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YEJIDE: You said to us during one of your lectures in class, that Nigeria is an experiment!
PROF: Yes; I don’t think the British meant it to last for sixty-six years. If they did, they would not have set booby traps for the fledgling nation. It was just for their administrative convenience.
YEJIDE: If the British had mischievous intentions, why have we not been able to correct the anomaly?
PROF: Booby traps! In-built mechanism to fail. Impossible cultural and religious conditions.
OSEME: This is serious, with serious implications for the future governance in the country!
PROF: An impossible experiment that has gone on for too long, far too long, my dear. In the 1980s, the late journalist Dele Giwa once said Nigeria was ‘God’s experiment on the impossible. Or something like that. The breakpoint ought to have been the secession attempt in 1967 championed by Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu through Biafra. The other parts of the federation did not have the foresight or the will which Ojukwu had. If they did, Chief Awolowo would have led the southwest out of the federation, whether by ‘omission or commission. It is true that Awo had wanted a clause in the Constitution for secession of any part of the federation that was not satisfied with things, and the others opposed it. In that sense, he envisaged a situation that ultimately happened in 1966-67. But by this time other factors seem to have crept in. If the southwest had supported Ojukwu, they would have been lightyears ahead of other parts of the federation. There would have been no civil war. Indeed, Awolowo saved the federation when he joined the regime of General Gowon.
YEJIDE: Do you mean Awo was wrong?
PROF: He was both right and wrong. Awo saw a prospect of leading the federation in some capacity, a dream which he nursed from the beginning, but was denied. Remember that he went to jail for treason, for plotting to overthrow the government of the day. He was tried by a court of competent jurisdiction and convicted. Later Gen Gowon pardoned him. As Vice Chairman of the Federal Executive Council and Finance expert, he was the de facto Vice President of the country.
OSEME: He had to show gratitude to Gowon who released him from the prison and granted him pardon.
PROF: At the expense of the future of the nation?
OSEME: Perhaps the release was conditional! Promise that if we release you, you will support our government. Remember sir, that Awo had great credibility; they needed him to stabilize things.
PROF: See the mess we are in. Sixty-six years after independence, we cannot claim to be one Nigeria. Some vagabonds in power believe it’s their birthright to rule Nigeria. To know that these fellows were not indigenous to Nigeria. They came in 1804 through Jihad and seized the Hausa states. Now they want to seize Nigeria. What nonsense! Some so-called jihadists have unleashed mayhem on the country. The faultlines created by imported religion, ethnic loyalty, and sheer lust for power have become more prominent. In some ways, the military managed our cultural diversities and ethnic sensibilities better than agbada-wearing politicians. At least they pretended to believe in One Nigeria.
OSEME: Yes, they pretended. But their years of misadventure in power derailed our march towards the entrenchment of democracy.
PROF: May be. But they didn’t bribe judges the way the political class is currently doing. A man wins an election to govern two hundred million Nigerians. He then proceeds to appointing men and women from his region to 95% of federal posts. Buhari did it; now Jagaban is doing the same thing. How do you build a united country by being unfair to other parts of the federation? The southeast is receiving the short end of the stick in all of this. The minorities are worse off though they are the goose that lays the golden egg!
YEJIDE: Prof, you seem to be very angry this Monday morning.
PROF: Angry? Naaah! I woke up this morning to read that South Africans are expelling foreigners, including Nigerians from their country. They have killed some, including a harmless bishop. Our government has not taken a firm stand against the killings in Jo’burg and Cape Town. There ought to have been reciprocity of some sort! We need to be decisive. And I wondered why Africa behaves like a cursed continent. May be the Hamitic curse is true.
OSEME: But you dismissed it in class, saying that the bible was used by early slave traders to justify slavery. You argued that it wasn’t Ham that was cursed. Now, are you…
PROF: Pardon me for digressing from the meat of the discourse. The Nigerian experiment has failed. ‘To your tents O Isreal’ should be the clarion call now. We can return to our tents and rebuild the country on new and negotiated terms. Monkey dey work baboon dey chop!
