Obadiah Mailafia: Passage of a Deeply Thoughtful Man
Jibrin Ibrahim, Deepening Democracy, Daily Trust, Friday 24th September 2021
I lost a good fried, Dr. Obadiah (Obed) Mailafia on Sunday at the young age of 64 years, apparently, from the Covid19 pandemic. Yes, another casualty in the long list of distinguished Nigerians lost to this dreaded disease. As I always say to all my friends and relations, take your vaccination, follow the prescribed protocol and pray.
I knew Obed from our student days at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), he was just a year behind in the university and I knew him from his first year – 1975-1976. He was a very cultured human being, very well read. I was always astonished at the vast number of books he has read and continued to read from when I knew him to the end. He was a very polite, kind and gentle soul. Although we were friends for over four decades, we never really agreed on anything and our friendship was based on disputations – philosophical, ideological and historical. We always agreed to disagree.
It all started in the 1975-76 session when my Marxist-Leninist Study Group identified him as excellent material for revolutionary cadre. Dear reader, at that time, everybody in ABU, or at least in our Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences was a Marxist, or at least pretended to be one. We were aware at that time that Obed was already reading Marxist literature so I engaged him with confidence to join. He rejected the idea of becoming a Marxist outright and provided his reasons. Marxists, he argued, were materialists who were cocooned in a monocausal vision of history while he was a humanist with a multi-causal vision that respected not just material conditions but also spiritual, cultural and other dimensions of existence and change. Secondly, he accused us of being intellectually one-sided in our approach because we focused too much, he thought, on Marxist texts and not the writings of dissidents who had lived in the Soviet Union and knew what really existing socialism was in practice. He had for example read the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who was one of the greatest critics of Soviet Socialism and devoted his life in exile to criticizing communism. I respected his vision and although he rejected the invitation to become a Marxist, we remained friends.
On graduation, we both joined the staff of the Political Science Department as graduate assistants, did our master’s degree and both of us had our French sojourn at the International Institute of Public Administration, a fancy new name for the old “Ecole Coloniale”, established in 1900 to train colonial officers. Subsequently, it was converted to an institution to train officials from former colonies. The French Government later took the decision to take in Anglophones and gave scholarships to Ahmadu Bello University, also to the universities in Ife and Nsukka, to go there. I was in the 1084-85 set while Obed was in 1985-86 set. We learnt to speak French, appreciate cheese and red wine and read French philosophers in addition to learning international diplomacy and international relations. At that point, Obed moved from Ahmadu Bello University to the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, becoming one of Nigeria’s leading experts in strategic studies while I returned to my post in Zaria.
In mid-career, we both decided to go out again and do our doctoral studies, I returned to France while Obed went to Oxford. He decided to divert from strategic studies to business and finance, a move that surprised me. I told him he was too smart and well-read to engage in such a pedestrian path based on pushing people towards the profit motive but he defended his choice making the argument that business and finance could be as exciting as strategic studies. He felt that that those of us from the socialist tradition were to focused on poverty alleviation strategies and by so doing we box ourselves into meagre reduction of poverty for the masses who never get to move out of poverty. His own vision, he declared grandiosely, was extending the frontiers of wealth creation to the people. I asked him to look at Nigeria’s Gini coefficient which clearly shows the widening gap between the poor and the wealthy. He agreed, arguing that he left the academy and went into banking, first the African Development Bank, and later the Central Bank of Nigeria, precisely to help create the conditions to opening doors for more people to join the path to wealth creation.
He was initially reluctant to accept the offer to be Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria thinking his ambition should be more Pan African but he later took the decision that Nigeria is so important to Africa that helping push the Nigerian needle forward is in itself a fillip to African Development. In the CBN, he was deeply engaged in the dept part-repayment and part-forgiveness from the Paris Club process, arguing it would free resources that could be used to place Nigeria on the path to people-centred development. Then suddenly, in a three-hour saga, President Olusegun Obasanjo and Charles Soludo conspired to bundle him out of the CBN. It was a huge blow to him, not because he needed the job, but because he felt that the opportunity to contribute to national development was cut in an unfair way and in a context where he had done no wrong. He did try to go back to the job for some time but it did not happen. It was at that point that he began to believe in some conspiracy theories.
That brings me to the third set of disputations we had. In the last phase of his life, he became an ardent advocate of the conspiracy theory about the Fulani seeking to colonise Nigeria and engage in Jihad against the Christian community. This is a very emotive and raw issue and it is too early to go into the details. Suffice it to say that over the past decade, we had many arguments and as is usual in our relations, completely disagreed on the fundamentals. What I would say with certainty is that Obed genuinely believed in what he was saying and was not playing to the gallery or playing politics, with such serious matters. The gentleman that he is would never allow him to say what he did not believe him. I have lost a great friend and confidant. I feel the pain of his lovely wife Margaret, who hosted my family and I so many times over the years and the children. May his soul rest in perfect peace and may his life work be a blessing to all of us.
