The Kila affair: Duty of care runs both ways, By Babafemi A. Badejo

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This is where I part company with the idea of a “soft landing”. I am yet to see what the elements of such a landing would be, or with whom it would be negotiated. Is it with the newspaper, so that it stops publishing? Is it with the anti-corruption agency, so that it stops asking? Neither is ours to give away.

For a few weeks now, one subject has competed with fuel prices, insecurity and the latest in the shifting alliances of thieves a.k.a political parties for the attention of Nigerians. It is the case of Anthony Kila, the television regular and reportedly suspended pro-chancellor of Michael and Cecilia Ibru University, whom PREMIUM TIMES has reported to be a professor that no recognised university ever made.

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The matter raises questions that go well beyond one man. How should a society treat a person at the centre of such a storm? Should a “soft landing” be found for him? Is he simply an easy target, and who will be next?

These are fair questions, and they deserve a considered answer. Mine is simple enough. We must look after the man. We must not look away from the matter.

What Is On the Table

Let me first set out what we are talking about, for the benefit of anyone who has been away from Nigeria or from the internet.

On 3 October, PREMIUM TIMES published an investigation reporting that it could find no recognised academic institution that had conferred the rank of professor on Mr Kila, who has for years been introduced on television and in newspapers as a “Jean Monnet Professor of Strategy and Development.” A week later, on 10 October, the paper went further. Its second investigation alleged that the problem was not only the professorship but the academic qualifications claimed by Mr Kila, from the first degree to the doctorate.

Mr Kila has not kept quiet. He has reportedly insisted that he is a professor, that he stands by his title, and that “the facts and documentation will speak for themselves”. He has also said that he has instructed his lawyers to review the publication. That is his right. In the meantime, the university whose governing council he chaired has suspended him, and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) is reported to have set up a team to look into the matter.

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I must say this plainly: Mr Kila remains innocent until proven otherwise. Nothing here has been tested in a court of law. But we are also well past the stage of “if.” Specific allegations, published in considerable detail, are on the ground. They will not go away because some of us find them uncomfortable.

Yes, Let Us Look After the Man

The case of Jason Arday is fresh in the mind, and it should be. Arday, celebrated in 2023 as the youngest black professor in the history of the University of Cambridge, resigned on 5 August after allegations of plagiarism and questions about parts of his biography. In his resignation statement, he said that relentless accusations, speculations, and public commentary had taken a profound toll on him and those he loved. Nine days later, he was found dead at the age of 41.

Nobody should wish that sort of ending on anybody. I certainly do not wish it on Anthony Kila. We like to think of ourselves as a tough people, but shame is a heavy load, and none of us knows the weight that another person can carry.

So, Nigeria must prevent an Arday outcome. Mr Kila’s family and friends owe him a duty of care. They should stay close, support him and, where necessary, get him professional help. If the State eventually invites him for questioning, the State will owe him that duty too. And the rest of us can discuss the issue without making sport of a man in trouble. Ridicule is not accountability.

Still, the two cases are not the same, and we should not pretend that they are. Arday was a black man at the top of a British system in which blacks are about one per cent of the professoriate. Many people, including the Chancellor of Cambridge, who spoke of a “racist feeding frenzy”, saw the avalanche of coverage as race-based witch-hunting. Others reject that reading. It is an argument for Britain to settle. Nothing of the sort arises here. This is a Nigerian newspaper asking a Nigerian about titles used in Nigeria. Nor are the allegations alike. Arday held a chair that a real university conferred on him, and the questions concerned his thesis and parts of his biography. With Mr Kila, the question is whether the titles exist at all. What the two cases share is the human being at the centre.

So, Nigeria must prevent an Arday outcome. Mr Kila’s family and friends owe him a duty of care. They should stay close, support him and, where necessary, get him professional help. If the State eventually invites him for questioning, the State will owe him that duty too. And the rest of us can discuss the issue without making sport of a man in trouble. Ridicule is not accountability.

I would add one thing. Mr Kila is reported to be heading to court to seek civil remedies. I am glad of it. It is a creditable path, and one that Arday did not take. A man who is preparing his case is a man who is still standing. If his friends want to help him, they can contribute to his legal fees.

But the Duty of Care is Not a One-way Street

This is where I part company with the idea of a “soft landing”. I am yet to see what the elements of such a landing would be, or with whom it would be negotiated. Is it with the newspaper, so that it stops publishing? Is it with the anti-corruption agency, so that it stops asking? Neither is ours to give away.

PREMIUM TIMES has done its part and should continue to do it. If there are errors in its reports, they should be corrected, for the sake of accuracy and posterity. If it has more to publish, I, for one, would not discourage its editors. Mercy to the man does not require silence about the matter.

More importantly, Mr Kila also owes something. He owes it to the students and parents of a university whose council he chaired. He owes it to the television audiences who took his analysis more seriously, given the title that came before his name. He owes it to those of us who paid attention to his views.

I count myself among them. He and I were on the same side, over Zoom, in an association that campaigned for the restructuring of Nigeria. He was its general secretary until it packed up. I listened to him with respect.

A friend of his has publicly asked him to come clean and answer the questions raised. This is good advice from a good friend. He is, of course, free to stay quiet and leave everything to his lawyers.

