Nigeria is a big paradox in several respects and this reality can be understood against the backdrop of the enormity of its human and material resources vis-à-vis the grave, widespread sufferings the citizens have been going through from one regime to another. Petroleum had begun to gradually flex its muscles with other natural resources such as cocoa, groundnuts, palm oil and timber more than fifty years ago. Today, it (petroleum) has succeeded in sending the above resources to the guillotine. Painfully, but not unexpectedly, the Nigerian economy with its monolithic status is now in grave peril. But despite this ugly scenario, Nigeria still manages to stand astride other African geopolities like a colossus. However, the nation remains far away from sustainable development in all its ramifications. This situation should worry all patriotic Nigerians at home and abroad. After all, there is no place like home. Again, the huge human population of this country reaching 200 million or thereabouts, is among other things, a great asset as regards local and international investments. Unfortunately, Nigeria remains a consumer society to the detriment of sustainable economic progress and political stability. This situation or indeed, retrogression is largely traceable to bad leadership coupled with passive followership at every level of our socio-economic and political engagement.
There is no doubt that the human capital of this country is also simply terrific. Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Bala Usman, Omafume Onoge, Ade Ajayi, Obaro Ikime, Kayode Osuntokun and Niyi Osundare among other academic giants ruled/rule the Nigerian intellectual space and beyond. These grand older academics (some of them now of blessed memory) were/are of Nigerian extraction. Even their enemies do not contest their profound scholarship. Their works have proved to the die-hard stereotypes that the black man is not genetically inferior to his Western counterparts. There are numerous other younger world-class Nigerian gurus who are grand commanders of our global intellectual space. One of them is Toyin Falola currently located in Texas, in the United States of America. But despite these enormous, robust opportunities for sustainable development, Nigeria is still feeling comatose. The people are experiencing monumental material poverty arising from socio-cultural disorientation or dislocation. Although, a significant part of this ugliness cannot be separated from the traumatic experience of Islamisation and Westernisation involving slave trade and colonisation (between about 1000 and 500 years ago respectively), the greater burden lies with the local Nigerian leadership that is incurably predatory and selfish beyond human comprehension. They are thoroughly unpatriotic in many senses! This underscores the reason why more and more beggars are being produced on a daily basis to the chagrin of people with good conscience. The Nigerian political rulers (with a very few exceptions) are chronic Machiavellians.
They are highly predatory and these primitive tendencies started from the eve of the country’s independence from Britain in October 1960. Gradually, the predatory mentality began to develop into a dreadful monster. In other words, from 1960 to-date, self-aggrandisement, massive corruption, nepotism and parochial ethnic consciousness have become important components of Nigeria’s vocabularies of political engagements. The coming of the military oligarchy (in January 1966) to govern the country never helped. However, the followership from the 1960s up to early 1980s was not rooted in docility. The much needed radical activities of university academics then provided the main impetus for positive change or moderation of the excesses of the ruling class. There was a great deal of personal integrity at least on the part of a few of them (university lecturers) like Omafume Onoge, Akin Ojo, Bade Onimode, Obaro Ikime and Ola Oni – all of the University of Ibadan. Comrade Laoye Sanda of the Polytechnic Ibadan was another “field commander” of great repute. He was my mentor in the Socialist Movement at the Ibadan Polytechnic in the mid-1970s. Comrade Laoye Sanda taught members (mostly A/L students) how not to keep quiet in the face of oppressive, irresponsive leadership at any level. These were academics who had integrity and were equally ready to use their knowledge to improve the standards of living of fellow humanity. They were large-minded and people-sensitive.
It is important to mention here, Dr. Bala Usman of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria who despite his aristocratic/royal background (one of the offspring of the Emir of Zazzau) was a prominent leftist scholar. Drs. Bala Usman and Segun Osoba of the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) wrote a minority report in 1979 in connection with the drafting of the 1979 Nigerian constitution. It was a buoyant era of radical knowledge productions. I was one of the University of Ibadan students at the Sketch Newspapers Office at Dugbe in Ibadan in 1979/80 when these two intellectuals had a press conference on their socialist mode of constitution for Nigeria. They religiously believed that a legal document of this nature was capable of liberating contemporary Nigerians from the shackles of political enslavement, capitalist oppression and economic exploitation within and without.
Of course, the generalissimo of radical knowledge productions and socio-political/cultural consciousness was in charge at Ile-Ife. This uncommon African citizen was Professor Wole Soyinka. These radical scholars never tolerated any University Vice-Chancellor that was obsessional about power, money and nepotism. The Nigerian university then was a fantastic model for the larger society. Today, the reverse is the norm. Thus, for example, leaders of academic unions now see themselves as part of university management. What an irony!We have painfully and gradually lost some of our finest values and value-systems to the ravaging stream of unhealthy, uncritical materialism. Lecturers including professors (with a few exceptions) have turned Vice-Chancellors to demi-gods largely because of their (lecturers) insatiable longing after positions and materialism at the expense of idealism. They do not care a hoot about the fact that idealism is the main pillar of profound intellectualism.
Unfortunately, the military regime of General Olusegun Obasanjo silenced these radicals in 1978. In other words, their radically inclined scholarship was eclipsed after the students’ demonstration christened, “Ali Must Go!” This was one protest too many. It shook the Obasanjo’s regime to its solid foundations. The National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS) organised this protest following the introduction of obnoxious school fees at the university level. Drs. Akin Ojo of Physics Department, Bade Onimode of Economics Department, Omafume Onoge of Sociology, University of Ibadan were sacked because of their alleged roles in the monumental protest.
Obasanjo’s axe also fell on Comrade Laoye Sanda of the General Studies Department, The Polytechnic Ibadan. This was how university academics who were the conscience of the society (the town) withdrew to their shells. It marked the beginning of a new era in the country’s intellectual history. Lecturers from this period developed a shell of complete or near-complete indifference to the satisfaction of our habitual oppressors and/or abusers who parade themselves as leaders. With this ugly situation, the pathway was/is clear for more political recklessness, massive corruption and unbridled arrogance on the part of the rulership. There was nobody to curb the excesses of our rulers because apart from the radical academics, labour union leadership at different levels was equally crippled.
Every year, the Nigerian university produces graduates who know little or nothing outside their main disciplines as the university authorities engage in one act of intimidation or the other. They are now being trained to celebrate their abusers – so that they can partake of the “national cake”. How can such university graduates contribute meaningfully to the development of Nigeria and the world at large? The Nigerian academic gown today is filthy and therefore very unhealthy and by extension, unfit for any decent and forward-looking society. We have to replace it through charismatic training capable of checkmating our predatory political rulers and other categories of administrators, who have become worse than our colonisers.
•Professor Ogundele is of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Oyo State