Professor Jibrin Ibrahim, a political scientist and development expert with over 30 years of active engagement in civil society, serves on the governing board of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD). Born in 1954, Professor Jibrin has made his mark in policy advocacy and the struggle for democracy. As he celebrates his 70th birthday today, he reflects on Nigeria’s journey, expressing gratitude for the opportunities his generation has had.
You clock 70 years of age today. How has the journey been so far?
Well, thank God, it’s been a good journey. In a sense, I come from a generation that Nigeria was good to. Our education at that time was of a very high quality, including for us who were children of the poor. From secondary school and university, we were given government scholarships, and after university, you were guaranteed a job. So, we thank God for His mercies.
We thank Nigeria for all the efforts in training us, giving us jobs, and making us good citizens. I’m not sure the present generation has all those privileges we had, but I think it’s been a good life.
Going through your biography, I saw that you received your primary education from a Catholic school in the Sabon Gari area of Kano. Will you say this has on impact on your interactions with other Nigerians, particularly in this era where we continue to emphasise the importance of unity in diversity?
Well, I don’t know. I attended St. Thomas Primary School in Sabon Gari, Kano. At that time, Sabon Gari was maybe 60–70% Igbo and virtually all my classmates in St. Thomas were Igbo.
And that’s where Nigeria started happening to us, because when the coup occurred in January 1966, and then there were the riots and killings. All my primary schoolmates left Kano to go back to the East. And the school had to close because there were no students. So, at that time, I moved to another primary school, which was still open on the other side of Sabon Gari.
The Nigerian problem started affecting us very early in life because I was just 11 years old, I think, when the coup occurred in 1966, and my troubles as a Nigerian began.
I also saw that you did your MPhil and a PhD in France. This was a period where most Nigerians acquired their second degrees from the United Kingdom or other English-speaking countries. What informed your decision to go to France?
The truth of the matter was that I didn’t decide to go to France. I was a graduate assistant at the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, at that time, and the French government gave a scholarship, a postgraduate scholarship, to the department. And my head of department at that time, Professor Ibrahim Gambari nominated me to go to France.
So, I wasn’t really given an opportunity to consider where I wanted to go. I was just told to go to France, and I went. I think, in the end, my feeling is that it was a very good decision.
It opened an opportunity for me to learn the French language and to learn about the French educational system, which is quite different from the British system. When, eventually, I came back from France, the fact that I could read and speak French provided many opportunities for me to engage with international organisations and to engage in research that was much broader than if I had just been to an English-speaking country. Well, I enjoyed university teaching enormously. It gave me a lot of pleasure. It’s something I enjoy doing. I like teaching. I like engaging with students. I like academic debates. So, in a sense, I didn’t have any other career choice apart from that.
I joined the faculty in 1978 as a graduate assistant, and I stayed at the Ahmadu Bello University up to the rank of associate professor. I also had the opportunity to go through the entire system and rise to the top at the Ahmadu Bello University. So, I think, in a sense, the first 10 to 15 years were very enjoyable. But later, the quality of students started declining quite dramatically, and we started having a new generation of students who were not really interested in reading or studying hard. They just came; they wanted degrees, and they wanted to get out and look for jobs. And I think, over that period, towards the end, it became less enjoyable for me.
It became less challenging for me. And that was why I made the decision to take early retirement from Ahmadu Bello University. I was only 46-years-old when I retired from Ahmadu Bello University.
And then that meant, for the next 25 years, I could do other things with my life. And I went into civil society, advocacy, democracy struggles, and all that. So, in a sense, I had two careers, one at the university and another one outside the university.
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You talked about the quality of students dropping at a certain stage. In your view, what was the reason?
I think the major issue was that the decline started early with the introduction of universal primary education.
In 1976, the quality of teachers in primary schools was very good. Now, the next generation that was approved over the next 10 years was also good. And then there was a sudden decline in the quality of primary school teachers.
And it becomes a system issue. Once your primary school quality goes down, it means your secondary school quality will go down. And finally, it caught up with the universities.
So, by the time we got into the 1990s, the decline had definitely affected university intake and the quality of students. And since then, it’s been going down. And I think the basic issue is that Nigeria never really committed itself to sustaining high-level investment in education.
The other issue is that because the Nigerian elite were conscious that the quality of education in our public schools had gone down, the private schools started as a parallel system. And the elite were sending their own children to private schools. And that meant the quality of public schools continued to decline.
And the children of the masses that could only go to public schools became the victims. It is in that context that we started finding the situation in which somebody has finished primary school and he/she is still illiterate. During our period, anybody who finished primary school would be fully literate and competent in literacy, numeracy, and all that.
But it was much later that we started having this decline. Even at the level of secondary school, you find many of the students who are really half-illiterate. And that really, in a sense, has been Nigeria’s tragedy.
You could have chosen any other career path at that period. Why did you decide to switch to research and policy advocacy?
Well, my training and background have been in defence of progressive causes. I belonged from the very beginning of my career to the radical school. And I found the university the best place for me to express myself. When I decided to leave the university, it was just a natural choice that civil society was the other arena where I could continue to advocate for progressive causes. So for me, it was just a natural choice.
Several of your colleagues, some younger than you and some older than you, that went into the civil society movement have metamorphosed into active politics. Have you ever entertained such thought?
No, no, no. I don’t have the capacity to be a politician.
