Dr
Omar Jah, the deputy vice chancellor of the University of The Gambia, has
recently bagged an appointment with the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation,
sources told this medium.
After
serving the UTG for about 15 years, Prof. Jah has finally resigned to take up
his new job as the Pro-Vice Chancellor, Islamic University of Technology (IUT)
in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
IUT
is a subsidiary of OIC established to build capacity of IOC member states in
the fields of engineering.
Shortly
before leaving The Gambia at the weekend, Prof. Jah had an interview with The
Point newspaper and below we produced the edited excerpt of the discussion.
Can
you tell me your story? Who is Dr Omar Jah?
In
a nutshell, Dr. Omar Jah, is a man with a humble beginning and currently a
humble status. I was born in Fass Omar
Saho, a village in Lower Nuimi from two parents of farmers who hailed from
Daarah background and did their best to inculcate in me cardinal virtues of
daaarah (quality education based on revealed knowledge), which designed my road
map and shaped my thoughts.
Can
you tell us something about your educational career?
My
beginning was the Qur’anic circle started from my village under my father’s
supervision, ending by memorizing the Qur’an in an early age in Touba Belel,
Senegal; later attended Muslim Senior Secondary School with a secondary
certificate, proceeded to Algeria where I learnt French and obtained a diploma
in techniques of Islamic propagation, and to Egypt where I obtained A Level,
and BA from al-Azhar University, combining the Shari’ah and Law in classical
Arabic in 1992. I later obtained Master of Comparative Law (MCL) specializing
in Public International Law with a thesis on the Law of the Sea in 1995 and a
Ph.D in 1999, both from Malaysia, and both the thesis and the dissertation were
written in English.
Can
you tell us about your journey with the University of The Gambia?
I
joined the University of the Gambia in 2002 upon an invitation sent to me in
Malaysia, where I was lecturing part-time at the International Islamic
University (IIUM). I received the invitation from the first Vice Chancellor,
the late Donald Ekong, to join the young University, and I positively responded
On
one hand, upon my appointment as lecturer (I) in the Faculty of Humanities and
Social Sciences I proposed to establish a department of Islamic and Arabic
Language Studies, which was accepted. I developed the curriculum and headed the
unit for six years. For over ten years, I had handled my full teaching,
community service and research loads, publishing a number of articles and a
book in peer reviewed journals and worked closely with both Vice Chancellors:
Ekong and Steigen, particularly in their late days; and worked very closely
with the third Vice Chancellor Muhammadou Kah in his entire tenure, the
combination of which did allow me acquire enough academic and administrative
experience, and to gradually and meritoriously attain my present academic and
administrative ranks.
I,
on the other hand, have served my technical supervision roles over all Deans
and all administrative units for over five years, reporting directly to the
Vice Chancellor; I have also been an active member of both the University
Senate and Governing Council since 2006, participating in formulating different
policies. During the period, I have chaired many technical committees,
supervised many collaborative projects such as the African Virtual University
(AVU, and the Erasmus Mundus KITE, and many more
And
since the university is built on three arms: teaching, research and community
service, combined with my inherently social traditional role of the one who
proudly hailed from and was raised in daarah, mastering both Arabic and English
languages with a reasonable ability in French, I had to involve in community
service activities; giving public lectures and becoming a regular guest speaker
at GRTS and, in that vein, I served as a columnist on The Point Newspaper, one
of the leading, well-read and well-circulated newspapers in The Gambia. I still
remember the late Deyda Hydara (may his soul rest in perfect peace), having
attended one of my presentations at a symposium in Bakau, verbally inviting me
to write for the newspaper, which I proudly responded to. So, from 2004-2010, I
served as a columnist yielding a number of articles such as: “Democracy: Is it
in a Dilemma?” the Iraqi Scenario; Is it an Islamic or Secular Fundamentalism?
Islam and Science, so on and so forth
Can
you brief us about your New Job?
