On Tuesday June 9, 2009 2.27 I received an e-mail from New York informing me of an interview given by one Dr Taiyemiwo Ogunade to Saharareporters. In that story Ogunade stated the following, that:
i. At the time in which I was the Chairperson of the Department of Black Studies, that he Ogunade was a professor in my Department and therefore a member of the faculty of City College of the City University of New York. This is a statement of fact that is easily verifiable. CUNY keeps good records of all employees, part time, adjunct and full time. Saharareporters should check with City College the status of Ogunade while I was the Chairperson of the Department of Black Studies;
ii Brigadier Buba Marwa while he was the Military Attache to the UN came to City College to negotiate with the College the instituting of a postgraduate degree in Peace and Conflict Resolution and gave City College $30million.
iii. City College received this $30million which it returned to Brigadier Marwa after the strenuous opposition of Mr Ogunade to the deal. Has Saharareporters checked with City College whether such grant from the Nigerian Government was ever made to City College? The President of City College at the material time was Professor Yoland T. Moses and it should be a matter that City College would be glad to clear up. Did President Moses receive $30million from the Nigerian Government to inaugurate a Master’s Programe in Peace and Conflict Resolution? Did she returned such money to Brigadier-General Buba Marwa? City College will be very glad to avail the Saharareporters of the truth.
iv. That he Ogunade opposed my desire to receive the $30million “but the chair of the department, John Muyibi Amoda “badly wanted the money. I kept fighting and one day the College authorities acceded to my request. When I got home the College had dismissed me, but also I got a fax message saying the $30milion had been returned to Marwa. But between Marwa and Abacha they never returned the money to the treasury. They shared it”.
From the above, Ogunade implies that the negotiation between Brig-General Marwa and the City College was mediated by me; that I persuaded the College to receive the grant; but because of his protests, the College fired him and returned the money to Brig-General Marwa. This aspect of the story I can categorically state as a figment of a pathologically confused imagination. I never met Brigadier-General Marwa at City College or anywhere as the emissary of President Moses. Ogunade asserts that money was received by the College and that presumably would be through me. There was no such giving and receiving of $30million at City College; City College returned no such grant which should have been a grant to the Department of Black Studies of which I was the Chair. There was therefore no such $30million which was returned to Brig-General Marwa; there was no such money which was not returned to the treasury of the Nigerian Government. The City College drama in which President Moses, Professor John Moyibi Amoda and Brig-General Marwa featured was an evil invention of Ogunade. No such thing happened under President Yoland T. Moses and during my tenure as the Chair of Black Studies. If Ogunade could create such a story from his imaginings, can anyone doubt that his story about Dele Giwa is no invention? If there is any grain of truth in the story of Ogunade, Newswatch will be only too glad to verify it. Has Saharareporters bothered to check this story with Newswatch?
I will now address the truth regarding Mr Ogunade’s relationship to me during my tenure as Chair. Mr Ogunade at that time was not an employee of City College and therefore could not be sacked by City College. This much was the case while I was the chair of the department. Mr Ogunade’s presence at City College through his social links with members of the Department, gave him access to the Department which he exploited to portray himself as a bona fide member of City College. He was never one before I became the Chair and he was never one after I became the Chair. I do not know what he is now after my retirement from the College as Emeritus Professor in the Department of Political Science at the College.
Between 1996 and 1997 the City University of New York embarked upon the creation of new and pioneering programmes at the University level and called for proposals that could be funded and developed as City University-wide programmes. 8 proposals were adjudged the best. The office of University Relations at 535 East South Street New York NY 100 put out for immediate release the following: CUNY Faculty Win Eight Diamond Foundation – Sponsored Grants for Interdisciplinary Programs, Some First in Nations
“Working with a three-year, $225,000 grant from the Aaron Diamond Foundation, a CUNY faculty committee chaired by Graduate School Professor Stanley Aronowitz awarded New Vision seed grants to the ground-breaking proposals, which promote collaborative relationships across disciplines and campuses. The awards went to:
- Queens College – The Cities and Civilizations Program
- Booklyn College – The Children’s Studies
- Hunter College – Human Rights Program
- The College of Staten Island – Applied Mathematics
(a) Hunter College of Social Work’s Community
Organization and Development Program
(b) Kingsborough Community College and
(c) Queens College’s Community and Labor
Organization Program
City College – Peace Building and Peace Making
This is a grant to City College for the proposal that I authored. The following is the description of the grant as announced by the Office of University Relation:
“At City College, Professor John Moyibi Amoda and colleagues won funding for their proposed interdisciplinary BA/MA Honors Program in UN-Related Peace Building and Peace Making Statecraft. CUNY faculty and United Nations Secretariat personnel will work to develop courses in such areas as conflict anticipation, conflict prevention, risk assessment and mitigation and post-conflict peace-keeping. Students will specialize in one of four world regions. The program assumes the perspective of the Security Council of the United Nations as its primary reference, since the institution has the mandate to address the issue of state power conflicts worldwide, according to Professor Moyibi Amoda. Its aim is to develop professionals in the areas of peace-building statecraft with multi-disciplinary specializations, and will allow students to enter a new field on the ground floor. The City University of New York, the nation’s leading urban university, comprises 10 senior colleges, six community colleges, one technical college, a graduate school, a law school, a medical school and an affiliated school of medicine. More than 206,000 degree credit students and 150,000 adult and continuing education students are enrolled throughout the five boroughs of the City of New York”.