YEJIDE: The situation in the country is precarious. The murderous herdsmen who go about maiming and killing innocent people are from an ethnic group. If you call them out you would be branded or accused of ethnic profiling. We are in the 21st century if we must remind our barbaric brothers. No one in the civilized world herds cattle in the city highways. Cattle are ranched.
PROF: Politicians are kowtowing to the centre so that the attack dogs from EFCC would not be unleashed on them when they leave office. Even when federal roads are neglected in the states, the governors want to be good boys; so, they never complain. At least not openly.
YEJIDE: Why should a governor complain openly?
PROF: You are too young to remember when Tinubu as governor displayed posters in Lagos bearing at places where roads had failed: Pls bear with us THIS ROAD BELONGS TO FEDERAL GOVERNMENT!
OSEME: For real?
PROF: Just do a Goggle search and you can read the details. It was democracy in action. The people appreciated his efforts as an activist governor. He took the federal government to court and won. He created local government areas, 57 in all, and when the FG kicked against it because LGs are in the Exclusive List in the Constitution, he renamed them Local Government Development Councils! Chief Obasanjo as President withheld LG funds due to the state for a long time. Tinubu didn’t budge.
OSEME: Now that he is president, why has he not removed LGs from the Exclusive List?
PROF: Waiting for the right moment perhaps. May be during his second term.
OSEME: Second term under these horrible conditions?
PROF: Forget that side. We must ensure that a 66-year-old nation acts its real age. Else, decay will set in.
YEJIDE: Has decay not set in already?
PROF: That is a topic for another day!
Bola Ahmed Tinubu And The Art Of Political Engineering
Opinion
What does it mean to be a good political leader? This is one fundamental question that straddles political philosophy and political science. Political theorists have always been concerned with the idea of the political community and how its leadership can facilitate social harmony for further socioeconomic development. This makes the question of leadership a very critical one for democratic theory, and the determination of the essence of democracy and good governance.
All across the world, there are a series of indices by which the characteristic features of good leadership are determined. For instance, the human development index references a composite achievement of political leadership in terms of the living standards of the citizens. For many years, the top positions have always been the preserves of the Scandinavian and European countries, from Finland and Norway to the Netherlands and Germany. The highest performing African countries are not only interspersed within the index, they also constitute the bulk of the countries that make up the bottom rung of the list.
Such indices and indicators of poverty and prosperity make the determination of leadership even all the more interesting and sometimes confounding especially in a country like Nigeria that carries the burden of geopolitical regional and continental possibilities and challenges. Since her return to democratic experimentation in 1999, Nigeria’s search for a good political leader has become redoubled especially given that Nigeria’s postcolonial and post-independence predicaments have become even more grinding for millions of average Nigerians. As we drive slowly and steadily towards another general elections in 2027, the discourse around leadership and the future of Nigeria has become even more accentuated. The apprehension about the impending democratic decision process is not only palpable but also fundamentally existential. Millions are asking whether their political and electoral choices this time around would be defining enough to swing Nigeria’s political, and hence economic, fortunes.
