PROFESSOR ISAAC OLAWALE ALBERT, a renowned scholar of peace and conflict studies at the University of Ibadan, speaks with GBENRO ADESINA about his journey into peace and security studies, the establishment of Peace and Conflict Studies at the university, religious tensions at UI, the Sharia debate, Nigeria’s security challenges, and the problem of elite state capture. In this first part of the interview, Albert also shares insights from his experiences at the National Conference and his international engagements in peace and security studies.
Q: What experience shaped your decision to study peace and conflict?
A: There is a misleading impression out there that needs to be corrected. Everywhere I go, people claim that I established the Faculty of Multidisciplinary Studies at the University of Ibadan (UI). Professor Abel Idowu Olayinka, the 12th Vice-Chancellor of the institution, established the department during his administration. I am connected to that agenda because the Vice-Chancellor recalled me from my sabbatical leave in Algeria. He called me one morning and told me that the Faculty of Multidisciplinary Studies had been established, and I had to return to the university to head the faculty as its pioneer Dean. I reminded him that I had about five months left to complete my sabbatical leave. He insisted that I should return immediately, and I complied. This is the first time I am saying this publicly. I was the pioneer dean of the faculty. What led me to the study of peace and security is a long story. My original plan in life was to become a lawyer. But something happened to my father that made him discourage me from becoming a lawyer. It is private to me. When I came to the university, I struggled to operate within the frameworks of legal practice, criminology, conflict, and security studies. So, while I was in university doing my first degree in History, I went around the faculties, taking courses that could help bring out the best in me in law, criminology, peace, and security. I took courses in insurgency and counter-insurgency in the Department of Political Science, developmental psychology, and other courses that actually prepared me for what I am today. When I came back to do my master’s degree in History, I started focusing on conflict issues. I studied the conflict that gave rise to the establishment of Sabo in Ibadan because there were conflict issues surrounding it. When I was doing my PhD in History, I looked at the conflicts surrounding the establishment of Sabongeri in Yorubaland and in Northern Nigeria, and I compared the two. In the process of studying different Sabongeri in Nigeria, I came across several conflict issues that gave birth to my interest in conflict studies. Again, in 1994, General Sani Abacha came to power. I called a big national conference on urban violence, and I was supported by the British, Canadian, and French governments to organise that conference, which took place at IITA. During the conference, the then Director of the British Council, West Africa, called me out and tapped my chest. He said, “Young man, there are wonderful ideas loaded in you. Would you allow the British government to help you unlock them?” I said yes. He said, “See me in Lagos.” I went to Lagos and met him. His name was Dr David Hawkin. He said, “When you spoke at IITA, one could see you manipulating words and hiding your intention. What are these issues?” I told him that I was interested in the reasons behind many crises in Nigeria. Abacha was in government. He told us things to say and things not to say. This informed my design of the conference we had at IITA. Nigeria would not be able to make any progress if we did not unwind and create an environment in which everybody would be able to say what they wanted the public to know. Consequently, he said he would send me to 12 British universities and institutions. “You would go round and, when you come back, we would have another meeting.” They took my passport, and the embassy gave me a visa. He gave me a list of institutions to visit: University of London, University of Edinburgh, University of Kent, University of Ulster, and other universities. When I came back, he sat me down and said, “Address me.” I asked him to help me develop my interest in conflict studies. He said, “Okay.” Then he asked me where I came across conflict studies. I told him I discovered conflict studies at the University of Ulster. I interacted with the professionals at International Alert. I gave him a long list of institutions and said I wanted to work with the University of Ulster. I said they had two programmes there. They had academic programmes and the practice aspect. He said, “The next thing for you is to go back to that university where your interest was discovered, that is, the University of Ulster. Stay with them for six weeks.” I went back to the University of Ulster at Magee College. I used the opportunity to study their Peace and Conflict programme, and I also studied peace practice. Luckily, some scholars were visiting Magee at that time from Russia. I was embedded in their operation. We travelled to different parts of Northern Ireland to study the peace process there because, at that time, Northern Ireland was experiencing a high level of terrorist conflict between the Protestants and the Catholics. I used that opportunity to understand how peace and conflict are taught and how one can also build the peace practice aspect. I came back to Nigeria. The next challenge was to obtain permission to establish Peace and Conflict Studies. I travelled back again to design the curriculum. Some scholars from the University of Ulster were brought in to support me. That was how UI started its Peace and Conflict Studies programme. That is the beginning of my scholarship. I have not known any other area than peace and security. That was how my scholarship was defined.
Q: Does that mean that you started Peace and Conflict Studies at UI?
