Category: Biodun Jeyifo

In my last year as ASUU National President in 1982, I tried to initiate a discussion within the National Executive Committee of the Union on the rapidly expanding number of universities in the country, my intention being to ultimately get the federal and state governments, together with other stakeholders within and outside the universities, to begin to reflect on and plan for the consequences on the quality of staffing of the rapid and relentless expansion of universities in the country. Nearly all the members of that National Exco of the Union to whom I put the suggestion agreed that the suggestion was good. However, almost to a man, they all cautioned me against putting the suggestion into action. Why? They thought that ASUU would be misunderstood as being against the expansion of our universities, which, at that stage numbered between 20 and 22. More specifically, they thought that as members of the Exco that were from the “educationally disadvantaged” areas of the country were in the minority in the Exco, it would make people think those of us from the “advantaged” areas were using our numerical dominance to work against the extension of higher learning to the disadvantaged parts of the country.

Moreover, at the time that I made that suggestion, ASUU was embroiled in struggles for better funding and academic autonomy, struggles that were putting a lot of strain on unity and togetherness among all the branches of the Union. In such a situation, it was felt that we would be further stretching the brittleness of unity amongst us by embarking on a critical discussion of the short and long-term consequences of the rapid expansion of universities in the country. In the face of such circumstances and considerations, I was persuaded to drop the suggestion. I don’t remember the full details now, but I think that a sort of vague commitment was made that at some future date, ASUU would lead the way in getting all stakeholders in higher education in the country to sit down, reflect on and plan for the consequences of an expansion of higher education that eventually resulted in one of the most rapid and wide-ranging in the history of the modern university anywhere in the world.

To this day, I am haunted by this particular “failure” of my presidency of ASUU. For in all honesty, I now believe that if I had stood my ground and initiated those discussions, we would have weathered the undoubted storms that would have arisen. Why do I think so? Well, between 1982 and 1986, ASUU’s victories in our struggles were decisive and consequently, the unity among all our branches and members was so unassailable that we would have had the moral capital and the tactical muscle to withstand any and all attempts to divide us on the basis of spurious expressions of differences between, on the one hand, the educationally advantaged and, on the other hand, the disadvantaged areas of the country. This regret is made even keener by the fact that, unless I am mistaken, as far as I am aware, no review has ever been made of the impact on the quality of staffing in our university system by the nature and scope of the rapid expansion of higher learning in our country between 1982 and the present. [Would anyone who has any facts or data to counter this assertion of mine please step forward?]

These opening paragraphs of this piece are intended as a broad introduction to the subject of this week’s column, which itself is intended as a sort of postscript or epilogue to the essays of the last two weeks. The subject of this epilogue, as hinted in the title of the piece is – how much of quality and value remain in our universities today, regardless of, or indeed in spite of the monumental decay that we extensively discussed in the two previous essays in this column? In order to prevent any ambiguities in my response to this question, I will be direct in my response to the question, almost to the point of being very blunt. And so, what is my response to the question? Very simply, this: quality and value still subsist in our universities, but mostly among the last batch of those whose undergraduate and postgraduate education, at home and abroad, were sound and thorough in comparison with standards of good universities all over the world.

Let me repeat this observation with a slight variation: senior academics whose intellectual and professional grooming were of the highest order are still to be found in our universities, but only in a depressingly diminishing order; when the last of them would have retired and/or departed from the historical scene, then the decay would really set in as an almost impregnable formation. This may sound deeply pessimistic or even apocalyptic, but I do not intend it to be so. And this is the crux of the matter, the heart of my observations and reflections in this postscript. In other words, I am suggesting that before the last of the “Mohicans” and the “titans” among our academics would have gone out of the historical scene, it is still possible to socially and institutionally reproduce them. But this will not happen automatically; it will not even happen if we are half-hearted and confused about what needs to be done. And speaking for myself, I assert, as I had done in the two previous essays in this series, that I have no simple, surefire solutions to offer to this great problem of the challenge of rescuing higher education from the morass of decay and mediocrity into which it is sinking in our country. This point leads me back to the opening paragraphs of this piece.

So: Has there ever been a review, a comprehensive review, of the impact of the rapid expansion of federal, state and private universities on the quality of higher education in our country? As I stated earlier, to my knowledge, the answer is no. Here I must repeat my plea that if anyone is aware that such a review has indeed been done, I would like for them to step forward and clear up the air on the matter. My point in raising this issue is that if indeed some review(s) have taken place, we would not have to start from a blank slate; all we would need to do is to build on the findings and recommendations of the review(s). But even if none has ever been done, the time is more than ripe and auspicious for it now. This is the basic issue that I wish to explore in this piece. To start us on this journey, I seek the reader’s permission to compare what happened in two large-scale, world-historical events to what happened in higher education in Nigeria between 1982 and the present, 2017. These two historical events are the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855 and the Scramble for Africa of 1881-1914.