And at the very heart of that democratic apprehension is the possibility that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will return to political power for another four years. Or that the opposition will be able to wrest power from him either jointly in strategic concert or singly through individual political and charismatic appeal. We must concede: within the force-field of the typical gains and pains that necessarily attend root and branch brand of structural adjustment grounded reforms, things are very difficult in Nigeria. The indices for multidimensional poverty are depressing. Millions have also been traumatized by insecurity from banditry and insurgency. Then there are the severe macroeconomic expressions of a governance system that is struggling to make sense of Nigeria’s oscillating fortunes. No one can envy any political leader who makes the decision to take on the heavy burden of shouldering Nigeria’s predicament at this moment in time. I do not envy such a leader given my background in governance, policy, and institutional reform. While I have been trying to make sense of the Nigerian civil service system, the President of Nigeria is trying to make sense of the political and economic dynamics of making Nigeria work. That is enormous. But then, people can argue that those who present themselves for leadership positions cannot be pitied because they had a sense of what it would entail, and they presumed that they had what it takes to steer the nation out of her challenges. This is a good argument that must be put in proper context.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu knew the task involved in managing the affairs of Nigeria. He has been involved at several political levels of the Nigeria’s unfolding for decades; from being in the trench of the pro-democracy movement, locally and in exile, to being in the legislative arm as a senator, to governing a state, and in the management of party politics and its combustible dynamics at challenging times, and participating as a core stakeholder in geopolitical policymaking at the highest levels through numerous but disruptive transitions. When he brazenly insisted that it was his turn to get to that highest level of overseeing the Nigeria’s fate—when he served the notice to all political agents that “Èmi lókàn” (it’s now my turn)—we have all missed the courage embedded in that political decision. And this for me is where we must start in our reflection on President Tinubu’s performance after four years in office, and whether or not his administration deserves a second term.
Given the heat of Nigeria’s pressing situation, we often gloss over the provenance and complexity of current predicaments. Nigeria did not become the way it is under Tinubu. In other words, Nigeria under the Tinubu administration is already a composite of complex and complicated dysfunction and debilitation. From independence to date, the political and developmental circumstances of the Nigerian state have kept fluctuating so much so that millions of Nigerians have been the worse for it. The commencement of the democratic experiment has not brought much relief. The issue is not to therefore articulate platitudes and excuses on why the Tinubu administration could not be considered to be magicians who are expected to transform Nigeria overnight. On the contrary, the critical analysis lies elsewhere.
This is where my interest in political philosophy enables an analysis that deepens the understanding of Bola Ahmed Tinubu beyond the usual political commentaries that often dissolve into petty and abusive vitriols. How does political philosophy enable us to figure the political style and leadership dexterity of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the president of the Nigerian state at this moment in time? One critical lens derives from the trajectory of his political evolution from a pro-democracy agitator to the sitting president of Nigeria. This alone is sufficient to necessitate an astute study of his political tenacity. In this regard, he has earned a space among the political avatars that have bestroden the Nigerian space. Only few leaders ever could survive Nigeria’s chaotic and violent political space not to talk of ascending to the zenith of its governance structure. My interest, however, is not just taking on a measure of his political unraveling. Rather, I am intrigued by what his over three decades of political actions could reveal to us in terms of a distinct framework of political leadership, a schema of political power and the dynamics of nation-building.
It is very clear to me that, as a Tinubu acolyte, western political understanding and global parameters of leadership will sit uneasily on Tinubu. This is not something to be lamented, because a leader is a function of the confluence of context, ideology, temperament and temporal situatedness. There is a level of unfairness in judging a postcolonial leadership by the parameters of western political theory or democratic institutionalism. I will hazard the hypothesis further that, compared to Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Tinubu will still not be able to measure up in terms of a leadership grounded in value credentials. This is because Tinubu is already bedeviled by serious reputational negatives that derive from his political rising. However, the crucial difference between Awolowo and Tinubu is simply that the latter is at the helms of affairs of the Nigerian state at a time when it is most difficult to be a president. And this is doubly so for him because he has not only a running knowledge of the dynamics of the Nigerian predicaments; he also specifically asked to be president.
And yet, Tinubu has converted his political position into a stance of strength. His enigmatic persona, I insist, derives from his capacity for political engineering. This is an amorphous term that I need to unravel to capture my measure of respect for someone I consider to be a typology of a good leader. The rise of Tinubu from pro-democracy activists to governor of Logos State to political kingmaker and ultimately to president reveals a Machiavellian streak that speaks to his capacity to balance shifting alliances, strategically navigate complex and fragmented ethno-regional landscapes, and preside over an immense political machinery that maneuvers between loyalists and rivals. He has become the ultimate Machiavellian strategist who is not just passively deft in deflecting oppositions, allegations and controversies. On the contrary, his strategic competences and alliances are meant to forge a pathway for rethinking Nigeria’s future.
