association when the military was the major face of the country’s governance.
Let me at this point sketch out an embarrassing situation he faced as the President of our Association. In 1985, at the Ilorin conference, when he was giving his presidential address, the then Governor of Kwara State, Group Captain Salawudeen Olatinwo, who was the Special Guest of Honour, in showing his displeasure to some lines contained in his presidential speech, ordered that the microphone be taken away from him, and it was thus taken away. He kept his calm and took it in its stride.
Unlike Professor Asissi Asobie, who headed the NPSA and the NSIA simultaneously, Professor Oyovbaire held the two positions at different times. I nevertheless consider the two as double presidents on this occasion. He is happily married with children and grandchildren.
Congratulations to you, Sir. Happy birthday to you, Sir. Many happy returns!
The author is the President, NPSA
