It was the usual magic of the paradoxical to sneak in and successfully steal a critical moment in most such occasions. This was no less the case at the five-hour long 70th birthday of Prof Jibrin Ibrahim on December2nd, 2024 at the Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja. For a minute or so, Prof Ibrahim was caught in an emotional overflow, thus making him give the most volatile testament at his own birthday celebration.
That didn’t happen because the Keynote speaker and members of the panel at the symposium didn’t deliver. No. Both the lead and other speakers hit at different cores.
Ex- ABU, Zaria, Prof. Abubakar Siddique Mohammed didn’t disappoint in his unique ability to draw a big inference from bits and pieces. To prove his assertion that ’emilokan’ governmentality is leading to increased deaths, he asks anyone in doubt to keep an eye on new graves in any chosen cemetery, maintaining that such a data gathering technique would produce a shocking result. People, he said, are dying in such large numbers because the cost of quality health care is simply too prohibitive as to be forcing many to take to concoctions which are paraded to be capable of curing all imaginable afflictions. The result is death from mainly kidney crises.
It was an impressive appetiser to his presentation titled “The Jibo I Know: Five Decades of Friendship” Each of Prof Chris Kwaja; Dr. Amina Salihu; Dr. Chido Onumah, Prof Sam Egwu and Mallam Y. Z Y’au who spoke in the subsequent symposium on his presentation in relation to Prof Jibo took and defended his or her own position. Prof Jibo overtook them all because the emotional manifestation of his memory of violence brought out a more embodied experience of what played out before but in a way that also revealed the depth of his own humanity. From what one could infer from what he said subsequently, the real tragedy in what has happened to Nigeria is the failure of Nigeria’s promise to herself.
The promise, as he told the story, had to do with the ‘decision’ by the Gowon administration in 1973 to the effect that there will never be another civil war and, obviously to guarantee that, there was the promise of access to quality education for every child born from 1970.
While the second peg of the visionary outing was what came as Universal Primary Education (UPE) in 1976, it came more as klieg light project defined by contractors more than by the essence the brain masters had.
Panelists and celebrant
Today, according to Jibo, Nigeria is the country with the highest out of school children in the world and nobody is shocked by that. Certainly not those who go by the title of leaders. Yet, for him, that’s where the strife all over the place is coming from.
The birthday was not all frightening portraits of Nigeria throughout. There were tension free moments. While delivering his welcome speech as Chairman of the committee which organised the 70th birthday, Dr. Kole Shettima of MacArthur Foundation said Comrade John Odah’s Idoma ethnic group remains the only one without its own Quarters in Kano City, indirectly intimating Khalifa Muhammadu Sanusi 11, the Emir of Kano of that gap. The joke attracted its own sensation before Kole went on to argue the case for the birthday. Jibrin Ibrahim, he said, has made contributions across identity politics, religion, journalism, governance and democracy. Above all, he is defined by a unique humanism.
Prof Abubakar Siddique Mohammed brought about similar sensational laughter when he alleged how Dr Usman Bugaje “rigged” the result of a schools debate between his GSS, Zaria and Jibo’s Barewa College many decades ago. As happens whenever rigging is alleged, the audience responded with unusual enthusiasm.
Eminent associates set for cake cutting
But no jokes could hold off the seriousness on the floor for long. Muhammadu Sanusi 11, the Emir of Kano who chaired the occasion made it known that those who grumble against his culture of talking should know the origin of that. It came from his experience of the height of radicalism at the defunct Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in those days. He is sure that the generation of ABU, Zaria intellectuals have made the most profound contribution to the society, “If this country is to go forward, we have to listen to them.” And Jibo is one of his models of “them” with particular reference to opposition to marginalisation of any groups or violation of human rights. It came out in the course of the Emir’s speech that he attended a Catholic secondary school where he said he got baptised into radicalism.
Cardinal Emeritus John Onaiyekan who was also at the birthday declared how within a much shorter time, he has bonded with Jibo, recalling how Jibo stood his ground last year as the Keynote speaker at his 80th birthday to an audience radically different from students. In welcoming Jibo to the 70 year old bracket, Onaiyekan said Jibo is in the bracket defined by sharing with all who stand to benefit from his stock of knowledge.
It was a remarkable event if seen from the diversity of attendees. One event made it possible for so many who hadn’t seen for years to converge,
The second part of the report will capture, among others, Jibo’s story of how he left Ahmadu Bello University Zaria as an academic after 20 years, spending the next 25 years to entangle himself in research, punditry and civil society activism.
