Obioma Nnaemeka is a Chancellor’s Professor of French, Women/Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Indiana University, Indianapolis. She is the only African in the university with the title and the first black woman in her faculty to receive it.
At 74, she remains an active academic, having bagged honourary awards from different parts of the world for her contributions in various areas of law, humanities and social sciences.
In May 2022, she received an honourary doctorate as a Doctor of Humane Letters from the American University of Paris and in May 2023, she will receive another from the University of Kwazulu- Natal, South Africa.
In this interview, Mrs Nnaemeka, who hails from Agulu in Anambra State, south-east Nigeria, talks about the precarious state of the Nigerian education sector and what Nigerians in the diaspora have done. She also touches on the upcoming 2023 general elections.
Excerpts:
Q: Can you recall your early childhood in Nigeria?
Nnaemeka: The thing is I come from a family, we are not wealthy but it is a family that placed a high premium on education. So, my parents did everything so we could go to school. And my elder sister was a school headmistress, she nurtured us.
So education was central to my upbringing and I will tell you something about me. When I was little, I was very skinny, but I had a big head. So they would call me Grace isi okpo (Grace big head). My English name is Grace. And every time all these women will come and touch my head and in Igbo say “so uburu di ni isi nwatakiria” translated in English as a very brainy/brilliant child. They thought I was a smart kid because of that big head so I prevailed.
Fortunately, I went to Queen’s School, Enugu. At the time, our principal was an Irish woman, Mrs Patrick, and her husband was a reverend gentleman. In my last two years at Queen’s School, she gave me a scholarship to finish. We were the first set that studied French in West Africa in the Anglophone area, and I was so good at French. I was the top student in French; so she said so that you will get that big prize for Queens School, the best French student. So that’s how I got into French and then graduated, but that first step has been extraordinary.
And from that scholarship she gave me, I have had scholarships all the way to PhD, my parents paid nothing.
I went to Nsukka. When I came to Nsukka, I also got a scholarship, the East Central State scholarship when Ukpabi Asika was the governor. So I got that to go through Nsukka and when I finished at Nsukka there was a programme they had at that time called the Junior Research Fellow. And what they do is to take the top of the graduating class in every department and they will bring you back when you graduate to spend one year at the university as a junior researcher.
When you finish that one year, then UNN will send you to do your PhD with a scholarship and the idea is a way to grow faculties. So when you finish you come back to teach at Nsukka. So I got a scholarship to go to do my PhD. And I also got a federal scholarship for PhD at the same time. So I told Nsukka to give mine to somebody else to save their money. So I came and did my doctorate.
So in effect, what I am saying is that education for me, to come up to this point, I have to pay homage to the route that really prepared me, and also, to thank those; my principal at Queens School for the generosity of UNN, everybody, from my sister who was a headmistress. So I owe a lot to everybody. So, where I am right now is not just my effort. I owe so much to so many places and so many people.
I always tell people when they are around, they will say, “Oh, you are great” and I say, no it is a collective effort and I want to recognise that. So this is what brought me to this journey, where I am now. And I am teaching at Indiana University.
Q: Tell me more about your sister who was a headmistress and you, as a young child.
Nnaemeka: My sister, her name is Mrs Joy Maduka. She married an engineer, Vincent Maduka. The most beautiful relationship he had with my sister.
My sister was in a position to help us. We are seven in the family and I told you, I am not from a rich family. My parents were working hard and when things came to a really tough spot, my sister would chip in; that is where she came in and she married a man who was not getting in the way of her helping her siblings.
My sister would be teaching us and every vacation, she would come and pick us up. We were living in Enugu but she was teaching in rural areas like Nkpologwu, Mgbakwu etc. She would always pick us up so we were spending all our vacations with her.
She was a headmistress somewhere but she was also our first teacher. She will teach us and she will help us in so many ways. The other advantage my sister gave me, which appears in my scholarship, is that she did not teach in the big cities – Enugu, Onitsha – she was teaching in the villages and I got to spend time in the villages.
