The vicious struggle for the soul of Nigeria has, fitfully, finally and formally staggered onto the streets. Now, everyone, even the blind, can see it. If it is not in the volley of well aimed verbal missiles issuing from The Presidency on all cylinders, signifying a President Muhammadu Buhari on the move for 2019, rhetorically and otherwise, then it must be in the pot-shots on the Presidency, particularly the ones fired from Kano and Kaduna. Elder statesman, Alhaji Tanko Yakassai said the president has been successful only in noise making. As one of the very few living traditional politicians with Left background, it would not be surprising if quite a number of people did not sleep in the Villa that night. He was followed by Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi saying the president is held hostage by mad people. These are considered significant statements in terms of the pattern of ruling class constellations unfolding. But the president is soldiering on nevertheless as we shall see below.
Meanwhile, disagreement within the ruling party has spilled onto the streets. Clearly, the battlefront which has opened between the Senate President and the Executive Arm is crossing the red line of power struggle by presenting Nigeria to the world as a country whose Head of the Legislature had anything to do with armed robbery. That may be good for some people but it stretches the image of the country too thin. To undo that dent now would take years and lots of efforts because it constitutes a big flash on the screens of researchers compiling indicators of instability across the universities, think tanks and researchers, INGOs and other new such actors in global security.
There is no knowing what the outcomes would be when added to other sites of rupture such as the continued killings, (Ekiti, Benue, Edo, Plateau, Zamfara, Nasarawa and Kogi last week); rupture in the ruling party where the contest of power between the legacy components and the n-PDP has blown up to near irreconcilable dimension and, of course, the intensified search for a consensus candidate to fight out the election between the incumbent and such an entrant.
Notwithstanding the commotion, the president is soldiering on. How far it would go is not clear but, for now, the president who had nothing to say (or, was he bidding his time?) as very tragic events unfolded between January and March in particular now appears to have found his voice at last. Corruption is the organising concept of his move but he is weaving other claims in the process. Two of them are most interesting. The first one, now most forcefully and more regularly articulated, is his contention that it is those who stole public resources who are organising chaos. By that, he means that the herdsmen involved in the violence across the country are actually ‘herdsmen’ or organised players by the people he is pointing fingers at. Interestingly, this was not his initial theory. The sequence of his intervention has been silence, armed herdsmen, Gaddafi killers before the new theory. Perhaps, presidents also adjust theories.
The more pointed shots were fired earlier on May 15th, 2018 at the commissioning of the new office complex of the EFCC where he declared that corruption itself overthrew him in 1985. In other words, the masterminds of that coup were on a corruption-inspired mission. Whao! Not quite a few clapped for him even as they wondered why he never began to harp on this until the onset of the campaigns.
Agreeable or not agreeable, alleged corrupt politicians across the country are being hauled into the courts, most of them ending up in jail for at least a week or so. It is a powerful way of imposing a moral censure on the individuals involved because, being arraigned for corruption diminishes anyone, whether he or she is found guilty or not guilty. It must, therefore, have been carefully planned over time to coincide with the onset of campaigns. The initial arrows in the direction of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, one of the angry godfathers, does not appear to be flying yet. It has only fetched the president a put down by General Obasanjo. But, who knows, there might be more of such disclosures. Some snippets have started circulating in relation to General Abdulsalami Abubakar although that one has not been such a vocal member of the cohort, (the club of four or five retired Generals wielding tremendous power in the country, formally and informally) against the president’s second term bid. It could be that a friend to an enemy is an enemy. Meanwhile, not a few are sure that before long, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar might get his own share of the anti-corruption firing. And so on and so forth!
The contradictions appear to have worked out in a manner that corruption is the issue framing the current intra-class warfare in Nigeria. Pessimists say that could be the eve of anarchy because the conflict parties appear so balanced and victory or defeat could be too costly. Optimists say the warfare is what would trigger or catapult Nigeria into a more qualitative era. Whichever line one follows, it would appear to be that, after four epochal wars against corruption in recent memory, (Murtala/Obasanjo purge in the mid 1970s; the 1983/4 arrest, detention and trial of several politicians of the Second Republic by the 1983-1985 Buhari military regime; the setting up of the EFCC in 2003 and the current phase), thesis and anti-thesis are about to build up into a synthesis although why this heightened dimension is coinciding with the eve of election is something many people are unable to explain or understand.