A: Yes. The British Council supported me in taking 10 of my colleagues to the United Kingdom to learn how to teach peace studies. The IITA conference took place in 1994, and my relationship with the British Council started that same year. We established an academic link between the University of Ibadan and the University of Ulster in 1996. I worked on the curriculum and designed the programme, but the course did not start until 2000. This was because I was too junior in the university. The usual problem you face when you are a junior lecturer in an academic setting is a very big conflict. At one stage, the university wanted me to be removed as the coordinator of the programme and replaced by another person. But the British Council Director said, “Well, this is not our project. This young man brought this project to us. We did not tell him to start Peace and Conflict Studies. He has the key to the course. If you say you no longer need him, that is the end of our relationship.” So, the British Council supported me in maintaining the management of the programme. The British learnt some lessons from it. They realised that the university was not giving me the kind of support I needed. What they did was to start another peace and conflict link with the University of Jos, using a man called Imran Abdulrahman. The meeting was arranged in Lagos. Imran was asked to start the Peace and Conflict Studies programme in Jos. Whereas my own link programme was between the University of Ibadan and the University of Ulster, his own was between the University of Jos and the University of Bradford. The UI programme was very successful, while that of Jos had problems, probably because Imran did not have a PhD and perhaps because he was invited to do it, unlike mine, which came from within. What the British Council did next was to start a Peace and Conflict Studies link between Sierra Leone and the University of Bradford. They called a meeting in Abuja and said the Peace and Conflict Studies programme I started at UI was their best because they could see the outcome within a short time. They called the people managing their links into a meeting in Abuja. I was asked to tell them the Ibadan story, which I did. The leadership of the Nigerian University Commission (NUC) and officials of the Ministry of Education were there. They learnt from my challenges in Ibadan and then advised other universities that if they wanted to grow their courses, they should be supportive. We eventually started the programme at UI in 2000 and admitted the first set of students that same year. The UNDP office in Accra, Ghana, gave me a contract to do the same thing for the University of Cape Coast. I was asked to help develop their curriculum for Peace and Development Studies in the Institute of Development Studies. After that, I came back to Nigeria. Professor Isiaq Oloyede, who was then Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, took me to Ilorin for one year and started the Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies. I started going around the continent, helping to support the development of their programmes or helping to monitor and evaluate their courses. But in Nigeria today, the universities that I supported to establish peace studies include Al-Hikmah University, Ilorin; Fountain University, Osogbo; Ajuru University of Education, Port Harcourt, formerly the Rivers State University of Education; and many other institutions. I am today known as a curriculum developer in peace and security studies. I help to evaluate peace and conflict studies globally. The United Nations then said they wanted me to extend my horizon to include security studies. In 1999, I was taken to the United Nations International Leadership Academy in Amman, Jordan, to train with the military. The agenda then was to build the capacity of a few of us to be embedded in military operations so that we were not just studying the military from afar, but were able to work from within to understand what they do, carry out analysis that would help military operations, and so on. That was the best training I have ever had. It allowed me not only to be trained in the classroom, but also to be taken around Arab countries, visiting sensitive military installations, including Israel. I have worked with institutions in Nigeria.
Q: With you and a whole department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Ibadan, religious crises keep rearing their ugly heads, and the expertise of you and your colleagues does not seem to be able to contain them. The alleged Islamisation of the institution is becoming a threat. The case of ISI is there. Religion also appears to have a dimension in the contest for the Vice-Chancellorship. How did UI get to this point, and what is the solution to the conflict?
A: A university is a universe. It is a place where you have the freedom to express yourself. In that type of environment, anything can happen. When you are drawing the map of conflict in UI, the first one you have to refer to is the conflict between the Igbo and others. With time, that conflict went down. Now we have this new one. You will recall that the conflict between Muslims and Christians at UI has to do with the cross. It started with Muslims saying that, when they were praying in the mosque, they could see the cross. I think we did not manage that conflict well. Afterwards, it became institutionalised, in the sense that whatever you want to do—whether the appointment of leaders or anything that will affect the community—people will come up with issues of religion. That should be expected in our type of environment. Nigeria today faces the problems of ethnicity and religion. UI is in Nigeria. You are asking this question because you feel that universities should be above board. You also think that the existence of some of us on campus should make a difference. Let me shed some academic light on what the situation is. UI is a VUCA environment. A VUCA environment is one that is volatile in terms of its demographic composition and expectations. In a normal university, we have crazy people—people who profess strange ideas. It is allowed in a university environment. A university environment is an uncertain environment. It is an environment in which you, Dr Gbenro Adesina, who have established yourself professionally and academically and who are a Yoruba man, will come and see Professor Olawale Albert speak in the Yoruba language, and I tell you I don’t speak Yoruba. It is an uncertain environment. It is a complex environment in which one person will suddenly stand up in a meeting and say, “God is a woman.” It is allowed. Many years ago, one of my students said Oduduwa, the acclaimed Yoruba progenitor, is a woman. She came to the examination hall and wrote it in her script. She didn’t fail because she came up with an argument that appeared scientific. I wasn’t there when Oduduwa came. If I am saying Oduduwa is a man and she says Oduduwa is a woman, it is a contribution to knowledge. I said it is a VUCA environment: V is for volatility, U is for uncertainty, C is for complexity, and A is for ambiguity. You have always known Professor Albert to behave in a specific way, but today he is behaving strangely. It is allowed in an academic environment. In that type of environment, if people are talking about religion or ethnicity, it has to be allowed. My field of specialisation talks about inclusivity. In that type of environment, you must have an inclusive system that allows everybody to express themselves. If, therefore, Muslims are saying, “We want this,” technically speaking, they have the right to ask. The only problem is when they allow differences in their opinions to tear the institution down, and I think that is the problem UI is having. The problem arises when we fail to listen to ourselves. There is always a middle way in a conflict environment. You are saying you want this and I want that. For us in our field, we say, allow all groups to express themselves. We will then compare notes and say, “This is the middle way.” All the issues of religion we have had at UI, anytime people come to me to talk about them, what I say all the time is, “Let’s talk.” There was a time somebody came to me and talked about going to court, which I opposed. It is possible for us to sit down and discuss this matter. Yes, it is happening; it has happened. But I think where we got it wrong is for us to use it as a basis for demonising ourselves—Christians demonising Muslims and Muslims demonising Christians. Now, any time a Head of Department is to be appointed, or we want to have a new Dean or Vice-Chancellor, the issue will come up and begin to obstruct the system. That is what we should condemn. In an academic environment, let us allow the best to lead us.
