Thank you very much OAA. I read the email exchanges that took place in this forum with regard to the essay written by Farooq on Professor Gwamna and Professor Agbese. I am writing this to share some of my thoughts about it because I was at the conference that Farooq made reference to and even made a presentation there. Of course I am not one of the organizers but I remember inviting three friends of mine to attend the conference / forum. Two of the friends I invited are from south western Nigeria while the other is from Southeastern Nigeria. Two of them are professors: one is a systematic and contextual theologian and the other is criminal justice scholar. The other is an employee of the state of Minnesota.
In my assessment there are two main parts to the concerns raised by Farooq about Professors Agbese and Gwamna. One has to do with claiming to represent an organization that is not registered, and the implication that this was done for dubious reasons or so it seems as he argued. The second part has to do with the claim that the two persons are engaged in some kind of propaganda to support the Buhari administration in spite of the terrible situation that the Buhari government has created in Nigeria.
Let me start by saying that just as Farooq accorded respect to the two persons based on their meeting at the Zumunta Convention last year, I too will start from there but I will go further. I have met many Nigerians in the United States, but Professor Gwamna who is a senior colleague to me has become like a brother to me. I am from Bauchi but he is from Southern Kaduna. I remember hearing his voice reading news in Radio Nigeria Kaduna when I was younger. I visited him in Iowa twice and the most recent was last Easter. I celebrated my last Easter break with him. This is my full disclosure. I have come to know his spouse who is a very kind woman. I have had extended contact and interaction with them such that while I agree that the concern Farooq raised about representing an organization that is not registered is a legitimate one, I do not want people to just totalize the character of the two persons around that. Please try to know them as persons in a holistic way. There is more to each one of us than just one wrong decision. I observe a lot and while people do make mistakes, I do not see anything in the life of Professor Gwamna that indicates that he is the kind of money-chasing person that he is being made to look like. His life is characterized by faith, moderation and humility. One can still make mistake but let us not from a distant just use one mistaken decision to draw conclusion on a person's character please.
Professor Agbese is someone I see not just as a senior colleague too but as a mentor since he was the classmate of Attahiru Jega. Jega returned to Bayero University Kano while I was still there as an undergraduate but I did not take a course from him. I however used to see him regularly at the Faculty of Social and Management Sciences. Although Professor Agbese visits Nigeria frequently according to Farooq, yet, this is not something that started recently. Even before Buhari became president he used to travel to Nigeria a lot. I am not sure also, but I have heard him speak on the role of the military in Nigeria in many conferences in the past, which indicates to me that either that is his area of specialization or one of the areas of his scholarly focus. His interest in the military is not starting now. This would help in greatly explaining his interest in the military. Now, again this does not mean that this makes it right to represent an unregistered organization but please, I do not want us to rush to totalize someone's character just based on such a mistake. That is why I feel strongly that Professor Agbese's picture should not have been in the article written by Farooq. In my view, that went too far. This is almost like treating someone as a criminal. From the way Farooq wrote, at some point it looks like he did some intensive research and knows a lot about the two persons. But I was surprise when he asserted that the two persons live in the same town. In fact, the distance between where the two live is more than two hours drive or thereabout. Let us all be careful about claiming details on things on the ground. I have visited Professor Abegese's house too but in my observation, I did not see any extravagant lifestyle that one may suspect based on Farooq's article, unless of course if I made a mistake in my observation which I could..
As for the conference organized in Minnesota last year, it went very well. Indeed, I wish there were more people in attendance. It was not propaganda as some may think. The presenter truly brought to limelight a lot of details about what is happening on the ground in Nigeria in fighting insurgents in order to help Nigerians here understand the complexity of the situation in Nigeria. Yet, he also encountered tough questions and scrutiny. I will say as my friends who were there would say also that if the goal was propaganda then the person did not succeed because it was a serious forum for intellectual discussion. I was not paid and no one dictated to me what to present on. I wish there would be more of such forums organized because that will help Nigerians in diaspora understand some of the things happening on the ground. After living in Nigeria for 13 months in 2017-18, I realized that we assume too much that armchair expertise or philosophizing here by us can bring immediate change in the distant grassroots communities in Nigeria or Africa at large. This is not a de-legitimation of the work we do, but I prefer praxis in the sense of the dialectical relationship between theory / ideas and existential life and struggles of people out there in the real world. And seeing the reality on the ground in Nigeria made me feel humbled about what kind of civil repair I can initiate in Nigeria from here. People in the conference were free to express their disagreement with the presenter and the body language of the presenter did not indicate he was shocked about that. He is a very educated military officer and did an excellent job in articulating his analysis of the issues and he got challenging feedback.
