• I never attended secondary school, but became first Philosophy graduate from a Nigerian university
President of Alaigbo Development Foundation (ADF), Prof. Uzodinma Timothy Nwala, is the first graduate of Philosophy from Nigerian university and Africa’s first professor in the field of philosophy. The renowned scholar has been described as the brain behind the formation of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), and what is today known as the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), having served as its founding Executive National Secretary.
Nwala retired from the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) in 2007 after 37 years of teaching and research. In this interview with OGBONNAYA NDUKWE, he spoke on many national issues, the Igbo nation’s trajectory and the way forward.
Hardly would Philosophy be mentioned in Africa without your name popping up and all these started in the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN). What was the experience like when you were studying philosophy, a very new course, then?
University of Nigeria Nsukka was the first to introduce teaching philosophy here in Nigeria. They admitted nine of us in the first set, the second year another set and then the first coup in 1966, the counter coup and the civil war caught up with us at the end of my study. When then Lt Col Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu took over and asked non-Easterners to leave, all our teachers in that department were from abroad. When they left, there was no teacher to handle us and we were asked to change to other departments. Some of my colleagues switched over to Political Science, Economics and other courses, but I insisted that I was not going anywhere. I vowed that I would graduate in UNN, because I had spent years in the institution no matter how they wanted to do it. This was debated upon and luckily, I had the support of some great nationalists, like Emmanuel Obiechina, and others that went to the University Senate and spoke on my behalf. They said that “this boy (referring to me) is the only evidence we have that we started philosophy before any other university around us.” They said my case was genuine and that I needed to graduate as scheduled. They further said that even if I was to be sent abroad, I must be graduated and then wrote to Michigan University in the United States of America (USA). Fortunately, the Michigan Head of Department then was also our Head of Department, who had left Nsukka, back to America. The man replied and said they should not worry, that he knew me and by their own reckoning, I was already a graduate and that they’d give me lectures. By that time, the UNN Catholic Chaplain then, Rev. E. J. McMahon, said he studied the philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of law and philosophy of history stressing that he could take me on those courses, which were my final year courses. So, the University hired him as a part-time lecturer for me, the only full-time student left in the department.
That was how I managed to graduate. There were other obstacles I had, but I came out successful. At some point, I was poisoned and I had to stay in a hospital in Port Harcourt while the part-time lecturer was coming there to teach me. In one of our discussions when I was planning my project, he said to me: “Tim, you’re fond of relating our discussions in philosophy to your African experience. You are fond of giving examples on African culture and so on. Why don’t you pick a topic like the thought patterns of the Igbo as your research topic? I quickly grabbed it and began my research. In fact, I submitted my project handwritten, because I couldn’t type it. Then, I returned to Nsukka in a month or two and did every other necessary thing and graduated. We were caught up by the civil war.
But before going to UNN, what were you doing?
There is a lot of stories behind my early upbringing. I resisted being a priest on different occasions and never went to the secondary school. I went to Teachers Training College (TTC), Olokoro in Umuahia, where I did my grade three. From there, I went to Government TTC, Uyo, for Higher Elementary, but left after just four months, because by that time in 1962, I had scored six papers in GCE O’ Level, which was enough to enter the university. I prepared for the examination on my own without tuition. By January, 1962, I had passed six papers, including English and Mathematics. Then in January 1963, the following year, I passed three papers in A’ Level, before I went to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. I was admitted to study Economics, but ended up changing to study Philosophy. I ended up becoming the only graduate in a department with just one part-time lecturer. That was how I managed to graduate from Nsukka and became the first graduate of philosophy from any Nigerian university.
What was UNN like for your generation in the 60s?
