One of Africa’s foremost historians, Professor Toyin Falola, holds the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin, United States. In this interview by LASISI OLAGUNJU, Professor Falola answers questions on the American involvement in Nigeria’s anti-terror war, the Almajiri system, the state of our politics, particularly what drives governors’ mass defection into the ruling party, and on several other issues.
Sir, as a historian who has spent decades interrogating the Nigerian project, would you say the Nigerian nation today is experiencing a crisis of statehood, a crisis of leadership, or a crisis of imagination—or all three at once?
Nigerianness, as a project, is yet to be fully consolidated into an inclusive national identity. There is Nigeria, but there is no Nigerianism. The Nigerian postcolonial state was built on the divergent experiences of colonialism. Rather than adopting a reconciliatory model that would make Nigeria one nation of Nigerians, there has been divergence along religious and ethnic lines. This allowed the state to be poised for a structurally generated disharmony, in which ethnic nationalism would precede national nationalism. Only a tiny percentage of Nigerians benefit from the dividends of democracy.
In contrast, most people are shut out of the benefits of democracy, thereby portraying a leadership that is not responsive to people’s needs. This is, in fact, a failure of leadership. Furthermore, the deterioration of security agencies, which are resource-starved through the prioritization and politicization of policing, a situation that undermines policing and thereby insecurity, is a failure of leadership. It is, therefore, essential that we have a new generation of leaders who emerge not only as Nigerian patriots but also as Nigerian nationalists.
The intellectual/cultural facet of our problems must be addressed within the framework of a value revolution, where imagination must be rekindled within the bounds of cultural inheritance, rather than in the politicized construct of ethnicity. Hence, in this respect, it is not only a repair mission within a particular institution in Nigeria, but also a rethinking of what it means to be Nigerian, with an identity resilient enough to harness innovations.
Recent reports suggest increasing American security involvement in Nigeria, including intelligence cooperation and direct military actions. From a historical and sovereignty standpoint, how should Nigerians interpret this development? Is this partnership, proxy engagement, or a subtle erosion of national autonomy?
I have constantly reminded us that states in Africa, since the colonial era through the Cold War alliances and into the postcolonial era of security partnerships, have never acted independently of the power relations of the international system. Nigeria’s sovereignty in the postcolonial period is thus always negotiated and not assumed. Nigeria’s historical experience of security partnerships with the British colonial empire, and later with the US and China, among other powers, is the negotiation of sovereignty vis-à-vis vulnerability and the power relations of the international system. The expanding Nigerian partnerships for enhanced security cooperation with the USA, particularly in intelligence and military areas, should be considered in light of Nigerian internal security challenges and the long-standing demand for foreign assistance. Nigeria has made it clear that its organized cooperation efforts, together with the USA, as far as the struggle against terrorism and extremism is concerned, involve intelligence cooperation as well as joint military-focused assaults carried out in northwestern Nigeria.
The Nigerian Government has stated that these steps comply with the dictates of international law, as both parties consented thereto voluntarily. Secondly, assistance from external sources becomes essential when the state’s capacity is weak. Still, as I have maintained, this kind of state always attracts the great powers into its internal governance, thereby undermining state agency, as demonstrated in Nigeria’s attempt to seek foreign assistance. As I have argued, over time, stable alliances between a preeminent power and a weaker state can develop into an asymmetrical mode of dependence. Now, when this type of weaker state becomes overdependent on an external military presence for central security-sector work, proxyism is evident. This is not in the form of proxyism in the sense of Cold War patterns, that is, hard-line proxyism, but rather in softer, less rigid terms regarding proxyism delineated by “soft” or “informal” proxyism with consideration to security, security policy, and security priorities.
This new degree of activity, where the U.S. conducts airstrikes on Nigerian territory, but at the invitation of the Nigerian president, signifies an extensive deepening of a mode that began with training and procedures and intelligence gathering mandates. It also confuses “support” mandates with “operational” mandates. We could clearly see this point in an “interest”- driven relationship that is fraught with consequences, which could affect the sovereign decision-making capacity within Nigeria, based on developing internal capacity-building that would not be subject to imposition or mandates on foreign bases of security priorities. In the end, it is our sovereignty as a people that is called into question, not diminished in any way. This is a very live negotiation, and Nigerian leaders have, in effect, accepted direct military strikes and intelligence sharing, but only as part of a contingency plan to build local capacity, and where the Nigerian national agenda is congruent with US strategy. It is up to Nigerians to learn to see such circumstances as an instrument of opportunity for the building of local capacity, the exertion of the will of the sovereign, and international cooperation, adding to regional, rather than substituting for, local capacity.
Drawing from Africa’s long encounter with foreign interventions, from colonialism to the Cold War, what dangers should Nigeria be wary of when powerful nations begin to “help” manage its security crises?
