Professor of Crop Ecology and Cropping Systems at the Department of Plant Physiology and Crop Production at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Abideen Olaiya, speaks with FATTEH HAMID about his early life, career and managing polygamy
At this point in your life, how do you perceive life?
I’m Professor Abideen Olaiya; I hail from Oke Oluokun, Ibadan, Oyo State in the sixties. I started perceiving what life is right from my youthful age and that stemmed from the ideology our parents had. At the time, they put us in Arabic schools thinking that Western education was going to make us become non-Muslims at the time which delayed my educational sojourn until 1975, when I started primary school after the government made it compulsory that everyone must go to school. So, life to me was completely different from the way others saw it.
What was your childhood like?
I started primary school as a teenager and not as a pupil which made me understand what we were taught, and that contributed to my performance in all my educational ventures because I’m more or less ahead in whatever the teacher taught us. I was always clinching the first position prize from my primary school days till the time I finished my first degree where I was also one of the top students from my class. Because of this background, I have taken it upon myself to define the kind of life I wanted to live.
What was the most difficult challenge you had when you were a child?
That would be being raised by a disciplinarian. My dad worked in a bank in the sixties and early seventies. He worked at the National Bank in Ibadan and their managers were always the whites. Due to the fact that he worked with them, he took it upon himself to instill discipline in us. Out of the several of us, children who were with my dad at the time, there were some of my brothers whose mothers were still with my dad, unlike me whose mother had left my dad. So, when my dad brings up his disciplinarian attitude, I was always at the receiving end with no mother to defend me. This made me more responsible and committed to everything I was doing. My dad would wake me up by 5 am to fetch water for him to prepare for work and the early morning prayers. When that is done, my dad will leave the house about 6:30 am and he will make sure that has followed me up until a defined way on the road to school, before he takes a public transport that would take him to Ogunpa where his office was located. He would follow me from Oke Odo to Ilupeju at the time. He would ensure that I was on my way to my school in Molete before he takes the transport to Ogunpa. So, in most cases, I was always the first person to get to school, and that afforded me the opportunity to read ahead. I remember that my dad would buy all the textbooks that I needed for the next session after the end of the third term. He would take me to Odusote at Oke Bola where we buy every book that was in the list of books.
What were the other things you learnt?
My dad knew how much I wanted to go to school and get educated and he uses that to get to me a lot of times. When it comes to relating with the opposite gender, my dad would not tell me not to relate with them. He would tell me that once I get any of them impregnated, that was the end of my educational sojourn, so, that kept me in check and made me stay away from women because I knew my dad was going to stop sending me to school.
How about your days in the higher institution?
After my WAEC, I wrote JAMB and chose medicine but my score didn’t allow me to study that. I proceeded to the polytechnic with the mindset that I was going to rewrite JAMB the following year. As God would have it, I got into the polytechnic and studied agricultural engineering but when I wrote JAMB the year after, I couldn’t get in for medicine and surgery again which was why I faced agriculture, and I was later admitted to study crop production; we thank God that we have made a mark in the field of study. It was during my higher institution that I got more interested in religious activities through the Muslim Students’ Society of Nigeria. I remember that I was the secretary of my secondary school branch and was the public relation officer of my council at the time. I remember that we called it Council C at the time, and that covered Molete, Oke Ado and New Garage area of Ibadan. So, it was during my secondary school that I was introduced to it and became more interested when I got into higher institution because it compliments my moral upbringing. So, my relationship with MSSN in school at that time gave me the opportunity to learn more about Islam and also contribute to the development of Muslim youths and as well, personal development. This gave me focus to excel in life. I was committed to my education, religion and community service.
Also, when we were in school, I got N200 per month from my parents and it was enough. I was even part of the rich students at the time. We had no other cause than to face our education and that was what we did, we had no reason to be chasing money as it is today. I remembered that I paid a canteen in the school N60 for my three square meal for a whole month because I didn’t want to be going through troubles of paying each time I come to eat. Things were easy at the time and I pray God restores Nigeria’s situation.