One great thing Nsukka did for my generation was to make us great African nationalists. The university environment was a sign of nationalism. It was around the Zik of Africa. Everywhere, even our hostels had symbols of nationalism. There was the Eni Njoku Hostel, Okpara Hostel, Akpabio Hostel, Akintola Hostel, Awolowo Hostel, Balewa Hostel, Nkrumah Hostel, Eyo-Etah, Ahmadu Bello Hostels and more of their likes. So, there was that smell of nationalism all over the university. I was an activist while in the university. I was in the Students’ Union Government. I was also Chairman of Awolowo Hall (Hostel). My academic success made me a household name. They talked about the guy who didn’t go to secondary school, but passed his papers within one year and made his A’ Levels and came to the university to become a graduate. When the Nigeria-Biafra war started, we all became great nationalists. Of course, I graduated in early 1967. By the 5th or 6th of that month (July, 1967), news came that they had started an attack and that was the day of our graduation ceremony. We were assembled at the Margret Ekpo Hall and given mass graduation and everybody left Nsukka that evening. Before the war started, we had taken two examinations into the Eastern Nigeria Civil Service. They involved graduates from all Nigerian Universities, including those from abroad. In the end, Nsukka had the first ten positions. I took the first position and when the war started, those of us who passed were asked to report to Enugu with late Senator Uche Chukwumerije, then the Director of Information. We were interviewed and recruited into the Propaganda Directorate. I and one other person started that Directorate.
Could you briefly relive your civil war experience and any lessons from the outcome?
One thing that came out of the war was my own worry after we lost. I kept asking myself, why did we lose the war? I kept contemplating on this because we all were great Christians then and we believed that we were fighting a just cause. We believed that we were being maltreated by Nigeria and the world and that the God of the just was with us. And the question kept coming: “Why did we lose the war?” That answer came to me when I left for Michigan, USA for my Ph.D.
When I got to New York, I didn’t know how it came by that I happened to find accommodation in the International House in New York. There, I came in contact with so many internationalists. Shortly, I became an active member of the International Students Movement to the United Nations (ISMUN) and was later made the Chief Representative of ISMUN. Our office was at 345 UN Plaza. It didn’t take time; I was elected the Chairman of the United Nations Youth Caucus and soon after had taken part in the First International Women’s Year Conference in Mexico in 1975. Then, I became very close to Ambassador Salim Ahmed Salim, the Tanzanian Representative to the UN. I was equally close then to Ambassador Ouattara, AU representative and also got involved in the South African Movement. In all these experiences, the assignment I gave myself was to find out why Biafra failed.
My observation at the end was that Biafra failed because Ojukwu didn’t understand the dynamics of the world’s struggles. Generally, our people didn’t understand it. Biafra failed for the same reason Kwameh Nkrumah failed. It was for the same reason that Muammar Gaddafi failed and it was for the same reason that Saddam Hussein equally failed. It was for the same reason a good number of them failed and are still failing. But who and who understood it and succeeded? Of course, Nelson Mandela did and succeeded. Fidel Castro succeeded as well. Mandela for instance, understood the dynamics of the world. He knew that the world was divided into two; the East and the West. You either belong here or there. If your enemies belong to one bloc, you move to the other. However, if the two of you belong to one bloc, the forces that control will try to reconcile the both of you and if they can’t, they’ll choose the one that’s more important to them and bring you in to suppress you. By then, the top communists around then were Igbo and when the Soviet Union indicated interest in supporting Biafra, Ojukwu said no, that he was not a communist. He was a democrat who believed in the free world. To avoid leaving anybody in doubt, have you taken a good look at Biafra’s slogan then? It was: “To Save Biafra for the Free World is a Task that Must be Done.” The message was to tell America, Britain and France, that we’re part of you and we’re not part of these Communists. Gowon and co equally adopted theirs as: “To Save Nigeria for the Free World.” Now, which one is more important to the West, considering their experiences with us and our people? They know us very well. They know we’re not the kind of people that will fit well into their Neocolonialism plans. That was how Biafra failed.
For Mandela, he realised the system. He went to China and went to Russia. What’s the basis of the friendship between Vladimir Putin and South Africa today? It started in that era of their history. It is hard to talk about South Africa’s struggle against apartheid without mentioning the role of the Soviet Union. Remember that Putin was the foreign intelligence officer of the Committee for State Security (CSS) known as Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB). He was among those who had the opportunity to help train the UMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress (ANC) of Mandela. That’s why you see South Africa is a member of the new group with the following countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS). Out of the two blocs, Mandela knew who was his friend and friend of his people. In Cuba, Fidel Castro was not a Communist when he overthrew Fulgencio Batista. When America tried to swallow him up, he had to run to the USSR where Nikita Khrushchev was the leader and the rest is history. All those who refused to have permanent friends either with the West or the East always end up badly when they run into trouble. All those who didn’t make a choice end up bad. Even today, anybody from this part who depends on the West for his survival is making a mistake because they know us better. Don’t forget that the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was a financial executive in the petroleum industry for the French corporation, ELF Aquitaine, which is now Total. With such a background and the role he played in the oil industry in Nigeria and Africa, is it not wiser that one is supposed to know better who should be his friends and choose wisely? There’s no need for anybody to even think of antagonizing the West but we should choose our friends wisely.