Whatever positive and redeeming things they may have accomplished, the California Gold Rush and the Scramble for Africa brought out some of the worst moral and social propensities in human beings on a gargantuan scale: greed, opportunism, betrayal, violence, thievery. Perhaps the most objectionable thing about both was the justification of all these vices, all these evils with the argument that the end justified the means where the “ends” meant production of wealth and progress on a vast scale. In both cases, the wealth was indeed produced and some “progress” did take place, but only as long as one chose to ignore at whose expense this took place. This profile, I am suggesting, is remarkably similar to what happened in the rapid expansion of universities in Nigeria between 1982 to the present. This is why I designate what happened to and in our universities in the period, “The Great Scramble for Professorships in Nigeria, 1982-2017”.

Now, other things were of course also happening to and in our universities in the period. Permit me to briefly identify some of the more onerous among them. Military dictatorship, together with its deleterious influences, massively invaded our universities and many Vice Chancellors, and virtually all Governing Councils became willing hostages to it. It became the norm that in order to become a Vice Chancellor or a Member of a Governing Council, you had to lobby the military bosses and you had to be willing to kowtow to them in their expressed desire to purge the universities of radical, anti-dictatorship elements among faculty and students. Criminal and extortionate gangs among students, otherwise known as “cults”, came on the heels of this militarist invasion of our universities. Massive SAP-induced decreases in the funding of state or public universities began to exert a great toll on the resources available for teaching and research in our universities, simultaneously as this led to calls for permission to be given for the setting up of completely private universities. [Incidentally, when I was ASUU National President, there was not a single private university in the country] Finally, an otiose religiosity, in the form of fundamentalist Pentecostal Christianity, won innumerable converts among all sectors of the university communities, especially among very senior academics and students. As a result of this particular development, the business of teaching, learning and research began to jostle unequally for attention and allegiance with the mission of saving souls from the spiritual clutches of Satan and his hosts.

Am I isolating “The Great Scramble for Professorships” from all these other crises and problems besetting Nigerian higher education in the period? Yes and No. Let us take the “Yes” first: all the other things were happening, not only in Nigeria but in many other countries in Africa and the developing world whereas, as far as I know, with the possible exception of post-apartheid South Africa, scrambling for professorships on a massive scale has not been a significant feature of higher education in other countries in Africa. For the “No” part, I would argue that the great scramble for professorships in our country is an indivisible part of the contradictions of the predatory, thieving and corrupt capitalism in power in our country. Ultimately, it will be either resolved or perpetuated depending on how we deal with this extremely regressive and unregenerate form of capitalism in reign in our country.

“The Great Scramble for Professorships in Nigeria, 1982-2017”: what exactly was/is it? Briefly stated, as more and more universities were created and are still being created, the professoriate was vastly expanded and is still being expanded absolutely without the intellectual and professional production to justify the expansion. It is like a gold rush because, in a way, it is analogically a gold rush because virtually all university teaching and research staff, with very few exceptions, were and are involved in it. Like the California Gold Rush that did not extensively involve deep earth mining so that complete amateurs and neophytes could participate in it, the scramble for professorships means that you do not have to have done much to strike it big and become a professor. “I personally know of the case of a former student of mine who moved from lecturer to professor the same year by tactically shopping around and moving from one university to the other until arriving at his destination of professorship.” This is a quote from an article by Emeritus Professor Jide Osuntokun that I discussed last week. The fact is that virtually everyone in our universities knows of someone or lots of colleagues who have done the same thing, that is if he or she is not him or herself an example of the practice.

The “scramble” can be stopped. Indeed, it must be stopped before the generational cohort of professors who are real professors in higher education in our country vanishes completely, without having reproduced itself. That is why a comprehensive review, a thoroughgoing stocktaking is a necessary first step. If this does not happen, if the “scramble” persists, quality and value will not vanish completely in higher education in our country. For indeed, value can never and will never be completely wiped out from Nigerian academia. Life’s renewal always reasserts itself. As the title of this piece indicates, from cesspools, from ordure and manure, new life often springs forth. But unfortunately, that is not enough; it does not suffice. Life and its possibilities must be encouraged to grow and thrive in all its richness.

