Professor Ilyas Adele Jinadu is a well known professor of Political Science. He had been the President, Nigerian Political Science Association; Secretary-General and President, African Association of Political Science and Vice President, International Political Science Association. He was also in the public service as a commissioner in the National Election Commission which became the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and Director-General, Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON), Badagry. In this interview he speaks on the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, the present democratic dispensation and other national issues
Tell us about the early period of your life.
Now that I am 80 plus, I don’t know whether it is going to be reminiscences or nostalgia. There are certain things I wish I could have done, other things I wish I should not have done; that is all part of this nostalgia and reminiscences. People tend to think basically in terms of good things, that is why I introduced the concept of nostalgia.
Since you have raised it, what are those things you wish you had done?
When you sit back and look at it, you have some regrets that you should not have done this, but that is history. You shouldn’t have regrets because you made the best decision you could make, with your faith in God.
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Put another way, if you had to live your life again, what are those things you would have done, what are those things you would have avoided?
Maybe I would have married earlier, not being too bookish about it. When I was leaving Kings College, I was admitted to read Law at the University of
Lagos. I should have read Law but my dad said no, that there were too many lawyers and there was no job for them.
Why did you listen to him?
Well, he was my father; and I had a first cousin who was trained by him, the late Justice Gbolahan Jinadu. When he came back he was working for one of the top lawyers in Lagos before he got a job as a counsel at the Federal Ministry of Justice. And he worked with this lawyer for about a year without getting paid.
So, you had a practical example?
Yes, my dad said, “Look at Gbolahan, he has been working for this famous lawyer for almost one year without pay.”
But then, I thought God had another plan for me. I believe very much in that. Whatever you do in life, there is a master plan, and that is why you should sometimes not have regrets.
Just after I listened to my father, I got an offer of admission to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at the University of Oxford, England.
Which is a famous programme?
And I asked how my poor father would afford that.
So, there wasn’t a scholarship attached to it?
No, the scholarship process had ended. I remember going to Ibadan after getting this admission to Oxford to try the Western Regional scholarship. I went there and they said I should go back to Lagos since I was not from the Western Region.
To cut a long story short, I went to see Akinjide, the minister of education and he said, “Oh, this is a place I have been trying to get my brother; we must get you a scholarship.”
A week later, I went for the interview. My principal in Kings College was also there, so I got that scholarship to go to Oxford.
How was it, being a young man?
The point I am trying to make is that what is a disappointment is a blessing in disguise. I think God wanted me move along that line.
To be a philosopher, not a lawyer?
Yeah, it fitted in well. At Kings College, my favourite subjects were History and English Literature. What I liked best were romantic poets who were kind of idealistic and radical in their thinking.
There is a lot of philosophy in literature, the way it was taught at Kings College; and the whole concept of poets as the unacknowledged legislators of the world. I had been in student unionism at Kings College. I was the secretary of the union, a house captain and a school prefect, that kind of getting involved in matters of public concern.
And I went there (Oxford) and that was where I got more grounding in philosophy, the relationship between philosophy and politics; literature as a kind of commentary on society and life.
As a young lad from Lagos suddenly not just going to England but Oxford, the citadel of British learning; was it difficult to cope?
Obviously, there was some kind of cultural shock. We had a large dose of British History, English Literature taught at Kings College. In Geography you read about winter in England. That was the curriculum in those days, very much Anglocentric.
You studied British History. Your study of constitution is about the British system of government. So, I had that preparation. Also, Oxford at that time was like a little world, students from the Commonwealth, India, Pakistan, Australia, Canada, other African countries.
So that cultural shock, in terms of the weather and the food and even the dress, that cultural shock was compensated by the fact that you also had others. I think whatever minuses my three years in Oxford would have had. They were compensated by the cosmopolitan nature. There was the racism and all of that, but also sense of fraternity, brotherhood that we were all intellectuals.
We may have our little biases but they should not get into the public space. It was a time when both in America and England, a lot of concerns were raised about racism.
And in fact, later on I went to do my PhD on Franz Fanon, who was one of the bitterest critics of colonial rule in the late 1960s.
Was racism a very strong problem in those days in the UK?
It was a major problem. There were even parliamentarians, even ministers who did not hide their feeling that there were too many strange faces in Britain.