I learnt the wisdom of Igbo land and it appears in my work. I was able to have this wonderful relationship with village kids, and with the villages and there is so much wisdom in Igbo land. So, those times I spent in the village on vacation were extremely important.
I will give you one sentence I said in Paris, in May when I went to receive an honourary doctorate. The first thing I said was that my work is anchored in the wisdom and knowledge of my homeland, Igbo land; beautiful place, beautiful people; that was my first sentence and it was my sister that took me to those places, to those corners of wealth of knowledge and wisdom I tapped into to do the work I do. So that is the role she played.
Q: I find very interesting the point you made about your sister having a husband who did not interfere.
Nnaemeka: My sister’s husband, like, you know, it happens sometimes in our homeland when a man marries a woman, he would not want the woman to help her siblings. You know, “I married you, you are my property, forget your family.” My sister did not do that because she married a good man, Vincent Maduk, an extraordinary man.
He did not get in the way of my sister. You want to help your siblings? Yes. So if my parents are in a position where school fees are not complete, and my sister can complete it, her husband did not get in the way. That is what I am saying.
She married a good man so she was able to contribute to our education. So when I was getting all the scholarships, I sort of relieved my family because then, instead of caring for me, right from secondary school, economically, whatever they had they invested in my siblings. So I was able to sort of lift the burden from them. But my sister was instrumental to where I am today.
I will tell you a story. In August, I visited Nigeria. I was on my way to Senegal. I stopped at Abuja, my kids asked me not to go to the East (Nigeria’s South-east region) because it is very dangerous – this past August.
Why did I want to come to Nigeria? I wanted to see my sister. I had not seen her for almost two and a half years.
I was in Nigeria working in the Delta when COVID exploded and then prematurely, I came back to the US. I had not seen my sister for two years.
I will tell you a story. In August, I visited Nigeria. I was on my way to Senegal. I stopped at Abuja, my kids asked me not to go to the East (Nigeria’s South-east region) because it is very dangerous – this past August.
Why did I want to come to Nigeria? I wanted to see my sister. I had not seen her for almost two and a half years.
I was in Nigeria working in the Delta when COVID exploded and then prematurely, I came back to the US. I had not seen my sister for two years.
And I will pick up the phone and she will call me and I am crying on the phone like a kid. I say “Sister I miss you so much, I want to see you, I want to touch you.”
When I came to Nigeria, I sneaked into Awka. I took that risk because I wanted to see my sister so badly. I am just trying to connect it to tell you how much I owe that woman.
Eventually, I stayed in a hotel in Awka because I was afraid to start going into the state. I did not know what was going on there.
So I stayed in this hotel and they brought my sister there. When I saw her, I held her for 13 minutes. I hugged her for 13 minutes. Tears were just rolling down my face. I said “Sister”, it was such a wonderful moment I was able to hug my sister. I am telling you this story to let you know how that woman is central to my life.
Q: Would it be appropriate to call you the scholarship child?
Nnaemeka: You do not need to call me a scholarship child. You know, I was fortunate. I was able to get a scholarship, so I am not like the poster child for scholarships or something. I got a scholarship for secondary school to PhD. I was just lucky. I am not the most intelligent but I was lucky. And I had people who held my hand as a kid, so when we think of people’s success, we also have to think of their journey. There are people that held your hand at some point so you could stand, so we have to recognise that.
I pay homage to my teachers. Flora Nwapa, the writer, was my teacher in secondary school and she followed me up to my PhD. Every time she wants to know how I am doing, I owe those people a lot. She was my Geography teacher when I was in Queens School.
Q: That is really beautiful. Let us walk directly into who you are today and your choice of career. A lot of people wanted to be doctors, lawyers, those very ‘shiny’ career paths.
Nnaemeka: Well, right now, I will say I am a professor, I am a scholar and a pedagogue, a teacher, that is the context of my work.
