Reminiscences with Professor Andrew Ameh–Odindi Abah

Professor Andrew Ameh-Odindi Abah, 73, now retired and resting at his Makurdi home in Benue State, shares memories of his career spanning over four decades in the academia, the Federal Civil Service where he rose to the rank of Director, the State Civil Service where he got to the position of Deputy Permanent Secretary, and then in the private sector as a former General Manager at Benue Cement Company and later, senior lecturer at the Benue State University, Makurdi.

Can you give us a brief insight into your background?

I am of Idoma origin and actually born in Otukpo. Ancestrally, I am from Igwu Orokam District in Ogbadigbo Local Government Area of Benue State. I am 73 years plus nine months old. I started school in St. Mary’s Otukpo, then to St. Michael’s Secondary School Aliade. After that King’s College, Lagos, where I won the national first prize of John Kennedy Memorial essay competition that gave me the scholarship to any university of my choice. I went to the University of Ibadan and graduated in 1972 with Second Class Upper in Literature-in- English. After that, I worked with the Government Secondary School, Kuru briefly, then to the Institute of Education, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria as an Assistant Lecturer. That was where I stayed until 1975, when I got a fellowship to go to the United States, again on John Kennedy Memorial scholarship for my Master’s Degree. I finished and came back to ABU. But I was among the young people drafted to Benue at its inception in 1976. I was sent to the then Advanced Teachers College in Katsina-Ala, which we established. From there, unto Advanced Teachers College, Oju as an Administrator, then, to the Civil Service of Benue State proper where I spent a few years and rose to the rank of Secretary. I think because of my big mouth, criticizing our big men with the academic background of openness, that didn’t go down well with my superiors, so when they had the chance to send me to the Federal Civil Service they gladly did and I became the Chief Inspector of the NYSC in February, 1985 and I rose to be full director after five years. I had a young family then when NYSC took me to Rivers, Jos and so on. I sought an opportunity to come back to Benue State because of my family. So, I got a job as Assistant General Manager with Benue Cement Company where I stayed until 1998.

Was that under the federal government?

No. I had withdrawn my services from the federal government and I didn’t get anything by way of gratuity or whatever because the process involved was overwhelming for me and I gave up. Also, I must say the salary in Benue Cement was twice that of the government. Whereas government was paying N16,000 annually for directors on Level 17, the cement company was paying N32,000 -that was double plus a trailer load of cement per annum. On a serious note, the trouble involved in getting it (gratuity) became too much, so many times of travelling to Lagos, frustration of files and so on. In 1998, I sought to be the Managing Director of the company and that cost me my General Managership because the man who got it threw me out, no benefit, nothing and until now, since 1998 my case for unlawful termination is in court, we are now at the Supreme Court. When I was sacked for seeking to be Managing Director, my friend, Professor David Ker who was the Vice Chancellor of Benue State University (BSU) then, invited me over to teach. So, I went back to school at old age for my Doctorate in English and I taught in BSU for like 17 years, rose to the position of Associate Professor, before I was retired in 2018.

How would you describe your formative years?

I remember very well, I am the first born of my parents. My dad had my mother and two other wives. So, my upbringing was in that polygamous atmosphere. But as first born of the family, I tried my best to stamp love, unity and agreement among the children. I had the opportunity to show them example. We didn’t have the normal acrimony of polygamy. My father was an old Class Six graduate, which was a big deal that time. I will say he was educated for his time. He was a very strict disciplinarian who valued education and gave it to all his children. Despite that he treasured going to school, we also, each person, boy and girl alike, had his or her hoe and cutlass for farm work. We were brought up in the thorough culture of the Idoma people to respect our language, respect farming and so on. So, I had no opportunity to be rascally. In any case, in my generation, you were not easily a rascally child as obtains now. I think I had a loving and strict enough upbringing from my parents. My mother didn’t go to school but she was quite enlightened and she too was like my father, a loving mother but she could love you hard as well, when you needed to be loved hard. I faced the responsibility of a young adult early, being the firstborn and in the midst of so many children. At that time, I started working after King’s College, my father had 24 children and you can imagine, he couldn’t bear the onus of paying school fees and so on and so forth. So, I started very early, learning responsibility of helping him out. I want to say also, that in Otukpo where I grew up, I had the opportunity to mingle with, particularly, Igbo people. They rented a lot of our rooms and as kids we grew up playing with Igbo children, speaking Idoma at first, then, they too, speaking Igbo and before you knew it you didn’t know who was Igbo or Idoma. So, I speak Igbo almost as well as Idoma.