Q: How do we achieve that?
A: It may be difficult for you to negotiate because if I consider myself brilliant enough to lead UI, I don’t need to build my political ambition on the platform or altar of religion. I will come out to contest. When I am contesting, what I am expected to do is to tell my colleagues how I am going to improve the academic standing of UI, not the religious rating of the university. I think that is where we are getting it wrong. It is not your religion that will promote UI. It is the academic standing that will promote UI. We want the UI Vice-Chancellor to go to London and America and speak authoritatively. They are not going there as a pastor or Imam. When we consider these sentiments, we drop merit to promote mediocrity.
Q: Is it not possible for Nigeria to be governed by only one constitution, with whatever the advocates of Sharia have to be accommodated in our Constitution?
A: We missed it at the level of colonialism. We have different types of nation-states. A nation is supposed to be a political entity in which groups have the same identity. It could be religious, ethnic, or any other form of identity. But the kind of federation we established under the British was an all-comers’ affair of a nation. It was a kind of nation in which different people from different areas were forced together. One would have expected the British to teach us how to become a nation. That is to say, “Look, for you to become a nation, you have to drop all kinds of these pedestrian identities to become one nation.” Unfortunately, the British didn’t help us to become united. They created a very big North dominated by Islam and paired it to compete with the Christian-dominated Southern Nigeria. When Southern Nigeria was trying to work together to be able to negotiate with the North, the British broke us into different units—the South-West, South-East, Middle West, and so on. Up till today, the Igbo and Yoruba are constantly in conflict. We were taught by colonialism to be enemies of ourselves. That is why I am saying UI is a microcosm, a small unit of Nigeria. There is nothing happening in UI that is not happening in Nigeria. There are universities you go to where people don’t want to talk about Islam, and there are universities you go to today where people don’t want to talk about Christianity. But in our own system, we are still working together. UI is better than many universities in the country. Christians have not been able to suppress Muslims, and Muslims have not been able to suppress Christians. When there are functions in the mosque at UI, I go there. I remove my shoes. The fact that they still tolerate me coming to the mosque and sitting down shows that we are still better than many other parts of Nigeria, where people are not that tolerant.
Q: Some Muslim countries, like Egypt, tried Sharia and it did not work. They practise liberal Islam. Why do we allow this Sharia issue to go this far and become a major conflict that is so difficult to resolve?
A: In the 1990s and early 2000s, the global community came up with the concept of political Islamism. Political Islamism has to do with putting the state under Sharia or using Sharia to dictate how the system is governed. What happened in Nigeria during that period was that when you went to the North, people at the grassroots genuinely wanted Sharia, but the political leaders did not necessarily want it. The political leaders decided to capitalise on the people’s yearning for Sharia by saying that they wanted Sharia. What our elite class did was to say, “Let us use what these people want.” This was what led to the Sharia crisis from 2000 to 2003. Zamfara came out to say, “We are starting Sharia.” They cut off the hand of Bello Buba Jengebe, a grassroots person, for stealing a cow. They implicated some commissioners in cases of political fraud. They didn’t cut their hands. That was how Sharia collapsed in Zamfara. They were not ready to do to the elite class what they did to that poor Jengebe. When the quest for Sharia went down in Zamfara, the system left several people on the battlefield. People who genuinely thought their leaders wanted Sharia were left behind. That was what produced the likes of Mohammed Yusuf. Mohammed Yusuf’s story today has not been properly told. There are several Mohammed Yusufs in the North today who withdrew because of what Yusuf went through. People genuinely wanted Sharia but were disappointed by their leaders, who ran away. Yusuf was left on the battlefront. The political leaders were no longer there, and he started moving from one group to another. He went to Zarkyzarky until he decided to stay on his own. He started to profess anti-state and anti-establishment views, which brought him into conflict with the then regime in Borno State. Then, Governor Ali Modu Sheriff felt that a good way of establishing peace with these people was to bring them into the government. The position of the government was that it was not easy for you to practise Sharia in a secular state. Nigeria is a secular state. If you say you want to bring Sharia into a secular state, it will conflict with the Constitution and with how a modern state is organised. They gave them some positions in the government, including the Commissioner for Religious Affairs. When Yusuf was killed, the man who served in that position before he resigned was also killed. It is difficult to do what some of these people are looking for in a modern state. That is the problem the Middle East is having now. Saudi Arabia is changing rapidly. Every society is constantly changing. Development is dynamic.