But, if I look at the extent, in terms of scholarship, my work; books, articles and everything I have written, spans the humanities and the social sciences. I got an honourary doctorate from the University of Paris in France in May and what they gave me was an honourary doctorate in humane letters. Next May, I am going to get another honourary doctorate in social science from the University of KwaZulu Natal in Durban, South Africa.
You see? That is why I say my work cuts across the humanities and the social sciences. But above that, I have done a lot of work in African Studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies, law, human rights, or even in health, but I do it from the perspective of gender.
I am an engaged scholar in the sense that I am a transformative scholar. I do not just stay in the ivory tower writing books and articles. I do that, but I want my scholarship to be relevant to my society. I want my scholarship to mean something. So I always try to bring my knowledge, and my scholarship and build community, and relationships with people outside of academics, outside of the university. My work also bridges the academy with what lies beyond it, society.
I am also on the board of a lot of NGOs. I get down to work with communities, and women in the villages; my work is informed by what I have learned from women I work with in the villages, in government and all that. So that is why I said I am doing the scholarship that can help to transform society. That is where I think the relevance of my work lies.
I do a lot of work for international organisations; development work, socio-economic development, women and gender development. And this brings me to look at human rights questions, peace questions, and how women are affected. I have worked in Rwanda, after the genocide, looking at how Hutu and Tutsi women can work together to bring peace after that horrendous thing that happened there.
I have worked in 38 African countries. I work in peace and conflict resolution. I do women’s rights, human rights, gender and health. I also do gender and democratisation, teaching women about voting and all that. I have done that in Senegal.
I want my work to have meaning in society, I want my work to transform society. So in fact, when my mother died, my mother was not educated but she did so much for education, both for us and for other children. So when she died I set up a fund called Jessy Obidiegwu Education Fund.
Q: Talk about the Jessy Obidiegwu Education Fund.
Nnaemeka: It is my mother. So in her memory, this “Jessy Obidiegwu” fund is for the education of girls and women in Africa. We give scholarships; there are so many students in Nigerian universities the fund caters for.
Because it is important, education, education, education. When the universities are closed in Nigeria it breaks my heart, because we are depriving these kids of education. No society can advance without educating its populace.
So, I invest in kids’ education in Nigeria, and I invest in women who could not go to school, but I help them to learn skills so that they can be independent. It is only education, whichever way you go, that can give you that independence to exist in the world. So I invest in all that.
The other thing I do that is linked to that is mentoring. As a professor I have the knowledge, whatever knowledge I have, I mentor. I will not be here forever, so you should be able to train and groom other people who can then continue the work you are doing.
So that is why I mentor lecturers all over Africa and Europe. In Nigeria, I mentor lecturers in Usman Dan Fodio in Sokoto, University of Benin, Anambra State University, and Nnamdi Azikiwe University.
I help get lecturer’s articles; when they show me what they are doing, I will review it, edit it and help them because I want them to be published. I want their voices to be heard outside Nigeria.
And the same thing with graduate students. I mentor a lot of graduate students all over the world. In Europe, in Nigeria, I sit on their dissertation. I want us to groom the next generation of scholars, intellectuals, of teachers, so that is the other thing I do.
As an engaged scholar, my work revolves around building relationships with whatever lies outside the academy, up to the villages, and also building relationships with people that are coming behind me.
Q:Why did you not become a doctor or a lawyer?
Nnaemeka: Why should I be a doctor or a lawyer? Can you give me one reason I should be a doctor or a lawyer?
Q: You know, it was a thing for our parents to answer Mama doctor, lawyer.
Nnaemeka: No. It does not make sense to me. I studied French but what has taken me around the world is not necessarily French.
What it has done for me is that I can work in many places around the world. I work in all these french territories, it expands my terrain for operation. But I am not going to do French but looking at gender issues, human rights, peace and conflict resolution, post-colonial studies, literature as well as post-colonial Francophone literature.
issues, human rights, peace and conflict resolution, post-colonial studies, literature as well as post-colonial Francophone literature.
So telling me you are not a doctor or a lawyer… one of my books is on human rights and the law, I am not a lawyer and I have written stuff on the law and human rights.