This is a political persona that defies easy location in existing populist or bureaucratic leadership typology. We have a leader who has to ride through the rough and tough waters of the Nigerian political terrain and democratic context to be able to lay the foundation of a new Nigeria. This demands not just a visionary and ideological framework but also a transactional realism that demands systematic patronage structures which leverage the assistance of loyalists and experts around whom nation-building and political engineering can be facilitated. In the political discourse literature, the apt term for this patronage is political gardening—a framework of harnessing competences, expertise and alliances that could be deployed for political and non-political objectives. What makes Tinubu’s political rising fascinating and formidable is the emergence of a political machinery founded on political gardening, his capacity to headhunt political, economic and technocratic capacities that transcend generational and regional limitations.
This political machinery has not been founded for the sake of merely obtaining power for the sake of power. This is a difficult argument to sell given the generations of political power brokers who have passed through Aso Rock and left Nigeria worse than they met it. But then, why headhunt a critical mass of technocratic brain powers if the endgame was simply to seize and exploit political power? If this harnessing of technocratic competence worked in his grand modernizing plan for Lagos State, why would Nigeria be any different with the same strategy? This is where the Machiavellian label deserts our characterization of Tinubu. This is because Machiavelli’s understanding of political power was for the maintenance of the state’s boundaries; Tinubu’s understanding of political power dwells at the very tight juncture where institutional patronage and strategic resilience must meet visionary policymaking, and power consolidation must be balanced by political engineering.
Four years are not sufficient for balancing power play while trying to inject structural reform into the Nigerian system. But what is more, for a nation-state that has been run into a complicated national dysfunction, there is no gainsaying the urgent necessity of swallowing hard pills of stringent policies like the fuel subsidy removal, the unification of the foreign exchange rates and the tightening of the monetary policy in ways that seek to eliminate price instability as an act in economic stabilization that has crystallized. These are a few of the policies already put in place to alleviate the policy errors of the past and achieve fiscal growth and accountability.
Let us return to the critical comparison between Awolowo and Tinubu. We are all apprised of the legacy of Chief Obafemi Awolowo especially in terms of human and infrastructural development. Tinubu’s legacy is still in the making, and the quest for a second term in office will go a long way not only to douse the immediate threat of political opposition (directed towards reputational damage) but to also allow free avenues for the consolidation of the foundations of transformational policies. To secure a spot in the annals of political leadership in Nigeria, Tinubu is faced with the challenge of converting his political strategies and pragmatic orientation towards not just stabilizing the fractured Nigerian state but also laying a policy architecture of economic recovery and growth.
. Olaopa, a Professor of Public Administration, is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission, Abuja.
Opinion
Another Encounter With Professors Grace And Ademola Tayo: The Adventist University Of Africa In Nairobi
There are encounters that happen because circumstances bring people together, and there are encounters that seem to gather together the many strands of one’s intellectual and personal journeys. My recent experience of meeting Professors Grace and Ademola Tayo in Nairobi is an example of the latter. Unlike my encounters with other people during my travels in Kenya, which were a part of my tour of the country, this experience was one in which many factors converged – from friendship, memories and religion to education, institutional history, and the general possibilities of African intellectual endeavor. I admire the Tayo family to the point of adoration.