Q: Is it not what they are dropping in the Middle East and other Islamic nations that we are now embracing?
A: That is why I said the elite class in the North is not altruistic and is not honest enough to be able to deliver peace in the sense that genuine Sharia advocates at the grassroots level are looking for. These modern-day politicians cannot practise it. They use it during elections to get the people to support them. After the elections, they run away from the people. I think this is the problem we are going through.
Q: Is Sharia a political tool or a means to serve God?
A: I think the grassroots people who are talking about Sharia sincerely believe in it. I grew up in the North, and I still interact with some of these grassroots people. Many of them are largely distant from Western civilisation and Western education.
Q: Do you think Sharia can run simultaneously with the Constitution of Nigeria and there will be peace?
A: I don’t want to say there won’t be peace. When the Boko Haram crisis started, I attended several meetings where I said, if these people are asking for Sharia, what stops our governors from giving it to them? They are entitled to it. The question is that our governors, after elections, don’t want to give Sharia to them. This is the conflict. If the people are saying, “This is what we want,” give it to them. When Governor Aliyu Babangida was governor of Niger State, he started a programme called the Ward Development Programme. Under the programme, every month, he gave millions of naira to each political ward, irrespective of political affiliation, and asked them to use the money to develop their wards. When we did an evaluation of the system, people said some wards were using the money to build mosques. He said, “That is what they want.” Development is defined by each of us according to our worldview. Some people used the money to build schools; some used it to build wells, but several communities used the money to build mosques. My advice then was that nobody should interfere with what they did with their money as long as the money was not embezzled. The lesson is that the community that used the money to build a mosque this month is not going to build a mosque next month. We realised that those who built mosques eventually realised that they had to establish Islamic schools. After this, they needed to establish primary schools where Western education was taught. The problem we generally have in Africa is that our leaders want to force their own worldview on the people. To me, I don’t see anything wrong with any state in Northern Nigeria that wants Sharia.
Q: What about the South-West?
A: I think the governor should sit down with those making the request and discuss it with them.
Q: As a delegate at the National Conference, what challenges do you think Nigeria is confronting, based on your experience at the conference?
A: The problem with Nigeria is elite state capture. A few people have captured Nigeria. We can count them. They have decided that Nigeria should be managed on their own terms. When we got to the National Conference, we thought it would be difficult to reach agreement on the issues. But I realised that Nigeria is what it is today because our leaders are not allowing us to talk. The typical Hausa-Fulani person is not as difficult as they are presented to us. The typical Igbo person is not as difficult as they are presented to us, and the Yoruba people are not as difficult as they are presented to us. The point is that everybody is frustrated because there is no opportunity for us to talk. When we got to the National Conference, the first major conflict we had was religious. Immediately, President Goodluck Jonathan declared the conference open and left; we were to have our first plenary session. Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi, who chaired the conference, started, as Muslims do, by reciting verses of the Qur’an. Immediately after he finished, Pastor Tunde Bakare raised a point of order and asked to be recognised. He said, “You have just said something now, and we don’t know whether you are abusing or cursing us. But we heard you murmuring and saying something. We don’t understand it. I think we need clarification about what you just said.” Justice Kutigi replied that he was not abusing anybody. “I only said a simple prayer.” Bakare pointed out to him that he did not say it in any of Nigeria’s languages; otherwise, they would not have been asking him questions. He said, “You said it in Arabic. This is a meeting to fix Nigeria. It is not a gathering of Islamic people.” The meeting became divided. People started shouting, and it turned into Muslims against Christians and Christians against Muslims. We said this was a conflict that must be resolved. We then agreed that, henceforth, we would not pray in a Christian or Muslim way. We would use the second stanza of the national anthem as our prayer. Every morning, we would start our meeting by reciting the second stanza of the national anthem. That was how the problem was solved. We used a similar strategy to deal with many other problems at the national level. When an issue was raised, people disagreed sharply. We would discuss it and eventually reach an agreement. We have so many conflicts in this country. The leaders are preventing us from talking. They know that when we talk and reach an agreement, power will be taken away from them. They don’t want us to decide how our present and future should be managed. This is the problem we are facing. It is a problem of elite state capture. Until we deal with the problem of elite state capture, this country is not going anywhere. These people who are deciding for everybody are not altruistic. They are not thinking about your children. They are not thinking about how Nigeria will look like the United Kingdom. They are not thinking about how Nigeria will rank among the best in the world. What they want to do is to ensure that their immediate families and themselves lord it over everybody else. They are not thinking about how the children of Professor Albert will graduate and respond to public advertisements looking for jobs. All they want to do is say, “The Central Bank is reserved for us, NNPC is reserved for us, and everything good in this country is reserved for us. Let the children of the poor go and find their level wherever they can find it.” That is why the problem we are having in the education sector today is that their children don’t go to public schools. All our leaders take their children to the United Kingdom and all over the world. You will never see them at UI. It is the children of Professor Albert and the children of Dr Adesina that you will see at UI and other Nigerian universities. That is retarding the growth of this country.