If it is true that on presidential agency does the future of Nigeria substantially lie, then the bigger problem remains. There is a strong belief here and there that an overwhelming opponent can defeat the incumbent hands down if the election is all a matter of first-past-the-post. But who might be that overwhelming candidate, with capacity for qualitative and nation building governance in an extraordinarily plural Nigeria?
After Ibrahim Dankwambo, the PDP governor of Gombe State, there are hardly any new names emerging yet although one of the angry godfathers might come up with a dark, dark horse. That is a strong possibility. Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar is right in the race. He has even started appointing the henchmen of his campaign. Until the dark horse is unveiled, each of the two is gathering moss. With the frequency of movements between the Northeast and the South-south nowadays, something would appear to be clicking. Governor Dankwambo might be lucky, not being vulnerable in any way to the anti-corruption shelling because he has immunity till the end of the Buhari regime in May 29, 2019. Should he declared elected, there is no chance of anybody arresting him before midnight of May 2019 and by which time he would have become Mister President and come under a stronger immunity. That is if he has any allegations of corruption against him. Right now, none is known to the public yet. But with what more progressive doctrine of power is he ever associated with? Some people are crediting him with being the designer of the TSA mechanism when he was Accountant-General of the Federation about a decade ago? So, would his be the arrival of a technocrat in power? Is that the presidential agency Nigeria needs today? Only time will tell.
President Paul Kagame at a session of the Next Einstein Forum
Ahmed Abiy, New PM of Ethiopia also went to the ideas based Next Einstein Forum
What about the dark horse? Not much is known about him yet beyond that it is a he, not a she. The assumption is that any dark horse coming into the fray must be more formidable than anyone already in the race. Again, only time will tell. Lastly, Atiku Abubakar! He is rated to have the cash and the capacity, although the substance of the capacity has not been interrogated. He has started quoting Lee Kuan Yew, the late Prime Minister of Singapore routinely cited as the ultimate example in compacting an extra-ordinarily diverse city-state as Singapore and transforming it from a ‘Third’ to a First World. But does Atiku subscribe to Yew’s categorical discourse of social transformation in the idea of a fair as opposed to a welfare society? If he says he does, has he got how such a doctrine can be operationalised in Nigeria?
It is not impossible for a swing in choice to occur because of the multiple calculations of the powerful local, regional class and global interests and their agents in the negotiations going on here and there on 2019. Surprises could still occur just as some stars could fade, some to the dynamics at work and others as damaged brands in the anti-corruption warfare. But the strategy of damaging brands could equally be counter-productive because in an angry and acrimonious country like Nigeria of today, one person’s damaged brand could be another person’s model. And some people could be decisive in electoral outcome, even from jailhouse.
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda is a dictator. That is the sort of thing one hears more frequently about him but he is a dictator who has delivered development to a society that went through genocide. A 43 year old young man has just taken over power in Ethiopia, an ancient African State and, so far, everyone is saying that if he continues the way he is going, Ethiopia would soon be alright. What is he doing right? Educated or informed governance, manifesting in how he dashed to flashpoints of discontent and mellowed hardened hearts! By education, we do not mean PhD but political education. In Nigeria, no one ever comes to power with a self-understanding that proclaims a categorical contention about what the country should be like. All of them come to power talking about development in terms of mega and mini projects without EVER talking about an overarching framework. None! The latest is President Buhari who gave the impression that he was a statist. After three years, it is not clear if the regime has anyone there who has ever heard about the word statism. Might this country have been cursed?
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Would the quality of education in Nigerian universities be raised by mobilising and injecting Nigeria’s reserve force of well heeled professors and senior academics who have left the system formally but are still capable of, individually and collectively, making a decisive contribution to the re-making of education in Nigeria?
This is the question on a considerable number of lips now partially in response to the spate of grudges against the system recently. A prominent Vice-Chancellor told Nigerian undergraduates recently to leave Facebook and face their books. The Nigerian government is complaining. The World Bank complained much, much earlier. Even the regulatory agency –the National University Commission, (NUC) is threatening a reform whose dimensions no one knows yet. All of them are raking against the university system, particularly on the overall quality of education.