After all, Nairobi was indeed the location where this took place, but there was much more to it than that. Being there, sitting with Grace and Ademola Tayo, I was once again reminded of myself that universities are not only buildings of education and research. They are communities of memory. They are places through which people pass, leaving traces behind and carrying experiences forward. They are also bridges through which Africa may come into contact with itself. Grace contributed the graciousness and warmth that she has always brought to our meetings, while Ademola contributed the quiet generosity of spirit that has marked our scholarly encounters throughout the years. There was the comfort of familiarity, but there was also a freshness to the place where we met. No longer did we meet in the institutional setting of Babcock in Nigeria. We met in Nairobi, Kenya, in a setting that from the very beginning widened our conversation far beyond any personal memory. Suddenly both Nigeria and Kenya were in the room; West and East Africa talked to one another through friendship. The distance between the two nations somehow seemed not so much a geographical fact as an intellectual and human connection.
I could not help but reflect on Professor Tayo’s experience and the transition of institutions that had led him to Nairobi. For several years, he had been identified with Babcock University as Vice-Chancellor from 2015 till the end of 2025. This period had been marked by his experience in the difficult sphere of Nigerian higher education, where one should know how to balance scholarship, administration, development of the institution, religious convictions, expectations of the community, and the increasing requirements to be met by universities in the dynamic society. Add the experience of his staff being kidnapped, and I had to wake him up in the middle of the night!
Tayo’s appointment as the Vice-Chancellor of the Adventist University of Africa in Nairobi, which came into effect on January 1, 2026, and his official inauguration as its fourth Vice-Chancellor in June 2026, thus meant much more than simply a change of institutions. It represented the continuation of an African academic journey across national borders.
That movement interests me because we often tell the story of African intellectual mobility in only one direction. It has been customary to discuss how many scholars in Africa have migrated away from their home continent to universities found in Europe, North America, and other parts of the globe. This is a very vital story, and the story of brain drain in Africa cannot be told without mentioning it. There is, however, another story that should be given much more importance, and that is migration within Africa. The movement from Nigeria to Kenya is part of this quieter but increasingly important story. It reminds us that the African university can become a destination for African expertise, rather than simply a point from which African expertise departs. Professor Tayo introduced me to his amiable management, comprising professors from Botswana, Uganda, and Ethiopia, places that I know intimately.
Tayo’s academic journey makes this movement particularly interesting. He began his academic formation in Nigeria, which includes his education in Agricultural Economics from the University of Ibadan, before going into other areas in postgraduate studies. His academic career was nurtured in teaching and academic planning, in postgraduate education and administration, as well as in his university-level experience. He had experiences outside of Nigeria as well, in the form of his connection to Adventist higher education in other parts of Africa.
His appointment at AUA can therefore be seen not as an isolated episode but as another stage in a career that has progressively connected different parts of the African academic landscape. But the story becomes even more interesting when Grace’s academic journey is considered alongside his. Professor Oluwatoyin Grace Tayo is not simply accompanying a university administrator to a new location. She is herself a scholar and academic leader, with extensive experience in teaching, research, and research management. At the Adventist University of Africa, she serves as Director of Research and Grants Development. Her academic work in Animal Nutrition and her experience in research administration, grant development, mentorship, and research ethics bring another dimension to the Tayos’ presence in Nairobi. Their transition to Kenya therefore represents, in a broader sense, the movement of two experienced Nigerian academics into an institution whose intellectual mission extends across the African continent.
This was one of the things I found particularly striking about our encounter. The Tayos’ presence in Nairobi made visible a principle that we sometimes discuss abstractly: African institutions can draw upon African expertise from across national boundaries. The continent is endowed with huge reserves of academics, administrators, researchers, professionals, and intellectuals whose talents do not have to be constrained within the confines of the country where they received their training. The transfer of such talent does not necessarily make one country poor. Ideally, it creates another connection in an expanding continental network. It is even more fitting to do so in the case of the Adventist University of Africa due to the fact that the institution is broader in scope than the nation-state within which it operates. Being located in Nairobi, the AUA is an institution that caters to students from various nations in Africa and even beyond Africa. The Adventist University of Africa takes pride in having students hailing from more than thirty-four different nationalities. The vision of the university is postgraduate studies, research, leadership, Christianity, and service. In other words, it is easy to visualize the institution of the university not only as a Kenyan university but also as a member of the African intellectual community.
