Jonah Isawa Elaigwu was a professor of Political Science with the University of Jos (Unijos) for more than 45 years. However, because of his specialisation in federalism he worked severally outside the field of Political Science. He was a member of the Presidential Advisory Council (PAC) in the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida and later became the Director General (DG) of the National Council for Inter-Governmental Relations. He wrote a biography of General Yakubu Gowon and now lives in Jos where he runs a research institute.
I know you went to Katsina-Ala Secondary School in Benue State which was then one of the elite schools in your part of Nigeria. Can you tell us a little bit about this?
I started school at the Methodist Primary School, Otukpo, Benue State. From there, in 1960, I went to Katsina-Ala for secondary school. In the old North we had provincial secondary schools which replaced middle schools. The one in Katsina-Ala was Benue Provincial Secondary School. We had such schools in different parts of the North.
The good thing about the Benue Provincial Secondary School was that it was pan-religious, pan-ethnic, transcultural and it provided the basis for interacting with many people at that early age. By the 1980s people were fighting over uniforms. There was nothing like that then as the government provided uniforms for us: class wear, house wear and athletics wear.
Religion didn’t matter to most of us. If they slaughtered a cow like they used to do during the holidays, all of us enjoyed it. So, you wouldn’t find people quarrelling about religion and all that.
Incidentally, many Christians studied the subject Islam Religious Studies, Some of them wrote it in the West African School Certificate (WASC). Many Muslims also took Christian Religious Studies (CRS).
Danladi Yakubu, a former Deputy Governor of Plateau State, was my senior. He wrote CRS and got a credit. There were many such cases. And there were schools in other parts of the North that did the same thing.
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So, the good thing about the environment was the fact that it didn’t matter what religion you practiced, what ethnic group you belonged to and what geopolitical area you came from. The important point was that you were a student of the same college and the loyalty to the college came first. Even many years after you leave you will maintain the relationship with classmates and others. It was the same thing at King’s College, Lagos.
In fact, my classmates at Kings College, just like other sets still do, if anybody from our set dies we task ourselves for the burial.
Why did you move from Katsina-Ala to Kings College?
Then, from Katsina-Ala and the other provincial secondary schools in the North, when you wrote mock exams the Northern government would choose 15 science and 10 arts students and send them to King’s College.
After the mock, some of us were sent to Keffi for Higher School Certificate (HSC), others to Barewa College, Zaria; Government College, Kaduna; and others to Okene.
Being from rural Benue, how did you find Lagos?
I really didn’t find it strange. I had spent holidays in Zaria, Kaduna, and so on. So, my rural perspective had been tampered with urban and semi-urban sojourns in these places and therefore I didn’t find myself weird in the Lagos setting.
Incidentally, Kings College was very interesting. They would initiate you into the King’s College culture to “drive out the old school traits” in you so that you become urban and no longer “a bush school man”.
Kings College was very national. We all spoke English; no vernacular. We were very proud of the King’s College song and up till today when we meet we say, “Floriat” and all that. There was this sense of togetherness built by the colonial authority.
Who were your classmates at King’s College?
In the arts there were Yemi Ogunbiyi, Yemi Adefulu, Professor Otunbanjo, Ibrahim Attah, John. A few of them are dead.
Given the link of the college with Britain, many who graduated from there tended to go abroad for their first degrees but you went to Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria?
Incidentally, I wanted to study law and I applied to the University of Ibadan (UI) and the University of Lagos (Unilag). Lagos gave me political science. The forms from Ibadan came late. There was nothing like JAMB.
ABU admitted me into the Department of Government which had just started. I was with people like Senator George Nkwob, late David Attah and a few others in that class. We were the second set of those who studied for a BSc in social science with specialisation in government.
Were you taken on as a graduate assistant?
No! By the time we graduated we had interviews all done and knew whether we were going to Lever Brothers, Federal Civil Service, Foreign Service and all that.
I wanted to go into the Foreign Service. The Chairman of the commission, Sule Katagum, interviewed us. After the interview he called me back to the panel and he said, “Look, young man, you want to go for Foreign Service but we can’t send all the best people into Foreign Service. We need people in the domestic service to create the basis for development. So, I would recommend that you stay in the domestic service.”