I think a lot of the qualifications you need to be a politician, such as stealing a lot of money and being ready to bribe people, being ready to use thugs, you must be ready to do underhand things, must be ready to break out of democratic norms. I find all these quite reprehensible. So, I find life as somebody who analyses politics to be much better for me than to be actively engaged as a politician myself.
You served on the Electoral Reform Committee set up by the late president Umaru Yar’Adua. Can you recall the experience of that period and why you think the recommendations your committee made were never implemented.
Well, I think the first thing I would say is that, that work was a major assignment. Twenty two of us were members of that committee. The recommendations we made were really profound and had the quality to address the problems facing electoral democracy in Nigeria. And I regret very much that since we submitted that report in 2009, virtually none of the recommendations have been implemented.
I think the most difficult issue for me was that immediately we finished, a white paper was drawn up and a plan to implement the recommendations was put in place. It was discussed at a meeting of the Federal Executive Council.
At that meeting, the then Attorney General of the Federation, Michael Aôndoakaa, a senior advocate of Nigeria, came out openly and said, these recommendations, if they are implemented, will reduce the powers of the president of Nigeria to control the democratic system. And if that is the intention, which he believed it was, it will not happen under his watch. And right there, the Federal Executive Council voiced opposition to the implementation of the recommendation.
And then the whole plan drawn up to implement them just disappeared. And that’s really part of the tragedy of Nigeria. Issues will happen, and a committee will be set up to investigate and make recommendations. But when it comes to implementing those recommendations, somebody will discover it’s not in his or her interest and the whole initiative will be scuttled. It has happened so many times in our history, and it’s very unfortunate.
How did that make you feel?
That’s what I call the Nigerian tragedy—that an individual or a small group of individuals will stop a progressive change that is for the good of the entire community. It’s very sad; it’s very unfortunate.
And it is very, very sad that some of these people have the capacity to surround the president. Even when the president has the intention to do good, and Yar’adua did, he definitely had the intention to fix the Nigerian electoral system, but his team was able to stop him from doing what he wanted to do. It’s unfortunate. We are not going to achieve any development with this attitude.
Using your journey as a basis and your experience over time, mingling with different people and different races, why do you think Nigeria has not been able to utilise its diversity to its advantage?
Well, I think the reason for this is fairly straightforward. The political class from the very beginning of our movement towards independence in the 1950s discovered that the region is good for their own access to power individually and as members of a segment of the elite group. And since then, they have been very successful in mobilising ethnic and religious differences to divide Nigerians, and in that process of divide and rule, they are able to access power and use power essentially for their aggrandisement.
That’s been the story of post-independence Nigeria to a large extent. That’s been the story.
Professor, you said this started when we were trying to attain independence in the early democratic period, and our former national anthem, Arise O Compatriot, has a part that says ‘the labour of our heroes past’. Do you think this labour has been exaggerated?
Well, I think the fact of the matter is that when you study the nationalist movements in Nigeria, it was led by people like Michael Imoudu, who was labour leader number one, as he was called, throughout his life. People like Nnamdi Azikiwe, people like Herbert Macaulay—they were the ones who, in the 1945 period, after the Second World War, travelled all over Nigeria. They went to all the provinces that existed and mobilised people.
And the grounds for mobilisation were two; they wanted welfare, to improve the welfare of Nigeria, and they wanted the resources of Nigeria to be used for the people of Nigeria. The argument they made was that Nigeria had a lot of resources and was producing a lot, but the British government was exploiting the resources for their own use, rather than for the benefit of Nigeria.
That was the business of nationalism. They mobilised and were able to force the British out. Unfortunately, by the time the new governing class emerged at the end of the 1950s, a lot of them had started to lose that commitment to the welfare of the people and became, as it were, professional politicians, more interested in their personal welfare and aggrandisement.
That’s how we started losing the ideal, and that’s how the labour of our heroes’ past got dissipated in serving the self-interest of specific political classes in power at any point in time. And my feeling, my sentiment is, if we are unable to change that attitude, then progress for Nigeria will be very difficult.
How can we change this attitude when these crop of leaders are still very much around?
I think that’s the same thing: our own generation has done what it could, and the country hasn’t improved.
So, I think the younger generation now has a huge responsibility to mobilise along new lines, to reawaken the spirit of nationalism, and to, above all, give a new orientation of governance as a service to the people rather than self-service. I think it is possible for that to happen. We’ve all seen the extent to which the country has been destroyed by the recklessness and selfishness of politicians.
And if we come to the conclusion that, that’s not a possible position to survive in, then the obvious alternative is for the young people to now mobilise along new principles and create the new Nigeria we, the older generation, were unable to create.
Finally, looking at your life, what will you say gives you the greatest joy? Do you have any regrets?
Well, I don’t have any regrets. I think life has been good to me.
I’ve had a good career, and I’ve retired. Thank God, I remain healthy, and I’m grateful for that. But I think for me, there are two things that are important; for decades I’ve pushed advocacy for a progressive Nigeria at every point in time and it’s a message that I think resonates with a lot of Nigerians, even if it doesn’t resonate with the political class.
Secondly, for the past two decades, I’ve been engaged as a public intellectual, writing regular columns, intervening on radio and television, and trying to amplify these messages. So, I have the satisfaction that I have done what I could. And if the results are not what I expect, there’s nothing I can do about that, because what I can do is do the advocacy that I think is correct and that is needed.
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