This is where my personal encounter began to assume a larger intellectual meaning. I have always been interested in the university as more than an educational institution. Universities are among the most important spaces in which societies imagine their futures. They train professionals, produce knowledge, preserve memories, question established assumptions, and create relationships that may last for decades. But in Africa, universities have an additional responsibility. They must help Africans understand one another. The colonial map divided the continent into political territories, and those territories subsequently developed different educational systems, intellectual traditions, professional networks, and national priorities. The borders became real, but they should never become intellectual walls; the university can help to prevent that.
When a Nigerian scholar works in Kenya, when a Kenyan student studies with a Nigerian professor, when researchers from West and East Africa collaborate, or when postgraduate students from different African countries share a classroom, something more significant than academic exchange is taking place. They are learning Africa from one another. They are discovering differences that cannot be understood from textbooks alone, while also discovering similarities that national boundaries can conceal. The classroom becomes a small laboratory of a continental encounter. Friendships formed there may eventually become research collaborations; research collaborations may become institutional partnerships; institutional partnerships may create new opportunities for the younger generations. This, to me, is one of the more practical meanings of Pan-Africanism in the twenty-first century.
Pan-Africanism cannot remain only a historical vocabulary associated with political movements and the great figures of an earlier generation. It must also become a practice of intellectual cooperation. It must be visible in the movement of scholars, students, ideas, research, publications, technologies, and institutional innovations across the continent. It must be visible in African universities learning from one another and in African scholars recognizing that the intellectual problems of the continent cannot always be neatly divided according to national borders. Thus, my encounter with Grace and Ademola in Nairobi offered a small, almost intimate illustration of this possibility. It was not a conference, a diplomatic summit, or a formal Pan-African gathering. It was simply a meeting between friends and colleagues. Yet perhaps that is precisely where the most enduring forms of continental connection begin. Grand institutions are built through thousands of ordinary relationships, and intellectual communities are sustained by encounters that may initially appear too small to matter.
The significance of Ademola’s transition from Babcock University to AUA also lies in the continuity of institutional values. Both universities are situated within the Seventh-day Adventist educational tradition, where education is linked to questions of character, service, leadership, and responsibility. His movement from one institution to another therefore carries with it not only administrative experience but an accumulated understanding of what it means to lead a faith-based university. At AUA, this experience enters a postgraduate institution whose mandate places considerable emphasis on developing leaders and strengthening the intellectual and professional capacities needed by African societies.
Leadership, on the other hand, must never be seen merely as occupying a position. The strength of a university does not depend on the fact that a Vice-Chancellor is holding that position. Leadership acquires meaning where it helps in building up institutions that will survive beyond individuals. This leadership is shown by the nature of the educational programs that are offered, the opportunities afforded to students, the conditions provided for researchers, the honesty of the institutional processes, the relations of the university with its surroundings, and the capacity to produce graduates who in turn will contribute to society. This is why Grace’s role at AUA is also important. A university cannot claim a serious intellectual future without investing in research. But research does not depend only on scholars who have ideas. Research requires systems that will enable the development of grants, ethics, collaborations, publications, mentoring, and knowledge transfer. Grace’s role in research and grants development is important as it touches on one of the most critical aspects of the future of the African university, which needs to develop the capacity to create knowledge rather than simply consuming it.
The conversation in Nairobi consequently made me think about the relationship between leadership and knowledge. Africa does not lack educated people. Nor is it bereft of capable academics, researchers, entrepreneurs, professionals, artists, and intellectuals. One of the persistent questions has been that of how these human resources could be systematized into sustainable structures of knowledge generation and transformation of society. The university plays a crucial role in this regard, as it brings together youth, who are only starting their professional careers, with seasoned scholars who have acquired decades of experience. The university, properly conceived, is thus an institution of intergenerational responsibility. Eventually, those of us who have been in universities for much of our lives come to realize that the greatest inheritance is not the office one has held. It lies in the students we have taught, the ideas we have generated, the institutions we have built, the younger scholars we have mentored, and the intellectual community we have fostered.