Prof Mike Adikwu, VC of FG own University of Abuja and proponent of the postdoctoral research strategy
So, haven’t the dynamics worked out in such a way that it is time to construct a pact between the Nigerian government and Nigerian academics who are though formally retirees from the system but can be pulled back. Pulling back the category of retirees into the system has been reinforced into currency by the recent argument of Professor Michael Adikwu, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Abuja that there is no other way to resolve the crisis of quality in the university system other than an aggressive pursuit of the postdoctoral research strategy as opposed to the illusion of dealing with the crisis from below. Critical observers of the system are thinking that it is even the starting point of the Vice-Chancellor’s proposal because the entry of that quantum of well versed elder academics prepares the ground for producing PhD materials that can go out and engage the system while also increasing the quality and quantity of PhD products domestically and immediately.
The argument is that these professors and senior academics are all very much available, the engagement can be immediate and the resources required to put them to work is minimal. They are not going for battles for Vice-Chancellorship, HODs, competition for research grants and any of those things that creates tension on campuses. They are not on the wage bill of the individual universities and there is no university that cannot find offices for its own quota of that pool. At 164 universities, it is very unlikely that each university would get more than two, depending though on what formula for sharing is approved.
Above all, the idea is argued not to be that strange after all. The late Prof Takena Tamuno was around and about at the University of Ibadan and even writing and publishing almost till he breathed his last. At 80, the late Prof Abiola Irele was still teaching at the University of Ilorin before his death. And even now, there are those such as Professors Asobie, Toye Olorode and Dipo Fashina still teaching, one way or the other, after retirement. Prof Biodun Jeyifo spends his time between the US and Nigeria. He can be doing something on a Nigerian campus each time he is around. So, the Nigerian government can pull back most if not all retired academics in and around the country to contribute to managing what is believed to be some kind of emergency in the university system, if the range of people complaining about the system is anything to go by.
These are no ordinary academics. Most of them have gone to the best schools around the world. If you take those that emerged as leaders of the ASUU, Biodun Jeyifo went to Cornell University, Mahmud Tukur to ABU, Zaria, Asisi Asobie to London School of Economics, the late Festus Iyayi to Kiev and later Bradford in the UK, Attahiru Jega to Northwestern University, Dipo Fashina to the University of California, Los Angeles and so on. There is nothing like the best university but these are some of the most outstanding elite universities in the world. Even people who knew Prof Asisi Asobie long before now were awed when his citation was read at The Electoral Institute’s First Abubakar Momoh lecture last Thursday. And that is what one finds with most of them in that generation. So, why would such collection of people who are sound, committed and available not be pulled back and injected, goes the question.
Igbinedion University, Okada’s Prof Eghosa Osaghae, VC with awesome CV
Prof Attahiru Jega, experience spanning ASUU, VCship, INEC Chairman
Such a list would stretch from those who have completely retired but are not tired; those who are either on the verge of exit from the system or are serving as Vice-Chancellors and might not move into other things but can still assist the system somehow; the category that are not currently teaching because they are on government service but are irreplaceable and, finally, there are those in NGOs who are, nevertheless, mobilisable. A sampler of the list across the different categories would stretch from Professors Enoch Oyedele, Okello Oculi, Y.Z. Yau, David Ker, Asisi Asobie, Egite Oyovbaire, Isawa Elaigwu, Yakubu Aliyu, Bolaji Akinyemi, Adiele Junaidu, Idowu Awopetu, E. R Ajayi, Moses Ola Makinde, Soji Amire, Kola Torimiro, Prof Dandatti Abdulkadir, Oga Ajene, Tony Edo, Mike Kwanashie, Eghosa Osaghae, Alli, Alemika, Alubo, Sule Bello, Nuru Yakubu, Toye Olorode, Dipo Fashina, Sonny Tyoden, Jibrin Ibrahim, Alex Gboyega, Bayo Adekanye, Okechukwu Ibeanu, Sam Egwu, Ogaga Ifowodo, Adebayo Williams, among many others that cannot be recalled immediately. It is difficult to place Yusuf Bangura on the list.
Some people estimate that no less can 2000 can be compiled. The assumption is that Vice-Chancellors would be disposed to such an arrangement, especially those of some of the new, private universities that are most conscious of standing out from the crowd.
