Author and activist, Dr. Chido Onumah, turned 60 on April 10th, 2026. In obvious sensitivity to the mood of a world at war and a country caught in sickening killings and mass misery, he turned his 60th birthday into a reflective exercise. His organiser-friends chose a symposium under the title “Formation or Nation Building: Nigeria’s Troubled Quest for a Modern Federal Republic”.
NSA, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, Chido and better half at the event!
The well-attended event at the Yar’Adua Centre in Abuja, however, fell to posthumanist mischief as the IT transmission process was echoing so badly that those who attended online lost out completely. Theorists of the posthumanist persuasion are arguing that material objects (oceans, mountains, airplane, earthquake, flood and so on have agency or capacity to act. They have a very fascinating argument, especially their detachment in Latin American International Relations scholarship.
The first phase of the posthumanist mischief was the poverty of internet reception that day. Intervention spent the whole of 3. 00 and 4.42 pm trying to join the event online. By 4. 42 pm when it finally managed to join, Dr Oby Ezekwesili was already speaking, meaning that the symposium had already taken off. But no online attendee could hear her. The last time Intervention recalls this happening was the tribute session for Prof Okello Oculi last year.
Prof Yakubu Ochefu and Dr Chido at the event
The initial thinking that it was an isolated experience gave way as other online attendees could also be seen complaining how the technology managers had not succeeded in resolving the crease. By the time Dr. Dapo Olorunyomi was speaking around 5.30 pm when there was still no ‘cure’, staying on had become hopeless.
Missing a symposium on Nigeria at a time of radical uncertainty cannot be a good experience because, as they say, speaking is doing. By implication, a symposium is an articulatory practice, with implications for the resolution of a national dislocation, depending on the consensus it can force through.
Hopefully, the world gets to read the transcript of the symposium somehow! Who knows, the transcript might, from the point of view of relationality, be all the world has been waiting for at a time of uncertainty never seen before since 1945 other than the Cuban crisis!