The CUNY Program on Peace building and Peacemaking was to be organized and offered at City College and its graduates would receive a CUNY BA/MA Honors in UN Related Peace Building and Peace-making Statecraft.
This was the program that Taiwo Ogunade decided to sabotage when he heard from his conversations in the Black Studies Department that there were ongoing discussions to create a specialized version of the New Vision Program for training for UN and AU Force Commander’s assignments. The Commandant of the National College was keen to have such a program developed and correspondents on this initiative mediated by me will be quoted in full in this rejoinder to Ogunade.
At the time of Ogunade’s intervention I was involved in developing Nigeria’s International Training Institute for Peace (ITIP) a UN and Organization of African Unity affiliate. And as indicated about the author in the back cover of each of the 5-Books of the ITIP Compendium authored by me, I was thus described “Professor John Moyibi Amoda graduated from Dartmouth College in 1965. He attended the University of California in Berkeley. He is presently a tenured Professor and Chairman of the Black Studies Department at City College, New York. He is also the inaugural Director General of the International Training Institute for Peace (ITIP)”.
The ITIP Compendium was the principal task I undertook in the founding of ITIP and was the basis of the policy research in peace building and peace making that provided the bridge between peace support field operations and professional academic peace support training. Ogunade had no ability or capacity to appreciate this necessary integration of practical problem solving and reflection on the same. He knew nothing of the New Vision Proposal nor of its genesis in ITIP. All he needed to go to war was that Nigeria was somehow interested in the New Vision Program and decided to wage his anti-Abacha propaganda war against me because of the presumed link between the Nigerian Ministry of Defence and the City College.
In the study of Nigeria’s global peace-keeping commissioned by the Ministry of Defence and published under the title “Nigeria’s 35years in Global Peacekeeping” and with the forward written by Major-General A.A. Abubakar, Chief of Defence Staff, Ministry of Defence, the reason for the relationship between the Ministry and ITIP was thus stated:
“There is already a Center for International Peace Keeping Training in Cairo Egypt and an International Training Institute for Peace (ITIP) in Lagos, Nigeria, which could form the intellectual hub of a continent-wide network of training centers” p45.
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On 5 June 1996, the Organization of African Unity through a grant from the Canadian Government prepared a survey of Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Ghana towards an assessments of African Peacekeeping Training Capacity. The members of the project team executing the study were:
1. Mr William Nhara, OAU;
2. Mr Mark Malan, Institute for Defence Policy, South Africa;
3. Brig. General Pol Bergevin (rtd) Lester B. Pearson International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Canada.
The background to the study is thus described:
“In order to prevent or mitigate the problems caused by continued conflict on the African continent, the OAU has initiated a number of measures. These include the establishment of the Central Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution and decision to establish an Early Warning Network, a Conflict Management Centre, and a Crisis Management Room at the OAU Headquarter in Addis Ababa. Yet, it has been recognized that these efforts cannot of their own produce the desired result without an effective capacity within the ambit of the organization to deploy Peacekeeping force to countries or regions affected by armed conflicts. It has been recognized further that the ability to deploy peace-keeping forces effectively will depend upon the availability of national contingents which are trained to a high standard according to a common doctrine. But little is yet known about the existing capacity of African institutions to train for peace-keeping. It is the need to know
and document such a capacity that has led the OAU to set up a Project Team to survey those African institutions which currently carry out formal peace-keeping training. The said African institutions have not been named but it would appear that the countries suspected, and may be expected to possess them include Nigeria. Accordingly the Project Team will visit Nigeria”.