There was a time they were chased around mainly for “teaching what they were not supposed to teach”. This was the ‘crime’ the state imagined them to be committing and which was framed as such by the late General Emmanuel Abisoye, one of the most sophisticated intellectuals of the Nigerian military in his time and who was head of government investigation into student uprising in Ahmadu Bello University in the mid 1980s. On its wisdom, the state went after ‘them’, mostly those in the leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, (ASUU). Today, the government itself is in the forefront of complaining that the university system is not performing its role to the state and that university workers were right in their perspective of the crisis. It is in that context that some stakeholders assume that government is most likely to look into Professor Adikwu’s argument, he being the VC of Nigeria’s capital city university. But even if government accepts the idea and finds the money, how soon can it produce outcomes without an emergency measure such as injecting tested and untainted academics?
Their presence, it is argued, would be a mentoring system in itself. “Their mere presence on the corridors of Departments means that certain things wouldn’t happen, younger academics would get the benefit of solid processing and they can best handle certain core courses such as theories and methods, especially at the postgraduate level”, it was argued. The clincher appears to be the question as to whether anybody would say that there wouldn’t be a big shift if Nigeria can inject 1000 solid academics into the system today, meaning that they would be coming as guides, especially in designing the courses which some academics say is more crucial that delivery of courses.
Nigerian youths seeking expansion of the scope of meaningful participation in politics have been told to learn from how their counterparts in Kenya went about it although there is still controversy on the meaning of youth participation. Is it for the youths to take over and enjoy the perquisites of office the way incumbents are doing or is it to take over and transform the Nigerian society? Notwithstanding the inconclusive debate for now, the argument is that the pathway to deepening youth participation is for Nigerian youths to organise and assert themselves electorally the same way their Kenyan counterparts have gone about it.
Prof Asobie delivering his lecture
Although a senior Nigerian politician at the occasion described the suggestion as exciting but inciting, Professor Humphrey Asisi Asobie, notable Political Scientist, former National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, (ASUU) and Guest Lecturer at The Electoral Institute, (TEI)’s First Abubakar Momoh Memorial lecture who is pushing this idea says that is why there are now Kenyan youths of 19, 24, 26 years who have been elected into parliament and other elective offices. But the model unfolded at the lecture attended by nearly a dozen high officials of Nigeria’s election management body – Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC), diplomats, academics, civil society leaders, leaders of political parties, women and youth leaders as well as the late Prof Abubakar Momoh’s family, particularly his widow, came with a qualification: the youths cannot accomplish this alone, they need to align with platforms such as the Nigeria Labour Congress, (NLC).
Indirectly saying that the Nigerian State is so alienated and alienating, Asobie declared how low participation generally is in Nigeria and specifically the youths, a low scale participation he blames the Nigerian Constitution for sanctifying by its provisions which set the age for most of the crucial offices such as that of the president, governors and senators at youth exclusionary ages of figures of 35 and above when no upper ceiling exists for the oldies.
Prof Asobie said it is not a question of homogenising youth agency because he accepted that the youths have also been incorporated into the representation and practices of the power elite, especially the construction of crisis in ethno-religious terms by ethic warlords. It is in realisation of this that he said he qualified his idea of youths as those ideologically clear and can think of politics in terms of rapid social transformation.
Challenging the youths to reckon with democracy as “what you do for yourself, not what somebody does for you”, Asobie said youth exclusion in Nigeria is scandalous, ridiculous and undemocratic, adding that Nigerian youths are actually subjects, not citizens, deriding the impossibility of talking about democracy when youth participation is that low.
Arguing how youth participation in itself is functional to democracy, he concluded how important it is to say that youths cannot wait endlessly. They have got to use their numerical strength and alliance to present a new pattern of politics in favour of transformative rather than transactional leadership, said Asobie who asks of them to know that the majority in every society are the poor and the numerous and that, in choosing, “people who are unlike you cannot represent you. Those who should represent you are people who are like you”.
He further argued the impossibility of youth participation without a financial level playing ground, noting how INEC could help; how the existing Constitution has provisions that could have resolved the problem. The constitution provides leeway by providing for a manner of managing the economy such that existing inequality level would not have arisen. Additionally, “If you take Section 16 and provide education, it would amount to youth empowerment because there is a positive correlation between high achievement in education and consciousness”.