As
the subject indicates, I am now a Pro-Vice Chancellor of IUT, equal to an
overall deputy vice chancellor supervising all academic, administrative, as
well as financial activities; IUT specializes in different fields of
engineering to build the capacity of member states. The position was advertised
last year across the member states of the Islamic world, competed for by many
candidates; I applied, was shortlisted finally with another professor from
Senegal, called for an interview in Jeddah on June 1. 2016 and was, by the
grace of Allah, able to secure it for The Gambia.
Let
me seize this opportunity here to thank Allah, the Almighty first and foremost,
to thank my parents for their sympathy for and intellectual preparation of my
humble self, and to thank H E President Jammeh for giving a “no objection” to
OIC for my appointment, which was a condition attached for the validity of the
contract. I will remain committed to continue participating in whatever makes
the Gambian youths, particularly intellectually and religiously grounded and
enlightened through fostering collaboration, particularly with UTG, especially
with the new Vice Chancellor who will have to face many challenges ahead.
However,
my short interaction with him to submit my handing over notes and to brief him
about the best way forward, followed by his initial steps shows that he is up
to the job; he is both flexible, a good listener and very stern at the same
time; he seems to be determined to reclaim the role of a strong Chief Executive
Officer, which was gradually perishing; there is more hope now.
You
have already had and will continue to have diverse experience from different
parts of the world; can you tell me what are the essential values leading to
your success?
Oh!
Success goes with risks and failures; and no success without planning; because
failing to plan means planning to fail. But before I give you the essential
values as you put it, let me stress here that I prefer using the term virtues
than values. Secular materialism has reduced many worldviews into a
superficiality by substituting certain metaphysical terminologies with physical
ones. I can say that my successes and failures have been shaped by the
following four main virtues:
(a)-humility, (b) self-reliance, (c) self-criticism, and adoption of a
role model in the person and living Sunnah of the Prophet Muhamad (SAW), who
was the embodiment of all virtues, and who designed the philosophy of the
“power of now” rather than the power of wait and see
This
is an interesting Q&A but let me finally know your views on politics: Are
you a politician?
Yes,
I am a politician by nature and a politician by functional household politics;
I have a family and engage daily in functional household politics as exposed by
classical thinkers like Ibn. Sina (Avicenna). The sociologists define man as
“rational animal” or political animal. I can define politics as “arts of
governance” and whether we like it or not every man and woman is either
positively or negatively affected by political activities. Nonetheless, I am
not a functional city politician. Reading through the literature, originally
city politics was strongly attached to a bill of etiquettes; however, as time
unfolds politics became detached from that bill of ethics and morality caused
by individuals like Machiavelli. Machiavellian politics means giving false promises
to rule. Apart from few world examples, all functional city politicians act the
same.
The
difficulty of returning politics to its metaphysical nature emanates from the
difficulty mainly of achieving three things:
(a) difficulty of striking a balance between
political realism and idealism and;
(b) difficulty in keeping up with “genuine
sphere of political power”; and to elaborate on this
point,
let me explain what I mean by genuine sphere of power. There are two legal
maxims, one which goes “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”;
I believe that this maxim is largely true but partly untrue, the other one goes
“might is right”; this maxim is largely untrue and partly true. Between the
two, there is genuine sphere of power; the Holy Qur’an repeatedly tells us that
genuine sphere of power is important and necessary; it is power used to assist
and rescue the weak amongst us.
(c) The third one is the difficulty of
striking a balance between using power and not using it. For, when power is
used by whosoever is powerful, power exhausts and when it is not used by him,
it will be used against him; and the techniques of using it and not using it at
the same time is where the real difficulty lies.
So,
until city politics are re-attached to its metaphysical roots, apart from
exercising my right to cast my vote in an election, I prefer the pursuit of
academic life to be part of the intellectual restoration of such values, rather
than involving in organic functional city politics
Thank
you Prof. Jah
Thank
you for having me