Q: Why do you think the Federal Government is scared for history to be taught in schools?
A: Because they don’t want us to tell the kind of stories I am telling now. History has to do with telling stories dealing with past events. What these people did in the past was so horrible that they would not want anybody to come into the classroom to teach people that this is how we came to where we are. They are afraid of the past. I was discussing this with a colleague yesterday. All over the world, history is a prestigious field of specialisation because the state rests on historical evidence. At the University of London, you teach national history and honours. The country is interested in your knowing. Why was Great Britain great? They want you to know why the royal family is so celebrated. They want you to know about the British Empire. What do we have in Nigeria to show anybody? Is it all these scandalous cases of corruption that we have every day? One person acquiring property worth over N200 billion. This is the shadow that everybody is afraid of.
Q: Is it true that the South-West failed to achieve what it wanted at the National Conference because it was not united?
A: They didn’t lose out, and they were united. I didn’t go to the National Conference to represent Yorubaland. I was invited to the National Conference as a professor of security studies because some of us were brought in technically. That was why, after the name of General Alani Akinrinade, my name came next. I was a representative of the Federal Government, nominated by the Federal Government. When we got to the conference, a number of Yoruba leaders came to me and said I must be attending the Yoruba Caucus meetings. They came to me in different shades, including Gani Adams, Baba Lanihun, Baba Arogbofa, and Baba Falaiye. Niyi Akintola, an erudite lawyer, belongs to my generation. He was very dynamic. When we got to meetings, Niyi Akintola would say, “Ẹ jẹ́ ká gbọ́ nkan tí àwọn bàbá yìí fẹ́ sọ”—”Let us hear what these elders want to say.” All the elders were there. When we got to that meeting, we realised that we belonged to different social brackets. For example, I was closer to Niyi Akintola. He is a very dynamic person. He was young and educated. We think like people who belong to this age. But those elders who were with Awolowo and who were there when we gained independence came to the conference talking about regionalism as what the Yoruba wanted. When we got to the meeting, and the elders presented regionalism as what all the Yoruba delegates would push and advocate for, they faced a major problem. Lagos State excluded itself. This is to say that when we were practising regionalism, Lagos was very solid on its own. One person stood up—I think he was from Osun or Ekiti State—and said, “A padà sí Ibadan o”—”We are not returning to Ibadan.” He interpreted regionalism as Yoruba people coming together again to be under Ibadan authority. They informally talked about what the Yoruba people faced and shared the experience that, at that time, nothing could be done by the other states until they came to Ibadan for clearance. Though regionalism brought progress, there were a number of gaps. He said, “Look, a padà sí Ibadan o.” Some people from the states said, “Àwọn gómìnà wa kò rán wa pé ká wá sọ̀rọ̀ nípa bí a ṣe máa padà sí regionalism. Nkan tí àwọn gómìnà wa ní pé ká wá ṣe ni autonomy.” In other words, “We are not going back to Ibadan again. Our governors did not send us here to come and discuss the issue of returning to regionalism. What our governors told us to come and pursue was how to achieve autonomy.” We came to that conference with different kinds of agitations and requests. We discussed regionalism. Those elders realised that regionalism might not work now as it did then, but that we could have a kind of collaboration—a Yoruba collaboration, something that looks like Amotekun. Amotekun is a security outfit. The people were saying that we could have a form of unity and work together, including helping to free Yoruba people who are in Kogi State, Kwara State, and elsewhere. How do we bring all of them together so that we return to the original Oduduwa identity? So, I will disagree with anybody who says we failed at the conference or that the Yoruba did not achieve its agenda. The only thing that had to be dropped was regionalism. Regionalism became watered down. That is why, throughout the conference, we were not able to push regionalism. It was like dead on arrival. But we were able to push the issue of state autonomy—a situation that would enable us to have strong states and a weak centre. We worked a lot in that direction. So, the Yoruba people achieved a lot at the conference. I have to commend our leaders. I didn’t know that they worked so hard for the Yoruba people until I got to the conference. We usually started the conference around 9 a.m. and closed around 6 p.m. We would go to our hotels and then return for another round of Yoruba Caucus meetings from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. All those elders would be awake. As a young man, I couldn’t stand it. There were several times I ran away from the meetings. It was either that I didn’t come to the meetings, or, around 1 a.m. or 2 a.m., I would excuse myself by taking permission to go and ease myself, and I would not return.
