By ENITAN ABEL JOHNGOLD ORHERUATA, mnipr
ABUJA — For years, the Abuja Branch of the University of Ibadan Alumni Association (UIAA) has existed in an uncomfortable paradox: a branch located in the nation’s capital, populated by some of the country’s most accomplished professionals, yet increasingly disconnected from the institutional life of the alumni body it represents.
Leadership disagreements, inactivity and a prolonged absence from key Worldwide activities have taken their toll.
But on Saturday, 31 October 2026, something changed.
Inside a hall at Regal Boutique Hotels, Wuse Zone 2, Abuja, a group of prominent University of Ibadan graduates gathered around an increasingly urgent question:
Can the Abuja Branch be brought back from the brink and rebuilt as one family?
The answer, at least for those gathered there, was a resounding yes.
And the first practical step came with the inauguration of a five-man Interim Management Committee charged with the task of bringing Abuja’s scattered UItes together, rebuilding the branch and organising a fresh election for substantive leadership.
The intervention was led by the Acting President of UIAA Worldwide, Dr. Terrumun Hembaor Gajir, in the company of members of the association’s Board of Trustees, including former Kano State Governor, His Excellency, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje and Dr Onye Godfrey Achilihu.
Two former Worldwide Presidents of UIAA, Dr Hyacinth Kyagbaa and Prof Kemi Emina, as well as the Worldwide Publicity Secretary, Comrade Enitan Abel Johngold, were also present.
The gathering, hosted by Achilihu, became more than an inauguration.
It became a reconciliation meeting.
THE FIVE PEOPLE NOW CARRYING THE BURDEN
The five alumni entrusted with the delicate assignment are:
Barr. Emmanuel Okere — Chairman
Folagbade Agbaye — Vice Chairman
Emmanuel Oyekan — Secretary
Anthonette Onu — Member
Barr. Onyinyechi Onumajuru — Member
Their mandate is deceptively simple but politically difficult:
Bring everybody together. Rebuild the branch.
Reconnect with UIAA Worldwide. Then conduct an election.
But underneath those words lies the real challenge, persuading people who have been on opposing sides of a leadership dispute to sit around the same table again.
That is why the language coming from the meeting was less about winning and losing and more about reconciliation.
“We are passionate about the revival of this branch.” – Dr. Terrumun Hembaor Gajir
GAJIR: “WE ARE ALMOST DECLARING YOU MORIBUND”
Inaugurating the committee, Dr Gajir delivered perhaps the clearest diagnosis of the Abuja Branch’s predicament.
He said the Worldwide leadership was intervening because it wanted to see the branch restored to active life.
“We are passionate about the revival of this branch and we are here today to inaugurate an interim management committee,” he said.
But his optimism was accompanied by a blunt warning.
For some time, according to Gajir, Abuja had not been participating in the association’s Executive Council Meetings, an important platform through which branches and Chapters engage with the Worldwide leadership.
That absence, he warned, has consequences.
A branch that does not maintain its membership and participation in Worldwide activities cannot expect to enjoy the same standing or opportunities within the wider association.
Gajir therefore charged the interim committee to move quickly.
The first task, he said, was not to start another leadership battle.
It was to bring the UItes together.
Then should come an election capable of producing substantive leadership.
“You have to use that leadership training you acquired in UI to achieve that,” he told the committee.
His message became even more direct when he described the branch’s condition.
“We are almost declaring you moribund,” he said, explaining that the intervention of a UIAA Worldwide BoT Member, Dr. Onye Achilihu had helped prevent the situation from deteriorating further.
Now, he said, Abuja must return to the mainstream.
The forthcoming Executive Council Meeting in Rivers State, he stressed, should provide one of the first opportunities for the revitalised branch to demonstrate that it is back.
“We want Abuja branch to be there,” he said.
For the Worldwide leadership, the message is unmistakable:
Revival is no longer optional.
THE REAL BATTLE: WHO OWNS THE BRANCH?
The most revealing aspect of the meeting was not the composition of the committee.
It was the repeated insistence by speaker after speaker that nobody should attempt to capture the Abuja Branch for a particular group, region, religion or personality.
That warning was particularly forceful from His Excellency Dr Umar Abdullahi Dr Ganduje.
The immediate past Kano State Governor and Vice Chairman of the UIAA Worldwide Board of Trustees did not mince words.
“We are all equal.”
He warned against the emergence of a leadership structure in which one individual or faction assumes that Abuja belongs to them.