The Guest Lecturer warned against how what he said has happened in China could happen here in which youths moved away from seeking participation into new technology in contrast to Norway where a much more organised response to youth participation produced a more participation-inducing system and outcome.
This is, however, not what he is expecting in Nigeria because Nigeria is in the category of a pseudo-democracy, notwithstanding a better election in 2015, recalling how late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was honest enough to admit this much in a documented manner.
Prof Asobie identified the state and social order context of youth participation in Nigeria in the fragmented, incoherent and very fragile state with which there is clearly something structurally wrong. Incoherence, insecurity and instability all go to show that something is wrong beyond just any particular regime even as he did not award the incumbent a pass mark, saying governance is very low. Nigeria had made some progress on her fragility status, it is still next to the worst in categorisation, said Asobie who put his fingers on what is wrong with the Nigerian State in the emphasis on sharing rather than production. “The state is a problem in itself”, he said, adding how the social order context of the Nigerian State is such that the leaders do not feel obliged beyond projectisation. The gap between the rich and the poor is also a point in this.
Prince Tony Momoh making his point
Prince Tony Momoh, a former Minister for Information and chieftain of Nigeria’s ruling party – All Progressives Congress, (APC) as well as a relation of late Prof Abubakar Momoh did not accept everything Prof Asobie said, arguing that the problem is that the Nigerian Constitution had privileged democracy over and above development. He called for decongestion of the political space because “we are spending much money on democracy”. He was basically saying that the Constitution put the rights to enjoy in Chapter 4 ahead of the duties to perform in Chapter 2, a contribution Professor Okey Ibeanu, another Political Scientist and an INEC Director who chaired the occasion subsequently framed as the “democracy – development’ debate in African politics. But, when given the floor again, Prof Asobie to whom the question was directed said it was not enough to say that democracy promotes development. For him, it is more important to ask what sort of democracy and what manner of development. He put it to the circumstance, saying Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore has been rated as such a success story in autocracy promoting development but that he worked with communists, itself a potential controversy.
Prof Ibeanu put some laughter to the conversation when he distinguished between a dead and a living constitution. One is the letter, the other is the practice of it. Those who wrote the Nigerian Constitution, said Ibeanu, “took everything that is important about our existence and put in Chapter 2 but tied it down with the justiciability/non-justiciability provisions. But, according to him, Section 14 of the Constitution is actually the basis on which Nigeria should be organised and that is Social Justice. For him, the point, however, is not whether the Constitution provides but the politics of enforcing certain provisions.
Another contestation came from Mohammed Baki Lecky, an INEC Resident Commissioner who did not accept a distinction between transformative and transactional leader, preferring to see a continuum there. Arguing that some of the points about youth participation were overstated, the REC maintained how youths do not necessarily have to be local government chairmen, governors or ministers in order to change things. They could do so using their votes to change things around. His worry is rather about the ideological level of Nigerian youths.
A group photograph which captured most of the attendees
Another line of attendees
Prof Anthonia Okoo-Simbene, another INEC top official who responded to a question posed in her schedule of duty told the gathering howINEC cannot do anything about whether aspirants should pay or not pay for nomination forms that political parties ask for. What INEC can do is in respect of monitoring party expenditure. That is provided for, she said, but even then parties submit such statements sometimes three years after an election.
Professor Okey Ibeanu, the Chairman of the occasion had sort of wetted appetite of attendees at the memorial at the beginning of the occasion by relating what the man who delivered a homily at the 7th day prayer for Prof Momoh said. The man said a dead man’s grave is not the most important thing because many would no longer even be able to find it after some time. What is more important is the number of graves a person made in the heart and minds of other people and which makes life a question of how many graves one dug in others. Or, what impact did one make on the life of others! Abubakar Momoh’s life, he said, was in the graves he dug in the minds of many people, from CODESRIA in Dakar to the lecture halls of King’s College London to the slums of Lagos. “Momoh would have been very happy with the prospects of youth participation”, he maintained but that is participation beyond the statistical sense. Rather, participation in transformative, progressive sense, he said. He was sure Prof Asobie under whom the late Momoh served ASUU as treasurer was best placed to deliver the first of the memorial lectures, an event they in INEC hope to keep alive.