The National War College was the institution chosen to coordinate Nigeria’s presentation to the OAU Team. ITIP’s role in this endeavor was to be the contribution of a paper on capacity building investment in Nigeria with a focus on conflict prevention on the African Continent. The principal resource of Nigeria’s contribution to international peace-building was the Engineering Capacity for Within Nations Conflict Resolution Statecraft – Nigeria’s ITIP Compendium.
The 5-Books Compendium solely authored by me are:
- The United Nations and the Organization of African Unity – A New Partnership for Africa’s Agenda for Peace;
- Third Party Interventions and the Designing of UNESCO’s Culture of Peace Programs; cultivating the Disciplines of Peace-making Statecraft;
- Humanitarian and Preventive Diplomacy, Issues, Analysis and Policy;
- Economic Development and Capacity Building for Conflict Preventions: Problems and Prospects for OAU Member States;
- The Diasporic African Interest in the Americas.
The ITIP Compendium was designed in aid of systematizing the analysis of issues raised in the course of contestations for state building in post colonial new societies and dealt with the categories of problems confronted in the course of third party mediations.
The involvement with OAU, the establishment of ITIP, and the research and the authorship of the Compendium had prepared the grounds for establishing a discipline for Black Studies majors that could prepare students for careers in the United Nations System and as well provide professionalized training for military generals chosen for Force Commanders Assignments. There were no such programs for this purpose in the 90s and the CUNY Program was the first of its kind in the Nation. While efforts to organize this joint BA/MA Program were afoot, Ogunade proceeded on a campaign of misinformation. With nothing but an image of an insider to legitimize him, Ogunade distributed leaflets containing libelous allegations against me. In this campaign neither Ambassador Olusola or Brig-General Buba Marwa were featured at all.
Taiwo Ogunade knew very well that smear tactics could kill an initiative by making its principal architect controversial – and Ogunade capitalized on the innocence of his audience. This is a copy of Ogunade’s leaflet 13 years ago:
“Who are you reserving???
Prof John Moyibi Amoda
Chair, Black Studies Department
City College of New York
Salary: $80,000p.a
Teaching Load: One class
Attendance in Class: 3 – 4 weeks per Semester
Number of Students in Class: Six
Students Grades: D’s & F’s
Versus
Ambassador John Moyibi Amoda
Director-General: Nigerian International Training Institute for Peace
Duties: Spreading Propaganda for Dictator Sanni Abacha in the United States and Abroad
Touring Allowance: $60.00 per day
Out of Station Allowance: $185.00 per day
Duty Time: 6 – 8 Weeks per semester
Versus
City College of New York
Result
Students Suffering
City College Losing
By Laws
The City University of New York
Section 12.2 Whenever any compensation, in addition to the regular annual salary is authorized to be paid to a member of any college, university or board staff college, universities or board, such compensation shall not be continued beyond one year unless reported to and specifically renewed by the Board. Presently Prof J.M. Amoda Teaches no class or course at City College but is earning full pay from CUNY”.
The intent of the leaflet was evident, to scuttle the CUNY Program on UN-Related Peace Making and Peace Building by making allegations calculated to destroy my career at City College and effect my removal as Chair of the Department.
His alleged specific misdeeds were matters which the Appointment and Promotion Committees of the Department and of the Division of Social Science could investigate and bring before the Dean of the Division who could take the matter through the disciplinary process of the College. What then was the consequent actions taken by the City College authorities being addressed by Ogunade? It is this leaflet campaign that Ogunade refers to as to as his struggle to frustrate the collaboration between the Nigerian Military Government and the College. What was the response of the Dean to these allegations? If Ogunade’s intention was to have me fired, he failed and that woefully. His figures on class enrollments can be checked. He obviously was ignorant of the fact that there are regulations about class load and class size and these regulations have inputs from the faculty and the College administration. Someone has the last say on class load and class size and that official is not the
instructor nor the Head of the Department – the Dean of the Division proposes, but the Registrar’s office and the Provost of the College have the final say. There are controls and even the cleaner is not outside of the radar of such control. Ogunade imagines CUNY is run as he runs his life, but this happily is not so.
Ogunade attacks on many fronts. His report on grades is not meant to inform the City College officials who must keep records on each student’s performance but to ensure that students do not enroll in my classes. If my classes suffer from low enrolments, there will be no need to scare students away. But if this is not so and you want to ensure during registration for courses that students do not enroll in Professor Amoda’s classes, put it out that he is a tough grader and those students who may have heard that Black Studies classes are fun and easy would be encouraged to avoid Amoda’s classes.
On the issue of my employment as Ambassador, it is clear that Ogunade is clueless. To enable me function diplomatically as the inaugural Director-General of the International Training Institute for Peace I was appointed as Ambassador-In-Residence attached to the National War College. I received no emolument from the War College or from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or from any agency of the Nigerian Government. My appointment and work was to ensure the international establishment of the Institute.
