Gambari: Nigeria needs students’ integrity, ideas, not just degrees

(Being the goodwill and acceptance message delivered by Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari at the Golden Olive Award at the University of Ilorin.)

I stand before you this evening with a profound sense of gratitude, but also with a feeling that is much more personal than the receipt of an award. I am deeply honoured by the decision of the Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies and the Association of Students of Peace and Strategic Studies, University of Ilorin, to confer on me the Golden Olive Award, an award so beautifully described as being reserved for those whose “giving watered the tree of peace”. I accept this honour with humility and sincere appreciation. But I accept it also as something of a homecoming.

For although my professional journey has taken me to many parts of the world and brought me into the service of our country, our continent and the international community, my roots have never ceased to matter to me. I was born here in Ilorin. My educational journey began in this environment, including in Bode Saadu and Malete, Moro Local Government in Kwara State. From those beginnings, which were modest indeed, life took me into the classroom, academia, Nigerian public service, diplomacy and eventually the United Nations.

I have often described myself as a teacher by training and a diplomat by accident. There is a serious point behind that description. I wanted to teach. I was trained in scholarship and international relations, and the classroom was an important part of my early professional life. I taught at Universities in the United States and at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria before diplomacy and public service progressively claimed more of my time. My career subsequently included service as Nigeria’s Minister of External Affairs, Permanent Representative to the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Special Envoy/Special Representative of the United Nations and eventually Chief of Staff to the President of Nigeria.

But through all those transformations, the teacher in me has always remained. Perhaps that is one reason why being here at a Centre devoted to learning, peace and strategic studies means so much to me. There is something profoundly satisfying in returning, after decades of international and national service, to an academic environment here at home and finding young Nigerians studying the very questions that have occupied so much of my own life: questions of peace and conflict, diplomacy and development, governance and democracy, security and the future of Africa.

So, tonight, I do not wish simply to say “thank you” for an award. I would like to use this opportunity to speak particularly to the students and younger scholars of this Centre about some of the lessons that a lifetime in classrooms, government offices, diplomatic corridors, conflict situations and international institutions has taught me.

From Malete to the world

Dear students, there is another reason I want to speak especially to you tonight. Young people sometimes look at those who have attained certain positions in life and imagine that the entire journey must somehow have been planned in advance. Life is rarely so orderly. As I have publicly recalled, my own beginnings included primary education in Bode Saadu and Malete. I could hardly have imagined then that my journey would eventually take me into international diplomacy and, at one point, to the Presidency of the United Nations Security Council.

That is why I want every student here tonight to understand this:

Never allow the circumstances of your beginning to define the limits of your destination.

Where you start matters far less than what you do with the opportunities that come before you.

But aspiration must be accompanied by preparation. Dreams are important, but you must acquire competence. Ambition is useful, but you must develop character. Connections may create opportunities, but ultimately you must have substance. And when opportunities come, be prepared to serve something larger than yourself.

I had wanted to be a teacher. Providence took me along another route. But when I look back, perhaps those two lives were never as separate as they appeared. The diplomat and the teacher ultimately share something important. Both must listen. Both must understand people. Both must appreciate differences. Both must communicate. And, when at their best, both help people see possibilities that were not obvious before.

Charity begins at home

Throughout my career, I have advocated an understanding of Nigeria’s interests through concentric circles: beginning at home, extending to our neighbours and ECOWAS, then Africa, and from Africa to the wider world. Our responsibilities can develop in the same way. If we want peace in the world, we should practise peace in our communities. If we desire justice internationally, we must uphold justice nationally. If we call upon nations to respect one another, then Nigerians of different backgrounds must respect one another.

The global begins with the local. And that is one reason why an institution such as the Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies at the University of Ilorin matters. You are connecting global questions with local realities. Peace is not merely something to be negotiated in New York, Addis Ababa or other diplomatic capitals. Peace has to exist in our communities, universities, families and relationships.

The meaning of this centre to me

When this Centre honoured me in 2024 among other Nigerians whose contributions to the promotion and sustainability of peace it wished to celebrate. I was touched by the honour then as I am by the honour bestowed on me this evening. It is also my belief that with recognition must come responsibility and it is in that spirit that I made the modest contribution and support in the form of endowment for the best PhD in Peace and Development Studies. It was a token to underscore my belief in investing in people and ideas. It is the combination of the quality of human resources and of idea that moves a nation and move the world.