Perhaps this explains why meeting the Tayos in Nairobi felt so deeply personal. I was seeing, in a new geographical setting, another chapter of a journey that I had known primarily through Nigeria. I was seeing how an academic career can cross borders without abandoning its roots. I was seeing how one university can become connected to another through the movement of people. Most importantly, I was reminded that intellectual friendships have their own geography. Nor do they have to stay in their original location. It was also heartening for us to hear this story in Nairobi in a period when the debates around Africa’s future are getting more and more focused on Africa’s ability to create its own institutional structures. We discuss a great deal about infrastructure, technology, investment, trade, good governance, and economic development. These are all important issues, but at a deeper level is the issue of capacity building in humans. Universities have to be an important part of the answer and yet not fall into intellectual isolation.
The university of the future in Africa must have its feet planted firmly on the ground in Africa while maintaining global connections. It will have to be familiar with the culture and history of its societies, but at the same time interact with global scholarship. This is why AUA’s continental orientation matters. Its location in Nairobi is Kenyan, but its intellectual ambition reaches beyond Kenya. Its students come from different parts of Africa; its programs engage professional and theological questions; its mission connects education with leadership and service. In such a setting, the arrival of a Nigerian academic leader is not an incidental development. It is part of the larger circulation of African intellectual capital. And so, when I think back on the meeting, I do not remember only the photographs, the conversation, or the pleasure of seeing familiar faces again. I remember the larger meaning that emerged almost imperceptibly from the encounter. Nigeria and Kenya seemed less like two distant national spaces and more like two points on a much larger intellectual map. Babcock and AUA became connected through a person whose career had passed through both. Grace’s research responsibilities added another dimension to the connection. Friendship became a bridge between institutions, and institutions became windows into the possibilities of a more connected Africa.
I left with gratitude—not only for the warmth of old relationships but for what the meeting represented. Africa’s intellectual future will be built in many places and through many kinds of people. It will be built in classrooms and laboratories, in libraries and research centers, in universities and communities. It will also be built through the movement of African scholars across African borders and through the relationships that make such movement meaningful. But perhaps, then, the value of such a gathering in Nairobi lies precisely in its not being a total picture of the future of higher learning in Africa. It certainly is not. It offers an insight into what that future may hold when Africans come to know each other as partners in a common quest for knowledge. That was, for me, the quiet grace of that meeting. A bond made in Nigeria had taken a different form in Kenya. A university experience that had been through Babcock University was now being lived out at the Adventist University of Africa. A scholar had brought his expertise beyond national boundaries, while another scholar was engaged in building up research capabilities. All of that amid an encounter between two old friends in Nairobi.
Opinion
The Art Of Forgiveness
The Glitterer wishes to make not so comprehensive remarks about a subject to which he considers affixing a comprehensive title. In other words, the Glitterer, this Glitterer, wants to give a very short, brief speech or comment about a topic, but he wants to give that speech, this comment, that is, a massive, official-sounding, and deeply detailed title. Herein lies the Glitterer’s art: His planning to make a very short, minor comment about a topic, but he is going to dress it up with a massive, incredibly complex, and official-sounding title to make it seem much important than it actually is. Is this composer sounding humorous or ironic here? Are his sentences trying to describe a humorous or ironic contradiction in someone’s behaviour? Are the sentences describing or trying to describe a picture of someone who cares a lot about the “packaging” (the title, the chosen title) but is not putting much substance into the actual “content”, the actual “substance”, the actual “illustration” (the speech, the comment)?
Now, let the composer terminate the perceived (or unnoticed) suspense his art may have generated so far; for it is time for the Glitterer to end the perceived (or unseen) tension and mystery that his composition has created up until this point.