Erratum

Last week, twice, I wrote complementary when I meant complimentary. Mea culpa; mea maxima culpa. Complementary is not complimentary; complementary is not complimentary!

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

Quite often, I get responses to the contents of this column through emails sent to me by readers. For the most part, these emails are positive, they are complementary. But sometimes, I do get emails that take me to task either for the views that I express and the positions that I take or for the arguments and the premises undergirding the views and positions. Interestingly, some of such emails are also complementary, mixing praise with critique. When the criticism is of the positions taken or views expressed by me, I am content to note and acknowledge difference and diversity of opinion as a fundamental aspect of public discourse. But when the critique pertains to basic premises, I sit up and pay attention. This is exactly what is involved in this week’s piece: many people wrote me questioning, even faulting the basic premise of last week’s column. What was this premise?

Well, it is the contention that as deep and wide as educational decay has become in the tertiary level of education in our country, it is the universities themselves, it is the professoriate that can and must effect the desperately needed reform and restitution. Invoking the popular adage of physician, heal thyself, I argued that without the universities themselves leading the effort, external agents like government, employers of labour and organizations of parents and guardians cannot even begin to make the slightest dent on the almost impregnable edifice of decay in our institutions of higher learning. To some who wrote me on this wrote me, this premise is mistaken, wrongheaded: the decay, the corruption in our universities is so vast, so systemic that reform cannot and will not come from our universities themselves. To give the reader a sense of just how radical and unrestrained this critique was expressed, permit me to quote at some length from one of the emails that I received:

“The process of decay in our universities has been long, sustained and nurtured to the point where it has morphed into being systemic. The “employers” in the universities, the Governing Councils, are populated by political jobbers and ‘professors’ who in the main are made by fraudulent Vice-Chancellors of vices. The choice of Council members lacking in integrity, has been hallmarked by political jobbers whose see universities as cash cows to be milked for personal gain. What are we to make of a situation where, rather than the users of equipment that are trained in its usage overseeing their purchase through competitive bidding and directly from the manufacturers, a monumentally ignorant state interposes itself strictly for the purpose of stealing, without regard for the purpose for which the equipment is meant? The result – inappropriate equipment; equipment with missing components; equipment without the space in which to place them.

In the main, the professoriate is populated by people who have cheated their way to the top. In the empirical sciences in particular, where electricity, water and the laboratory – a basic space for infrastructural support for experimentation – do not exist, the question arises as to where the “experimentation” on which publications are premised was done. How do universities that can hardly run undergraduate practicals engage in research? So, we have a vast number of lecturers who are products of non-empiricism who are reproducing themselves through no fault of theirs but what the system has made of them. It is common practice now for lecturers to provide their writing materials. And graduate students – the future of the profession – are saddled with astronomical fees in decrepit conditions. Moreover, they are compelled to provide the wherewithal for their research and are compelled to implement them out-of-house rather than in-house, lacking in direct supervision and regular research group discussions that research entails. The list goes on and on and on. In Nigeria, the university has become a cesspool.”

It is important to underscore the fact that the person who forwarded these sobering observations on the state of decay in our universities to me is himself a senior university don. I say this is important because both his general observations and the conclusion that he draws from them are commonly known in our universities. In other words, there is widespread knowledge in the universities themselves of the fact that things are very bad, that indeed things are so bad in virtually all our universities as a system that something desperate, something unprecedented ought to be done. Indeed, to drive home this point, permit me to quite from another “witness” on just how vast is the state of corruption in the academic vocation in our country, a “witness” who is a highly respected emeritus professor in one of our first-generation universities:

“I personally know of the case of a former student of mine who moved from lecturer to professor the same year by tactically shopping around and moving from one university to the other until arriving at his destination of professorship. This has been made possible by the ballooning number of universities without corresponding planning for staffing them. I know of a case of a young lecturer in a hard area of computer science applying for a job of senior lecturer in another university. As soon as he got it and without even assuming the position, made a bid as in an auction or in a market for a higher post in another university and got appointed a professor. There are professors and there are professors of course! This academic title has become like chieftainship title in the usual bad tradition in Nigeria.” [Jide Osuntokun, “Quality Assurance in Varsities: Umudike Example”, The Nation, October 26, 2017]