“My appeal to those of you who are struggling to get this branch of UIAA up and going is that we are all equal,” Ganduje said.
“Don’t come with the impression that in Abuja you are the only one who matters.”
His argument was straightforward.
Abuja is Nigeria’s political and administrative capital. Its UIAA branch inevitably reflects the diversity of the country.
Therefore, any attempt to build the branch around a narrow ethnic, religious or regional constituency is bound to fail.
“Abuja is a cosmopolitan town. You must take everybody on board,” he said.
And then came the warning that may ultimately define the success or failure of the new arrangement:
“Please, let’s make Abuja Branch work this time around.”
GANDUJE’S PERSONAL STAKE IN ABUJA
Ganduje’s intervention was not merely ceremonial.
He reminded the gathering that although he is from Kano State, his connection with Abuja dates back decades.
He said he had lived around Abuja since 1981 and served as Chairman in Abuja, commissioner, deputy governor and governor in Kano State before eventually becoming a prominent national political figure.
Despite another engagement at his office, he said, he made time to attend the UIAA gathering.
His reason was simple: he believes the Abuja Branch can work.
“Since I’m domiciled here, I will be joining you here. We can be building the chapter together,” he said.
But Ganduje went beyond the immediate alumni dispute.
He placed the Abuja crisis against the larger Nigerian problem of ethnic and religious division.
“We should not let ethnicity or religion tear us apart,” he said.
For him, the University of Ibadan experience should provide a different model, one in which people from different parts of Nigeria can compete, collaborate and lead without turning identity into a weapon.
“We must support anyone that emerges as a leader and not necessarily the person must be from our tribesman,” he said.
His conclusion was striking:
“There is no tribe in nation building.”
And, he added, there should be no tribe in the task of lifting the University of Ibadan alumni community.
ACHILIHU: “SEEING THE PEOPLE HERE GIVES ME A LOT OF HOPE”
If Ganduje provided the political and national perspective, Dr Onye Godfrey Achilihu brought the emotional dimension.
As host of the meeting and a member of the Worldwide Board of Trustees, Achilihu has a personal history with the University of Ibadan that stretches back decades.
His story is also a reminder of what the alumni association can become when friendships transcend geography, ethnicity and religion.
Achilihu recalled his medical-school classmates from the 1981 set, people who have gone on to different parts of Nigeria and the world but who have continued to maintain their bonds.
He himself spent much of his professional life in the United States before returning to Nigeria.
When efforts began to rebuild the Abuja Branch, however, the initiative encountered what he described as a “roadblock”.
That experience, he said, made the turnout at the latest meeting particularly significant.
“Seeing the people here gives me a lot of hope.”
For Achilihu, the problem is not that there are too few successful UItes in Abuja.
There are plenty.
The problem is getting them to see themselves as members of the same family.
WHAT UI TAUGHT THEM, AND WHAT THEY MUST NOW REMEMBER
Achilihu’s most powerful argument was rooted in his own experience at the University of Ibadan.
He recalled the generation of students who came together at UI after the Nigerian Civil War.
They came from different parts of Nigeria.
They had different histories.
They belonged to different ethnic and religious communities.
But inside the university, those distinctions were not allowed to determine friendship.
“Those of us who came to Ibadan after the civil war, nobody knew where anyone came from,” he recalled.
“It wasn’t mentioned. It wasn’t a part of the conversation.”
That experience, he suggested, offers a lesson for Abuja UItes today.
His own medical-school classmates remain friends around the world.
They organise trips.
They visit one another.
They gather in different countries.
And the bonds formed decades ago have survived.
That, Achilihu argued, is the kind of fraternity the Abuja Branch must recover.
“Please, we want to revive this Abuja Branch of UIAA at all costs,” he said.
Then came a simple but powerful observation:
“It doesn’t take too many people to do that.”
AMBASSADOR JOE KESHI: “LET’S COME BACK AS ONE GROUP”
Veteran diplomat Ambassador Joe Keshi took the reconciliation argument a step further.
His message was directed at the different sides that have emerged from the leadership crisis.
He urged them to stop viewing the issue through the prism of victory and defeat.
Instead, he proposed reconciliation.
“Let’s come back as one group and solidify and rebuild the UIAA brotherhood Abuja branch,” Keshi said.
His intervention suggested that the way forward may not necessarily be another prolonged contest between factions.
It may begin with something much simpler:
An announcement. A meeting. A conversation. A willingness to forgive.
