Wale Adebanwi, Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Africana Studies, is also the Director of the university’s Center for Africana Studies. In this interview with OLUKOREDE YISHAU, Adebanwi gives details about his new book on Aare Ona Kakanfo Gani Adams’s rise in the the Oodua Progressive Congress (OPC) and related matters. Excerpts:
Why did you decide to carry out a study on Gani Adams?
I was tangentially interested in the Oodua Progressive Congress (OPC) as a Yoruba nationalist group when it started because I was, at that time, interested in a long-term study of the Yoruba political elite, primarily the Chief Obafemi Awolowo political movement. However, when the spate of violent clashes within the group—which led to a split—and the clashes between the group and members of other ethnic groups in Lagos started, I began to pay a new kind of attention to the group. This was around 1999. As you know, the group was initially led by Dr. Frederick Fasehun. When the split happened with the then 29-year-old Gani Adams emerging as the leader of his own faction, I became interested in a new way. Perhaps the dominant perspective, particularly in the media, was that the Adams group was dominated by young people who were revolting against “elders,” as represented by Fasehun.
Though this was not completely true, the perspective of youth-versus-elders in the context of the group and the larger social context struck me as a potential theoretically-rich way to approach a study of the group. I was then interested in youth studies. When the youth-versus-elders factor was related to the question of violence, it became even more interesting for me. Therefore, I devoted myself to a more serious study of the group starting with both factions in 1999, to understand the role of social maturation, that is, youth, in relation to violence, and in the context of democratic rule. Remember that Nigeria had just transited to democratic rule in 1999 when this became a major challenge, such that, at a point, President Olusegun Obasanjo issued a shoot-on-sight order to the police regarding members of the OPC. So, I wanted to study the connections among youth, socio-economic crisis, perceived political marginalization, ethno-regional relations, and the democratic struggle. This was the context in which the OPC was formed.
Therefore, I didn’t start wanting to study Gani Adams as a social actor. He was just emerging as a critical social actor at this point, though he was becoming increasingly “popular” or “notorious,” depending on where you stood. However, it was the group dynamics in relation to these other factors that first attracted me as a student of society. I was then teaching Political Science at the University of Ibadan while also working on my first doctoral research which was on the Nigerian press. The focus on the Gani Adams faction of the OPC came later, and the decision to use Gani Adams’ life history as a pathway to the analysis of subalternity, elites, ethno-regional politics, and democratic rule emerged more than one decade after I started the research. It was not until about one and half decades into the research project that it struck me that narrating this particular social life-in-transformation, this unique process of social maturation, and this compelling story of social transformation from a subaltern to an elite, and the intriguing ways in which this could help tell the story of a particular era in Nigerian political history, was too strong for me to resist.
What did it take to finally get this book out?
The research for the book took 21 years. I had gathered vast data, including several hours of interviews with the major actors (Fasehun, Adams, the members of the group, other members of the Yoruba elite), several years of participant-observation, a huge archive of publications, and numerous audio and video materials that I didn’t even know where to start. I also didn’t have the time work on the manuscript. Over those years, I was engaged in many other research projects, including my work on the Nigerian press, the Yoruba progressive elite, and intellectuals and the domestication of the Enlightenment in the West Coast of Africa in the late 19th and early 20th century. I also had administrative duties. In the last couple of years of the research, I was heading the African Studies Center at Oxford. Anyway, I couldn’t find the time to focus on writing the book. Meanwhile, Adams is an intriguing generator of news (and images too; the book has no less than 200 images). It was difficult to have an ending for the research. He just kept generating more and more news that could form interesting angles to the book. No surprise, therefore, that the book ended up being more than 600 pages. The publishers had to do something about the typeface and type size to reduce it to less than 600 pages.
Anyway, to answer your question directly, the great lockdown imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic gave me the mental space and time to write the manuscript between 2020 and 2021. I doubt if I could have written the book at the point I did, but for the lockdown.
How did you come about the title “How to Become a Big Man in Africa: Subalternity, Elites, and Ethnic Politics in Contemporary Nigeria”?