When I was in school, I was top of the class in science. I did very well in science, I did very well in maths. At some point, they started suggesting that I study pharmacy. I could have, you know, done pharmacy and been dispensing drugs in pharmacy.
I know French opened doors for me. That is what it did, it opened so many doors for me. What it opens is the point and it is not about money. You know, there is this whole idea that when you are a doctor, you are important, and you make money. So if you have a kid, know where their interest lies, and encourage them to grow in that dimension.
We have to take that mentality off us. What we need is to hold our children’s hands so that they can work, so they can climb the mountain that they want to climb and we hold their hands.
Q: Were you clear on what you wanted to do from the start?
Nnaemeka: No. My dissertation was on French literature but while I was doing that, we had a wonderful women’s studies programme which caught my attention.
My mother was very influential even though she did not go to school. She was a great woman, a woman leader and tough like Igbo women are. I am from that lineage so women’s things are not like the ones I learned from a book. I had relevant tough Igbo women around me growing up, so I started thinking… my mother was the one that… I am telling you my mother did not have a real formal education, but she became the president of Agulu at home and abroad.
So, why would I not be influenced by this woman who did so much for women? So, I had this combination of my environment directing me where I should go.
Q:You spoke about what you have done in Nigeria and Niger Delta, can you speak about that work?
Nnaemeka: What I did in Niger Delta… I did not conclude it.
I came to Nigeria in January 2020 to do some work around women and environmental justice. I was looking at the women and their protest against oil companies. I wanted to go there to see why they are dissatisfied.
So, I am looking at how women are protesting and what they are protesting against. These oil companies?
I went down to Port Harcourt, then I went to all these places there, Degema and all that. I am looking at the environment and how these companies devastated the environment while carting away billions of dollars of oil every year. The people who live in these places are farmers and can no longer farm because oil is sipping everywhere, it is horrible.
That is the work I went to do there but I will still go back because I was doing it and then by March, Covid-19 exploded.
Q: So, how is the current situation in Nigeria affecting this? How has it affected your return to complete this work?
Nnaemeka: Well, I will still go back to complete it. Maybe I am waiting until after the elections to make sure Nigeria is even there after the election. I am planning to come back next summer.
Nigeria’s story will take days to talk about; it is so heartbreaking. Nigeria is a wonderful place. Great Nation and these people just messed things up. When I was growing up in Nigeria, however, poor your family is, the children will have three good square meals on the table every day. There was food everywhere.
Then oil came in the late 50s, we abandoned all these. I will tell you this story.
When I was in Queens School at the time Zik (Nnamdi Azikiwe) was premier, Opara (Michael) was the prime minister and all these people were working for Nigeria. I cried a few months ago when Mbazuilike Amaechi died. These are the people that built our country. He was the last member of the Zikist movement.
At that time, things were excellent…schools… Nigeria was unbelievable. You know, when I was finishing university (UNN), anywhere you said you were from Nigeria they would give you scholarships because they knew we had a quality education. But it does not exist anymore.
I cry to see where we have ended, and what is happening in our country. Let me tell you when I applied to the United States to study French Literature to get a PhD, the University of Minnesota sent me a package at Nsukka. I was a junior fellow getting ready to do my PhD. In that box, they had a cassette, and in the box, they had things I had to translate to give me admission to come and do French Literature. They wanted to see my French. The admission process was very very tough.
So, I did all those things, put them in the same box and sent it to them. You know what happened?
When they gave me a mission, they gave me admission with a teaching assistantship. I am telling you that with an undergraduate in French from Nsukka.
The teaching assistantship they gave me was not for me to help another teacher; when I landed in the US, the first semester I had 32 students in my class, teaching with a BA in French from Nsukka. I was teaching BA students in one of the big 10 universities in the US. I hadn’t even done my master’s.
This is to tell you how good our education was and it is not about me, any of my classmates could have done that. We had quality education, they took care of us and we went and learned. It is not what I am seeing here now; it is such a sad story.