What are the remarkable childhood memories you treasured so much?

I can never forget when my father, with intention to train me in carefulness and prudence brought out one kobo, a penny he put in my hand and said, “Keep this penny for me until I ask for it”. I thought that was not a big deal. So, I kept that penny on and on and it got to a point I told myself that papa had forgotten about it, then I spent it on kulikuli. As if he was watching me, that very day in the evening, he said, “Andrew, can I have that penny back?” and my heart sank. I asked myself how he got to know I spent it, and I came before him shivering.

What is the impact of your early education on your environment?

You must appreciate that things happen according to time. That is why I used to tell my students that I pity them for coming to the world at this time in Nigeria, because there is a difference between their time and ours. We were morally brought up. Perhaps, on account of the mission schools, we started with the primary and secondary. I will give you an example: When I finished from King’s College Lagos, I was on scholarship at Ibadan. I had another scholarship from the Northern Nigerian government and sent my papers to King’s College Lagos to endorse it and I had a thorough dressing down for it. The things you might do these days and nobody would bother was what they dressed me down for-having a scholarship already and trying to get another scholarship by dishonest means. That was the level of morality that we enjoyed at that time. The flip side of that that is the problem in schools now, whether primary or secondary, was also evident in our time. One of the experiences that I had that taught me on the wickedness of humans was when the school bully, I won’t call his name, planned to give me a thorough beating after school at St. Mary’s Otukpo, all because I touched his sister in class. But I got wind of his plan very early. Other students who knew me, who didn’t like bullying, warned me that the guy was waiting on the road to give me a trashing and I told myself that well, if I was going to be killed I was going to be killed heroically. So, I decided to fight him to the limit that I could and I am glad I did. I got him down and I took off, raced from the highway up to my father’s house. That was a lesson I learned that people can be wicked, get at you for flimsy reasons.

Do you have regrets in your civil service or private service life?

That is a very important question to me because if I were to write my memoir, I will dwell on that very much, because I also think younger people should learn from my tributes. To start with, my early work life started in the classroom and then ended in the classroom. I went round and round and came back to the classroom. That’s the area I appreciate the most because of the independence that allowed me to be who I am and to work without the feeling that my big brother was looking or watching behind me or something, provided that I had prepared my lessons and knew what I was doing and that the students also appreciated my work, that was all I needed. It didn’t require any sycophant or worshiping of the boss. In academics, I was quite happy with the situation whereby you don’t even have to see your superior for three months or so, provided you are doing your work. So, I loved the academics most. It challenged me in terms of my ability to deliver. For me, the fact I was standing before these students – hundreds of them- who will bear me in their mind for decades, was always important. I always told younger lecturers not to joke with the opportunity they have, they shouldn’t look down at them (students) and think ah! Students, they don’t know anything, you will be joking. They will be weighing you and evaluating you in the next 20 years and you may not be there. It is a moral opportunity to also plant your kind in them. That was the way I saw my teaching and that’s why I enjoyed it most, also because my students appreciated me for my efforts and so on. Although, in more recent times, I started teaching in 1972, teaching in the university I must confess that most of these students are not like the students we taught in the 70s and even the 1980s.

What are the differences?

The divergence is that they are not ready, present day students are not ready to work. They’ve been corrupted by the virus of corruption in the larger society. They’ve seen the bad examples of mediocre and rotten personalities who are making it good. So, they don’t see why they should work hard.

What would you say is responsible for such attitude?