His purpose is to put into form presently certain of his thoughts or ideas on the point or mystery of forgiveness and its art with respect to our politics. How do we tell the frank and stimulating story of the unforgiving spirit of every political gladiator in our land? Very recently a handsome columnist/regular Guardian contributor whose association with me is handsomely favourable sent me the following newspaper report of ages ago:
“How I Became a Drug Abuser and Trafficker – Gov Tinubu of Lagos”.
The story was published as the lead (front page) report of PM News of Monday, May 17, 1999.
The Glitterer feels the need to affix (or re-affix?) the comprehensive report to a Nigerian newspaper again as he hereby does in this column – somewhat in its original form. The Glitterer is doing so genuinely to indicate that we should not be indifferent to the art of forgiveness, and the comprehensive remarks it surely will generate. Here is the massive report:
“Lagos State Governor, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, yesterday made a shocking revelation of his past, confessing that he became a drug abuser and trafficker during his younger years.
“In an emotional and candid interview with PM News, the governor said he got involved in drug abuse and trafficking while he was still a young man, a period he described as one of the darkest chapters of his life.
“I became a drug abuser and trafficker, Tinubu said. It was a difficult time for me, but I have since turned my life around and chosen the path of service to my people and to Nigeria”.
“The Governor, who is also the national leader of the All Progressive Congress (APC) said his experience with drugs exposed him to the darker side of life, but it also taught him valuable lessons about the dangers of addiction and the need for a better society.
“I don’t say this for sympathy, he said. ‘I say it so that others, especially our youths, can learn from my mistakes. Drugs destroy lives, families and communities. I thank God for giving me a second chance and I will continue to work for a Nigeria where our young people are protected and given real opportunities.
“The admission has since sparked wide reactions across the country, with many Nigerians commending the governor for his honesty.”
The confession of the then Governor of Lagos State who is now the President of Nigeria, our mysteriously great and greatly mysterious country, is the proof of a life and curiosity of a man whose curiosity is indisputable and which will remain indisputable in the consciousness of those who are studying him earnestly with the intention to bring him down. Bola Tinubu’s confession proves that he is an undeniably curious man, and this trait will always be recognised by the people who are closely studying him to find a way to ruin him. In other words, this confession serves as evidence of his life choices and his undeniable habit of being curious or investigative. His political enemies or critics who are closely watching his every move to find a weakness to destroy him, cannot deny how curious and sharp he is. Even his fiercest critics who belong to the brotherhood of journalists must acknowledge this in the same way that their readers, and the man’s political enemies cannot dispute his sharp intellect.
If President Bola Ahmed Tinubu were a devout Roman Catholic, he would have gone to a priest as a penitent to confess his sins or alleged history with drug abuse and trafficking. Without a doubt his sins would have been forgiven. Instead he went public, holding a conflicted sense of remorse and optimism that the public – acting as his confessor – would forgive him which they ultimately did. This is the strategy of a masterful performer – one that cannot be faulted if we view politics as an art form meant to be accepted at face value rather than over-analysed.
This is the comfortable, good-humoured presumption of this writer, columnist and composer that cannot really be queried in the spirit of art that is a pudding which is a pudding, and that our only concern with it is to taste and swallow it – whether or not our tongues wholesomely accept it.
In closing, the Glitterer wishes to ask as follows: In publishing Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s curious alluded-to confession in 1999, did the four (ex-) guerilla journalists – Bayo Onanuga, Babafemi Ojudu, Dapo Olorunyomi and Kunle Ajibade, who co-founded PM News – deliberately lob their journalistic grenade into Tinubu’s enemies’ lines just on general principles to help him stay on course for the pursuit of the biggest prize in the land (which he eventually got, and wants to re-get, by all means possible and impossible)? What or who gives me the temerity to tender this question? Answer: My zeal and enthusiasm for truth and nothing but the truth, and my open-mindedness and objectivity, and other things art demands of/from all of us pushers of the mighty pen – and readers of our jocular or serious texts.
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