To get to the heart of the issues that I am exploring in this piece, I ask the reader to please note that the title of Emeritus Professor Osuntokun’s article in The Nation of October 26 hinges on the words, “Quality Assurance”. This implies that as much as Osuntokun recognizes the scope and the depth of decay in the system, he still feels that reforms can and should be implemented. Indeed, towards the end of his article – which I encourage all who are truly interested in these profoundly troubling issues to go and read – Osuntokun gives some suggestions as to how the process of restitution, of cleaning up can be started. I can confirm that, in my opinion, they are thoughtful, sound suggestions. But unfortunately, that is not the end of the story. Why? Simply this: the cesspool cannot clean itself. Of course, one could in response say that “cesspools are not people, they are not human subjects with agency; human beings who live in or around cesspools can and do often drain the swamp and clear up the gargantuan mess”. But then, there is the riposte to this revisionism and it is this: if those living, breathing and thriving in the cesspool are in the majority, are in control, the chances of cleaning up the cesspool are bleak. This is the thesis, the dilemma posed to me by the email from the senior colleague from whose text I quoted first before quoting from the article by Osuntokun.

It is perhaps necessary at this point in the discussion to render the dilemma that I am discussing in this essay in very concrete terms. Thus, I ask the reader to think of the implications of the question indicated in the title of this piece: How do universities that can hardly run undergraduate practicals engage in research? The answer of course is simple and devastating: universities in which the conditions for basic undergraduate instruction are non-existent cannot engage in research, period. But we all know that our universities are claiming to be doing research, they are awarding Ph D’s in all the disciplines. Things are so seemingly hopelessly skewed that even new, private universities that lack the basic human and infrastructural necessities for high school instruction are awarding Ph D’s, the ultimate research degree in the modern university. To get a sense of just how deep and wide this particular stretch of the drain is, think, dear reader, of the fact that a large segment of the professoriate in our universities were produced and are still being produced by and through this tragic malformation of the universal traditions of higher learning in our country.

To make the implications of the central issue in this discussion more concrete, more inescapable, I ask the following question that is posited in response to Emeritus Professor Osuntokun’s sound suggestions for safeguarding and sustaining quality assurance in our universities: What do we do, concretely, about all the worthless Ph D’s that have been produced and are still being produced in our universities? And the “professors” who produced and are still producing them, what do we do about them? That is the question and anyone who claims that she or he has a simple and realistic solution to the question is self-deceived. This was the thought in my mind when, in last week’s piece in this column, I asserted that like what Governor Nassir El Rufai did in Kaduna State to primary school teachers, no one can simply go to the universities, conduct a simple test or examination to expose fake lecturers and professors and give them the boot. If this is the case, does that mean that we can do nothing at all about the vastly diseased and festering situation? The answer to this question, I declared last week, is “No”. We cannot and must not reconcile ourselves to the prevailing very dire, very tragic situation. Listen, once again, to what Osuntokun says of the professoriate in our universities today: “There are professors and there are professors of course! This academic title has become like chieftainship title in the usual bad tradition in Nigeria.”

The one thing that brings all these unhappy matters to a head is the subjective, human dimension of academic decay in our society: the men and women who produce worthless Ph D’s are not worthless human beings; the generational cohorts of thousands of young graduates from our universities that employers of labour have routinely and consistently found “unemployable” are not worthless human beings; the dozens of hundreds of professors whose professorships are little better than the “professorship” of the magician, Professor Peller, are not worthless human beings. No human individual or group comes into the world worthless, even the most physically disabled; people are made worthless by the order or scheme of things organizing their individual and collective existence. And any solutions that we come up with must start from the basic presumption that, baring congenital mental defects, every human being is not only educable but is entitled to good and relevant education. I learnt all these things mostly from decades as a teacher in the academy, at home and abroad, but primarily from the invaluable experience of having once served as the National President of ASUU. I had this fact in mind when I wrote last week that solutions to the vast, surfeited decay in our university system can be found in our universities themselves. Permit me to bring the discussion to an end by giving a short elaboration on this point.

For over two decades now, ASUU’s leadership has been proposing solutions to the small and the great, the local and the general problems besetting our universities. Indeed, in December 2014, I was privileged to serve as the Chairman of a National Educational Summit (NES) organized by ASUU and the other unions in our universities. It is immensely gratifying to state that this NES focused on problems internal to the good running, the rescue of relevant and qualitative education in our universities and polytechnics. And beside ASUU itself as an organization, there are many individual academics in Nigeria who have reflected deep and wide on the problems, the challenges. Taken together, these factors were responsible for the premise of my article in last week’s column. What was this premise? Even with the depth of the decay that we see in them, the universities themselves can and must play a crucial role in the rescue of our universities from the morass of mediocrity, decay and redundancy into which, heaven help us, they are sinking.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

If he had not gone on to become the investigative journalist extraordinaire that is now regarded as one of the greatest journalists in Nigeria’s post-independence history, he could have had a very promising career as an academic. Take this as a testimony from one of his former teachers. I am talking of course of Dapo Olorunyomi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Premium Times, one of Africa’s leading online newsmagazine, who turned 60 this week. In this tribute to a man who is one of the most dedicated and delightfully inquisitive students that I ever taught, I start with the account of an encounter with him and another student that would eventually prove portentous, even though I did not know it at the time. What was this encounter?   

