I concluded last week with the crisis of leadership, which has permeated almost all facets of our system. If we are serious about retracing our steps it has to start from here. My fellow supermarket discussant agreed that throughout human history, the centrality of leadership in charting positive direction has been established; the ancient and modern history of leaders is replete with stories of vision, courage, enterprise, capacity, tenacity and originality. While several factors – physical, non-physical and human – are almost always at play in determining the fate and fortune of societies, the role of leadership is fundamental. Leadership, particularly political leadership, whether good or bad, can determine the destiny of a nation.
Without dwelling on the elaborate and multi-dimensional aspect of leadership, I am interested here in identifying the role leadership plays in human capital development and how this can be used to address the challenges of tertiary education in Nigeria. With vision, integrity, dedication or commitment, competence, discernment, creativity, assertiveness, fairness, openness and humility, a good leader can create a vision of a good society, recognising what needs to be done to build one, mobilising human and material resources to build such a society and confronting every challenge that is encountered in the process.
Bernard Montgomery, the British Field Marshal who accepted the German surrender in northern Germany at the end of World War II, stated: “Leadership is the capacity and will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence.”
The capacity to rally men and women to a common purpose and inspire them with confidence cannot be achieved by anyone who does not – fundamentally speaking – believe in humans as the bedrock of society. A leadership that recognises this and have the vision to transform society would make the development of human capital the centre-piece of its development paradigm. This is because strategic leadership involves the ability to anticipate, envision, maintain flexibility, think strategically, and work with others to initiate changes that will create a viable and lasting future.
As I got home from the supermarket that day, I reflected on one key issue: what if we never had visionary leaders at independence who invested massively in education, where would we be today? Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile Ife, University of Nigeria Nsukka, University of Lagos and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, were all conceived and set up by these leaders, I deliberately left University of Ibadan (UI), Ibadan out because it existed before independence. Until decay started setting in from the late 1980s, these were institutions of repute that attracted visiting professors from across the world.
For example, by 1980, Nigeria had established one of the best higher education systems in the developing world which offered direction at an international standard in diverse disciplines. For instance, the UI and Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) earned global recognition for research in tropical health and agriculture, respectively. But since then, under successive military administrations, these achievements, through lack of funding and policy inconsistencies, were not allowed to be improved upon.
Driving through these campuses anytime and looking at the infrastructure back then, a visitor will be left without an iota of doubt that visionaries planned these. The sad aspect is that many of the products of the finest decades of these varsities – up until the early-1990s – who were expected to become an essential part of a new middle class and the engine rooms of social, political and economic change and progress were forced out of the country. Today, many of these people who were trained in these institutions – like my discussants – are now not able to send their own children to these same institutions that produced them. They now send their kids to Ghana, South Africa, Europe or America.
What went wrong then? Let’s make no mistake about this: the original crisis of higher education in Nigeria is entangled with the political crisis in Nigeria which brought the military to power. The military in power constituted the greatest threat, not just to the advancement of human freedom and justice, but also to knowledge building, knowledge sharing and human capacity development. The military destroyed higher education in Nigeria, as they destroyed many other institutions of society. Starting from 1966 when they first seized power and ending with the Babangida-Abacha era, where the military simply buried an ailing university system, Nigeria has witnessed leaders who are the very anti-thesis of human capital development and progress.
With higher education destroyed by the military, aided and abetted by their civilian cronies, it was no surprise that virtually every other institution of society, including the moral fabric, which hitherto held us together was virtually wiped out, in essence we lost our soul and have continued in a downward spiral ever since.
Fourteen years into our democratic dispensation, we still face many of the old challenges in area of higher education in Nigeria – as illustrated in the capital flight and brain drain which attend the outflow of students from Nigeria to foreign universities, without the expected inflow of trained manpower or “brain gain” and financial resources. This is the depressing reality we face today. It is evident from developed societies that substantial investment in human capital is needed for economic progress, social transformation and political stability. This we lack as the system is so hostile that those that left are not willing to come back.
A large percentage of Nigerians now attend Ghanaian universities. Why Ghana? we may ask. Because they put their house in order and returned to the glory of the past and are now marching on to a more glorious future; they embraced their challenges and learnt from them. But it seems that in Nigeria, our leaders are yet to identify a problem, let alone think about the solutions. The establishment of nine new federal universities last year is a classic example of the absence of strategic thinking at the national level. A Federal Government that is yet to develop the understanding of the need, let alone the capacity, to sufficiently fund the existing federal universities should not have embarked on another round of creating new universities. They could have used the resources to expand the facilities and recruit more lecturers and staff in the existing universities so that they could accommodate more students.
Now that we love foreign lands so much for education, leisure and other frivolities, we are not realising that we are becoming a nuisance to some countries. Only on Monday, reports had it that the British Government is planning to ask visitors from Nigeria and five other countries whose nationals are deemed to pose a “high risk” of immigration abuse to provide a 3,000 pounds (about N750,000) bond before they can enter the country.
Home Secretary Theresa May said the David Cameron administration is serious about cutting immigration and abuses of the system. The Sunday Times said from November, a pilot scheme would target visitors from Nigeria, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Pakistan and India. Visitors aged 18 and over would be forced to hand over £3,000 ($4,600, 3,500 euro) from November for a six-month visit visa. They will forfeit the money if they overstay in Britain after their visa has expired.
The Federal Government said although it had not received any communication to that effect, such a policy, if implemented, would be discriminatory. Perhaps we need such policies to enable us to really sit and think of creative and productive ways of tackling the numerous challenges confronting us . Britain has a right to put forward whatever policy it deemed fit to protect its interests. This is where I agreed with one of the discussants who said we always have an “escapist mentality” about issues in Nigeria.
A cartoon in one of the national dailies captured what we should expect if the policy is implemented by the British. It depicted a politician congratulating the High Commissioner for coming up with such a policy because London should not be an all comers affair; in fact, he promised to pay double the fee as a status symbol because “Britain is not for every riff raff”. We know that this cartoonist hit the nail on the head, forget about the wolf cry from the National Assembly. Isn’t it time our leaders got down, their hands and dirty make Nigeria work?