I didn’t like it but he was very persuasive like a father and explained the advantages. I agreed. So, I was recruited into the Federal Civil Service.
Before then, I had a second class upper degree and the Vice Chancellor of ABU, Prof Ishaya Audu, was trying to develop the staff of the university. So, while in the civil service Prof O’connell recommended me to Prof Ishaya Audu. ABU had sent Andrew Kasai and one other person to Wisconsin, USA. So, I was admitted into Duke University, Carolina, and later to Stanford in California.
Did you study up to PhD in California?
Yea! I went to Stanford, finished my masters in 1972, then started my PhD. Actually, my masters and my PhD programmes were together. In 1973 I left for my field research which brought me back to Nigeria, took me to Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and of course I went to Ethiopia in 1974 for the fun of it. Ali Mazrui and his wife invited me to a diplomatic gathering. President Jomo Kenyatta came and I saw him live. Mazrui introduced me to him.
Was your research on federalism?
It was a combination of federalism with a tinch of civil/military relations, because in my three exams, political theory was one of them, then comparative politics, particularly thematic issues like civil/military relations, and of course federalism and international relations.
I was in Uganda the week Field Marshal Idi Amin’s wife was butchered and put in a doctor’s car booth. I was scared at YMC Guest House. My friends at Makerere University told me nobody cared about me, I but I told them I was going to ministries, universities and other places and asking questions and somebody could pick me up.
Was your choice of federalism as a speciality based on your background as a minority within another minority from Benue State?
No! At that point one wasn’t politically cognitive, one wasn’t politically aware to the level of thinking in a sophisticated way you are putting it.
I was interested in federalism particularly after the civil war. I saw what Nigeria went through, I saw that the federal system in the First Republic had a loose centre and very strong regions. It was even said: “Regional tails were wagging the federal dog.”
And my question all along had been, what would happen if you do not shift from the federal model but provide different kinds of relationship between the centre and the peripheral?
Federalism is meant to manage conflicts through sharing of power so that legally each unit will operate within its own sphere.
Example, Kenya inherited a quasi-federal system and by 1964 replaced it with the Majibo Constitution, saying quasi-federalism was expensive and disintegrating.
Ghana inherited the quasi federal model. Nkrumah kicked it out and said look, “We are going unitary because federalism is a ploy to disunite us.”
Uganda had a combination of federalism. Buganda had a federal relationship with the centre, but Bunyoro had a unitary relationship with the centre.
What will you say given the structural experiences we have gone through from the First Republic, and what do you think is the ideal structure?
There is nothing in human nature and in polity you can say is ideal because the best also changes from time to time.
The people wanted the centre to be stronger, which under Gowon was effected. It was the same thing under Murtala and others followed.
By 1999, the same Nigerians were saying the centre is too strong, the centre is suffocating the states, let us devolve power, let us amend the legislative list in such a way that we will bring down some powers from the centre to the states; which the General Sani Abacha conference tried to do.
But basically we must always remember that the reasons why you adopted federalism is not because of finesse, it is not because you like it, it is because of its functional utility.
Now, if a society is badly divided, it means that the centre’s power will be limited, the federal pendulum would go in favour of the periphery, the states, the local governments and all that.
Now, if you centralise power, it will be part of what we call centripetal poll to the centre where the centre has more.
Very often, in all countries, the United States (US), Belgium, Australia, India and all these places, the pendulum is more to the periphery.
The federal pendulum gets adjusted from time to time depending on the exigencies of the political arena. You can’t say this is an ideal thing. It is ideal because it solves the problem and the problem you solve in time A is not the same problem you will solve in time B.
Is our current structure dealing with our problems?
I think it has tried in a lot of ways. We had the problem of large regions. We had the problem of many minorities out of the circle of the political arena. The 12 states were to create new centres which generated their own forms of developmental processes; with development going to some states where nobody even thought about them because they were local government headquarters.
The creation of states had advantages because it made the centre stronger. Two, it dealt with the fact that none of the states could succeed on their own. Three, it provided new avenues for distribution of resources to a wider space, and four, it provided a new framework for distribution of resources.