So, what was your war experience like?
Before I go into that, I remember one tough war experience here in my home town, Itu Ezinihitte Mbaise, where I would have been killed. What saved me was my friend from Asaba who was recruited into the Nigerian Army, and was with me at TTC. Everybody had run away and I told my people no, that we only needed to hide in a nearby plantation. However, after that, we encountered the soldiers and they said they must evacuate all of us to the Ngor-Okpala area, because they had the fear that Biafran troops may stage a counterattack. However, after sending the first group out to the marketplaces, the soldiers came and said they were looking for Nwala. There were many male Nwalas around, but everybody knew who they were looking for, because almost all our relations that ran from the other side were here then. My mother started crying seriously. They were afraid that I’d be killed. The woman carried me 12 months on her belly and people were mocking her that she wasn’t pregnant, until I was born. She breastfed me for three years, until women would beat me to leave her alone. So, we were very close. I told her not to cry, that nothing would happen to me. I told her that God did not bring us this far to take us back.
I went with the soldiers and one man, Captain Jibowu, was seated like a monarch. He was the Commander. Before I could get close, my classmate in TTC, Nwaogwuegbe called my name and introduced me to the captain who didn’t look friendly. The captain took him one side and they whispered. He came back and asked me, why didn’t you run away? I replied, when Enugu fell, Aba fell, Port Harcourt fell, Onitsha fell and Owerri fell, I knew we had lost the war. I decided I am going to stay here in my village with whoever is running this place. I didn’t intend to commit suicide as there’ll still be another day. He asked if I was assuring him that I didn’t stay back to continue fighting and I said no, that I knew the war was over. He discussed with the captain and came back to ask about my home and that was how the soldiers took me back to my house to the shock of everybody around. When my family saw me coming back laughing with my friend and the commander, they were shocked. After that, they took me out. The commander signed and gave my family a pass that no soldier should molest my family, as he had ordered us to stay. A few days later, the war ended and I returned home.
You had a relationship with the legendary Chinua Achebe. Could you speak on how relating with him led to the formation of Alaigbo Development Foundation (ADF)?
The first time I and Chinua met, we had a bond in the school system as lecturers. But we got very close when he published his book: “There Was a Country.” That should be around October, 2012, some months before his death. The book was being bastardized all over the place and being attacked by some group of people because of what he wrote about the role of a particular person close to them, in his account in that book. He called me and said that I and my colleagues should try and give some thought and attention to that publication, so that people will not mess up what he had in mind. Before then, there was a 50th anniversary of “Things Fall Apart,” in 2008 and it was being celebrated in the whole world, but in Nigeria, nothing was happening. It was only the University of Ibadan (UI) that organised a seminar on “Things Fall Apart.” So, I called my friends and said to them, we owe a duty to these anniversaries. I said to them that the debate and the anniversary of Things Fall Apart is a book written by our own brother. Two, it’s a book that discussed the most critical part of our cultural history. I said that we must join in the debate. That was how we agreed to hold a conference on Things Fall Apart, and worked out the details.