That is why I am saying that they are seeing what is happening in the society, that it pays not to be honest, it pays not to work hard, you can cut corners and get money, get appointment and get positions. So, why should you kill yourself reading and studying and so on? Left to them, the day they matriculate, if they could sign some paper, produce money or give some bribe in kind and get that degree certificate three years ahead or four they don’t mind. So, it is not totally their fault, it is because of the society. That is as far as academics is concerned. When I became a public servant, civil servant as such, that was a different college of learning. I saw that you have to be careful the way you commit yourself with your bosses and so on. And my academic background became a problem for me because I thought academic freedom was to speak my mind. You don’t speak your mind in the civil service, whether informally or even in the file. You suffer for it and I did. I suffered for speaking the truth and speaking my mind in files and so on. I think the academic background also helped me, although it was too late for me at age 40 to change.  One of my most pleasant experiences that I recall is when I was the director of NYSC. At the year end, the Colonel in charge of the whole NYSC in Nigeria would send accountants round the country to mop up unspent money. After releasing that money, the second day a colleague said to me; “You need offices, your place needs fencing and all of that and then you are giving them money”. I said, “Oh! Fine. So the next year, I am not sending money anymore”. Not to prolong the story the Colonel got me on our radio system and was shouting at me to write a cheque of N600,000. That was in 1986 and that I gave it to the accountant that was coming from Lagos. I said no! I wouldn’t. So, it became a shouting match between a civilian and a Colonel until my subordinates came to plead with me that I could lose my job. So, I should comply but I said I wouldn’t. I was ready to lose the job. That was being myself, not being a typical civil servant that would obey the boss at all costs. At the end of the day, the man said, “All right, I give you the last chance, share the money in two, send my bit and go to hell with the other”. And that money was the one I used to start building the NYSC Secretariat that is standing on the Railway Crossing in Makurdi today. I started with youth corps architects, youth corps labourers and some master masons. The second year, we did split the money in two and we finished  fencing and building a storey building and renovating old Benue government structures given to the NYSC with less than N700,000. I learnt the buildings are still standing there to my pride and joy. Then of course, the private sector was another kettle of fish. Talking of corruption or worshiping of leaders and so on, and of course tribalism. As a person, I would say my script was written on the basis of my background. As an academic, I saw everything from that perspective and it was not easy for me on that account. I didn’t know that you keep your real, truthful feelings about things, I didn’t know that you have to cover up the truth. I couldn’t do it anymore because as for me I passed the level of learning new tricks in life.

How long did you stay in the academic environment?

That’s where I spent the longest period of my life, that’s like 22 years or thereabout of 40 years service.

And which of your work life did you enjoy most?

I would say academics because of the freedom to be who you are, because of the distance of the boss that could have tried to interfere with your work in one way or the other, because of the atmosphere of freedom. You are on your own provided you are doing your work and your students are your judge and also your motivators. So, that kept me on my toes. I enjoyed it also because I was most excited when I had brilliant students whose presence made me to be sure of what I was preparing and delivering to them in my lectures.

How would you compare education yesteryears and now?

That’s a big one to talk about and in talking about it people have been rather unfair to the system and unfair to the operators of education at this time. In fact, comparison is perhaps difficult and sometimes meaningless in the sense that you are talking about two different worlds. When I was in secondary school, the population of the whole of St. Michael’s was 300 students. Now, you have a small school with more than a thousand students. Right away, you can see that the parameters based on quality or impact of what was being provided in school, even in numbers. In Aliade, the principal, not just the teacher, knew all of us by first name. You couldn’t misbehave much, if you did, he would call you by name. That became a caution right away. Nowadays, who can know? A class may be up to 50 or 70 at secondary school level. How can teachers cope? And then you talk about the level of learning, motivation for teachers, you can’t expect them to do the kind of miracles our teachers did. Given a situation where even your salary becomes a matter of prayer and miracle. You don’t get your salary, how did you get the impetus to do that work well? And discipline; because of the times where younger people have learnt evil early, the disciplinary level is not comparable. In our time, you were disciplined from home. There was still fear, what we didn’t know at final year in secondary school, kids dabble in them in junior secondary school now. So, the comparison is not fair. And in the university, in some courses, you find out 1000 students taken by one person for three hours maximum, sometimes one hour. How can you teach properly with a thousand students? So, the personnel are not enough or they are not adequately trained, the facilities are simply not comparable. So, it is hard to compare.