Yes, my intellectual property as the author of the Compendium whose publication was paid for by the Nigerian Government is of immense value-as it is for all authors and inventors. Yes, when the Institute would have been fully established and operational, I would of necessity would have to apply for leave without pay to run the Institute. In the planning phase, it was enough to be part of the process of creating de novo an ITIP before the Egyptian and Canadians. This is why it was ITIP, not the Egyptian or Canadian Centre that was asked by UNESCO to conceptualize the framework for its Culture of Peace Division at its inception. The contract was adated 17 November 1995 for this task on UNESCO form 205A (vi.93 page1/5 and signed by Leslie G. Artherley, Director, Culture of Peace Programme; the result of this project was the ITIP Volume on UNESCO Culture of Peace.
Saharareporters please check with the Nigerian Embassy in Washington, from the Nigerian Permanent Mission to the UN or from the Nigerian Consulate, for records of payments to me – whether in terms of per diem or out of station allowance. It is clear that Ogunade is drawing from his purported employment as a minor civil servant in the Ministry of Information. This was what he said about his pre-Americas employment. It is reported that he now parades himself as a Professor of Musicology – this advancement must be a post 2003 accomplishment for he was not so employed at City College in the Department I chaired. As a civil servant you receive “per diem” and out of station allowance for travels within the country. But when you travel abroad you receive “estacodes” that includes both the per diem and any other upkeep allowances. Saharareports should kindly find out what were the estacades for ambassadors traveling out and what are the per diem and out of station
allowance for Ambassador traveling within. He obviously was appealing to the gallery and was not expecting the students unfamiliar with civil service practices to know the difference between facts and fictions. In this foray into the affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs he overreaches himself. Ogunade at least did not allege that I as Ambassador was on the payroll of Brig Buba Marwa. Saharareporters should kindly ask the “original documents” record keeper to provide evidence of salaries and allowances paid to me. He will not be able to provide such records – for they exist only in his troubled mind.
It should therefore be noted that Ogunade only had one mission and it was one of scuttling the CUNY Program because it was the gossip that the Nigerian Military Government in an image laundering public relations was being brought to City College by the Chair of the Black Studies Department through the back door. The truth is for different from what Ogunade reported in his interview with Saharareporters. The events that led to his campaign of calumny had nothing to do with Brig. General Buba Marwa. It all had to do with Ogunade opposition to the interest of the Nigerian Military Government in the CUNY BA/MA Program. Ogunade’s leaflet establishes this fact. He did not in 1996/1997 need the tarnishing of the image and reputation of the Military Attache to the UN or of that of Ambassador Olusola. There was no mention of a Military delegation to City College who informed him of their purpose. All he needed for his case was the Chair of the Black Studies Department. There is one
who was interested in having a version of the CUNY Program established for the training of Nigerian Military officers at City College – that person was Major-General Chris Abutu Garuba and he wrote trough me on this matter to Professor Yolanda T. Moses, President of City College. His two letters on this matter are reproduced below.
On 13 August 1996 Major-General Chris Abutu Garuba wrote as follows in letter Ref CMDT/CA/01/96/PER addressed to President Yoland T. Moses City College of New York through John M. Amoda Chairman Black Studies Department of New York and Inaugural Director General, International Training Institute for Peace (ITIP), Headquartered in Nigeria.
“Dear President,
1. I write as the executive head of the National War College to acquaint you of our deep interest in a pioneering effort of your Institute with respect to the proposed “Interdisciplinary BA/MA Honors program in UN-related peace-building and peace-making statecraft”.
2. The National War College is the apex educational institution for officers of the Nigerian Armed Forces and our programs are open to appropriately qualified officers from other African Countries. We presently avail the College of a master’s level course in strategic studies through the University of Ibadan, Nigeria’s premier University.
3. After exploratory discussions with Professor Amoda, the Inaugural Director General of the International Training Institute for Peace (ITIP) and Chairman of the Black Studies Department at your Institution, I am keenly interested in a link with City College similar to that presently subsisting between the National War College and the University of Ibadan (UI). The National War College would want to offer an opportunity for course programs in Masters of Arts in Peace-Building and Peace-Making to thirty (30) officers at City College of New York. Our intention is to be part of your first in-take in September 1997.