Dapo Olorunyomi and Dele Layiwola (currently Professor and Director of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan) had walked into my office one afternoon and asked me some probing questions about the work, the ideas of one of the major figures of the European Left intelligentsia of the second half of the 20th century. Was it Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin or Louis Althusser? I don’t remember, though I am sure it was one of these three philosophers. I was then teaching at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife and Dapo and Dele were both undergraduates. I think they were not yet in their final years when this encounter took place. Which was why I was rather taken aback by the searching nature of their questions. I confess now, so many years and decades later, that I thought they were just trying to impress me. Every teacher was once herself or himself a student: in our time, I and my fellow students, we had done the same thing!

Now, so many decades later in my memory of the encounter, I think I tried to fob off their questions with some paternalistic remarks that didn’t really address the questions they had posed to me. This was because I thought that their questions, being the sort that one expected from advanced postgraduate students, were way beyond the undergraduate status of Dapo and Dele. But they persisted, having probably noted the small dose of paternalism in my responses to their questions – even though I was trying as hard as I could to hide it. At any rate, they followed their first set of questions with further questions that made me sit up, made me realize that I was confronting, not neophytes trying to impress their teacher, but bright young minds trying to understand complex issues and ideas pertaining to human equality and dignity. If my memory serves me right, from those series of questions developed a conversation between us that lasted for more than a week of two or three sessions.

That encounter has lingered in my memory because, in my recollection, it was the very first time that my apprehension of Dapo and Dele as distinct individuals within the generality of my students began to take shape in my mind. This story may seem exceptional and in a way, it is rather unique. But I think I speak for all teachers when I declare that the moment when we begin to form distinct impressions about students with whom we would go on to forge deep moral, intellectual and emotional bonds, that moment tends to linger in our minds. Of course, no one remains a student forever: Dapo Olorunyomi and Dele Layiwola long ago achieved their biological adulthood and intellectual maturity are now “elders” in their own right. After all, Dapo is now sixty and moreover, I have been told that he has begun to “command” those among his cohort that are still below sixty to respect all their elders!

Of what significance is it that it was a figure of the European Left and not an African or Afro-diasporic thinker that Dapo and Dele came to discuss with me in my office at OAU that momentous afternoon so many decades ago? Not much except for this simple but deeply significant fact: because Europe had colonized us, we did not therefore take the position that everything in European thought was off-limits. We knew that we had to read and study thinkers and philosophers from our own continent and from the African diaspora and from other parts of the Non-Western world. But that did not exclude European thinkers, especially those, like Adorno and Benjamin, that had made devastating critiques of the cruelty and barbarism at the heart of the civilized façade of European modernity. In other words, it was not as a mark of Europhilia that Dapo and Dele that afternoon came to pose searching questions to me about human life and social institutions; rather, it was reflective of an incipient cosmopolitanism that was trying to be well informed about all the intellectual currents of our world. And indeed, Dapo Olorunyomi’s cohort of Nigerian university students was, in my opinion, the first generation of students in our country’s intellectual history whose radical globalist or cosmopolitan formation was entirely homegrown. This is the basic idea that undergirds this tribute.

Am I suggesting that there is a link between, on the one hand, the young undergraduate that came to ask me probing questions about the works of very challenging philosophers and, on the other hand, the mature and gifted activist journalist that has garnered a very well-deserved reputation for the capacity – and the courage – to tirelessly track down every clue toward the exposure of the looters, the money launderers and the scammers in whose hands lie the reins of power in our country? Yes, that is what I am suggesting. Of course, one does not have to have read Marx, Fanon, C.L.R. James, Althusser, Adorno or Benjamin to be a first-rate investigative journalist. But it helps a lot to be very well read, to have a mind, a sensibility that has a solid grounding in the deep intellectual contexts of world affairs. And that is what, I think distinguishes Dapo Olorunyomi and a few others in the top echelons of the profession of journalism in our country.