Q: So, your generation voted for autonomy?
A: Yes, that was what we voted for.
Q: Why have we not had the autonomy, and why are some governors even rejecting local government autonomy?
A: That was another problem that I saw at the conference. One of our resolutions at the National Conference was that only the federal and state governments should be recognised. I was surprised by all the former governors and speakers at the conference because they didn’t want local government autonomy. The conference was dominated by politicians. Up to today, I still find it very difficult to understand why they are opposed to local government autonomy. Governance is best done at the grassroots level. If governors are not interested in local governments enjoying autonomy, then I ask myself: can we actually say that we are altruistic? Can we say we love the people? Traditional rulers are not given their due and respect, and local government councillors are nowhere. So, how do we grow the community? It is really strange. It takes us back to the issue of elite state capture. Our politicians have captured society, and they manage us the way they want to.
Q: Are you optimistic or worried about Nigeria?
A: I am worried about Nigeria because we have politicised security management. There is no society where security is politicised the way it is in ours that does not disintegrate at the end of the day. We are not managing our security well. When we were doing security training in the Middle East and touring the region, we took off from Amman, Jordan. We were based in Amman before we started visiting the other countries. In Amman, the Israelis came to each of us. They gave us a form to fill, saying that entry into Israel would require us to provide certain information. I filled the form. What is the name of your father? What is the name of your grandfather? They were minor details of information. I filled out the form, and they gave me the visa right inside the hotel. We travelled by road from Amman to Israel. When we got to the border, each of us presented our passports and was cleared. When it came to my turn, they asked several questions. I thought they were joking. “What is your family name?” I was answering them, but then I forgot my grandfather’s name, Ogunkeye. They were asking the questions in a friendly way. Our team was a high-profile UN diplomatic team. The man interviewing me just turned around, brought out handcuffs, and handcuffed me. Then the head of the UN mission said, “No, you cannot touch anybody in this team.” The security man stepped back. He said, “I have this problem with this young man.” It was then that I realised that the questions the man was asking me were not a joke. I gave the information correctly, and he saluted me, removed the handcuffs, and cleared me. That is a country that does not joke with its national security. If the country jokes with its security, it would say, “This is a big UN security team, and nobody here can be wrong.” In a country like ours, if you are managing security, even if it is your mother who is doing the wrong thing, you sanction her immediately. But in Nigeria, an operation is going on, and you say, “You cannot touch my people. You cannot touch my religion.” This is what brought us to where we are. Now it is becoming too late to correct the problem. A criminal is a criminal. Deal with the criminal the way criminals should be dealt with. Let your law book be very clear on who is a criminal and how he can be processed. Look at what happened in Orire recently. The security people went there. They carried out the operation according to the books and achieved success. But some Northern communities are now saying, “Why didn’t you do it in our own communities?” The same people who said you could not do it in their communities. A military operation is going on, you are almost achieving your target, and you are asked to withdraw. We have to be sincere with ourselves. If we want our problems to be solved, we have to be sincere. Don’t say, “Don’t call the name of the group that is causing the problem. Don’t go to these communities.” Our problems will continue to expand. I am worried for Nigeria because, early in the Boko Haram crisis, I was privileged to belong to many security groups. I was chairman of the West Africa Network for Peace Building. We covered all ECOWAS states. I could travel to any country and ask questions. I belong to several technical groups. I have worked in Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Senegal. When the Boko Haram crisis started, one of the strange things I noticed was that every country I visited in West Africa would be talking about Boko Haram. Most of these West African countries are French-speaking. When I heard them talking about Boko Haram, I would ask my colleagues, “What is that guy saying?” They would say he was talking about how Boko Haram members were training in their country. I would wonder, saying, “Boko Haram? I thought they were based only in Nigeria.” I heard that in several places. When you talk about the problem in Nigeria, they will say, “No, you are abusing our people.” These people are operating across several corridors. The groups that ISIS works with include ISWAP, Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, and several other groups. ISWAP is the most senior in West Africa. So, if ISIS is trying to link up with West Africa, the Boko Haram brand is very high. I don’t want to go too deep. When you talk here, people will say, “They are our people.” They are not your people because they work across broad corridors. Why are they interested so much in Nigeria? They can come to Nigeria, carry out all forms of terrorism, kidnapping, and so on, make money, and use it to support their brothers in other West African countries. We have politicised everything and turned serious problems into local issues. Now our problems have escalated to a level we cannot manage. When you allow your problems to fester for too long, as we have done in Nigeria, you will generate three problems. You will generate what we call actor proliferation. For example, this phone is lost in your office here, and you allow that problem to fester for so long without managing it. The actors will increase. I may start by saying, “It is you who allowed my phone to be stolen.” In the process of managing the problem, somebody may say, “It is Shop 3 that organised for my phone to be taken.” Another person may say, “It is that person who has been eyeing your office for a very long time.” Then the number of people involved in the conflict will increase. Another is issue proliferation. The issue around the phone is that the phone is lost. You may say, “I