What do you suggest can be done to reverse the trend?

That is a more impossible question to address, unless you want to be academic about it or to just talk. I think the biggest onus lies with our government. And even for government in so far as we don’t have anything like population control, parents can have children and also the poorer segment of the society, they are the ones milling children. If you can’t control population, that is how the demand for places in schools will rise and so on. What can anybody do? I don’t think beyond talking (laughs) I can address that question.

At what point did the educational sector miss it in the country, especially in terms of moral decadence?

I don’t think you can draw a line because it is a progression of deterioration. I talked about moral decadence by giving example by way of how many we were in secondary school. In Ibadan University Department of English as a whole we didn’t have more than 50 students in course, after which for example the students were divided into tutorial groups. They went to lecturers’ offices and went over the lecture. Now, I just told you, in present day universities, a class can be 1000 or 300, it’s like joke. That is as far as academics is concerned. You talked about moral decadence, the numbers also have bearing on examples that students need one another. The reluctance to be diligent is one of those things that give rise to evils like cultism. If you talk about moral decadence, cultism is at the bottom of it. What is moral decadence more than youth that have no regard for authority, they take people’s lives and their lives into their hands and commit crimes without any bashfulness. And it is a system I call recruitment by seniors. You know that there are even madams in the university who are good girls for doing the rounds, they lease girls out as well. They recruit membership. So, it’s a whole mess that grew incrementally from our time on and on and will grow worse. On measures to reduce cultism/immoral acts and so on, we parents must know our children during every stage of their growth. We must consistently be their close friends, visit and spend time in their rooms, yarning and playing with them, and praying often together. We ought to attract their friends to us, and, in fact, make them our own friends. To me, it is frightful, unwise, and dangerous that many parents spare little or no time for their children from the post-primary stage onward.

Was that not already happening in your own time?

Not really. What happened in our time, we didn’t know anything called cultism, we didn’t know anything called exam malpractice and we didn’t know anything like sexual immorality until after secondary school. I can tell you historically, in Aliade mission school, they brought late Dr. Fond to give us a talk and he said that if you go messing around with any girl that which comes out of you into the girl was what you needed to get Grade 1 in your West African School Certificate. Oh, I wanted my Grade 1, so no messing up with girls beyond writing fanciful letters and impressing them with French and English. After the exams, when we made sure that we had Grade 1, we could now go talking to girls. That’s talking about the age of 19, 20 then, of final year in secondary school. Nowadays, primary school kids are tapping sex and drugs and so on in the name of condom and modernity. Some organisations think that they will curtail sexual immorality and give them condoms, imagine! We didn’t know what condoms were, even at the age of 19, 20. It was not happening in our time at all.

How about the time you were lecturing?

I lectured up to three years ago, 18 years in BSU alone, five years in Zaria, six years in Katsina-Ala, also in Advanced Teachers College Zaria, Advanced Teachers College Katsina-Ala and we did not hear of cultism at all, exam malpractice to a degree, yes, up to the early and mid 80s. When I was involved in tertiary education right up to Oju where I was Registrar/Secretary, we didn’t hear of cultism at all. It was not comparable with what we are having at this time.

What would be your recommendations to solve these issues?

I think my recommendation has been overtaken by measures as certain institutions are already taking measures, they have like watchdogs in their institutions, I don’t need to be specific but I read about schools in the South that as a policy look out for cult materials among the students. They have a proactive approach in the sense of catching them early and nipping it in the bud. Secondly, when such cultists are found, the weight of punishment meted to them is a good deterrence to other students. And then there are other universities that also approach it from the angle of moral training. I am talking about the one I know but I guess that the Islamic faith too has its own approach. I know that in BSU the Good News Chapel is very strong in its involvement in the development of students and how they can shield them against the influence of cultists and so on, preaching the gospel to them. Once you preach the gospel and a student is entrenched in Christ he or she doesn’t fear threats of cultists again because they are now aware that they are engraved in a force – the power above all powers that cultists fear them. Finally, I think the selection of students should be better done, not what is currently done. It should not stop at post-UTME screening. Even oral interviews can begin to yield questions as to where this candidate is coming from. But we threw the gate wide open, gave the objective questions and answer test and that is it. They come in droves, all sorts of characters. There is no screening. If they ever sign anything like indicate references of character because they are too many, you are talking about tens of tens of thousands. Who can track them in terms of communicating with their referees for anything?