I took it to Ohanaeze Ndigbo, which was then led by Dr Dozie Ikedife and the group gave its approval. We had the first working session in Awka, where then Governor Peter Obi, hosted us and worked out a programme called “First Festival on Igbo Civilization.” We had the first programme in Asaba, where the Igbo clergy were there. We had a Conference on Arts and Exhibition on Igbo Civilization for Nollywood people in Enugu, hosted by Gov Sullivan Chime. We handled it that way, because having worked out the programme and presented it to Ohanaeze, Ohanaeze looked at the budget of about N400 million. Its president, Dr Ikedife was bothered about how to get the funding. I told him to just approve it and we’d make suggestions on how to fund it. We proposed a conference in Asaba, Enugu and Owerri. In Abia, we had two programmes, one in Government College, Umuahia and the second in Aba, which was meant to host an International Women’s Conference on Igbo Civilization. Port Harcourt was meant to host the political conference, Abakaliki was meant to host a Conference on Traditional Rulers. We had Asaba, Enugu and Aba, but we didn’t have enough support from Port Harcourt and Abakaliki. We had the main conference in Owerri, which was the one Prof Achebe attended and gave the Ahiajoku Lecture. This came years later after he published “There Was a Country.” When the book came out, Achebe asked us to look into it, to ensure that what he had in mind was not distorted. I took up the challenge, although I told him I hadn’t read the book then and later he sent two copies to me. After reading, I told him what I got from the book. I called him the name we usually called him, which is “Ugonabo.” I said, Ugonabo, this is what I understood you to be saying. I made it clear to him that he wasn’t saying something new from what he had been saying or “different from the Ahiajoku Lecture you gave titled “Nneka.” I used Things Fall Apart’s Okonkwo’s situation in his mother’s place after banishment and the safety he experienced there, to explain to him (Achebe), that the message he was sending, was simply, “If our people are not wanted outside, we should come back to our motherland and feel at home.” We did our best on that and explained things easily. After that, I went with my wife to one of Achebe’s colloquiums and went for dinner, thereafter. He called me and encouraged me to keep working hard for our people. He told me to remain a light and I promised never to disappoint him. From that day, anybody who invited him to any programme, he’ll call me to represent him. One night, his son called me that he was in the hospital and that he said he should tell me. Early in the morning, I was called that Ugonabo was dead and that I should inform Ohanaeze, the Federal Government and Peter Obi, who was the Governor of Anambra State then. That was how I became the Chairman of his burial committee. After the whole thing, we went back to the Conference and all other things involved and got out the “International Colloquium on the Igbo Question in Nigeria.”
In 2014, I sat down and said to myself that we had to set up an organisation of Igbo intellectuals. By then, the Jewish example was steering us in the face. The only difference between us and the Jews was that we were still in our ancestral homes, unlike the Jews who didn’t have a home during their ordeals. And for us, if we don’t take time, we’ll become a vanishing nation. We needed to borrow a leaf from the Jews and the intellectuals had to lead it. That was how we got Igbo intellectuals to form the Alaigbo Development Foundation (ADF). That’s how it was born in 2014.
So, how has it been for the ADF since then?
We are at a point of reform and returning ADF to the people. We had a time, when we accepted all kinds of characters into ADF. It became like what happened during the socialist movement in Nigeria. At one point, as one of the foremost socialists in Nigeria, around 1984-1985, I was invited to Russia. They (The Soviet Union) wanted to make me the arrowhead of the Communist Movement in Nigeria because they were disappointed with some group of people, who they thought could have done better. When I got there, I discovered that the Communist Movement was crumbling and the whole issue centred on what was Capitalist Property and Socialist Property. The misconception among the post-Lenin communists in Russia and post-Moa Communists in China. If one goes back to Karl Marx, who articulated the fundamentals, “Capitalist Property is the property that allows you to exploit another.” For the Soviet Union, Capitalist Property means big-time wealth. Socialist Property is a collective wealth. In China, Communist Property was Cottage Property. Anything big is Capitalist Property. That’s why, by that time, China did not know how to run big hotels or big engineering firms, because they dismissed them as capitalist property. It continued until the Cultural Revolution, when they asked America to teach them how to run big companies. This was the confusion some of us had, which is why we must reform ADF. However, we’re at a point where that transformation of ADF to make it a popular people-oriented movement has become imperative. We had wanted to do the first thing first, which is to anchor it in a well-defined, properly understood, global setting of the struggle, with the knowledge that such a level of reflection is highly intellectual. We are now at the point where ADF must become the property of the people. We’ve been experiencing some forms of struggles that show the problems we are having in ADF. We brought a whole lot in and anybody with an Igbo agenda was brought in without us taking time to select well. We thought we were building them well, but we now need to get to the point where theories and practicals meet. We’ve learnt from the mistakes of many other movements and are positioning ADF, to where it should be. We needed to groom people. ADF has shown me some fundamental flops in our land, but we need to sanitise it.
It’s a battle we should put behind us in the next one month. We need our younger ones to be part of this moment of precogitation of the way forward.