Ahmed Bako: Intellectual Masturbation As Inaugural Lecture

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

What caught my attention when the flyer of the 50th inaugural lecture of the Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto surfaced in the social media late August was the theme: “The Igbo factor in the history of intergroup relations and commerce in Kano: Opportunities and challenges revisited.”

The lecture, to be delivered by Ahmed Bako, a Kano-born professor of African and Nigerian history, triggered a sense of foreboding instantly because I guessed it would be a voyage in dog whistling, a pastime of ethnic irredentists across the country when dealing with their bête noire – Ndigbo. He proved me right.

An inaugural lecture not only serves as an invaluable platform for professors to present their groundbreaking research, innovation, engagement and teaching, but also to demonstrate the societal impact of their work.

It is, therefore, sad that Bako, a 1980 history graduate of the Bayero University Kano, who has been a lecturer since 1981, and served as head of department four times, supervised over 100 Bachelor of Arts projects, 45 Master of Arts dissertations and 22 PhDs could embarrassingly undertake such an exercise in intellectual onanism in the name of inaugural lecture.

Come to think of it, inaugural lectures are usually for newly appointed professors who use the platform to showcase their achievements. By his own admission, Bako has been in the university system in the last 43 years without being availed such privilege. He claims he didn’t know why. Well, his colleagues were wary of his dubious intellectualism and wanted to avoid the embarrassment which his outing has become.

Spouting sheer ignorance as a scholarly virtue smacks of intellectual dubiousness, which was what he did when he labelled Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide an Igbo separatist group. Only a witless mind can conjure that.

Bako said he was pushed into extensive study of Igbo community because apart from being the most predominant migrant group in Kano and successful entrepreneurs, “many of them, even though speak Hausa very well, did not adapt to the predominant Kano value system,” without saying what those values are.

Perhaps, the fattest fib of his voodoo intellectualism is the assertion that “the Igbo in actual fact from the 1950s started sending their sons and daughters to Europe and America for higher education; all with the hope of eventual domination of the country; not necessarily for developing it for the benefit of the nation,” without any supporting research.

Yet, he doubled down on that with another jaw-dropping claim: “What needs emphasising during this time was the fact that searching for economic power and dominance make the Igbo to be desperate and aggressive. Desperation is what makes them to not only be disliked by host communities in several of the areas of their dominance in Northern Nigeria but to push some young Igbo into criminal activities.”

* Igbo Road By Main Market

Bako’s non-researched lecture led him to accusing Igbo traders of marginalising their hosts. Hear him: “My view is that because of ethnic solidarity, Igbo traders gradually marginalised or even displaced large number of Hausa traders. A typical example of a Hausa man displaced by the Igbo was Alhaji Abubakar Makwarari. He became a textile retailer in 1974 in a stall he rented from Alhaji Salisu Barau Zage at the cost of £6,000 per annum. In 1986 he was ejected due to his failure to pay the new rent of £30,000. Chief David Obi Okonkwo paid the stated amount and occupied the stall. Many other Hausa traders were displaced by the Igbo who were ready to pay high rents.”

How insincere can a man be all in an attempt to smear a people? Ethnic solidarity in this sense would have meant that the owner of the shop was Igbo. That was not the case. So, how can Alhaji Zage’s decision to eject Alhaji Makwarari from his property be recorded as a crime by the Igbo? And to imagine that our erudite professor of history deemed it necessary to include this inane narrative in an inaugural lecture beggars belief.

But doesn’t that narrative sound familiar? Of course, it does. Suffice it to say that the Pound was abolished in Nigeria in 1973. So, for a professor of history to claim in an inaugural lecture that rent was paid in Nigeria in Pound in 1974 and 1998 is the height of intellectual dishonesty.

Bako concluded his jejune lecture by asserting that: “There is no doubt in the fact that the broadening base of the Igbo in Kano and their success has given rise to criticisms against them by the indigenes who consistently blame them for taking over enterprises as well as landed properties which would have otherwise been under their control. The Igbo have also been accused of constituting a drain on Kano economy in terms of repatriating funds to develop their homeland.”

Then he became very cryptic. “Like quite a number of academic presentations, this lecture intentionally leaves many questions unanswered and several others untreated. It is my hope that the lecture generates greater interest in the history of Igbo Diaspora in different parts of the country, especially the Northern elites to know what actually happened so that necessary arrangements are made.”

So, what are those necessary arrangements that the Northern elites are beckoned to make since he concluded that Ndigbo will never leave Kano and go back to the South-East “because the factors that pushed them to leave their area to Kano and other cities in Northern Nigeria are still there or even more.”

Perhaps, he is psyching his compatriots for another round of genocide in the 21st century. Well, he is not alone. He has kindred spirits in the highest office in the land – presidency.

But it is a crying shame that a professor of history is accusing Ndigbo, bona fide citizens of Nigeria, of constituting a drain on Kano economy because they are allegedly repatriating their wealth. To where, if I may ask?  

Yet, here is a man who acknowledged that the massacre and dislocation of the Igbo in Kano and other Northern cities in the late 1960s led to the theft of their wealth. The indigenous Hausa merchants who saw in the displacement and slaughter of their fellow citizens an opportunity to steal their hard-earned wealth refused to give up their loot even when these people, completely stripped of their resources and even dignity returned at the end of the war in 1970.

Commenting on the lecture, Prof Chidi Odinkalu said Bako should be pitied. “If a man – or anyone at that – has spent over 40 years of his life spouting this kind of stuff even with the best of intentions as seems evident on the face of this paper, I will take pity on him and pity even more the students who endured it.”

Odinkalu further noted: “For a relatively shortish inaugural lecture delivered on the eve of retirement after nearly 45 years teaching and researching Nigerian history, this text is riddled with distressing errors of text, context, sub-text, and texture. I say nothing of errors of intellectual method – it explores no alternative explanations or interpretations for its limited sourcing and evidence. So the lecture seems to be embarrassingly devoid of basic intellectual curiosity too.”

I agree. But there seems to be a method to this madness. And that worries me. What Professor Bako has done is sheer ethnic baiting all in the name of inaugural lecture. It is the kind of diabolical stunt that the likes of Onanuga have been pulling over the years and getting away with it.

But truth be told, like Prof Bako rightly noted, Ndigbo are going nowhere as long as the unity of this country remains non-negotiable. Not even intellectual masturbations like his will stampede the Igbo out of their own country.

*Amaechi is the publisher of TheNiche