want to steal your data.” The issues will become so many that if I say, “Let us settle it,” we will not even know the issue to discuss. The last one, which is the most serious and which is the problem Nigeria has, is management complications. The military is confused today. Our political leaders are confused. The police are confused. An average Nigerian is confused. Those coming to Nigeria to do business are confused. Our hands are full with problems today, but in the midst of it, our political leaders are managing their political future. As they are managing their own problems, our problem is like having a wound that is not treated. It will keep getting worse. That is where we are now. That is why people are increasingly running away from Nigeria. You meet somebody who ran away from Nigeria and find the person in the Republic of Niger. You ask him what he is doing there and tell him, “Nigeria is better than where you are now. Why will you run away from Ibadan to live in a village in Niger and carry water on your head?” The man will tell you, “At least, I can sleep with my two eyes closed. What drove me away is not what you are thinking. I left so that I can have peace of mind.” As I go around the world, when I interact with our people, it is not wealth they are looking for. They are just looking for peace. And people are looking for peace in very strange places. People who are living in places where the temperature is minus 30 or minus 20 degrees—when you see them and ask, “Why are you in this place?”—they will tell you, “I ran away from Nigeria. At least, I have peace here.” So, people are running away across the Sahara. People trek to North Africa and swim across the Mediterranean to Southern Europe. They die. When you ask them, “You are taking a great risk,” they will say it is 50/50 per cent of survival. When you do it, you will either live or die. “I have chosen to die if it is death. But if we live, we will live in comfort in Europe.” That is what we have turned our society into. When you sit with an average political leader today, he is not interested in this conversation. He is interested in how to make the next millions.
Q: Is it correct to say that Nigeria is too big for us to manage?
A: Nigeria is not too big. I disagree with that argument.
Q: Some Yoruba people believe that if there had been no amalgamation, the Yoruba would have gone farther than this. Beyond that, are we saying that there are untouchable people in the country? We have watched the government hold meetings with terrorists. This shows that the government and security personnel know them. The question is: why can’t they be arrested and prosecuted?
A: It is a question you are asking the entire country. It is not a question for me. It is also a question I ask myself. When you have a terrorist on television boasting about past achievements, making threats, shooting into the air, taking ransom, taking money, beheading people, and the person cannot be found, it is a question that is difficult for me to answer. If anybody abuses any state official today, even if you run into a rabbit hole, they will fish you out. This is why I say that our problem is elite conspiracy and a lack of readiness to do what is necessary. I have just shown you my example in Israel. Israel did not look at my face and say, “This person is representing a global body.” They were ready to arrest me because I was not answering their questions correctly. But people can stroll into Nigeria today, do whatever they want to do, and go away. So, Nigeria is a strange society. There is no society that is built this way. I don’t think the size of the country is the problem. It is probably a lack of readiness to do what is right. Readiness means that if it is your mother who is trying to put Nigeria at risk, you arrest her. But we are not ready to do that. If Oshiomhole said, “If you join our political party, your sins are forgiven,” that is a very good example of what we are saying here. How we are going to set ourselves back on the path of sustainable development, honestly, I don’t know, because we have left the path of progress for too long. We have gone too far into terrain that will not deliver sustainable development.
Q: Nigeria has battled terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, communal clashes, separatist agitation and farmer-herder conflict. Are these isolated problems, or symptoms of one deeper national problem?
A: To me, I would not say we have battled anything. We claim to be solving the problems, but I don’t think we are serious about dealing with them. The Nigerian military is one of the strongest in the world. I am not saying that as a scholar. I am saying it as somebody who listened to confessions about this at my first meeting with AFRICOM in Germany. The soldiers there confessed that Nigeria has one of the best land armies in the world. We are one of the best in land warfare. The United States will boast of being the best in the world in air warfare. We exhibited that prowess in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and several other places. We have been participating in international peacekeeping since the 1960s, and Nigerian soldiers are celebrated. So, why is it difficult for Nigerian soldiers to defeat Boko Haram? It is because of a lack of political will. You can’t move beyond what your leaders allow. I have participated in training our policemen at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Ghana, preparing those going on international peacekeeping missions in what they call pre-deployment training. I saw our policemen going out on international peacekeeping missions, and I saw them coming back with laurels and medals. The question is: why do we have problems with the police in Nigeria, but when they go abroad, they come back with medals? Nigerian factors. The Nigerian environment makes Nigerian police personnel misbehave. They are not well paid, and they are not properly kitted. Most of the time, we just abuse the police. But two years ago, we conducted a study. We went round the country and discovered that the conditions under which the police were working were not conducive to protecting anybody. We wrote a very comprehensive report, which we were to present to Egbetokun before he left office. You cannot keep the country safe while treating the police the way you are treating them now. My position is that when we start state policing, if we subject the state police to what the federal police are experiencing, the state police will fail. Federal policing is not just failing because it wants to fail. It fails because the infrastructure for doing the work and the enabling environment are not provided.
