I have always had high hopes in Nigeria’s academia and despite their numerous shortcomings, I have always insisted that the academia remains Nigeria’s best hope of salvaging the nation’s fortunes l, in it lies the numerous opportunities for national salvation and if only the Nigerian political class would only give it its due and not treat it as one former Governor contemptuously remarked that all they did was to sleep with young female students, today, the same Governor has pretentiously been all over the space for eight years asking Nigerians to take back their country!
But then, when the same academia begins to exhibit the same dysfunctional nature that has defined everything that is wrong with this nation and has thus led her far into the entangling quagmire and has reduced us from that Super Power status our founding fathers much aspired to perhaps the near sick man of Africa! Nigeria has much defied the numerous promises she is beholden to and has sought to break the hearts of most of those who have believed much in her.
So when the academia begin to squabble and fight like petty Lamidi Adedibu’s and the Bob Izua’s over who becomes a Vice Chancellor as is presently witnessed in Obafemi Awolowo University Ife, then it seems that even our hopes that the academia’s light may one day shine over the darkness that much envelopes Nigeria is dimmed forever and we may have to look to another course, the military? God forbid, perhaps a revolution then, but such an option could be gory too!
The issues surrounding the selection of Professor Adebayo Bamire as the 13th substantive Vice Chancellor of one of the first generation universities the nation produced is mind boggling. The protests that have greeted such a process that is naturally as sacred as any of the other academic rituals is indeed an assault on the principles of ‘Academic Freedom’ from which the University System much owes its existence to. When the University system became a socio- cultural club or a tribal union ,thus becoming the chattel of the tribe or people upon which the university is situated, one cannot really say, but the university system like Alexander’s parting words seeks the best and brightest, how the people of Ife, including members of the academia who hail from the Cradle of Yoruba Civilization can think to upturn such a process that should be as inviolable as the principle of academic freedom not by suggesting that Bamire’s selection did not meet the requirements or that he may have had some criminal records for which he had been indicted for in the past.
This it must be our son or daughter as Vice Chancellor much negates the essence of a university, will a Vice Chancellor of Ife stock attend to the challenges presently staring the university in the face? Will it improve the academic excellence in the university? Will it immediately translate to bridging the gaping infrastructural gap common with Nigerian universities? Even at that Professor Bamire happens to be a Yoruba man from Oyan, imagine if he was from Abagana!
Carrying all sorts of charms, dressing funny and chanting all sorts of mumbo jumbo all in order to reverse the emergence of Professor Bamire is an affront on today’s thinking and represents the departure the academia in Nigeria has taken away from the real ideals of the academic environment.
Has the academia lost it, is thus then any hope for the Nigerian nation if an Oyan man who has lived much of his adult life in Ife cannot be allowed to be a Vice Chancellor even when his credentials are outstanding! If every university in Nigeria were to be managed by sons of the soil, then every tribe will have to have its own university, and employ only sons of the soil, in order to exclude all outsiders from even dreaming to become Vice Chancellor, that would indeed be a sorry sight.
The concept of the university holds that it is a world distinct from the area in which it is domiciled, thus it is a hub on its own, away from the remote vagaries of the town, it is insulated from the thinking of the town, particularly when such thinking runs contrary to the universal spirit from which the word universitas which is Latin and from which the word University is culled from.
Lastly, the University of Ife is a Federal University which is open to any bonafide citizen of Nigeria, the last I checked Professor Bamire is not from Niger, Benin Republic or Djibouti, and it is a shame that 60 plus years into nationhood, we are still squabbling over ethnic issues, worse for it is the fact that it is the academic community that is engaged in such shamelessness when it should be the torch bearer to national integration and national unity.
Nigeria Will Triumph