That was my first experience. It was difficult to change attitude with law because they were deep seated. As an instrument of social change, we must not place too much emphasis on law. What is more important is attitudinal change.
That is why we need to hang on to moral values like another favourite philosopher I like very much, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He said there was no law you make that the mind of the human being cannot defeat. What we need to place more emphasis on is moral content to law. The spirit of the law is more important than the language of the law itself.
You are talking of your thesis on Fanon; after your PPE degree in Oxford, did you get another scholarship for PhD?
The year I finished from Oxford I met my wife, a black American, who was also a student there. She came and was going back. I was also going back, so we made our plans.
She was going back to the US and you were going to Nigeria?
Then somebody came to Oxford from one of the colleges in the US. They were looking for somebody to teach African politics. He talked to one of my teachers and I applied and was given the job. I met this girl and we had already decided to marry.
You moved to the US from the UK?
I moved to the US and taught for one year, and within that period I got a scholarship to do a PhD at the University of Minnesota. Before I started that job at Minnesota, I went back home to introduce my wife to my family.
What time did you finish the PhD?
December 1973 and I applied to the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) and got a letter of appointment.
Were you not tempted to remain in America with a young American wife and PhD?
Well, it is interesting because you had this impulse that you owed your country something, so you would want to go back home after you had gone after the golden fleece and achieved it.
I had some fantastic offers. Columbia University gave me an offer to teach. My wife was pregnant, you know black Americans. She wanted to go back ‘home’to Nigeria and I asked why she would not wait and have our child.
She said, “Were you not born in Nigeria. Are they not giving birth in Nigeria on a daily basis? You are talking about the facilities here, didn’t I lose a set of twins and the doctor did not know until I was in the theatre?”
So, we came back in December 1973 to start teaching at the ABU. And we had Mustapha at Samaru.
Why did you choose ABU?
I had two offers – one from ABU and the other from the University of Lagos. She preferred to go to ABU because it was peaceful. I had been to Lagos, so we went to the ABU. We were at Congo Conference Hotel. We were there when Mustapha was born. They didn’t give me accommodation.
One day, I just got a letter from the Deputy Registrar, University of Lagos, who was my senior at Kings College. He wrote me a letter and said look, we made you an offer, are you still keen on coming? I told my wife that we could not stay there; we were still in the hotel.
So, you moved to Lagos?
I had to put in a letter of resignation. When I did it, they found me a place to stay, but I said I had already committed myself. They were annoyed and I could understand.
They said, “We brought you back, paid you airfare, luggage, everything and you have not spent a year, so you must return the money we spent on you.
So, I transferred my service to University of Lagos and they paid those things I owed them.
A lot of Nigerians would ask why political science has not impacted on the political problems of Nigeria. Our politics is corrupt, elections are not seriously done, we have people who just grab power and run with it; what do you think is the problem?
It depends on how you define impact. I think Nigerian political scientists, and I will say that African political scientists, have been in the forefront of the struggle of democracy in Africa.
After 100 years of British rule in Nigeria, for example, how many people did they impact? Look at the distance between the elite and the people. The whole concept of colonial rule is undemocratic. They said they were training us and we were like children, so when we matured we could rule ourselves but they gave us independence.
That was also what our first generation of leaders believed —that we knew more than the ordinary people, please believe in us.
Political scientists were following the footpath earlier laid by historians in trying to demystify the concept that Africa had no past until Europeans came.
Historians like Kenneth Dike, Adu Boahen in Ghana said that Africa had a past before the Europeans came. It was an interruption in our history. That is why we have the concept of African political science as opposed to political science in Africa because the political science that was being taught was brought from outside. We began teaching Political Science that is African centred. I think we did that.
Number two, I think we also provided ideas on which governance should be based. It is a pity that the politicians will listen to you, but they have other influences that divert them. When they see something that is against their interest they will not do it.
I always tell people not to blame us for the fault of the politicians. Political scientists are not prophets, they can only provide options and you make the decision.
I also think we live in an anti-intellectual society, where people simply look for what is in this for me, not looking at the wider picture. Whatever it is, political scientists like Claude Ake, Okwudiba Nnoli and even some of our younger ones today, Jibril Ibrahim, Attahiru Jega and so on, have laid the path of that struggle. No matter what our problems are today, it will be difficult to go back to the pre- 1999 period.