How difficult was it when you decided to take in a first wife?
It wasn’t a difficult decision to make when I wanted to get married. In fact, I had wanted to get married earlier but my parents and the parents of the lady I wanted to get married to did not consent to it because we were in school. I wanted to get married because people were fornicating at the time and I didn’t want to fall into such hole, but our parents declined and I got married immediately after my first degree.
Being a polygamist, how has that been?
Being a Muslim, we have been trained to understand that marrying more than one wife is an option we can explore and we do not have an apology to anybody for that. I didn’t marry a second wife because I had any problem, my wife was giving birth normally, she had given birth to five and we were living happily, fine and comfortable. I just felt that I needed a second wife because my wife had interest in furthering her education. Informed her that we should consider another partner while she was furthering her studies so that the children can be taken care of because they were still kids and that was it. Also, my wife and I are very prolific and I knew that journey was a right step for her. Many people will bring the argument of why can’t you control or hold yourself; no, that wasn’t the case; it was a case of God permitting something and when he permits he, why don’t you explore it?
How do you cope with managing the affairs of many children at a time?
We are solely depending on the blessings of the Almighty for that. Those who we started together and had the same background but with just two or three children are not better than us. The only thing is that you have to strive, be hard working, be committed in whatever you’re doing, seek the blessings of Allah, and pray for Him to perfect your affairs. Also, it is important to seek other means of income without relying on salaries alone to be able to fend for your family. Salary alone won’t give you that luxury, so you need other sources of income. Before I got a white collar job, I have been doing agric businesses and after I got one, I didn’t leave those jobs. So, that was how I was able to be responsible for the financial challenges that comes with polygamy and having many children.
Young men today are scared of polygamy. Are these fears concerning?
Of course it is concerning, however, they should look at being financially responsible in order to venture into that.
Have you always known that you were going to be a lecturer or you had a different plan?
No, I didn’t know. I was a researcher at the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria and that was where I got my doctoral degree before I decided to go into academics, and that was also because of the need to make a change and impact the lives of students through the many things I’ve acquired over the years.
Recently, ASUU noted that Nigeria was losing good hands in our schools to other countries. Why do you think we are losing lecturers and what can be done to prevent this?
I think it’s a government problem. Especially for those of us in the public university, that observation is true. A good number of our colleagues are finding their ways out of the country. If the government is serious, they need to stem the tide of japa among lecturers and that is by listening to academicians by improving their welfare. When they went on strike the last time, they advocated for the review of the 2009 agreement which the government hasn’t done anything about. The earned allowance that the government said they’ll start paying from January 2023, up till today, this is December 2023 and the government hasn’t paid our earned allowance. They have never implemented the visitation report that was agreed on and in fact, it is not more about the payment platform but the review of what academicians get as a take home for what we do.
Have you also been tempted to relocate abroad before?
I’ve had opportunities of travelling around the world. I’ve been to the United States, United Kingom, Spain, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Cameroun, Ghana, etcetera, but it never got across to me to japa. Maybe because of my deep involvement in community service and lecturing, I never thought of that despite the better pay and better opportunities abroad.
What will you say about the current political setting in Nigeria? Do you think that it’ll be different from the last administration?
I’ve been an active participant in politics since 1995, and the last election made me participate nationally after participating in my state space for a long time, but the 2023 election gave me the platform to participate across board and meet a lot of people as well. As a nation, Nigeria is not doing very well politically. I was part of PDP when it started in 1998, and moved the progressives in 2010 but nothing has really changed, there has been hardly much difference between the conservatives and the progressives. However, the emergence of Bola Tinubu as the President gave us a ray of hope and I pray God will assist him. I won’t want to judge him because he’s barely six months into his administration. I think we have to collectively work together to make the country succeed and not turn the government into political activism. We need to develop our country and make progress. I wish him a prosperous and progressive tenure and I pray that his tenure will bring about a major change and turnaround for good governance in the country.