So, our government or whoever is there, ignored or abandoned education. That is where our trouble started and that is where our trouble will end, because once we stop educating our kids who will come out and do anything anymore and represent Nigeria without education? It is not possible.
You can have all the houses you want all over the world but you are not it. I think about it all the time because I love our home, my heart is there. I want to retire in Nigeria when I retire. I am not going to live in the US. I keep telling people, I have lived in the United States most of my life but I do not have any emotional attachment to this country.
All my emotional attachment is in my homeland, it is in Nigeria, it is in Agulu, it is in Anambra State, that’s where my emotional attachment is. But the only thing I can say about the United States is that I am super grateful to the United States because it is only in this country I could do the amount of work I have been able to do.
So I am grateful to this country, very grateful, if I had not come here, there is no way I could have had this spectacular career in any other place. That is what I am grateful for, I cannot minimise it, I could only do it here.
could only do it here.
Q:What can the Nigerian diaspora do really, to help the education sector in this country?
Nnaemeka: Let me tell you, the problem is not that we are not willing, we have done everything. As I have told you, one thing I know I do, and I know other people do, is we want connection. We have built partnerships with universities all over Africa.
We want to help curriculum development; I do that. There is something I started called Women in Africa and African Diaspora conferences. I have invested in education in Nigeria, apart from the kids I am sponsoring at the universities.
I work with lecturers to get their works published. But then, you also have to work in an environment that wants you to share that space.
You know the problem diasporans have is that, if you go to an institution in Nigeria to do something, they will start these turf wars as if you are coming to occupy their space and all that stuff. So, it becomes a problem, and you get discouraged. Are you going to go there to fight turf wars? No, you are going to contribute.
The problem that people in the diaspora have with Nigeria is that they want to come and help to contribute. But the people over there have to create the space for you to do that. But they do not.
I have been offered political appointments in Nigeria but I said no, not that I do not want to help Nigeria but it is because I am devoted to this intellectual work. I am devoted to educating people, I do not want to be given a political minister, I know what I want.
I want to make contributions. But then when you come to make your contribution, either those people are feeling insecure…it has happened with so many of my colleagues, who will get some grants to go on to when they go there… the politics of the place, and all this stuff. That is just awful.
I will tell you something that happened, was it in 2020? That is just because of this thing you said. Now I am on the board of a big foundation and then they decided they wanted to give grants to six African institutions.
They had money, they had $18 million to divide. So when I went to the first meeting, I saw that the list they drew of people to get, Nigeria was not even there. Nigeria is notorious. Nobody wants to do anything with Nigeria. So I said no. As a Nigerian, we have to put a Nigerian university.
Each university will get $1.2 million not naira. There is a university in Nigeria. I know the vice chancellor and I wrote several times but did not hear from him. We were going to have the third meeting where the decision would be made, so I told them to put the university name there. And what I wanted to do was to talk with the Vice Chancellor for him to tell me their needs so I can prepare a persuasive proposal for the committee.
Eventually, the slot went to another university in Zimbabwe instead of Nigeria because of the silence from the vice-chancellor. So when you keep talking about the diaspora people, talk to the people that are there, they are so insecure.
Q: Nigeria is going to the polls next year. It is a big election for us. What are your expectations?
Nnaemeka: Any candidate that has to be chosen, you want to check. The way I would choose a candidate is to look at the history of that candidate. Not even the candidate’s political party, not even the ethnic group. Because what I noticed now that is going on in Nigeria, is that Nigeria elections are not about issues – what will be your policy when you come in? It is not just that I want to be president, it is my turn. What is your platform? What are you going to deliver? Not elections where you give women bags of rice and they vote for you. That’s not democracy.
So if I look at the Nigerian situation right now, we are in a precarious/very dangerous situation in Nigeria now. If you look at these candidates, Atiku, Tinubu and Peter Obi.
You look at Tinubu’s history. What has he done, apart from accumulating wealth as governor of Lagos, apart from all his criminal records? There is no way in the United States somebody like Tinubu, will not even be a dog catcher. Nobody can vote for him for being a dog catcher in this country. With all the things he has done, all his criminality.