Peace has been the tread

Throughout my academic and professional career, peace has been the thread of my endeavour and engagement. And peace has to be understood simultaneously as an idea, a process and a responsibility. Peace is more than an absence of conflict or the silencing of the guns; peace endures only when there is justice and is built on inclusion in the sense of giving everyone their due in a society, country and compromises, reconciliations and forgiveness. This is why your choice to study Peace and Conflict Resolution is of such significance.

To the students: learn to listen

If there is one practical counsel I would give the students of this Centre, it is this: learn to listen. Listening is not passive. In diplomacy and conflict resolution, listening can be a powerful instrument. Throughout your lives, you will encounter people whose views you reject. Some will hold political opinions entirely different from your own. Some will belong to communities different from yours. Some may interpret the same historical events in ways you find difficult to understand.

Do not make the mistake of believing that understanding somebody requires agreeing with that person. You cannot mediate a conflict you refuse to understand. The task of the peacebuilder is to discover where dialogue remains possible. There will sometimes be individuals who insist that compromise represents weakness. My own experience has taught me that compromise can require considerably more courage than confrontation. War can demonstrate power. Peace requires wisdom. Peace requires the building and widening of common grounds from competing ideas and interests.

Nigeria needs your generation

The challenges facing Nigeria are substantial, but I refuse to believe that they are insurmountable. This is a country blessed with enormous human and material resources. One of the greatest of those resources is our young people. But our young people must be given not only encouragement, but education, opportunity and responsibility.

To the students here tonight, Nigeria does not merely need your degrees. Nigeria needs your integrity and commitment to common goals and societal objectives. Nigeria does not simply need your certificates. It needs your ideas. It needs people capable of disagreeing without destroying one another. It needs people who will enter public service and remember that public office is a public trust. It needs scholars willing to undertake rigorous research rather than simply repeat fashionable assumptions. It needs people courageous enough to tell uncomfortable truths, but wise enough to do so constructively. And it needs citizens who understand that nation-building is not somebody else’s responsibility.

Do not wait until you occupy high office before deciding to serve. Serve where you are. Leadership begins long before anyone gives you a title.

What the golden olive means to me

Watering the Tree of Peace: A Legacy for Future Generations.

This brings me back to the Golden Olive Award. The symbolism is especially appropriate because an olive tree is not planted today and harvested tomorrow. It must be tended and must be watered. It requires patience. So does peace. Perhaps that is why I find the wording in your letter so touching: you speak of honouring those whose giving has “watered the tree of peace”.

I accept that description not as a declaration that my own work is complete, but as a challenge that the tree must continue to be watered. And that responsibility now belongs increasingly to you. My generation has played its part. We did not get everything right. No generation does. But whatever lessons we have accumulated must now be transferred to those who will carry the work further.

That is why I regard my relationship with this Centre not primarily in terms of awards but in terms of continuity and of mentoring. Experience not transmitted disappears. Institutions which do not cultivate successors, decline. My hope is that this Centre will become an increasingly important home that helps several transfers between scholarship and practice, between experience and innovation, and between one generation of peacebuilders and the next.

If the Golden Olive Award celebrates the watering of a tree of peace, then the young people before me tonight are among its new branches. What matters now is how far those branches will grow.

Conclusion

Let me therefore conclude by expressing again my sincere gratitude to the Vice-Chancellor, the Director and faculty of the Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies, and particularly the Association of Students of Peace and Strategic Studies for this honour.

To the students who organised this occasion, I thank you. I hope you will regard my presence here not simply as that of an awardee recipient, but as that of a fellow traveller in the search for durable peace. And so it is profoundly gratifying that a journey which began in Kwara can come full circle in this way: by supporting learning and peace here in Kwara and by investing, however modestly, in those who will continue the journey long after my own generation has left the stage.

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I pray that this Centre will grow from strength to strength; that the students who pass through it will distinguish themselves in scholarship and service; and that the seeds being planted here today will produce men and women capable of advancing peace not only in Nigeria but throughout Africa and the wider world. I thank you most sincerely for this honour and for your kind attention.

And may Almighty God bless the Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies, bless the University of Ilorin, and bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.