Dr Sa’ad Umar Idris, Acting DG of TEI had taken basically the same position earlier in his welcome address by saying youth participation was one of Professor Momoh’s best themes and on which he researched and wrote.
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It is a bit long but never boring video, from start to finish. There is the appetizer in what his host, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, the President of the Africa Development Bank, (AfDB), said about the emir at the beginning of the video. The pair speaks to the Nigerian paradox- united abroad, divided at home! There is the main meal and we can lump the rest into the deserts. Economists hardly agree on even the most central issues in their discipline. But Muhammadu Sanusi 11, the incumbent Emir of Kano in Nigeria’s speech provides a useful checklist that can move forward the conversation on the African crisis. The Afrocentric verve here and there, the privileging of industrialisation and the advocacy for an African review of the China phenomenon define the grand strategy to the presentation.
There are many who will go after the emir after watching this video. Philosophers would certainly be one of those because he has splashed mud on a key fascination for them. Local protagonists of unchecked neo-liberalism would certainly not be happy with him because he is contesting the space from within with a new orthodoxy. But this video would also have its fans, in fact, the majority although what the video demands is beyond fandom. It is not for fans or haters of the emir but for thinkers. It is a tough video, from the technical difficulty of uploading it from YouTube here to the content in terms of the silent debate on the mess in which Africa is.
One of China’s statements in developmentalism
In fact, Africa is a threat to all now – to the poor, powerless humanity trapped in its poverty as well as to the rest of the world, at least the Western world. That is what Western authors such as Robert Kaplan articulated in his widely read book in the international policy mill – The Coming Anarchy. But an African Political Scientist of note has equally said that, since SAP, much of African countries are either at war or just coming out of war or just about entering war. That was in 2005 and nothing has changed. In 2018, three of the continent’s much talked about powerhouses-Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt – are in crisis. The newer power houses such as Ethiopia and Kenya are not at peace either. Beyond Rwanda and Botswana, there are no such great sustainable success stories. The never ending war in the DRC must be the continent’s greatest embarrassment that such a rich land could be turned into a permanent waste of human beings since independence, engineered and sustained by forces Africa is too weak to do anything about. Add South Sudan to that and it is time to go drink Umqombothi because, as the street wisdom goes, he who drinks goes to sleep and he who is asleep escapes committing sins, thereby paving the way for admission into Heaven.
As far as this video is concerned, Emir Sanusi is worth listening to at all party headquarters, think tanks, universities, NGOs, media houses and so on for sketching out what is clearly a grand strategy for de-securitising Africa. The video has touched an ensemble: from the knowledge requirement for industrial leap, the technocratic requirement, the energy framework, the inter-African trade necessity, the imperative for responding to negative corruption perception rating, an Afrocentric re-conceptualisation of the migration imbroglio, his models of critical or sensitive governance in Africa and the bad guys thereto, the need to undo the interior-coastal differential in African development, Dangote’s strategy of conquering challenges of industrial investment in the era of the famished presence of state-based elbow room and a host of such critical themes. It is debatable but there is a sense in which the video can be comfortably reduced to his point about the imperative for an African re-engagement with China vis-a-vis getting it right.
That point ought to have been a running debate across Africa, not the current continental silence. Even for curiosity sake, China since 1978 ought to be well understood across the continent. 1978 was when the ‘liberals’ miraculously succeeded in taking over and reworking orthodoxy in favour of an assemblage of ideas, models and expertise from wherever, following the paradigm of welcoming cats of all colors, provided they caught mice. It could have gone either way. Today, it is such a phenomenal success story which no one has provided an apt enough phrase to capture. As late as last March at the 19th China Development Forum, Stephen Roach of Yale University said “No large developing economy has ever done what China has done …, transforming itself into the world’s most powerful export machine”. Roland Berger, founder and former head of the global strategy consulting firm by that name agreed with Roach by saying that China had confounded every forecast about it in the last 40 years and it had become uninviting to predict what could happen next. Mark Moody-Stuart, former head of Shell simply said China from 1978 is a story in “astonishing achievement” and thus the role model that other developing countries cannot but be interested in, mentioning Africa in particular.
