Silly sycophancy

By kayode idowu

Formal education ideally should nurture the ability for critical thinking in those being educated, especially so the post-secondary phase of education. In other words, there is some level of critical thinking expected to be cultivated in tertiary students, and failure by them to exhibit such trait invariably signposts fundamental failure of the goal of education. It was apparently that notion famous Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget had in mind when he said in his work, The Origins of Intelligence in Children: “The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.” Education at the intellectual level, which the tertiary phase represents, is a quest for truth; and legendary Albert Einstein once said “blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”  Those who truly imbibed the goal of tertiary education are justifiably potential rebels.

Drooling sycophancy is, however, endangering the essence of tertiary education in Nigeria and promoting an anti-culture of docility in institutions. And it is worse that even where students tend to cultivate the streak of independent / critical thinking on their own, some school authorities suppress and penalise the trait that they ought to have inculcated and nurtured in the first place. The oddity of this role reversal was so egregious in a couple of recent instances that even respective authority centre whose interest the concerned school managements eye-serviced couldn’t stand up for those acts, they rather posted a disclaimer and held out the prospects of a review of the shameful sycophancy.

That was the case with the Borno State government which recently queried the Provost, College of Nursing and Midwifery, Rukaiya Shettima Mustapha, for suspending some students because they refused to join the crowd that lined Maiduguri highways to welcome President Muhammadu Buhari when he visited the state capital on 17th June for on-hand appraisal of the security situation and commissioning of some infrastructure projects. Borno Health and Human Services Commissioner Juliana Bitrus accused the college provost of mischief for acting on her own, not taking recourse to her supervising ministry and without directive from anyone in the state government.

In the query dated 25th June, the commissioner termed it curious that of about eight institutions owned by the state, it was only at the college of nursing that students were suspended for the stated purpose – a move she viewed as calculated to embarrass government. She argued that though it was normal practice for students to join in welcoming the President wherever he was visiting across the country, such participation was usually voluntary, more so as students constituted only a small sub-set of residents who freely turned out to welcome him in all parts of Maiduguri when he came to town. Bitrus said the provost may have seized the President’s visit as an opportunity to get at some students with whom she had prior issues. She added that heads of states had been visiting Borno over the years and students had been joining in welcoming them, but no one ever expected 100 percent compliance in any public mobilization. The commissioner further wondered that if any issue was to be made about students abstaining during the visit, how come it wasn’t by the Borno State University that the President commissioned, or schools close by other projects he inaugurated?

Another related instance is the Akwa Ibom State University that recently expelled a final year student of the Department of Agricultural Engineering, Iniobong Ekpo, for publishing on Facebook a “defamatory” article about Akwa Ibom State Governor Udom Emmanuel who is the institution’s Visitor. Reports said Ekpo had in 2019, under a pseudonym, posted the piece in which he accused the governor of reneging on a promise to financially reward some graduating students of the university. “It’s two years and 166 days since he promised, yet none of the graduands have received a naira…Even the first class graduands were not attended to when they went to his office,” Ekpo wrote in the Facebook post, adding that by not keeping his promise the governor “scammed” the students. The university administration was not amused by that piece however, and on 9th April 2021 issued Ekpo a letter signed by the Registrar, John Udo, announcing his expulsion from the institution. Describing Ekpo’s article as “derogatory and defamatory,” the letter said publishing it constituted a violation of the university rules enshrined in the Student Information Handbook, adding: “You are hereby expelled from the university for this gross act of misconduct, which constitutes a breach of the matriculation oath. You are required to submit to the Dean, Division of Student Affairs your student identity card and any other property of the university in your possession before your exit from the university. The Chief Security Officer is by a copy of this letter directed not to allow you entry into the university campuses.”

But Ekpo did not take that verdict supinely and has dared the university to a legal battle. In a letter by his lawyer, Inibehe Effiong, he protested not receiving fair hearing by the university, saying he was never summoned before a disciplinary committee before his expulsion was announced. He thus demanded N20million from the university as general damages and for alleged gross breach of his fundamental rights. “We will like to know whether the matriculation oath of the Akwa Ibom State University requires students to surrender their fundamental right to freedom of expression as guaranteed them by Section 39 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic Of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) upon admission into the university,” Ekpo’s letter read.

Meanwhile, Governor Emmanuel has disclaimed the university’s sanction against the outspoken student and held out prospects of a review, with a statement by his spokesman asserting that he wasn’t privy to Ekpo’s expulsion. “We have read various reports mainly on the social media space concerning the administrative sanction said to have been taken by the management of the Akwa Ibom State University (AKSU) against one of its students, Iniobong Ekpo, leading to his expulsion from the university…We wish to state here emphatically that Governor Emmanuel, a known apostle of freedom of expression, was and is still not aware of this purely administrative action reportedly undertaken by the university. He has accordingly directed the constitution of a panel comprising five members to review the case and submit its report immediately,” the statement said.

Just so to make it clear, the offences purportedly committed by the suspended students of Borno nursing college and expelled Iniobong Ekpo at the Akwa Ibom varsity were by no means criminal in nature. The violations, if so considered, did not breach matriculation oaths and rules of conduct for students the way Chidinma Ojukwu’s alleged murder of television executive Usifo Ataga constituted a breach of her matriculation oath and students’ handbook rules of the University of Lagos where she’s been acknowledged to be a student. Rather, the purported sins of the Borno nursing students and Ekpo respectively were in expression of their respective individuality – a tendency that ordinarily accorded with libertarian ethos entailed in a democracy as Nigeria claims to be. But in their overdrive to please the paymaster, the managements of those institutions didn’t see it that way: it took the Borno health commissioner to point out that lining highways in reception of a visiting President is voluntary, and the Akwa Ibom Governor to espouse respect for freedom of expression that the state university management penalised.

Sadly, those two instances are not isolated; no, they veridically reflect the general state education in Nigeria. Sycophancy is killing the universal objective of education in the country and, by extension, the potentials of the country. This is because by implicit inversion of role, institutions that should be turning out fireballs to set the future alight are cultivating pliant zombies dousing whatever light there could be with an unquestioning mindset. Local inventions are rare because it takes a rigorously probing mind to throw up new things; and socio-political consciousness is being blunted with systemic mass grooming in docility, such that authority centres are hardly held to account by the vibrant generation that should care. Sycophancy sucks. Shame on all sycophants!

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