Over time we moved from 12 to 19 to 21 to 30 and to 36. But one of the problems with the creation of states is that it has political consequences because if you create a state, the states lose most of their powers. Don’t forget they lost prison, native police and even the judiciary which they had.
Secondly, you have new states with less powers financially and politically. You have new states with less area to deal with. So, it is convenient in some way, but also the resource bases for most of them have actually dried up.
Why did you write Gen Gowon’s biography?
Gen Gowon was overthrown as I was finishing my PhD thesis in 1975 and I read in some newspapers about “Gowon’s nine years of failure”. Many journalists didn’t see anything good about him at all.
And my study, especially during my field work, showed me that in African countries, and particularly in Nigeria, if you were a head of state for one night, you had tried, and to say nine years of failure; I found that very annoying. It was not analytically correct that for nine years you were there and there was total failure.
In trying to set the records straight, what did you find good about Gowon?
I wouldn’t say what was good about him, because you are going to areas that are fairly subjective. What I would say were his achievements.
All the airports in Nigeria that were developed later, who created them? Gowon. The network of roads that we have now, who created them? Gowon. I remember in 1964 I was going to Jos from Makurdi and we spent three days there because it was during the rainy season. The road was all laterite and we had to wait until after the rains. And what were the vehicles we were boarding? Gongoro (trucks).
A friend recently told me that he used to take his son to school in his car and that once he told the son to trek to school because it was a couple of blocks away from their house but that he refused, saying, “I am used to going in a car.”
Granted that Gowon built roads and airports, but there was the oil boom money. What else would he have done with the money rather than do those things?
But isn’t that presumptuous that there was money and therefore you had to use it for development purposes. Education is another area he also invested money in. The man could have decided to “chop” the money like they are doing. The amount of incorrigible level of insensitivity to the poor Nigerians that Nigerian leaders have displayed after Gowon; you would be shocked.
Is there any evidence that Gowon didn’t “chop” money?
For the first time in 1978 I met him in London when he drove to High Banet Station to pick me up with a Volkswagen Passat, to his house. That was his only car.
Before then, when Gowon was kicked out of office, he had nowhere to stay. One Mr Oti gave him a two-bedroom house in London where he could stay.
Who is Mr Oti?
One of his friends. Later some Nigerians, including Prof Ishaya Audu, helped him to get another house at Broadgate. He still stays there.
When I went to his house he couldn’t even pay his children’s fees, and as Buhari said, at his 70th birthday he wrote to Buhari to request for that.
He told me that what annoyed him most was that with all he had done, the British government wrote to him that he didn’t have enough money to cover his schooling.
The school he was attending himself?
Yes! That if he didn’t, he couldn’t stay in the country. It was after there was a protest that the British government, through the home office, said there was a mistake.
He told me that if he had taken money would he be asking for all that nonsense and going through all that? In short, he had to pay his children’s school fees, medical bills and electricity. He had no driver. And the next time I went, he came in the tube (train) to the hotel where I was to pick me; very humble and all that.
Why was he overthrown, from your own study?
You are no longer dealing with his achievements. Okay, let’s go to the removal. Gowon stayed for nine years under military rule; that is a long time.
Why did he overstay?
In military regimes you have to have a turnover otherwise the same people who came in with you turn against you.
Two, there were intra-military issues that many of those who had fought the civil war thought that since Gowon had promised after FESTAC he was going to change those people, then he shifted it to after the Queen came and all that, that those who had been in governance for long had overstayed outside the barracks; that they should go back and others should go into government. So much human ambition.
Three, the issue of 1976 as a date for return to civil rule and reneging on that made politicians who were waiting on the wings to coalesce with people in the military to overthrow him.
You served on the Presidential Advisory Council during the government of Gen Babangida; what was that job about?
You must give Babangida three credits for courage, intelligence and humility. He asked me to get him people in economics, sociology and anthropology. I was in political science. He made Aboyade the chair of the council.
He told us that as a military regime they didn’t have structures for feeling the pulse of the people. He said we lived with the people.
Two, he said they didn’t know the processes of government and international nuances. That we in the council would put brains together. They did that because ministries brought their budgets through us, we went through them and questioned them before they went to the Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC). It was a rigorous process.
Was it a full time job?
It was part time. We kept flying in and out. We had accommodations in Lagos and Abuja.