Jibrin:
My favourite line in yours is:
Although we were friends for over four decades, we never really agreed on anything and our friendship was based on disputations – philosophical, ideological and historical. We always agreed to disagree.
Above is the key to living a good life. Any person who must always win an argument is, in the final analysis, a fool. We don’t know whether we are right or wrong on many issues until we meet Allah. I was caught unaware of the period in Nigeria when folks began to abuse one another to make their points. Could it have been the era of social media? Today, folks think that insults and abuse are part of arguments. No! And they have now added verbal and physical violence to score points. No!
As an aside, some of us were working on moving him to a University to teach, and unknown to him, we had recommended him to two universities for an appointment. One was set to be announced in October.
Who is next? I mean not for a glorious appointment, but death:
And the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
TF
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Obadiah Mailafia: Passage of a Deeply Thoughtful Man
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kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Obadiah Mailafia: Passage of a Deeply Thoughtful Man
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Please be cautious: **External Email**
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
I'm left wondering, speechless.
Should the difference of opinion/s signal the end of a discussion, when, no matter the various interpretations of facts, there are indisputable facts undergirding some of the opinions and some of the basics which still stare us in the face and about which we all agree, for example, that a redeemable percentage of the Nigerian population is mired in poverty, due to the pernicious corruption of the lootocrats of the lootocracy, all of whom see themselves as crooks or capitalists.
In any case, I should expect Jibrin Ibrahim an acolyte of the Björn Beckman school of the Left to be in essential agreement with, in my opinion, the equally, very progressive Baba Kadiri,a cornucopia of Swedish socialism, a treasure-house of knowledge about the history of the Left in Sweden) and about the fact that in 1981 the official ( not artificial) rate of exchange was Naira1 was = £1 Sterling – as per my home remittances to Sweden, that year. And that, sadly, it's now getting close to 550 Naira to the Mighty Dollar. In Zimbabaw it was a lot worse; In 1981 I Zimba Dollar was = Uncle Sam's $. By the time President Mugabe's war veterans were seizing white farms, it took 1 million Zimba dollars to equal the Yankee dollar.
So far, Baba Kadiri's position is reminiscent of Brazil's late Bishop Dom Helder Camara, a strong proponent of Liberation Theology ( semi-anathema to the Vatican). He said, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist.” It should be interesting to see how Bishop Kukah weighs in on this.
I spent a good part of this afternoon in the company of Baba Kadiri. We met at the Culture House, the epicentre of Stockholm City, and from there, at a leisurely pace, we strolled to the Academy Bookshop where the Baba purchased a few hundred dollars worth of books (talk about capital-ism!) to keep himself him updated and in good stead as he continues his journey as a veritable walking encyclopedia. On the way to the great Academy Bookshop, the Baba regaled himself and me with both iconic and ironic acronyms for Nigeria's arrested development, not much in common with this Arrested Development ...
I got the ball rolling with N.E.P.A., the now defunct “National Electric Power Authority” which in its heyday, as far as performance was concerned was a disappointment, was said to have only lived up its unintended reputation. i-.e, what should have been its real name” Never Expect Power Always”. In retrospect, it was painful entertainment, two bitter Negro Elders ( bitter old Negroes) 60 years after Nigeria's Independence/ Emancipation, ambulating in the direction of the Academy Bookshop, Baba Kadiri venturing into other acronyms such as P.U.P. (Perpetual Underdevelopment Progress)...
When we go there, ( a ten-minute walk) the Baba was greeted and saluted by some of the personal, of course, they were happy to see him ( he had his coronavirus 19 mask on ( a black mask - of course) I didn't have any mask on, don't want to give anybody the idea we are armed robbers from Buhari's Nigeria on a mission to raid the bookshop/ ransom-kidnap some of the personnel/ rob the nearest bank - the latter also a bad idea since the banks no longer stash cash). We browsed quite a bit – for me, living in Social Democratic Sweden, the taxpayers' money being put to good use means that the only books that I buy / order are those that I want to possess – that are not available at any of the libraries in the country - and we have good libraries; we can if we want, demand that they order all of Oga Falola and at the very least get in 90% of his total output). To my chagrin, I pointed out one of the items on the shelves of the Africa section - Ken Saro-Wiwa Book by Roy Doron and Toyin Falola, but Baba Kadiri visibly wrinkled his nose at the idea and in my heart, I didn't blame him, because most Nigerians of the reading generation believe that they know all about Ken Saro-Wiwa and there's not very much more that Alagba Falola or Roy Doron can tell them about him.