Q: So, there is no rocket science to the argument that state police will address security challenges in their respective states?
A: Not at all. Let’s take, for example, the kitting of the police. When we say we have Oyo State Police, you don’t give them the tools for the work. Are they going to do the work with their teeth? You don’t pay them well, and you want them to give you their best. They have not paid the school fees of their children. Politicians come and send them on criminal errands. It is not rocket science. You need to provide what it takes for them to do well. Let me give you another example from my experience in Northern Ireland. I was in Londonderry. I went to see one of the greatest professors in the United Kingdom. He asked me to come for dinner at his house. After the dinner, he took me back to my hotel. On our way to the hotel, we saw some police officers. It was very cold, and they were heavily kitted. They stopped us and saluted. The man demanded our papers. I behaved in the Nigerian way. I pointed at the professor. Because in Nigeria, you can blackmail anybody by saying, “Professor Albert,” and the police will salute, let you pass, and leave you alone. The professor I am talking about is a star when it comes to security management. When this professor appears at a meeting, he will be recognised. But when the policeman kept asking for our papers, the professor brought out his papers and gave them to him. The policeman saluted and returned the papers. Then the professor said, “Isaac, I allowed you to have that experience. I ought to have stopped you the first time you introduced me to the policeman. I want you to have this experience that security management is not a question of differentiating between Professor Albert and any other person. “Any person you meet on the street must be ready to be profiled and processed because criminals don’t write it on their foreheads.” He said he allowed me to entertain myself and be properly educated. That was my first introduction to the study of the police in Northern Ireland. I went back to study the police and that of the United States. Afterwards, I came to understand that policing is not done the way we do it in Nigeria, which is relatively unprofessional.
Q: Albert, your surname is an English name. Was your great-grandfather colonised?
A: No, he was not colonised. My grandfather was Ogunkeye from Ilesa, Osun State. He was a devout Methodist. One of the Methodist priests loved my father as a child, and he decided to give him the name Albert. My father is Albert Babatunde Ogunkeye. When I started primary school with my grandfather, I started using the name Ogunkeye, which is the family name. My elder sister also used Ogunkeye. I went to Benue State to continue my primary and secondary education. At the primary school level, whenever I brought my report home, the name Ogunkeye would be misspelt. It was always twisted to the extent that you would think you were reading a Plateau name. They would write the name the way it fit their environment. As I was growing up, I didn’t like the name Ogunkeye.
Q: Why?
A: For religious reasons.
Q: Were you born again?
A: Not then. I just didn’t like the meaning. Sometimes you are challenged to explain the meaning of your name. I told my father I would use his English name. As a child, we thought it was a sort of pride for you to be identified with an English name. So, my primary school certificate read Isaac Albert. I attended CAC Primary School, Makurdi. I went to Tinney Gyado College for my secondary school education, where I bore Isaac Albert. When I came to the University of Ibadan, most of the time I was Isaac Albert. When I finished, my certificate read Isaac Olawale Albert. I felt better when you called me Isaac Albert because I felt an Anglicised name made you a better person among your peers. It was like Michael Jackson. Something happened to me when I was doing my PhD. I started writing very well at the master’s level. I attended my first international conference in my first semester as a master’s student. So, I started getting invitations to big meetings. When I was doing my PhD, I was invited by the Academy of Science and Letters in Finland to participate in their folklore fellows meeting. They invited me as Mr Isaac Albert. When I got to Helsinki, the capital of Finland, the lady who was to pick me up at the airport was carrying a banner showing my name. I went to her. She said, “No, I was asked to pick up a white man.” It became a big problem. She wasn’t ready to pick me up from the airport. I insisted that I was Isaac Albert and showed her my passport. She said she had been asked to pick a white person. She phoned the academy, and they said, “If the passport reads Isaac Albert, why not pick him up and bring him to the academy?” It was then that I realised that even the invitation was based on the assumption that they were inviting a white man from the University of Ibadan. When I came back, I insisted that all my records must include Olawale. That is why today, if you write a letter to me and you don’t include Olawale, I will insist that you put Olawale in my name. When Babangida was in government, we established the Ijesa Cultural Foundation. We were holding meetings with Ijesa traditional rulers. At one of the meetings, the late Aromolaran asked me to drop my English name. He said I couldn’t be coming to promote Ijesa culture while bearing Albert. At that meeting, one person said, “But Baba, a ni Palmer ni odo wa.” (We have many people bearing English names in Ijesa) He started mentioning Ijesa families with English names. Mine was becoming a little bit worrisome, coming from the Institute of African Studies and promoting foreign names. Now, I insist that Olawale must be included in my name.