The interesting thing was that there were many crises which the PAC helped to defuse; some even religious. If you remember the International Monetary Fund (IMF) thing and so on; we tried working with the government to defuse them; even when it came to the political crisis and registration of political parties.
Were you involved in creating the two party structure; a little to the left, a little to the right?
It is not for fun; it was a situation in which creating those two parties saved the country from violence, because many politicians were waiting; that their political parties would be registered. In fact, some of them had thrown parties in Lagos and were waiting for it to be announced. Yet if you saw the report from the National Electoral Commission (NEC), none of them met 50 per cent.
So, it was a way of saying, since none of them met 50 per cent, how could we create a basis for unity among Nigerians and avoid the obvious disaster that would come from violence under a military regime. The move was a mechanism for dealing with the looming crisis.
With all these, how come his transition programme ended up in failure?
There was a committee after the report written by a group. Jerry Gana and others were in that committee. After they made their report, the white paper panel was set up. I was a member of the white paper panel and we recommended the exit of the military in 1992. The AFRC approved it.
Now, a number of factors were responsible: the military over time had factionalised by 1993. So, intra-military conspiracies, which is normal in military regimes, were partly responsible for the failure of that transition programme.
Secondly, ambitious politicians working with the military exacerbated the problems on the table for Babangida.
Thirdly, ambitious young military people, you should know them by now, who actually were on the wings complicated the setting.
And finally, the Nigerian factor; once you are doing anything, we would want to skew the system to suit us; that also adulterated the process.
Don’t you think Babangida didn’t really want to go until he was forced out by his colleagues?
When I was talking of ambitious people and all that, it included all of them: Babangida, Sani Abacha, MKO Abiola and some younger officers. But some things went beyond my knowledge.
But the main issue wouldn’t be that Babangida was trying to prolong his stay. He knew he was going, but how would he go safely and neatly without the barracks erupting in a volcano?
How would he go without the political environment which was politically toxic degenerate into violence? There were many other questions, but I am trying to be careful to limit myself to what I know.
We have another toxic political environment as we are about to transition to another government this 2023. Are you optimistic that we will navigate the period seamlessly?
My late friend, George Obiozor, used to tease me that I am an indestructible optimist, and I would tell him if the matter concerns the country. I love it, anytime I am out of the country, I like to come back to it, I miss my pounded yam and egusi soup or something. I miss the company of my people; I relate warmly with my friends. I miss the forthrightness, the candour of Nigerians. I miss the fact that despite our problems, we are determined to prove ourselves as Nigerians even outside the country. Forget the crooks; they are not as many as those who you know and hear about that are contributing wonderful things to the world.
Now when you look at that setting, I am optimistic that for good or for bad, the Nigerian system, God willing, even if there is minimum bloodshed, would find itself restructuring itself, summersault and bounce back on the road.
Meanwhile, note that we have three political groups: the group of politicians who know how to acquire power and use it for the ends of the state, welfare, security and foreign relations. That group is getting extinct; talking about Aminu Kano, Shehu Shagari, Adamu Ciroma and their likes. They knew how to use power and didn’t see it as an investment for their private lives.
The second group are political contractors who are 80 per cent in the political arena, who see politics as an investment from which they must harvest with huge profits. You remember Adelabu and Ladoja. You remember Chris Uba and Ngige, there are many of them all over the country.
The third group are thugs; these are the hirelings of the political contractors. They hire them to dispense maximum violence to those who don’t tow their lines.
So I think part of the problem that we have currently is the fact that the political contractors are dominant. Most politicians are dominant in vices rather than virtues.
At 75 you are retired from the university and now run an NGO; aside the NGO how do you occupy yourself?
Let me say that the NOG, Institute of Governance and Social Research (IGSR), is a research institute because of the kind of peace building activities that we do. So, it is not primarily an NGO. I retired from there on July 1, last year, but I still go there to work as a senior fellow.
So I still work, I still do my research; I still do all kinds of things. If I stop, I think I will die.
Do you have any hobbies?
I can’t do too much. My doctor has told me I can’t do anything beyond walking. So I walk during the day and in the evening I watch TV.
What about your family?
I have six children who are all grownups.
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