On October 2nd, an online conversation was conducted by the Program of African Studies of Northwestern University between Professor Chris Abani and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka.1 It was the resumption of a conversation between the two writers and scholars at the New York Public Library in November 2019. In response...
In this talk and related activities, I hope to inspire others to take up one of the greatest challenges of our era: narrowing the governance gap which is at the root of many of Africa’s development and security dilemmas. In view of the emergence of many fragile and failed states,...
What sets this initiative apart is the commitment to deepening ties between African and non-African institutions and making them more seamless and routine. There is a need to make this case to US institutions - lobbying them to digitize/provide open access, creating relationships with African institutions, prioritizing partnerships and academic...
In this essay, I will focus on the fifth theme of the Collaborative Learning Initiative: Reclaiming Security. Attempts to reclaim security in many African countries, tragically, often lead to greater insecurity as rulers respond by heightening repression. Some even close down access to social media and global communications thereby harming...
In May 1991 the allied armies of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) and the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) overthrew the 27-year military regime (Dergue) in Ethiopia. During the succeeding 27 years, the EPRDF-dominated government attracted one of the highest per capita levels of external aid in the...
Plenary Address to the African Economic Conference of the African Development Bank and the Economic Commission for Africa Addis Ababa, December 4-6, 2017
A Dialogue on Nation-Building took place in Bishoftu, Ethiopia, on January 14-16, 2018. I was one of a dozen individuals invited to serve as resource persons for this meeting of over a hundred representatives from the government, civil society, political and faith-based organizations. The aim of the gathering was to...
This is the text of a public address at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs delivered soon after the inauguration of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. It identified several priorities after fifteen and a half years of military government. The country’s eroded legislative, judicial, and other state institutions needed to be rebuilt...
This opinion piece, written by two long-term students of Nigerian politics, proposed a different course to the one taken following the death in mid-1998 of a military tyrant and the elected president he had imprisoned. It called for the creation of a caretaker national government of respected civilians that would...
This revised version of a paper presented at a conference at M.I.T. on State, Conflict, and Democracy in 1997 pulled together key dimensions of a Nigeria that had drifted far from constitutional and democratic governance. State and society had become increasingly criminalized; the educational system and other social sectors were...
More than taking Nigeria back into the “dismal tunnel” of military rule, after seizing power in November 1993, Sani Abacha raced through the playbook he knew as a senior member of Babangida’s junta. Like Babangida, he pushed back the announced date for the return to civilian rule, launched an exercise...
When this testimony was given, there was still hope that Ibrahim Babangida would transfer the presidency to the elected Moshood Abiola before he left office on August 27, 1993. In that way, Nigeria would join the wave of post-Cold War democratizing nations. I had earlier called for a “transition in...
A long-running wager took place between the Babangida regime (1985-1993) and Nigerian civic, professional and political groups that the former would honor its commitment to usher in a Third Republic via free and fair elections. The June 12, 1993 elections were as free, fair and competently administered as could be...