My mantra has always been: colonization did not start with conquest; it began with the helping hand of ministering missionaries, traders, military trainers, “peacekeepers.” Britain entered Yorubaland to “stop wars.” France entered the Sahel to “stabilize.” The US entered many African states during the Cold War to “contain communism.” The crises in Africa are often seen as politically driven, socially rooted, and historically rooted. But foreigners are always convinced of threats to their security. The Nigerian variant of terror embraces the following: poverty, land disputes, the failure of the Nigerian State, corruption, and the disenfranchisement of Nigerian youth. The helping hand may not need to be spurned by Nigeria; the pointing finger must.
President Bola Tinubu inherited a deeply troubled security architecture. Nearly two years into his administration, how would you assess his handling of insecurity across the country, especially in the North-West, Middle Belt, and now the South-West?
In the Northwest, Tinubu’s engagement has been acknowledged, but substantive problem-solving remains elusive. The federal response lacks the integrated political, economic, and community dimensions needed. While the South-West is more stable overall, rising insecurity is a growing local concern that the federal government has been slower to prioritize relative to other zones. Overall, security under Tinubu shows effort without decisive transformation, reflecting the deep historical, socio-economic, and institutional roots of Nigeria’s multifaceted insecurity.
In your view, is Nigeria’s insecurity primarily a military problem, or does it reflect deeper failures in governance, justice, and social policy?
Nigeria is fighting wars, but it hasn’t established a state that makes violence impossible. This is a cyclical event. Whether it is the Niger Delta militants, Biafra agitations, or militarization without justice, it always means rebellion will recur. Violence speaks the language of negotiation when institutions fail. My interpretation of Nigeria’s history is that insecurity ensues when people feel that the state does not belong to them. Insecurity in Nigeria is 70% governance failure, 20% societal disintegration, and 10% the military factor. You cannot bomb corruption, land inequality, ethnic minorities, failing schools, and lost generations.
We are witnessing a wave of defections by elected governors to the ruling party. Historically, what does this pattern suggest about the health of democracy in postcolonial African states?
Historically, the phenomenon of elected governors defecting to the ruling party has traditionally served as an indicator not of consensus but of the weaknesses of institutions in postcolonial Africa. In the analysis of the formation of the African state, these phenomena are viewed as expressions of the continuity of what can be called the “patrimonial political culture,” in which allegiance is given not to ideology or to citizens but to power and the control of state resources. In many African democracies, parties are viewed as mere “survival machines” rather than as programmatic vehicles of democracy, and politicians defect not because of persuasion but because of the threat of being left out of patronage and relevance by associating with the opposition. In this regard, large-scale defections to the ruling party are a harbinger of the erosion of democracy. Desertions signal that there are elections, but political choice is gradually being smothered by fear, intimidation, and material needs. When politicians make beelines for the centre of power in large numbers, it means power has become an objective to be seized rather than something to be cared for in governance. Democracy becomes ritualistic rather than substantive. Citizens vote, but power remains in the hands of a cartel of the elite few. These instances have been foils in the lead-up to authoritarianism, as opposition is killed, not by banning it, but by exhausting it, intimidation, and starvation.
Do you see the current political drift as a genuine convergence of ideology or as elite survival politics? How real is the threat of Nigeria sliding into a one-party state?
What is happening in Nigeria’s political drift currently has little to do with ideological convergence but much to do with elite survival. Political parties in Nigeria have never been built around coherent political philosophies but are instead coalitions of ambition organized around access to state power. Whenever governors and powerbrokers defect en masse, they are not responding to policy alignment but to the gravitational pull of the federal centre, where security protection, financial leverage, and political immunity reside. This is the continuation of Nigeria’s postcolonial patrimonial tradition in which, for him, politics is not competition over ideas but negotiation over access to the state. The danger of a one-party state is, therefore, not imaginary but structural. Nigeria may retain elections and multiple party logos, but if opposition parties are starved of resources, defected into irrelevance, or intimidated into silence, pluralism becomes cosmetic. History shows that African one-party dominance often emerges not through constitutional bans but through elite convergence around power, as occurred in Nigeria in the late 1960s, in Tanzania under CCM, and in Senegal for decades. This is the way democracy dies quietly: not with coups but through the slow suffocation of meaningful political choice.
A university in Northern Nigeria recently announced 24 percent as its pass mark. As an education scholar, what does this signal about the state of higher education in Nigeria? What long-term consequences could such academic compromises have for national capacity, professionalism, and even national security?
A 24 percent pass mark is anything but an academic decision; it is a civilizational alarm. Universities are places where societies reproduce their intellectual, technical, and ethical capacities. When standards have collapsed this far, it is a sign and a symptom that higher education has been turned from a meritocratic knowledge system into a political and demographic management tool designed not to cultivate excellence but to absorb youth, manage regional inequality, and prevent unrest. I have long warned that when African universities abandon rigor in the name of access or stability, they cease to be engines of development and become factories of credentialism.
The long-term consequences are severe. Weak students translate into weak professionals: engineers who cannot build, doctors who cannot diagnose, teachers who cannot teach, and officers who cannot reason. Over time, state capacity would be reduced, corruption would increase, and national security would be weakened, as institutions would fill with individuals bearing certificates but lacking competence. I can add that a nation which devalues intellectual discipline eventually pays in poverty, and instability—because failed education produces failed governance, and failed governance produces violence. When universities fall, the state follows.