From there, he said, the different sides could gradually come together and ultimately emerge as one group.
WHY THIS ELECTION WILL BE DIFFERENT
On the surface, the committee’s assignment is straightforward: organise an election.
But that election may be the most consequential in the recent history of the Abuja Branch.
The danger is obvious.
If the election simply reproduces the old divisions, the committee will have achieved little.
If, however, it creates a leadership accepted across the different constituencies, it could become the foundation for a genuine rebirth.
That means the interim committee must do something that previous leadership arrangements struggled to achieve:
make people feel that they belong.
That requires reaching out to alumni who have stopped attending meetings.
It requires rebuilding confidence.
It requires reconnecting with the Worldwide body.
It requires regular activities.
And above all, it requires convincing UItes that the Abuja Branch is not a platform for one personality or faction.
It is a common institution.
ABUJA’S UNIQUE ADVANTAGE
Ironically, the same diversity that has complicated the branch’s politics may also be its greatest advantage.
The Federal Capital Territory is populated by professionals from virtually every part of Nigeria.
Among Abuja’s UItes are diplomats, doctors, lawyers, academics, civil servants, politicians, entrepreneurs, security professionals, administrators and members of the international community.
The meeting itself reflected that diversity.
Ambassador Joe Keshi was there.
Dr Emmanuel Sokpo was there.
Senior professionals from different generations and backgrounds were there.
And sitting together were alumni whose professional and personal journeys had taken them in vastly different directions.
That is the opportunity before the new committee.
If they can turn that diversity into collaboration, Abuja could become one of the strongest branches of UIAA.
If they fail, the branch risks returning to the same cycle of factionalism and inactivity.
THE WORLDWIDE DIMENSION
The crisis is not isolated from the larger UIAA structure.
According to the Worldwide leadership, Abuja’s prolonged inactivity has affected its participation in Executive Council affairs and, by implication, its ability to fully engage in the association’s broader leadership processes.
That makes the revival more than a local matter.
The Abuja Branch is being asked to reconnect with the Worldwide family.
The new interim committee therefore has a dual responsibility:
heal the branch internally and restore its place externally.
The forthcoming Executive Council Meeting in Rivers State is expected to be an early test of that commitment.
The question will be simple:
Will Abuja show up?
A TEST FOR THE NEW UIAA RECONCILIATION AGENDA
There is also a wider significance to what is happening in Abuja.
The current UIAA Worldwide leadership has increasingly placed reconciliation, unity and the resolution of disputes among branches at the centre of its agenda.
The Abuja intervention is therefore more than an isolated local initiative.
It is a test case.
Can a divided alumni branch be brought back together without creating another faction?
Can a credible interim structure create enough confidence for all sides to participate?
Can an election be conducted without reopening old wounds?
And perhaps the biggest question:
Can an association built around the shared memory of a great university rediscover the sense of brotherhood that brought its members together in the first place?
THE PEOPLE’S BRANCH
At the end of the meeting, one message appeared to resonate across the room:
The Abuja Branch must belong to everybody.
Not Kano.
Not the East.
Not the West.
Not Christians.
Not Muslims.
Not one professional group.
Not one political constituency.
Not one individual.
Everybody.
That may sound like an obvious principle.
But in an organisation emerging from a leadership crisis, it is also the hardest principle to enforce.
The five-man committee now has the responsibility of turning that principle into reality.
THE ROAD AHEAD
The committee has been given no licence for prolonged transition.
Its assignment is urgent.
It must reach out.
It must reconcile.
It must rebuild membership.
It must reconnect Abuja with UIAA Worldwide.
It must participate in Executive Council activities.
And, ultimately, it must organise a credible election that produces substantive leadership.
But the real measure of its success will not be the speed with which an election is conducted.
It will be whether the people who once stood on opposite sides can eventually sit together as colleagues, friends and alumni of the same university.
That is the real election being conducted in Abuja now, an election between division and unity, between the past and the future.
The five-man committee may have been inaugurated on Saturday, 31 October 2026.
But the harder work begins now.
THE FIVE-MAN INTERIM MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE
Chairman: Barr. Emmanuel Okere
Vice Chairman: Folagbade Agbaye
Secretary: Emmanuel Oyekan
Member: Anthonette Onu
Member: Barr. Onyinyechi Onumajuru
THE CHARGE
Bring Abuja UItes together. Rebuild the branch. Restore Worldwide participation. Conduct a credible election.
And, perhaps above all else:
Rebuild the brotherhood.