4. As a Force-Commander for the United Nations Mission in Angola, my two years field experience has more than persuaded me on the necessity of educating top level officers of Africa’s Armed Forces on the vital and necessary disciplines of peace-building and peace-making. Peace-making and peace-building entail the reconstruction of societies, states, and economies of countries like Angola that have rarely enjoyed peace. It also involves building institutional breaks that slow down the process of conflict escalation through effective management of existing conflicts. A thorough multidisciplinary approach will be necessary for cultivating the competence the next generation Force Commanders must bring to the missions assigned them. The program of study which Professor Amoda and his colleagues are developing at City College for CUNY holds out such promise.
5. I have brought the interest of the National War College in the City College program to the notice of our Governing Board for necessary approval. My discussion with Professor Amoda is reassuring for he knows that projects of peace-making and peace-building are statecraft projects and are therefore essentially capacity building enterprises. Adequate definitions of subject matter would require inputs from parties to conflicts, the Security Council of the UN, past Force Commander etc. His concept of involving these Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations with commensurate exposure to the subject matter is a safeguard against impractical academic approach to such high level issues of statecraft.
6. I am prepared to participate in creating the Network of Institutions that will be needed to make the City College program effective. This investment in adequate planning is obviously a case of enlightened self-interest, for the better the programs, the more cost effective an investment it will be for all concerned.
7. I look forward to hearing from you soonest on this matter and others that you may want to bring to my attention” Signed Chris Garuba, Major General, Commandant.
The letter’s content describes the nature of the relationship between the National War College and City College envisaged by the Commandant. Whether this be propaganda or not, can be determined by the reader. The Commandant dealt with matters that are continental in their scope and from a perspective of one who had served the Security Council as a Force Commander.
A second letter dated 29 August 1996 similarly addressed Ref NWC/111/1/G is reproduced:
“Dear Professor
Re: City University BA/MA Programme in Peace Making and Peace Building Statecraft
1. You may just be receiving the original copy of a letter addressed to you on our interest in the above named programme. You will recall that I stated in my letter that the National War College presently has a relationship with the premier University of our country enabling graduates of the War College to enroll in Master’s Programme in Strategic Studies. We have conveyed our interest in developing a relationship similar to that with the University of Ibadan with City College for annual intake of 30 graduates of the War College in the Master Programme in Peace Making and Peace Building.
2. Further to my last letter to you on this subject, I have decided that the War College will reserve 15 slots for non-Nigerian candidates. Five slots will go to the West African subregion, 5 to East Africa while the remaining 5 slots will be reserved for the graduates of the Egyptian War College. These unsolicited gestures are a result of my experience as Force Commander in Angola and demonstrate my appreciation of the need to afford the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity the caliber of military expertise that post cold war peace building mission require.
3. I am appreciative of the pressures on the Security Council to invest more in capacity building for peace building and I look forward to participating in a programme development process networking the secretariats of the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity, the CUNY faculty and the War College. It is for the same reason that I have requested Professor Amoda, the Coordinator of the CUNY Faculty to invite the participation of the Secretariat of the Organization of African Unity in this project. This approach recommends itself in the pioneering stage when excellence of foundations is most critical for the development of usable and practical skills and competence.
4. I am looking forward both to hearing from you and perhaps playing host to you soon in our lovely campus at Abuja” Signed, Chris Garuba, Major-General, Commandant.
It is in this calm sea of reflection on how the promises of the post cold war could be realized that Ogunade, captain of hells mischief makers, set forth to make City College a site for his Anti-Abacha campaigns. This was a time for confidence building between two institutions, the National War College and CUNY. I do not know the backers of Ogunade – whoever they were, if they meant good for Nigeria, Africa and the World, they could have requested a meeting in which all the available documents could have been reviewed with them so that intelligent distinction between support for the UN and support of a seating government could be made. No request for such meeting ever canvassed.
This is why I am led to conclude that Ogunade was and is a lone ranger self-commissioned, ruthless and a man by-passed by events in which he would like to be featured in heroic terms. The truth is that he succeeded as a destroyer rather than as a builder – He is still hell-bent to cause more confusion and destruction. He is only useful to gossipers who want to be privileged participants of causes to which they are perfect strangers. Saharareporters are free to interview Major-General Chris Abutu Garuba on the authencity of the letters reproduced in this document. I expect Saharareporters to give same publicity to this rejoinder as they gave to their “newsmaker”, Taiwo Ogunade.
Right of Reply:
This response is copied to: Major-General Chris Abutu Garuba, Ambassador Segun Olusola, Amb Buba Marwa, Nigeria Ambassador to South Africa, City College of New York, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, Chief of Defence Staff, Federal Ministry of Defence, Commandant, War College, Abuja, Secretary to the Federal Government of Nigeria, The Nation, Newswatch.
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