I have said that Dapo belongs to the first generation of university students in Nigeria whose deep and wide grounding in cosmopolitan internationalism was entirely homegrown. Now, I wish to return to this observation, this claim with one or two caveats and clarifications. Thus, strictly speaking, before the arrival of Dapo and his cohort on the historical scene, people like G.G. Darah, Odia Ofeimun, Mohammed Sokoto, the late Ntiem Kungwai and the late Raufu Mustafa did not go abroad for further studies before becoming well-read in diverse branches of knowledge; they were all radicalized, all trained and acculturated into becoming what Gramsci described as “organic intellectuals” in Nigerian universities. But be that as it may, what in the time of Darah and Ofeimun and the others had been a tiny rivulet became, at the time of Dapo and his cohort, a mighty river in full flood. It was in their moment in the sun, so to speak, that, for the first time in our intellectual history, Nigerian academia not only became up-to-date in knowledge of the latest developments and trends in the academia worldwide, but also became the focus of keen interest to the rest of the world in the ferment of ideas and movements happening here. Permit me to express this point with a very concrete illustration: when, later in my professional career I taught at some top-flight American universities, I found to my surprise, that the undergraduate and graduate students that I had had in UI and Ife were, on average, much better read in world affairs, ideas and intellectual trends than my American students. But alas, that remained true for only about, at most, a decade and half. Today, our university students are some of the most poorly trained and uninformed in the world, not through their fault but because of a system that has failed them utterly.

Dapo is of course not a mere index, not an indifferent integer in the calculus of the unique experience of a whole generation. He is the one and only “Dapsy” as he is known and fondly called by many of his friends and admirers. I confess that this is a nickname that I have never actually liked and therefore have never used in addressing him. Now, I do know that the reasoning behind my reticence in using this cognomen is rather absurd: “Dapsy”, to my ears, sounds like and rhymes with “Popsy” and “Mumsy”, two of the most overused terms of the special argot or vocab of the overpampered offspring of our national bourgeoisie. Nobody who knows anything about Dapo would dare to say that there is anything in his character and his sensibility that smacks of the moral and social universe of our “agbero” bourgeoisie. Still, I cannot shake off that unfair phonetic and rhyming association and hence I remain resistant to that nickname. But his comrades, his friends, his colleagues and admirers all call him “Dapsy”. And so Dapsy it is.

Coming now to his unique traits and accomplishments, I have one special reason for deploying that encounter with “Dapsy” (and Dele Layiwola) over Adorno, Benjamin or Althusser so long ago in their student days as the pivot for the essential things that I wish to say in this tribute. What is this reason? Quite simply, it is this: “Dapsy” is not now and has never been a man to flaunt his deep and wide intellectual formation. He is not exactly shy and in fact can be robustly forthcoming in a discussion on ideas, tactics and strategies for getting things done. But he absolutely stays away from an ostentatious display of his cosmopolitan “citizen-of-the-world” sensibility. To illustrate the point I am making here, I draw attention to two things, two accomplishments that have stood out in the many tributes that have been paid to Dapo for attaining the age of 60. One: the ingenuity and the thoroughness with which he takes investigative journalism into the darkest zones of graft, sleaze and corruption in our country. Two: the institutions or centers for a free press, for the rule of law and for social justice that he, acting with others, has set up. Not to make too blunt an insistence on the point, I would argue that it takes a man who, though he never flaunts it, has read widely and deeply to bring these two aspects of his accomplishments together. Here, it is important to note that, out there in the world at large, “Dapsy” is one of the most widely known and highly regarded Nigerian professional journalists.

It says a lot about the state of our world that for journalists to become internationally or globally famous and respected, intimidation, harassment, imprisonment and even death is mandatory. At one time during the Abacha years, exile was probably what saved Dapsy from having to pay the ultimate price. But he has not quite managed to escape all those other “mandatory” indices of the baptism of fire that is the lot of the world’s most famous journalists. The stresses don’t show much, if at all, on his physical being. Remarkably, they show even less on his sensibility, his sociability. What the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, said in tribute to him is quite remarkable for its astuteness: despite all the travails, all the dangers of his chosen profession and mission in life, Dapsy is a deeply caring, sensitive and considerate human being. No doubt we have his wife, Ladi, and family to thank for the relatively little “collateral damage” that stress has inflicted on his personality. But Dapsy is Dapsy. He is also “Dapo” who came to my office so many decades ago to pose probing questions about Adorno, Benjamin or Althusser. I don’t remember which of them it was, but that hardly matters. Here’s wishing you health, a long life and many more decades of meritorious service to our unhappy land our world!

• Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

The Buhari/Osinbajo Administration is not only a “SOFT PLACE”, but the softest place since January 1966. I intend to enjoy this sudden sunny break in the dark clouds that covered Nigeria. I am happy with this Government. I know it and I clap my hands. Professor Itse Sagay, The Nation on Sunday, October 8, 2017
Have you ever seen in the history of Nigeria where in the Secretariat of the ruling party water is disconnected, electricity is disconnected, salaries of aides and workers are not paid for six months? It is shameful, it is disgraceful and we claim to be in government! Buba Galadima, The Daily Trust, October 12, 2017

The publication of Professor Sagay’s open letter to me in this column last week precipitated a long string of emails to me the tenor of which, quite frankly, I had neither anticipated nor expected. This is because without a single exception, all the emails vigorously questioned me as to why I had not disputed or, more appropriately, rebutted Sagay’s claim that the Buhari administration is the best government that Nigeria has had since 1966. As I stated last week in my brief response to Professor Sagay, although I gave my opinion on what I thought of his claim, I didn’t take it up for disputation or rebuttal because the claim was based on Sagay’s departure from the substance of our exchange – the futile search for the non-existent soul or conscience of the APC. But with all the emails that I have since received, I have changed my mind and now wish to take up, dispute and rebut Sagay’s astonishing claim.

If you look at it closely, there are two distinct components to the claim, perhaps unknown to Professor Sagay himself. First, there is the extremely audacious claim of exceptionalism for Buhari and his administration – the best federal government in Nigeria since 1966; not just a soft place but the softest of all places; an Indian summer the like of which Sagay has not felt in a long, long while. Secondly, there is the claim that commentators and pundits like me are not giving any credit or recognition for the achievements of Buhari and his administration.

Now, thinking of the first component, I want to bring into the discussion other instances in the past when, at very critical moments in the political history of the country, highly reputable and unquestionably patriotic Nigerians like Professor Sagay had made similar declarations about heads of states and administrations that were generally thought at the relevant times to be taking Nigerians and the country through extremely troubled and troubling times. Two particular instances of this comes to my mind: Professor Sam Aluko on Sani Abacha in 1997; Odia Ofeimun on Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. [Odia, make you no vex say I mention your name here o! When water done pass gari, wetin man pikin go do?]

In the case of Aluko, the revered and unquestionably progressive economist in 1997 declared Abacha to be the best ruler Nigeria had ever had. This was at a time when Abacha was universally unpopular and bitterly hated at home and was regarded as a pariah in the world at large. Ditto with regard to Ofeimun on Goodluck Jonathan in the thick of the presidential elections of 2015. Ofeimun is unquestionably one of the most perceptive, progressive and gifted writers and public intellectuals of my generation. But all the same, at the very moment that Jonathan was at the bottom of his standing as head of state and leader of the ruling party, there was Ofeimun declaring that Jonathan was indisputably the best head of state the country had ever had. Ditto with regard to Professor Sagay on Buhari.

Now, I do admit that it is somewhat unfair to compare Buhari with either Jonathan or, far worse, Abacha. Nevertheless, the comparison is not gratuitous because both Aluko and Ofeimun made their astonishing claims at precisely the times when, respectively, Abacha and Jonathan were in the nadir, the rock bottom of the rubbishing of their reputations as leaders and statesmen. Buhari is still with us and may Allah grant him long life and good health, but how many people, like Professor Sagay, are clapping their hands with joy in appreciation of the sunny and wondrous times that Sagay claims Nigerians are experiencing right now? Is it in fact not the case that instead of clapping, what Nigerians are expressing is bitter disappointment that Buhari’s and the APC’s electoral promises have, for the most part, not been kept and the country is sliding precipitously close to the abyss? Doesn’t in fact the very large band of critics include the President’s own wife, Mrs. Ayesha Buhari? And if the First Lady is not only not clapping but actually gives solid reasons why she is not clapping, why should Nigerians be clapping, Professor Sagay?

For the second epigraph to this piece, the text comes from one of the fiercest and at the same time most principled critics of Buhari within the APC itself, this being Alhaji Buba Galadima. I have a special reason for invoking the profile of the terrible mess and the suffering and hardship of aides and workers at the National Secretariat of the APC that Galadima’s bitter testimony paints for us. What is the reason? Well, it is the fact that Galadima’s profile gives us a perfect mirror image of what is happening all over the country. In other words, what we see in the National Secretariat of the APC is what we are seeing everywhere in the country. Let me be very clear on the point that I am making here: some of the most ardent supporters and apologists of Buhari and his administration like to argue that it is because the President is too busy with the tasks of governing that he has paid little or no attention to the party; I argue instead that what is happening or not happening in the party secretariat is precisely what is happening or not happening in the country at large. At any rate, I challenge any reader(s) of this piece to credibly argue that they cannot or do not see Nigeria itself in the grim picture that Galadima paints of the APC National Secretariat.