But there is another side to the story, how political scientists like you played a part in stabilising military rule. You are one of the Babangida boys, if I may put it that way. How do you see that role you played; did it help democracy or it actually institutionalised autocracy?
It is a very complex and difficult question, which I have thought about myself. All said and done, when you look at the totality of your own experience, I will do it again, of course with some lessons. I will do it again because I think we provided some ideas that have formed the basis of the present situation.
You see, the problem that led to the outbreak of the civil war was breakdown in the consensus reached among our political elites in the 1950s. It was a federal system of government that is ethno-federal, in the sense that the constituent units are based on granting home rule to ethnic groups in their ethnic homelands.
But once you grant those ones home rule, what about the other ethnic groups?
It was home rule to the majority ethnic groups and not to the minority ethnic groups agitating that the three regions should be broken up into more regions.
No state was created until 1963 when the Midwest was created. In any case, that consensus broke down and led to the civil war.
I think we should learn from that. When Mohammed and Obasanjo came to power they set up a constitution drafting commission. One of the things they did was that we should have political parties that would not be ethnic-based.
The leading person in the constitution drafting committee was Billy Dudley, a political scientist. He was the one who came up with this idea of presidential system of government to avoid the distinction between head of state and head of government.
The crisis we had in 1965 led to the civil war. Who was in control of the military—the head of state or head of government? Zik and Balewa were fighting over that.
So, they said to avoid that let’s have a presidential system of government. We fused the office of the head of state and the head of government. The head of state is elected by the entire country.
When the political bureau submitted its report in 1986 and 1987, they said what we had after 1979 was just a coalition of ethnic political parties, a national party made up of a coalition of ethnic parties that believe in mobilising ethnic groups for each party.
The Political Bureau said that did not work well, so let us have two political parties.
The point I am making is that the presidential system of government and the reform of the electoral body was the idea of social and political scientists in the Political Bureau.
What really happened with the Babangida transition? It was full of political scientists like you but it ended in an election that was annulled.
My answer to that is simply that we were not in control of the material we were working with.
There were different interests working in government, sometimes at loggerheads. There was competition between those who were serving the same government.
There was a debate going on within the government, and if some lost the argument they would try to make sure it didn’t work.
So, in the case of IBB, it was not just the political scientists or social scientists that he was reacting to. He listened to you, he accepted what you were saying, then in the evening another group of people came to see him. They were the last to see him, maybe he would see more superior argument in them than in yours.
We were there simply to advise, you didn’t take part in the implementation.
That is where institutions like the civil service is very important. The best ideas could be adopted and at the level of implementation it would be obscured.
Was that the fault of the people who suggested the ideas or that of those implementing it? I will give you an example, I will not mention name. I have a friend who said the president had approved this. The paper was passed down through the right channels to the department, the paper would sit on the file because those people didn’t believe in it. So, how would you ensure accountability in that respect?
I will also mention one point that is very important, one of the major things the Political Bureau recommended, that certain categories of politicians should not be allowed to take part in Babangida’s transition programme.
They should be banned?
Banned; and they set up a tribunal for that purpose. I was in charge of political parties and I know how we did it. We succeeded in banning some politicians from taking part in politics. Some of them appealed, like Nzeribe, to the Transition Bureau at that time. We were overruled in some cases, we were upheld in other cases.
Now, the election for governorship was held late in 1991 and they were sworn in 1992. That election went on and those who were banned did not take part in the election.
But when it became a big game, it was pressure.
Jakande, Yar’adua, Falae, all these politicians mounted pressure and the ban was lifted and all of them came in. What happened? The presidential primary we held in August ended in a fiasco. Those who saw that they were losing the primaries started “kata’kata” saying the elections had been rigged. They mounted pressure on the military and it was cancelled. That was the first annulment.
Why do you think the June 12 presidential election was annulled?
Well, I had left INEC at the time. I was in ASCON because after the annulment of the presidential primaries in October, I said please let me go somewhere else.
It was getting too hot?
Well, also because I believe the primaries should not have been cancelled.
So I went to ASCON, and when I was there, at one point they said I was anti-government, that they should remove me. But I had friends and I think IBB believed in me. He didn’t tell me to leave ASCON.