Not only what people have done but people with probity, decent people, that stay on the moral high ground, there is that dimension of leadership. It is not only a question of capability, you have to have a moral grounding, you have to have that to guide you and if you do not have that, you will not be a leader.
That is what campaigns are for. During campaigns, you investigate those people, investigate their history. It will play a role in knowing they can lead you.
The other one is Atiku, he has the same problem. He has been there before, we saw how he was there before.
If you look at Peter Obi, Peter obi has been there too, he has been governor of Anambra State. Go and see what he was able to do in Anambra states, particularly for education. I keep going back to education, the neglect of education in Nigeria is our perennial problem. That is the first thing we have to resolve because if we do not have an educated population… That is why somebody that should not even be considered a dog catcher, you say you voted for that person.
We have to have an informed electorate, people who can think, think, it is not about bags of rice. They can question what the candidate can do for the country. If we have an educated electorate they can vote better but we do not have it. So all these things we are doing with throwing ethnic jabs here and there all in the name of campaign, you are not campaigning.
campaign, you are not campaigning.
If we have a fair and transparent election, Peter Obi will win. But we probably would not have one. They will do everything to sabotage that process. This is not because he is an Igbo man. He already has ideas, Peter Obi has performed particularly what he did for education in Anambra State. I have my fears and I hope we have the election because with the way these people are going… Maybe at some point now they will create one problem somewhere and say we are declaring a state of emergency, no election or probably they will just have a coup d’etat.
The question I have to ask all these other politicians from all parts of Nigeria is how they sat by and let Buhari pocket all the levers of power in that country. Buhari has the army in his pocket. He has the police in his pockets. Customs in his pocket, and judiciary is in his pockets. Where can you go? How did we get here? There was no opposition, so you see we are now living in a dictatorship. What can you do? It’s even late.
Q:Prof, from your comments or your response sound like you are in the Peter Obi camp.
Nnaemeka: Yeah, Peter Obi will be the best choice among these three people.
Q:Will that be in the absence of a better choice?
Nnaemeka: There is no better choice. You have to deal with what you have. You cannot start imagining what you do not have. I am looking at these three people we have now running. If you bring somebody else I will look at it, but the three we have that have the potential or prospect are Obi, Atiku or Tinubu. So these are the three people. I cannot speculate on another person that we could have had.
Compare the tickets. So it is not just Obi. Compare the tickets. Datti/Obi, compare it with Tinubu/Shettima, that is what you have to be doing. I am not saying it because I am an Igbo woman, if Peter Obi is not doing well I will condemn him. It has nothing to do with where he comes from. But it has to do what he has done and probably will do for us, he has ideas, and he has already demonstrated. Tell me what these other people have done apart from amassing wealth.
Atiku, now when you were in position what did you do? He carried millions of Nigeria’s money and he went to build universities. That university is his own. When they have taken all the money they can take, they go and build these universities where the tuition is so high that only a few people can get in. What happens to 99 per cent of children in our country? When I was growing up, education was for everybody. Awolowo brought free primary education. It was accessible to everybody. It was all good for everybody.
So, what they are doing is, they are creating elites. They are creating class divisions; that will not make a nation grow.
Q:Tell us one thing about you that the world does not know.
Prof Nnaemeka: I think pretty much about me the world knows. It is not just what people know, but I want people to know about me. That is also part of it.
So recently, when I got information about the honourary doctorate I am going to get from South Africa, a professor at the University of Abuja responded to that saying several things about me. But the thing that touched me most, that always touches me is first, he said Professor Nnaemeka has enormous respect for other intellectuals like herself. The other thing he said was that I am an unassuming great scholar.
It touched me, with humility. So I wrote somebody and said, you know, when I am gone, I want humility to be inserted in my epitaph.
That is what I want. I am in a place of egos and ego tripping but I am humble. I keep keeping my humble background. That is what I want people to know. I am just not this great professor… I am a humble human being and that has helped me to do the work I am doing.
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