My initial response on the trajectory of the research and its evolution explains the title. I started out studying a socio-cultural group protesting the political configuration of the country and the nature of its ethno-regional configuration, particularly against the backdrop of military autocracy and emergent democratic rule. Then that morphed into the study of the internal dynamics of the group and the struggle for supremacy which led to the split into two factions, the Fasehun and Adams factions. Many other factions have since emerged.
And then, there was the question of violence within the groups in the contest for supremacy, the inter-ethnic violence, and the vigilante activities of the group which made the group very popular in urban areas. In the context of all these, politicians identified the salience of the group and its mass membership as potential tools for their electoral ambitions, which caused further rifts among the factions and within the factions. This also connected the group firmly to party and electoral politics, including the political ambitions of certain politicians and those who wanted to be or maintain their positions as state governors or even presidents. For instance, I deal with the latter in chapter 5 of the book entitled, “Playing (with) Big Men: Elites, Ethno-Regional Competition and Electoral Politics” – in terms of Adams’ relationships with Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan and his relationships with Governors Bola Tinubu and Gbenga Daniel.
As I hinted earlier, in the end, in reflecting on what I had studied for almost two decades, it occurred to me at a point that the transformation of Gani Adams himself as a social actor within a particular structural framework – whether you think about the group’s (OPC’s) structure, the structure of Yoruba political organization in relation to ethno-regional politics, and the structure of Nigerian party politics – was the core path to telling this story: The story of how a “young man” who had been socially disabled by the deep political and economic crisis of the Nigerian state and its irresponsible, even criminal, national elite leverages the socio-economic and political disabilities to challenge the system. He then uses his dissent and his resistance not merely to mobilize young people (the subaltern) to ensure socio-economic and political transformation but also as a ladder for personal social transformation. Adams’ story, for me, is one of the most compelling stories of personal social transformation in Nigerian public life in the last half a century. As a student of structure and agency, the leveraging of agency that I witnessed in this case was most fascinating.
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You don’t have to endorse the tactics and strategies that led Adams to become a Big Man from a high-school dropout eking out a living in Mushin and a foot-soldier of the democratic struggle. But, as a student of society or as a social observer, you cannot but be fascinated by his story. Therefore, tracing that process was how I came about the title of the book.
What are the challenges you encountered while following Gani Adams and other major figures in the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) for over two decades?
Well, the usual challenges you face as a researcher and the peculiar ones you will face in the specific circumstances. Generally, as I acknowledged in the book, in the earlier years, Dr. Fasehun and Adams were generous to me in giving me access to the meetings of the two factions, letting me observe the activities of the two factions, and granting many interviews. After a few years, I decided to concentrate on the Adams’ faction, which was called the “Militant Faction.”
One of the challenges I faced was getting to some of the low-income areas of the Lagos where the group usually held its National Coordinating Committee (NCC) meetings. I grew up in my early teens in Lagos. So, I knew of some of these areas, and in my adult life, particularly after I left journalism, I wasn’t eager to visit many of these areas. But I had to be there and stay around for endless hours to interact with the regular members of the group. The other challenge was how to get to know some of the most intimate secrets of the group. This is where my training as a reporter (in journalism) and as a researcher (in academia) became crucial. I stayed the course for many years while gathering the materials I could gather. I went about accessing some of the most intimate secrets of the groups in two ways. One was to find a few people I knew or had developed a relationship with who could reveal these to me. They helped in giving me a round picture of the man beyond the headlines or beyond what a scholar would call the “public transcripts.” The other was to wait for the opportune time. This came when both factions also fractured. Two or three factions emerged from the Adams’ faction, while at least one other faction emerged from the Fasehun faction. With these, the new factions members told me things they couldn’t tell me before the disagreements.
Of course, as a researcher, you recognize that some of the things you are being told were a function of the anger and frustrations of the group members. Therefore, it was essential to check the pieces of information and to present them either as manifestations of the grievances that emerge from the division within the group and/or as factual expressions of what went on behind the curtains that could be illuminating in terms of the public actions and activities of the group as well of as the leader of the group, that is, Adams. There are plenty of examples of these in the book.
The third challenge was the tension that the transformation of Adams to a Big Man caused in our relationship over time, notably after he received his ultimate acclaim as the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland. And this for me, as a researcher, was also fascinating. He was now less available than he was in the early years. And he was a big chief now, and even before becoming the Kakanfo, the transformation presented a different set of research challenges. But what I did was focus on the new forms of data generated by his new status that was useful for my study. For instance, though I am not on social media, I had research assistants and colleagues who fed me constantly with Adams’ activities on social media and the Internet, in general.