The point I am making is simply that we tend to take a detached view of things. I didn’t know how to go lobbying, begging. I didn’t have the money to spend the way politicians would do.
The politicians saw that this was not in their interest and they mobilised against it. I think that is the problem we still have today. We need a voice that is different from that of the political class, to be put on the public forum.
Would you say that nothing has changed in our politics?
Things have changed.
What are the improvements?
I mean the fact that people still use the language of democracy. I see some of our politicians saying they are against corruption and they would fight it, but when you look at the man talking, he is an epitome of corruption. I believe in party democracy.
So, it is all talk?
It is all talk, in the sense that you see a consistent pattern and it is really Machiavellian. Machiavelli said the clever politician is one who tells people what they want to hear and does not do it. Pretend to be good because people are easily carried away by emotions. They don’t probe deeper. They (politicians) also have this “power of the purse” and the press; they do not allow an alternative view to penetrate.
There is also a growing concern about electoral management. You are a consultant to INEC. It seems that there are a lot of complaints about the last election; what is your take?
My analysis is that since 2001 we have made a lot of improvement in our electoral process through administrative reforms and the application of technology. We have succeeded in that. But the environment within which INEC is working has not changed, it is even getting more hostile to the conduct of elections. Political parties are now seeing that their ability to rig elections is getting more restricted. They device a way of delegitimising INEC through the appointment of people at the level of resident electoral commissioners who will do their bidding, as well as the of power of incumbency, poverty in the country etc.
In other words, you have an electoral body that has tried its best to enhance electoral integrity, but you have an environment, political and cultural, that is actively working against the improvement. I think that is the problem.
Do you worry about the judiciary now increasingly determining winners of elections in Nigeria?
The more the judiciary gets embedded in politics, the more public eyes will be turned on them. They also will become victims like INEC. It is believed that INEC is not conducting elections well. And losers look at the judiciary as being partial.
In some parts of the country you see judges hobnobbing with politicians in public. People have this perception that when you go to parties you see judges dancing and spraying money on musicians. When I was growing up, judges were elevated; they were not seen as human beings, they were like gods.
What is your take on this government, which took off about six months ago?
What I am seeing now worries me; we are reducing our problem to simply one of improving the economy. We are not thinking of how to improve the political structure of the country. We are rather talking about how to do palliatives. We are not talking about how to enhance the strength of the naira.
You cannot talk of the economy in isolation of the political system on which it rests. You must solve the political problem first; and that is a very deep one.
By the nerves of government I mean the institutions of government that are implementing reforms. The civil service, for example, is in a bad shape. Our academic institutions are in a terrible shape; it is all part of that political environment. These are places where ideas of good governance should come from.
I don’t want to get into politics. Look at the Rivers case now; the president cannot be a neutral observer because he was very much part of the problem there.
Now you want him to help solve that problem.
Apart from that, as some Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) have said, constitutionally, he is restricted. All he could do, if things get out of hand, is to declare a state of emergency, which had been done in the past. It was done twice or thrice by Obasanjo. It was done by Tafawa Balewa when there was crisis in the Western Region. If President Bola Tinubu is the one to make the final decision, getting involved in it at this stage is too early.
What do you do now; are you a retired professor?
You know professors don’t retire. I am still very much doing consultancy work. I stopped teaching and supervising research students in 2018. I do more of my own research work and consulting.
I am writing what I think would be a definitive study of the ‘Federal Idea’ in Nigeria since the pre-colonial time up till recent times.
It was to have been part of my 80th anniversary birthday. We should have had a retreat discussing that book to get the inputs of other academics. Some of our friends are arranging something in late January. We will have a day or two retreat where I will give them the manuscript.
How is family life for you? Is your pro-African wife still with us in Africa?
No, unfortunately she died in 1997, but I am happily remarried. I just have two children. I still have a good life. When I leave here, I am going to meet some friends where we call the “Fish Place” in Abuja. We will be there eating fish and drinking. That is where I reconnect and become myself with younger colleagues. We talk politics, about our friends and other things.
How is life at 80?
I am waiting to welcome you when you are 80. I will be 90 then or 100, I don’t know. But whenever you turn 80, I will be there physically to welcome you.
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