How did you handle indiscipline as a lecturer?

The other aspect of the coin is where you are at risk as a lecturer. We talk about sexual harassment and so on in the university. I want to tell you that psychologically some of the girls deliberately harass lecturers sexually. I have had cause like when I was on sabbatical at Nasarawa State University, I had a cause to openly in the classroom berate a girl that I know had plan going by the way she was always dressed and always insisted on sitting on the front row carelessly. I found that the only way out of this trouble was to come out at her in the hearing and seeing of her mates. I said quite a few nasty things. In view of her plans it wasn’t pleasant at all but lo and behold, thereafter this girl turned the right way up and started dressing decently and we even became friends, she appreciated me so much that we became friends. So, that is to say that you are in danger all the time, a lecturer is exposed. You are standing there, you prepared your lectures and I kept telling them that I was a model for them in every way, the way I dressed, the way I spoke and my work. So, I was a model, I was doing this work in this manner and some girl there was communicating thunder with her eyes. Some girls would come to my office to say, “Sir, you know the way you shave your beards remind me of my dad.” Ehn! (laughs). What had my beards got to do with your degree? By the way, a story that I got to know about was a story of a student of mine who went to his father to bring him to the lecturer about failing in an exam. I don’t think he was listening well but he was carried away by his son’s emotions having repeated a year for whatever reason and he convinced his father to come to the office to see this lecturer. As soon as he opened the door he saw my face, his face dropped. He turned up to be an old student of St. Michael, Aliade, my junior. He greeted me and I said what’s wrong? And I saw the boy. He said “No, if only I knew it’s Andrew Aba my son came to unload all this stuff about exam failure I am sorry I wouldn’t have left my house.” That’s how I got to know and I felt very proud about that. So, that is as far as academics is concerned.

Between administration and lecturing, which made real impact in your life?

Each of them made impact but as I said earlier on, the academic environment is the one I appreciate most in terms of my development as a person. Incidentally, I did not set out to teach. I found myself teaching as a career and it suited my make-up. Part of the earliest encouragement was the appreciation of students. I could have run away from teaching long ago for more lucrative appointments but each time I thought about how students encouraged me, it got into me, the opportunity to make impact and in our community in Nigeria it is very easy to make that impact because role models are few. Role modeling is demanding, it is expensive, forget about the larger number of students who don’t care about anything value or any moral importance. I tell my students that out of 200 or 300 of you in this class even if only 20 are watching me, listening to me and are ready to pick from my life I am glad that I have done my job. So, that is why I will say that the academic aspect of my career was the one that pleased me most and the rewards are here, not in heaven because wherever I go in this country I meet my old students and it is a joy. As I am granting this interview I am looking forward to my students reading it and if only they would give you feed back they would confirm what I am telling you. The fact that I have goodwill from countless number of former students, former youth corps members who served under me all over the country is encouraging. I was once in Sokoto and one young man ran and almost lifted me from the ground. I thought something funny was happening until it turned out that he was an old student of mine. The practical reasons for that aspect of my career being the most, of course I spent a lot of years teaching. I told you more than half of my years in service pertained to the academia.

Looking back at where you are coming from, who had the greatest impact on your life, especially in your family?