I'm stopping here because my yams ( imported from Nigeria) are ready, and I am hungry....
On the musical side: Who are you?
Me? I'm stuck and entranced at this station: Dream
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Dear Ken:
The use of “lies” is problematic. Perhaps, “delusional”, “optimistic”. By luck, I have met many great people, including evil ones, but I don’t think they are telling “lies”.
“Lies,” as opposite of “truth”, is an epistemological catastrophe. My favorite thinker of all time, Ahmad Bamba, said that the lie that heals is better than the truth that divides.
TF
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kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Corrected.
I'm left wondering, speechless.
Should the difference of opinion/s signal the end of a discussion, when, no matter the various interpretations of facts, there are indisputable facts undergirding some of the opinions and some of the basics which still stare us in the face and about which we all agree, for example, that a redeemable percentage of the Nigerian population is mired in poverty, due to the pernicious corruption of the lootocrats of the lootocracy, all of whom see themselves as crooks or capitalists.
In any case, I should expect Jibrin Ibrahim an acolyte of the Björn Beckman school of the Left to be in essential agreement with, in my opinion, the equally, very progressive Baba Kadiri, a cornucopia of Swedish socialism, a treasure-house of knowledge about the history of the Left in Sweden) and about the fact that in 1981, the official ( not artificial) rate of exchange was Naira1 = £1 Sterling – as per my home remittances to Sweden, that year. And that, sadly, it's now getting close to 550 Naira to the Mighty Dollar. In Zimbabwe, it was a lot worse; In 1981 I Zimba Dollar was = Uncle Sam's $. By the time President Mugabe's war veterans were busy seizing white farms, it took 1 million Zimba dollars to equal the Yankee dollar.
So far, Baba Kadiri's position is reminiscent of Brazil's late Bishop Dom Helder Camara, a strong proponent of Liberation Theology ( semi-anathema to the Vatican). He said, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist.” It should be interesting to see how Bishop Kukah weighs in on this.
I spent a good part of this afternoon in the company of Baba Kadiri. We met at the Culture House, the epicentre of Stockholm City, and from there , at a leisurely peace we strolled to the Academy Bookshop where the Baba purchased a few hundred dollars worth of books (talk about capital-ism!) to keep himself updated and in good stead as he continues his journey as a veritable walking encyclopedia. On the way to the great Academy Bookshop, the Baba regaled himself and me with both iconic and ironic acronyms for Nigeria's arrested development, not much in common with this Arrested Development ...
I got the ball rolling with N.E.P.A., the now-defunct “National Electric Power Authority” which in its heyday, as far as performance was concerned was a disappointment, was said to have only lived up to its unintended reputation. i-.e , what should have been its real name : ”Never Expect Power Always”. In retrospect, it was painful entertainment, two bitter Negro Elders ( bitter old Negroes) 60 years after Nigeria's Independence/ Emancipation, ambulating in the direction of the Academy Bookshop, Baba Kadiri venturing into other acronyms such as P.U.P. (Perpetual Underdevelopment Progress)...
When we got there, (a ten minute walk) the Baba was greeted and saluted by some of the personnel, of course, they were happy to see him ( he had his coronavirus 19 mask on (a black mask - of course) I didn't have any mask on, don't want to give anybody the idea we are armed robbers from Buhari's Nigeria on a mission to raid the bookshop/ ransom-kidnap some of the personnel/ rob the nearest bank - the latter also a bad idea since the banks no longer stash cash). We browsed quite a bit – for me, living in Social Democratic Sweden, the taxpayers money being put to good use means that the only books that I buy / order are those that I want to possess – that are not available at any of the libraries in the country - and we have good libraries; we can if we want, demand that they order all of Oga Falola and at the very least get in 90% of his total output). To my chagrin , I pointed out one of the items on the shelves of the Africa section - Ken Saro-Wiwa Book by Roy Doron and Toyin Falola, but Baba Rocekerfeller Kadiri visibly wrinkled his nose at the idea and in my heart, I didn't blame him, because most Nigerians of the reading generation believe that they know all about Ken Saro-Wiwa and there's not very much more that Alagba Falola or Roy Doron can tell them about him.
I've just had some yams ( imported from Nigeria) and egusi soup. I'm ready
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kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/HE1P193MB0076F269DD6B617F0600D888AEA69%40HE1P193MB0076.EURP193.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.