Earlier in this discussion, I stated that there are two components in Comrade Sagay’s claim that the Buhari administration is the best thing that fate has bestowed on Nigeria since 1966. Now, that we have dealt with the first and more contentious component, let us deal with the second, more modest, more self-aware component, this being the suggestion that the achievements of the administration are being either underplayed or entirely ignored, especially by a “hard taskmaster not known for suffering fools gladly” – as Professor Sagay described me in his rejoinder. In principle, I do not ignore or discountenance the modest – very modest, I might add – achievements of the administration; rather, I say don’t make too much of it, don’t turn a molehill into a mountain! Permit me to give a brief elaboration of what I have in mind here.

I repeat: I do not deny or ignore the modest achievements of the administration. And neither do I ignore the efforts, the clarity and the resoluteness of some individuals in the administration and the leadership of the APC. Those who are dedicated readers of this column know of persons within the party hierarchy and governance personnel about whom, at different levels, I have expressed admiration and solidarity. What I find objectionable, indeed very objectionable, is to inflate modest achievements into grandiloquent claims of unprecedented and even revolutionary change and transformation. In my opinion, what the Buhari administration needs, what every administration in the country – federal, state and local – needs is not grandiloquent praise for modest achievements but vigilant, critical support where it is deserved. Thus, if Comrade Sagay has been paying attention to my stance on this issue in this column, he would perhaps have noticed that in the two years of the Buhari administration, my position on the administration and the APC has gone through an evolution from an initial stage of critical but vigorous support, especially on the war on corruption, to increasing levels of alarm and despair in the realization that what Nigerians expected of the administration was very different from what the administration was willing and/or capable of doing. Let us briefly explore this contention of mine with two particularly appropriate issues or projects that Professor Sagay highlighted in his piece published last week – the war on corruption and the so-called social intervention or social protection programs for the benefit of the poverty-ridden masses and subaltern rural and urban women.

I think I can justifiably claim, as Professor Sagay himself knows only too well, that on the pages of this column and among the community of the national “commentariat”, I was one of the most vigorous and tireless supporters of the President’s project of total war on corruption. However, I began to have doubts about the seriousness or clarity of the administration when I, like most literate, thinking Nigerians, discovered the depth of the naivety and cluelessness of the administration on how to wage the war on corruption. I was and continue to be astonished by the haplessness of the chief law officer of the federation, the AGF, Abubakar Malami. I have asked myself, indeed I keep asking myself: how in the world could Buhari have chosen this inept man to lead the war on corruption on the legal front, the most critical of all the redoubts of corruption in our country?

On a far more serious and fateful level is the fact that the presidency itself has turned out, mostly by acts of omission, to be a sort of refuge, a sort of protected haven for corruption. As I write these words, the case of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir David Lawal, is still sitting on the desk of the President awaiting action nearly a year after it was discovered and widely covered in the press. You say you are fighting corruption and a case of a particularly merciless act of corruption happens right under your nose and you don’t smell the rot, you don’t act on it in a timely and resolute fashion? And yet again, even as I write these words, there are allegations of humungous corrupt practices going on at many levels and institutions of governance controlled by the ruling party and/or the administration – the National Assembly; Parastatals; NNPC; state governments. So yes, Professor Sagay is right to declare that a lot of looted monies have been recovered, but what of monies that are being looted now, right in the smoldering midst of the war on corruption?

On the social intervention or protection programs for improvement of the terrible conditions of poverty, hardship and inequality among the masses in general and women in particular, what is worthy of note is that there is nothing new at all in the announcement of, or beginning action on welfarist or ameliorative projects by government, either at the federal and/or state levels. And please, let us not for a second pretend that these programs amount to acts, policies and projects of significant redistribution of income and wealth in our country. The Nigerian masses are not slaves, they are not serfs whose destinies can and should be left to the compassion, the noblesse oblige of the political elites. For every naira spent on these social intervention programs, millions of naira go to the elites and their cronies. Capitalism in our country in the last six decades has been more and more predatory, even as it has also been more an more unregenerate. Unless and until the predation stops, stopgap measures will make only a very slight dent on the edifice of inequality in our country. Social protection and intervention programs for the amelioration of the terrible conditions of our peoples everywhere in the country? Yes, but only as the absolute minimum of social transformation! When the predatoriness has stopped, believe me the people will see it. And then they will clap.

• Biodun Jeyifo                                                                                                                          bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu