On The 60TH Birth Day Of Dr. Jibrin Ibrahim: Political Science And The Sickness Of The Nigerian State

I read with consummate interest the treatise by Dr Jibrin Ibrahim in the Daily Trust (December 1st, 2014) and a follow up by Issa Aremu, (December 8th, 2014) to mark Dr. Jibrin Ibrahim’s 60th birthday.

On arriving Vicenza, Italy, I wanted to send a card but decided to write this tribute to my former teacher. ABU, Zaria was my meeting ground with Dr Ibrahim, more popularly known as Jibo.

Before my arrival in Zaria, I had encountered radical split. At the College of Preliminary Studies, Yola in those days, we had a sharp and incisive intellectual in the Marxist, Dr Jonathan Zwingina.

There were others too. However, some of us later fell out with Zwingina after his criticism of Dr. Bala Usman’s book, For the Liberation of Nigeria.

Those of us who esteemed Bala did not like Zwingina for that, until we went to Zaria. When I got to Zaria in 1982, however, it was Rima Shawulu, a childhood friend and then a rabid student union activist who became the initial radical flow.

This was because Jibo was shortly thereafter leaving for his PhD programme in France and no radical influence was going to flow from his direction towards mine at all. Instead, it was Rima mostly. I was trying to be careful, studying the learning environment.

But Rima would not let me rest. He got me into the Movement for Progressive Nigeria (MPN) and Youth Solidarity on Southern Africa (YUSSAN). I then went on to contest for the post of Students’ Welfare Officer which I lost.

However, together with the late Gauis Obed, as Editorial Board members, we rebranded the ABU Main Campus Student Union magazine, The Task. Indeed, I became active but remained committed to the Fellowship of Christian Students (FCS). A friend, Ahmed Aminu Yusuf, however, confronted me to the effect that comrades were worried that I could be engaged in the struggle and yet be that religious.

I told him there was no problem about it. In Zaria in those days, the activist culture saw as a contradiction the possibility of mixing radical activism with religious consciousness. It is interesting that today, Ahmed Aminu Yusuf with whom I remained close has seen the religious light and is such a practicing as opposed to a nominal Muslim that he was.

What amazed me most in Zaria was the existence of different Marxist schools. The late Dr. Bala Usman had his followers: the Bala Brought Ups, aka BBU. BBU activists would fight and oppose anyone with contrary views to theirs, sometimes to the point of being intolerant.

They included Professor Alkasum Abba, Dr Sadiqque Abubakar and Sanusi Abubakar. We used to have series of debates in the now disbanded Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, (FASS).

From these debates could develop enemy camps. The most interesting or most unforgettable must be the one between Dr Bala Usman and Bjorn Beckman, the Swedish political economist.

It all started at a seminar where he presented a joint research findings together with his wife, Andrea, an equally radical geographer. The venue was the famous Abdullahi Smith Lecture Theatre. Andrea who had just arrived Nigeria and was totally unfamiliar with the style of discourse or the ideological aggressiveness in ABU academic culture was obviously lost.

She could not give a coherent answer. Beckman, her husband, had to take over to, in his own words, “answer Bala in ABU language”. It was so interesting as we all burst into laughter. The ABU language then was the combative intellectual approach which a first timer like Andrea from Sweden was not used to, and would have thought ABU was an unfriendly environment, a zone of vicious intellectual combat and ‘enmity’.

No, it was not. Rather, what followed was the convergence of the same people at the ABU Staff Club to ‘mess up.’ By the time Jibo returned to Zaria, I had left. I had graduated. Somehow, Jibo among others, also left in the late 1990s, clearly a collateral victim of the multiple crises that befell the university in the 1990s.

Professor Wilmot had been deported while Dr. Yusuf Bangura had felt sufficiently frustrated without promotion after several years of service and left. Dr Sam Oyovbaire too left, obviously in anger over believed denial of his professorial chair.

Professor Okello Oculi was skillful enough to leave honorably. Painfully, ABU continued to lose such staff, particularly the non-Nigerians and with it, the associated international image and reputation problems.

But, in spite of his exit from ABU, Jibo invariably remained one of the finest political scientists in Nigeria, giving his insightful write ups. He veered into civil society where he intellectualized it. In his 60th anniversary note referred to earlier, he took a rather holistic view and lamented thus: When the state is sick, the name of the doctor that prescribes treatment is called the political scientist.

I am not sure what our political scientists today are saying about the prognosis of the disease and the necessary treatment that should be applied, (to Nigeria). Indeed, political science in Nigeria has reached where donor agencies now define political science research methodology.

They now tell us homosexuality is a human rights issue, and we must sheepishly buy into it and even carry placards to our National Human Rights Commission. Jibo must have been observing this, if not actively participating somehow. It is a tragedy.

We are nowhere in which we can assert or pose the question of ‘OUR AFRICAN WORLD VIEW’ But even back home, the situation is not much better. And Jibo can attest to this given his own unsuccessful efforts at an attempt to remodel the collapsed political science structures in Nigeria as a member of the National Committee on Electoral Reform in Nigeria.

The Committee had recommended the establishment of the Centre for Democratic Studies (CDS) as an andragogy of political education. When the recommendation was made, it was a delight because it was hoped it would quicken the setting up of the Institute for Democratic and Legislative Studies (IDLS), which president Obasanjo signed into law before his exit from office in May 2007.

His successor, President Umar Ya’ardua was not privy to this. The Drive to establish IDLS started shortly before the end of the 5th National Assembly (NASS). Through a colleague of ours, Fatai Jimoh, some of us submitted a draft bill to his boss, Senator Ken Nnamani GCON, then Senate President. He found the idea lofty and picked it up.

In its wisdom, NASS established the Institute for Democratic and Legislative Studies (IDLS) with two schools: the professional School of Legislative Studies and the School of Democratic Studies; to provide both technical services in legislative drafting and political education respectively.

However, unknowingly, the staff of Policy Analysis Research Project (PARP), established by grant agreement between the NASS and African Capacity Building Foundation were not happy. As soon as the 5th NASS ended, they worked on the 6th NASS to repeal IDLS.

The flimsy reasons given were that IDLS was yet to commence serious practical work; was not a pure legislative institute; had not squarely addressed any matter relating to the legislature; the title of the law was too long and there was need to encourage the capacity building of the legislature.

They falsely stated that the Legislature is the only arm of government without a training institute and that the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON) and the Public Service Institute (PSI) serve the Executive arm while the National Judicial Institute is for the Judiciary.

In truth, both ASCON and PSI serve all arms of government and it is only the Judicial Institute that is understandably exclusive to the judiciary.

I brought this to Jibo’s attention. He was excited and got a copy of the law. I was hopeful he would use the good office of his Committee Chairman to reach out to the presidency. Similarly, I reached out to Professor Sam Egwu, then, President of Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA).

Before we knew, the NASS had repealed IDLS and went ahead to establish the National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS), which is narrow in perspective. Jibo might have tried.

If he did, that was proper and fitting because we cannot blame the power elite permanently if we do not use little opportunities to actualize one or two things.

I believe an Institute of Democratic Studies will serve as the laboratory for the experimentation of our political development There had been efforts, especially at the level of members of the Nigeria Vision 2020 to ensure the creation of a unit in the Office of the National Security Adviser that would provide such umbrella but it did not work out.

In his May 29th 2012 Democracy Day Speech, President Jonathan announced the establishment of the Institute of Democratic Governance at the University of Lagos. The hope now is that the NPSA and concerned political scientists would seize this opportunity to ensure that government establishes a similar political science laboratory in Abuja. I have not seen any effort to this extent.

But hope is not lost. Not when there are the Jibos in the nomenclatura of Nigerian political science. A belated happy 60th birthday anniversary! Prof Yoroms, concurrently of Bingham University, Abuja and National Defence College, Abuja wrote in from COESPU, Vicenza, Italy .