I knew John Nengel for more than forty years. We were close colleagues at University of Jos for almost twenty. He was the only one of my friends whom I would also consider a brother. Whereas Europeans like to draw boundaries, and much of my academic career was spent looking at this process, Africans prefer to find connections. “Brother” has much wider and more positive meanings in Africa than it does in Europe. With John I followed the African usage. Centuries ago a famous French writer, Montaigne, explained his friendship with Étienne de la Boétie: “Because it was he; because it was I.” Despite the obvious differences of origins and experiences, that was how I felt about John. With no other friend have I felt such a kinship.
I shall therefore begin with the one thing on which he thought very differently. I am sure that John would agree with my putting it first. His life was guided by his strong religious faith. He was brought up in the traditional practices of the Buji, but converted to Seventh Day Adventism in adolescence, and did not deviate from it. For him Christianity was not something to profess and proclaim, but to practise every day. I know that he often felt let down by fellow Christians who did who acted in selfish or inconsiderate ways. He was for a time puzzled by my also trying to behave morally despite my having no religious commitment. On how to deal with each other and with other persons we seldom disagreed. Religion was not a topic we felt we had to avoid. We talked freely, but we did not preach or evangelise. We learned much from each other. John was a remarkably tolerant man. Initially I assumed that he would not go to the hotels and drinking places that were a part of my life, or that if he did accompany me, he would be ill at ease or awkward. I misjudged him. He was above all sociable, and we enjoyed our company even if we drank different things. When we went out for lunch we were always amused when the jollof rice and Maltina were placed before me, on the assumption that I was a missionary, and the pepper soup and beer before him, on the assumption that he was a disreputable African.
As this suggests, a sense of humour was something we did share. His was robust. Just before I left Nigeria we wrote a Conference Paper: “From Cattle Dung to Chemical Fertilisers, Soil Fertility and Social Relations in Gurum Area, Buji District of Northern Jos, Plateau State: A Preliminary Analysis”. He was the one who first called it “The Bullshit Paper”. Life amused more than it annoyed him. He had the gift of laughter, and shared it widely. I shall miss that laugh.
The Bullshit Paper was not our only collaboration. We worked together a lot, both formally and informally. Our minds, skills, and knowledge were complementary. We shared a commitment to getting things right and to doing the research and fieldwork necessary to achieving that. Academic partnerships often break down because of clashing egos. I cannot deny that I am a show-off, but I do not recall John ever boasting. On the other hand he did not run himself down. Good academics know that there is much that they do not know, and, where necessary, John set about learning it. Few men or women of my acquaintance have had so clear an understanding of themselves and of what they could do.
John’s career was not an easy one. He was not ostentatiously a high-flyer. He was not among the first of the young men of his area to be given opportunities for success outside. Even when he reached Unijos, he was for a long time overlooked or neglected. He did not always make the obvious choices. As a child he took up with the Fulani, and was given a cow to manage. His father forbade this. Years later, when we were stuck in his blue Beetle behind a procession of Fulani and their herds of cattle, we calculated how much these would sell for, and how much less we were earning as university lecturers after so many devaluations of the naira. We came in jest to question whether he had made the right career choice. I first met him as I arrived in Jos in September 1979, just before he went off to London to do his Masters. In a week he did a lot to give me a sense of the city. As he believed that Europeans would melt if we walked in the African sun, we went round on his motor-scooter. This was valuable for me, but it would have been better for both of us if, instead, he had reached London just before I left for Nigeria. The English are not as outgoing as West Africans. He found it more difficult to adjust to London than I did to Jos. When I returned the next year on home-leave I found him for the only time in our friendship visibly unhappy and stressed out. Instead of doing his thesis on the Plateau, of which he knew so much, he had chosen to write on Mahdism in the Sudan, a well-studied question about which he then knew little. This was ambitious, but unwise. Back in Jos, he eventually got on track, and did eventually establish himself as a leading authority on the history of Central Nigeria, but this took longer than it need have.
His success showed above all determination and a proper sense of self-worth. All too often I have seen talented and even hard-working academics fail to reach the position that they should have had. John was clearly not one of them. But whereas in all else that I have discussed, John had virtues without the corresponding defects, faith without sanctimoniousness, dignity without pomposity, humour without frivolity, his determination could become stubbornness, as he recognised. I particularly recall that on one occasion when he returned from England he had to go back to Kano to collect what he had purchased and sent on. He refused to check that all the necessary documents were in his file. He was not careless, he was stubborn. He was sure he had everything. He had quickly to return without his stuff, without making excuses, but acknowledging the character trait which was responsible. He was a man who knew himself, and he was a good man to know.
I recently published a book which deals with Nigeria in the First World War. At the end of my preface, countering the image which so many have of Nigeria as a land of 419ers, I pointed out that it has also “persons of drive, integrity, and deep pride of race”, and that I had benefitted from working with some of these for almost two decades. I was not thinking just of John Nengel, but he was foremost in my mind.