I will say my father. I said so because being the first born I was close to him and I got to learn about growing up to become supportive. My father was a houseboy to one Mr. Ifo Obikwu at Ugwashiuku in the now Delta State when he was schooling. He would send him on errands. My father would say that when he was up the palm tree tapping palm wine for the headmaster, Obikwu, he would be thinking about his future and one of his prayers was that God would give him a son first and to God’s glory here is the son. So, we were very close because of his dreams for me. The irony of that closeness was that often time it resulted in conflict. He would have pampered me but due to the hard love of spanking me thoroughly if I didn’t do enough work on the farm, he kept me at a distance as well because he felt that I would get spoilt. For example, after primary school and before secondary school he sent me to be a houseboy deliberately. Most important to me was that we fought a few times in adulthood. I think he wanted me to be exactly himself but I would disagree and then there would be conflict. And again, if there was any quarrel with not even my mother, the second wife and I gave my judgment which didn’t support him I was not his son as well and several other instances. So, the consciousness of my father’s feelings even in a negative sense with myself anything I did I had to watch out that it would not result in conflict between me and my dad whom I loved and who loved me. But his love sometimes became sour when I was not toeing his line in terms of disobedience or anything negative. And of course, I dared not judge any quarrel between him and my mother that was not in his favour (laughs). A very stronger character in words and I believe I too turned out to be a strong character like him. I am not bragging. He was a smallish man but with a heart of a lion who could take on any fight. I remember he went to the then Och’Idoma, Ogiri Okoh, he wanted to see the Och’Idoma and the Och’Idoma was sitting there and the police guards couldn’t let him in. And he had been there two times and the third time he took the policeman and banged him on the ground and they came as a team trying to handle him roughly and the Och’Idoma said, “Leave that man alone. You are supposed to be protecting me and see this small man alone beating you, let him come and see me”. That was the kind of person he was. He always spoke his mind. I believe he stood for what was right. I imbibed that from him. That I appreciate because in my life in government I was a fighter, in Benue Cement I was a fighter, anything I felt was not in order I fought it. As a civil servant in the Benue State government if Aper Aku was alive, the first civilian governor, he would tell you that I fought him. If they brought a policy that I considered inimical to the wellbeing of Benue ethnic groups I would write what I called occasional papers, printed and distributed them for free. An example of that was when some obnoxious people came out with the policy that Igala and Idoma or Tiv people should learn Tiv history in junior secondary school, that time Igala was still in Benue. And I said why? Are we going back to colonialism? I said well, if you are teaching Tiv history in junior secondary school you must as well teach Idoma history to equalize it and Igala history and I wrote an eight-page defence of that position and distributed it. Of course, as usual, the Government House security came to Katsina-Ala where I was Head of Languages Division to bring me to Government House Makurdi. And I had the privilege several times to sit close to the governor and be shouting on matters. That particular policy, at the end of the day, Aper Aku set up a group including myself, Eka Onoju then a security adviser, Mr. Mvendega then now Prof. Mvendega Jibo Commissioner for Education and Dr. Nyiekura, another commissioner and said we should go and sort that thing out. We went to Mvendaga’s office in the Ministry of Education, debated it and thank God, that policy was killed. So, people used to call me then controversial, not knowing what I was doing. I was not controversial, I was fighting causes. I was a fighter of causes and I have no regret about that. A man should be known for something in his life.

At 73, what has life taught you?

Interesting question, but it is not easy for me to answer based on my perspective about life. There are certain questions that you can only toy with or parry, unless you have a certain stand point. I was telling somebody the other day about why a lot of my colleague professors are dropping dead. I said why wouldn’t they drop dead? Number one, they have no life style or no idea of life style. You eat and drink whatever at all time, you don’t do exercise and surprisingly you have no spiritual anchor – that’s where I am going. Either you serve the God of our Lord Jesus Christ or you serve Allah or you serve the god of your ancestors. At least you are holding on to something that regulates your view point on life, you have a place you can go to and fall down and cry and you are sorted out. Many people wouldn’t, you are a professor but your professorship doesn’t inform your life. So, the answer to your question is that I am a Christian. A Christian is not just a church goer but one who has committed his life through Christ to God and lives by the word of God in the bible.  So, what has life taught me? Life has taught me, number one, that I have been a privileged person, that God has loved me from the beginning, and I am not talking spiritually. God has loved me because of the parental background I had. In Otukpo, among the Idomas’ my father was among the few that had Primary six certificate. I know that enlightenment rubbed on his children and I gained from his background.