Before his death at the age of 70 was announced on Wednesday, October 2, Dr Jonathan Zwingina had not been in the public eye for some years, apparently due to poor health. Otherwise, for many years before that, the Adamawa-born Zwingina was a forceful presence on the Nigerian intellectual and political scene, and also for a brief period, embroiled in a public service scandal.
He first shot into the limelight in 1988. Military President Ibrahim Babangida was then unfolding his transition to civil rule program, and had just received the report of the Samuel Cookey-led “Political Bureau” [suspiciously named, at the time, after the Politburo of the Soviet Communist Party]. One of its recommendations was to create MAMSER, an agency for mass mobilization.
Nigeria Television Authority, NTA, then the only television network in the country, organized a live televised debate on the Bureau’s recommendations. It was aired every evening for about two weeks. NTA had a monopoly of TV viewership at the time, so the whole country was glued to the debate. The two dominant persons in the three-member panel were Zwingina and Dr. Ali Adamu, then a History lecturer at the University of Sokoto [now called Usman Danfodio University, UDUS]. The panelists, especially those two, displayed a remarkable knowledge of history, politics and economy. Both Zwingina and Ali Adamu were subsequently appointed commissioners of MAMSER, headed by Ahmadu Bello University Geography professor Jerry
Gana.
Even though the agency was apparently well financed and was extremely visible, MAMSER’s mandate was fairly dubious because it was not very clear to what end it was trying to mobilise Nigerians. It had a difficult time because the IBB transition program was increasingly discredited in the public eye by constant twists and turns and suspicions of a hidden agenda, leading to the creation of two government-created political parties, NRC and SDP, and the transition program’s final implosion in the June 12 saga.
At some point, Zwingina abandoned MAMSER and waded into politics. In 1993 he was the Director General of Chief M.K.O. Abiola’s Hope 93 presidential campaign organization, which won the election but the military annulled it. I met Zwingina for the first time at Chief Abiola’s house in Ikeja in October 1993. It was during the days of Chief Ernest Shonekan’s Interim National Government [ING]. Abiola had just returned to the country after a brief exile, and he granted the Kaduna-based Citizen magazine’s request for an interview.
I accompanied my boss Malam Mohammed Haruna to interview MKO at his house in Ikeja. When we finished the interview, MKO took Haruna aside for a private discussion, and I was left together with Zwingina and the late Prof Femi Agbalajobi.
Zwingina was very friendly, and we had a very engaging discussion. He probably gauged that I had sympathy for MKO’s cause, so he sought my advice as to how they should pursue the struggle for the “actualisation of June 12,” especially in the North, where public opinion seemed to have turned against it. In 1999, Zwingina emerged as PDP senator for Adamawa South.
As ever he was a forceful presence, with his powerful intellect and oratorical skill. There was however a hitch; at the beginning of the new Senate term in 2003, new FCT Minister Nasiru el-Rufa’i accused Zwingina and Deputy Senate President Ibrahim Mantu of demanding a bribe from him in order to get the Senate to clear his nomination. No proof was adduced to support the charge but Nigerians being very cynical, many people believed the accusation and it really tarnished the two men’s reputation.
Senator Mantu passed away three years ago and Zwingina has now passed away too. May their souls rest in peace.