The Almajiri system has long been identified as both a cultural practice and a social crisis. From your research, how did it evolve into its present form?
Historically, the idea and practice of the Almajiri system were never meant, at any point in time, to be characterized by an unprecedented level of poverty and social abandonment. In fact, as has been explained from historical perspectives, the Qur’anic school pupils were incorporated into an organized social structure in which emirs, merchants, and families fed, housed, and morally supervised these pupils. The colonial era, however, destroyed this structure in the North, as its indirect rule left Northern institutions without financial substance, and Western-style education was patchily introduced, so that Islamic education received neither funding nor any governmental link. As time progressed, therefore, Qur’anic schools were forced into the almajiri economy, where children had to beg or starve, an incident that contributed, in the long run, to the devaluation of the esteemed learning practice, which has since become an assembly line for urban poverty and social marginalization.
Reform, thus, needs to be cultural and not punitive. In this regard, the Nigerian government needs to make the Qur’anic school part of the public school system by funding the Mallams to teach Islam alongside reading, technical skills, and civic engagement, rather than penalizing parents or shutting down schools. Community-feeding programs and the sponsorship of state-run Islamic schools will restore dignity to the alms boys by taking them off the streets and providing them with hope, rather than keeping them in the bottomless well of hopelessness they are in now. The radicalization is not challenged by arms but by belonging. Once the boys receive an education and take on value, the pool of hopelessness evaporates, and they become productive members of society with the potential to carve out a future for themselves.
Recent incursions of bandits into Kwara State and Ora in Osun State suggest that insecurity is no longer regionally contained. Should Nigerians be alarmed by this southward spread?
Yes, Nigerians should be worried. Historically speaking, what is being witnessed is the geographic diffusion of disorder, one of the most alarming stages in the existence of a nation, and one of the most perilous in the life of the nation in question. What happened in the ‘northern’ regions is that the violence is progressively becoming ‘national’—that is to say, it is no longer being controlled regionally; it is in the bloodstream of the nation. At that point, organized crime networks, terrorist groups, and illegal economies that cross over not only the boundaries of one region to another but also beyond the boundaries of one ‘ethnic’ group to another will indeed cease to be regional concerns. These problems become ‘parallel systems’ to the actual systems of power in the nation in place, and security will not be merely a security concern—it will be translated into a political economy concern. History is cruel to states that do not halt this problem early enough. Once violence is normalized across regions, three consequences ensue: trust in the state dissolves, communities take up guns, and war becomes self-replicating. This marks the way societies cross from chaos that can be governed into states of chronic instability, not from collapse but from eventual accommodation of fear as reality. When this happens, and people start making their own long-term plans around violence, it will be too late for the state.
Sir, 2025 has been particularly harsh for Nigeria’s poor: rising food prices, energy costs, and shrinking incomes. From a socio-historical perspective, how would you characterise this moment? Are we witnessing what you might call a “slow violence” against people with low incomes, one that lacks spectacle but devastates lives daily?
Absolutely, one could argue that 2025 represents a paradigm of “slow violence” against the masses of Nigeria. African states have been complicit in creating this paradigm of “slow violence,” of “slow death,” through governance policies that promote elite capture rather than equal distribution; that Nigeria’s poor are caught in this paradigm of “slow violence,” or “slow death,” not because of one catastrophic event, per se, but because of the “slow violence” of neglect implied in governance failure. This is a danger because it compromises social cohesion and social mobility. Families reduce expenses on education, health, and nutrition; young people turn towards dangerous survival strategies; the state’s moral credibility starts deteriorating because this slow violence may be even more destructive. After all, it’s not a spectacular crisis but one that “normalizes suffering, mutes dissent and depletes the social capital that’s required for social development.” It can become the breeding ground for unrest. It’s an invisible crisis that can make state failure “deteriorate” because it’s an internal problem that compromises social development.
Finally, sir, given Nigeria’s history of survival against daunting odds, what gives you hope today, and what should urgently worry us if we are to avoid repeating the tragedies of our past?
What gives hope is Nigeria’s resilience and adaptive ingenuity. Despite centuries of colonial disruption, military coups, civil war, and economic mismanagement, Nigerians have continuously reconstituted social life, commerce, culture, and political engagement. Communities innovate in the face of scarcity, youth movements mobilize for change, and civil society persistently holds leaders to account. The rise of tech hubs, grassroots advocacy, and regional cooperation reflects a civilizational capacity to survive and remake itself. This demonstrates that even when institutions falter, the country’s human and cultural resources remain a source of regeneration. What should worry us urgently is the normalization of crises. Historically, there have been repeated failures in governance, the militarization of politics, the erosion of institutions, and the gradual surrender of sovereignty. Nigeria risks reproducing cycles of suffering rather than breaking them. The task is to harness resilience through competent governance, investment in human capital, and moral imagination, so that survival becomes a form of transformation rather than mere endurance.
Culled from Tribune Online