However, I must say that he granted me a lot on access over the years, apart from the fact that he also operated and still operates among the highest level of the elite that I also relate to since I study them. So, there were points of social convergence for us in some ways – as any readers of the book would find. This is why I had the unique insight demonstrated in the book as an ethnographer and social analyst. But I suspect these would also have their drawbacks.
Based on your findings, will you classify Gani Adams a hero or a bloody opportunist who knows the meaning of being in the right place at the right time?
That would be a rather simplistic conclusion. I was not looking to study “a hero” or “a bloody opportunist.” I was seeking social analysis based on observed social reality from the vantage point of an ethnographer and a student of society who happens to come from the same culture as Adams. What he represents as a social actor within a particular socio-cultural, economic, and political field is what I tried, both theoretically and empirically, to capture in the book. I leave the conclusions of who he is to the readers.
Aside Gani Adams are they other African figures who have been able to challenge existing models of political ascendancy?
Absolutely. There are countless others. In a comparative sense, within Nigeria, you could think of the ex-militants in the Niger Delta, particularly the leading ones, as young people who also went through similar forms of personal transformation and are now Big Men. Some of them are multi-millionaires, if not billionaires, now, including being traditional rulers or owners of universities. The question is, how can we account for their agencies within a particular structural context? That is what interests me. Beyond Nigeria, another comparative example is Julius Malema of South Africa, the Commander-in-Chief of a political party, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and member of the South African parliament. His story is similar in some respects to Adams. I am working on a comparative study of both men now, while another colleague is studying the ex-militants who are now the Big Men of the Niger Delta.
From your study, do you think the self-determination talk by the likes of Gani Adams is genuine or part of the strategy for political relevance?
Again, that was not the core focus of my research. But the book tracks the trajectory of the self-determination struggle in which Adams was a prominent figure. Readers will reach their own conclusions. But let me say that, in the early years of his engagement with the public process, Adams was one of the critical foot soldiers of the pro-democracy movement. There is no doubt that he made critical contributions at the time to the struggle to free Nigeria from the military’s stranglehold.
Have you seen the semblance of the sort of model that saw Gani Adams transforming from ‘area boy’ to ‘big man’ anywhere outside of Africa?
Technically, Adams was never an “area boy.” Although so many of his detractors described him as such when he emerged in the social scene. So, apart from young people who are actually proud of being “area boys,” “area boy” is also a term used in Nigeria for young people who are poor and unemployed. Dr. Fasehun, in his books, called Adams many names, including describing him and other members of the OPC as “an embodiment of poverty,” and Adams as an “illiterate” who earned a “meagre income” from being an “okada rider,” and so on.
Anyway, there are other examples outside of the continent, particularly in Central and South America, of similar transformations from subalterns to big men.
What are your expectations for this book? Do you hope to see it become one of the most cited political biographies in African Studies?
I only hope that people will read it in Nigeria, in Africa, in particular, and elsewhere worldwide. If I find a willing publisher, I hope to publish a Nigerian edition. There is no greater compliment for an author than for the work to be read. What happens beyond that is out of the author’s hands.
Let’s talk briefly about your current position, which saw you relocating to the U.S. after years in the UK. What does it entail?
I have been fortunate to have had opportunities in Nigeria, the UK, and the United States. But I am sad that members of my generation were driven out of Nigeria. We had a better hope for Nigeria. My generation was also the foot soldiers for the pro-democracy movement. While the likes of Gani Adams were protesting on the streets, some of us were working in the newspaper press, the student unions, and the civil rights movements. A significant part of that generation is now abroad. We sacrificed the best part of our youth to build a good country where we could grow up and nurture the next generation.
So, while as individuals, we might be doing well in our current vocations, in a sense, we feel a sense of failure about our collective sacrifices to build a better country. Though we thought we defeated the military in 1999, and we did in a sense. But the military and their allies appear to have had the last laugh. They remain directly or indirectly in charge of the country. And you can see the evidence of that all around us. It’s tragic.