While food and accommodation was provided to those who attended the conference, this, in and of itself in my assessment should not immediately qualify as something dubious except of course if someone has some other kinds of evidence. For example, there was a time an organization at the Graduate Theological Union in California received funding from Templeton Foundation to promote dialogue on science and religion in Africa. They invested seventy thousand dollars or thereabout to organize an initial conference about this subject matter at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria. At the very time the conference was to take place, the United States invaded Afghanistan and for security reasons, the organizers were advised not to travel to Nigeria for security and safety reasons. The organization requested me to represent them instead, which I did. But they paid for all people's food and accommodation at the conference in so far as one's paper was accepted for presentation. So my point is not to say that I know exactly the details of anything but in my assessment, having seen something like this somewhere and long ago, it should not be immediately assumed that organizing the conference in Minnesota was dubious. I know that all that attended felt it was a value addition. With regard to the press release, in and of itself, there is nothing wrong since it is an expression of their perspective, except for the point that Farooq made about representing an organization that does not exist. But let us treat that as a mistake and be cautious not to use it to totally condemn their lives and character. There are many press releases that I never read, e.g., from the White House.
I do not think that Professor Agbese and Gwamna do not feel the pain coming from the violence in Nigeria. There was one conference in Atlanta, where Professor Agbese made a thorough analysis of the Fulani Violence in Nigeria. What I will say briefly is that he examined the intersection of factors and processes that led to the violence instead of isolating just one factor as many people do. With regard to the fact that as Farooq claims Professor Agbese supports Buhari, I believe while many will disagree with that, but if he chooses to do so, the best one can do is to provide counter evidence. In this forum, there are many opinions that disagree and sometimes it is not just disagreement but as Thomas Kuhn would say in "The Structures of Scientific Revolution," the different positions people take are incommensurable. Before the elections in Nigeria, people supported different candidates. Yes, intellectuals should not sell their conscience but at a deeper level, conscience itself is not developed in social or cultural vacuum. Owing to elective affinity and how the intersection of social and material interests can subconsciously create a plausibility structure for a worldview and political arguments, intellectuals may end up supporting something that cannot claim universal applicability to all social and interests groups. Of course this does not mean that we should discard the question of "social responsibility."
The way Professor Agbese is presented is that he is too close to the military. Well, I do not know as much as Farooq claims to know but I know that Agbese did his sabbatical at Bingham University which was established by the denomination I grew up in i.e., ECWA. It is not necessarily one of the highly rated universities in Nigeria. Would not someone highly connected to the military establishment or the government of Buhari as implied be able to use his connections to get a more strategic location for his sabbatical through the military at for instance, The National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies in Kuru (Plateau State) or even the Army Resource Center in Abuja? How much will Bingham pay him? Bingham University has been in serious financial difficulty. I truly believe they did not pay him on time. Please let us not rush.
I agree with Farooq that it would not be good or nice for anyone of us to represent an organization that is not registered. Even if we have good intentions, doing so can create concern about our intentions, but that notwithstanding, please let us not rush to judge these two people based on one issue or mistake. And let us all learn a lesson from this. It is always good to understand people in different or numerous ways than doing so based on one issue. I do not deny that humans can make mistake or make wrong judgement but let us not reduce the complex life of a person to one issue or event please. These two persons are not perfect human beings and I am not sure there is one, but I believe if one knows them closely, he or she would not rush to put them in a pigeonhole.
--Let me thank Bitrus Gwama for this modulated response stating his side of the story.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: "Dr. Bitrus Gwamna" <bgwamna@gmail.com>Date: 25/05/2019 11:15 (GMT+00:00)Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A Reply to Kperogi.doc
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