And since this is Nigeria, let me say the obvious. We have a long history of injunctions: against further publication, against investigation, even against an invitation by the police. It would be a pity if this case took that familiar road. A court is a place to prove one’s claim, not to prevent the question.

Is He an Easy Target? Who Is Next?

There are several familiar arguments for looking the other way in a case like this. He is brilliant and prolific, so he measures up to the title anyway. We live in a post-certificate world. He is not in public service, so why the hullabaloo? He is only being hounded because of his outspoken public commentary.

None of these persuade me. If a man is brilliant, he does not need a borrowed robe. If certificates no longer matter, nobody should need to claim one. And one does not have to be on the government payroll to hold a position of public trust.

So here is where I stand. Let his family and friends hold him close. Let PREMIUM TIMES finish its work and correct whatever it got wrong. Let the ICPC do its job without fear or favour. Let our universities look inward and verify before they certify or appoint. Let Mr Kila have his day in court, with every presumption in his favour. And let him, in the meantime, show Nigerians the documents he says will speak for themselves.

I have long defined corruption as the betrayal of public trust. That goes beyond being a public official. My 3X3X3 framework looks for corruption, and for the means of curbing it, across the three arms of government, the three tiers of government and the three sectors of society: public, private and social. The public sector is primus inter pares, the first among equals, because it makes and enforces the rules for the rest. But the private and social sectors hold public trust too. A pro-chancellor presides over the council of a university, and parents hand over their children on the strength of what that university says about itself. A commentator introduced to the nation as a professor is trusted by viewers on the strength of that title.

If the alleged conduct were established, we would be talking about obtaining by false pretences, false swearing and, where an oath was involved, perjury. Those are not private matters. Too often, our security agencies do not bat an eyelid, as with so much corruption by the high and mighty, including in our tertiary institutions. That is why I welcome and appreciate the involvement of the ICPC team in this case. The Commission deserves our encouragement to follow the evidence wherever it leads, fairly and to a conclusion.

Then comes the cleverest argument of all, the one the Yoruba capture in the proverb about holding on to the one person you are able to catch. Is Kila simply an easy target? Who is next?

My answer is that he is not the first, and he will not be the last. I was an undergraduate at the University of Lagos when the Ọwọshọ scandal broke. It swept many students out of that university. The ICPC has prosecuted cases of fake certificates and unearned titles before. The Ministry of Education is currently trying to stop people from parading honorary degrees, as if they had earned them. If the PREMIUM TIMES reports are upheld, what is alleged here would be more serious than that.

This is why I must also turn to the universities themselves. A newspaper should not be the first body to check a certificate that has already passed through a registry, an appointments committee and a governing council. Nigerian universities, public and private, need to be self-critical. They should thoroughly investigate every credential presented to them before they certify anyone or appoint anyone, whether as a student, a lecturer, a professor or a pro-chancellor. That means writing to the awarding institution, confirming that it exists and is recognised, and keeping the reply in a file. A fine curriculum vitae and a familiar face on television are not enough. Where a false claim has passed through the gate, the gatekeepers also have questions to answer.

We must resist the very Nigerian habit in which a person accused of stealing dares society to first catch every other thief before attending to his case. No country cleans its house that way. We handle each case as it arises, to the best of our individual and collective capacities.

Will one case transform Nigeria? I doubt it. People still present forged results for university admission, decades after the scandal of my student days. But to anyone asking who is next, I say: help to find out. If you know of a similar case, blow the whistle to PREMIUM TIMES, SaharaReporters, the ICPC or anyone else who will do the digging.

Ọmọluabi Begins With Integrity

We spend a great deal of time lamenting the ills of our dear native land. I often ask whatever became of our Ọmọluabi values. It is true that Ọmọluabi also calls for wisdom in handling human misconduct. Wisdom is always necessary. It means weighing the different sides of an issue against a picture of the society we want to live in.

But wisdom is not the same thing as looking away. The foremost attribute of the Ọmọluabi is integrity. It is the olu-iwa, the head of all characters. To live in society is to be accountable to it. That civic-mindedness is what our brothers and sisters further south call Ubuntu, and it sits comfortably inside Ọmọluabi. A compassion that asks us to drop integrity is not Ọmọluabi.

So here is where I stand. Let his family and friends hold him close. Let PREMIUM TIMES finish its work and correct whatever it got wrong. Let the ICPC do its job without fear or favour. Let our universities look inward and verify before they certify or appoint. Let Mr Kila have his day in court, with every presumption in his favour. And let him, in the meantime, show Nigerians the documents he says will speak for themselves.

If he is vindicated, some of us will owe him an apology, and I will offer mine without hesitation. If he is not, my hope is that this episode becomes a lesson that every Nigerian parent teaches every Nigerian child: a lie may run for many years, but the truth catches up with it in one day.

Babafemi A Badejo is a former Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Somalia and a former Professor of Political Science and International Relations. He is the author of the best-selling Raila Odinga: An Enigma in Kenyan Politics and of Somalia Just Before Al-Shabaab: Why Peace Was Elusive. He is a recipient of the Mandela Lifetime Achievement Award of the Annual Africa Conference at the University of Texas at Austin, the Medal of the Order of Timor-Leste, and Djibouti’s 27 Juin 1977 Order. He acknowledges the use of AI assistance in preparing this article.