It is against this background that what the Emir said at the May end Board of Governors meeting of the African Development Bank, (AfDB) in Busan, South Korea must be subject of further debate. Although he used Nigeria a lot to illustrate most of his claims, many of his listeners felt he was speaking to the situation in their own country:
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It was one of the questions Intervention tried to deal with very early in its formation. The puzzle is why more conflict and violence in Nigeria at a time there are more universities and think tanks dealing with formal study of peace and peace politics? The question came about following what was clearly a massive expansion in opportunities for formal study of Peace and Conflict in Nigeria, something that was available in scattered forms in International Relations, Sociology, Psychology, Political Science, Geopolitics, Linguistics and Religious Studies.
Whereas by 2003/4, it was just the University of Ibadan programme in Peace and Conflict Studies and the same university’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, (CEPACS) as well as Programme on Ethnic and Federal Studies, (PEFS), there were over 20 universities, INGOs, independent think tanks and sundry centres offering one programme or another in Peace Studies by 2016. The correlation should be very clear and if that is not the case, then the question must be posed regarding what might be the intervening variable between the reality of more such centres without corresponding decrease in the quantum of violent intra and inter-group conflicts. Intervention interviewed academics and other stakeholders across the country in a two-part narrative. Each gave his or her own analyses, (See “Nigeria: Why the More Conflict Management Training, the More Conflict, Sept 5 & 6th, 2016/www.intervention.ng).
Pioneer Peace and Conflict Studies centre in the Nigerian university system
An expert from the Peace and Conflict programme at Ibadan who assessed the story post publication, however, interrogated the assumption entirely. He said the expansion under reference was overblown because many of the centres and Peace Studies programmes lacked the staff strength and the vibrancy to warrant a claim of lack of correlation between expansion in the number of study centres and decrease in (violent) conflicts. That was 2016. Now, this is 2018 and there is a book trying to account for the relationship between universities and conflict.
It is an interesting book because, for one, it has analysis from across different parts of the world – Middle East, Asia, Europe and Africa. It may not score an ‘A’ in inclusivity because there is just a chapter from (South) Africa, it is an improvement when compared to other such efforts.
Two, it basically agrees with the notion of universities as conflict managers in their own right because they are theatres of discourses of conflict, discourses which are reproductive of peace as well as conflict, depending on what the discourses are and how students of these discourses operationalise them.
The newness of this research agenda means that most readers would find the introductory chapter and Chapter Three interesting. Chapter Three is where Dr Sansom Milton of the Centre for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Qatar based Doha Institute for graduate Studies reviewed the literature on universities and conflict. Those who are, however, more interested in practical issues might find the case studies chapters (4 – 11) more inviting. The case studies in university – conflict nexus cover some of the hottest conflict spaces or universities concerned with the discipline: Israel/Occupied Territory, Myanmar, Belfast, Bradford, Bosnia and Herzegovina, South Africa.
Dr Millican of the University of Brighton and editor of the new book
Edited by Dr Juliet Millican of the University of Brighton in the UK, this book contributes to closing the gap on scarcity of reading materials in a discipline still borrowing heavily from other disciplines and trying to resolve fundamental subject matter issues. Only last month, Professor John Gledhill of the University of Manchester published an article calling for an intellectual insurgency to put peace back into Peace Studies because much of the works in the discipline so far are concentrated on violence/war compared to peace and peacemaking. That could sound strange to students of Peace and Conflict in Nigeria, for example, given the strong distinction between Negative and Positive peace in Peace Studies on campuses across the country. However, Gledhill made his call based on a study he carried out last year with Jonathan Bright at the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University in which they described Peace Studies as a ‘divided discipline’ on the basis that “there is limited exchange between academic studies of war and research on peace”. It is possible because the quantum of Peace and Conflict Studies and publications coming out from Nigeria might be so minor of global percentage as for the two scholars to make their claim.
In all cases, this is an interesting time than any other to study and/or practice peace. This is simply because the world is still in the Interregnum: the old order is so discredited and going but the successor order is still nowhere to be seen, leaving not a void as such but an empty space upon which anyone could smartly write anything.
Veteran Nigerian Political Scientist and politician, Dr Bala Takaya is dead. He died 2 O’clock on Sunday morning. Until his death, he was the national leader of the Middle Belt Forum,... Read more
The 2018 Africa Day has come and gone but still lingering for reflection is how civil society activists marked it. Put together by the CDD, CISLAC, CITAD, Centre LSD, WRAPA and the Abuja Col... Read more
