Tag: retirement

I finally retired from teaching at the end of the current academic session 2016/2017 at the Redeemer’s University Ede. I started my teaching career at the university level in 1966/67 session when I was a postgraduate student at the University of Ibadan. I was in my early twenties. It was an unusual time. Some of the Ibo lecturers and even some expatriates left the University of Ibadan because of the crisis and killings in the country for fear of being killed. There was a special course for final year students on “The scramble for and partition of Africa”. In the absence of the lecturer assigned to teach the course, the late Professor JF Ade Ajayi asked me to teach the course. I had no choice because this was an order which must be obeyed. I prepared very well before I started teaching the course. Most of my students were older than me and some felt uneasy being taught by me but after some disquiet and realizing they did not have a choice, the students settled down and I discharged my responsibilities with all my heart and all the energies at my command.

I left Ibadan before the outbreak of the civil war and went to Canada as an Izaak Walton Killam scholar the Canadian equivalent of the British Rhodes scholarship. I remember in my final year of the PhD programme in 1970, I was again asked to offer a course in Commonwealth History to final year students at Dalhousie University, Halifax Nova Scotia one of the oldest, if  not the oldest university in Canada. In spite of my being naturally shy, my solid academic grounding in Ibadan had prepared me for the experience. After the doctorate of philosophy in history in 1970, I was appointed Assistant Professor of Commonwealth History at the prestigious University of Western Ontario, London Canada the richest city per capita in Canada. This like Dalhousie University was a lily-white university. My late wife, Abiodun was a student in the Faculty of Science; thank God I did not have to teach her. In order to overcome my shyness, I used to mesmerize the students by smoking pipe tobacco of the pungent Erinmore brand. On entering the class while the students were wondering what this black dude was about to say, I would envelope myself and the podium where I spoke with smoke. By the time the smoke cleared, the lecture would have begun. By the end of the academic year, I had become a much sought-after speaker in many lectures and seminars in the university. The 1960s were epochal years in Africa and the black diaspora in Canada and the USA. It was also a period of political ferment in francophone Canada particularly in the province of Quebec. I had well considered opinions on all these happenings.

I left Canada for the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill Barbados an island which used to be described as one of her Britannic majesty’s crowned jewels on the account of being almost a tropical paradise for the rich. I was young and I wanted to explore the world. If I had been older and farsighted, I would have bought a four bedroom bungalow which the university offered to finance for its lecturers. After a wonderful year of swimming, eating fish and drinking rum, I returned to reality in 1972 and was shunted to the University of Ibadan, Jos campus. It was another happy place for me and other young colleagues most of who were from the south and experiencing the cold weather of Jos and the hospitality of its people for the first time. Governor Gomwalk, an alumnus of the University of Ibadan who invited the university to his state offered us plots of land in the prime area of the GRA. Few took up the opportunity because we felt we were birds of passage in Jos. I could have stayed in Jos forever but for the fact that we lost a male child because of substandard health facility. My wife and I left for Lagos University in 1974 from where I retired in 2005 to join Redeemer’s University as foundation Dean of the College of Humanities from where I have now retired. I had a wonderful and fulfilling experience mentoring students and younger academic colleagues. I believe I gave as much as I received from my experience at the Redeemer’s University Ede.

After retiring from the University of Lagos, I was conferred the Honour of Emeritus professorship and on retiring from Redeemer’s University I was again made a professor emeritus. This is a double crown in my academic efforts. It does not mean I am on salaries in these two universities. In fact Redeemer’s University has put me on a salary of one Naira per year. I am told this is the only way by which I can continue to use their facilities when I visit. I am involved pro bono in the University of Lagos in the supervision of a doctoral student I will also be available to do the same at the Redeemer’s University if called upon to do so. In more civilized part of the world my status would have conferred on me not only an office but secretarial assistance since I plan to write some books as time goes on. The Nigerian university system has apparently not thoroughly thought out what they should do with distinguished retired professors who can still be useful in teaching and research and guardianship in the universities where the university culture is disappearing and is being replaced by mediocrity and materialism.

Now that I am retired and in splendid isolation, I have suddenly discovered that I have too much time doing practically nothing at least for now. My friends are also not too much involved in anything. I am surprised that my generation has been virtually forgotten in the scheme of things. In the mounting national problems, one would have thought people of my generation will occasionally be called upon to make suggestions or to proffer solutions to one problem or the other. One would have thought retired academics who know about what universities should be like should be the ones being appointed chairmen and pro-chancellors of universities and polytechnics rather than failed politicians with their buccaneering attitude to appointments which they see as opportunity to eat. Personally I cannot complain and I thank the management of The Nation newspapers for giving me the opportunity to air my views and to ventilate and express opinions even when they are not sought. A friend and colleague  for whom I have tremendous respect once told me he was surprised that I am wasting my time pontificating on Nigerian issues because according to him those who should read your column have no interest in reading and consider it a waste of time reading not just newspapers but reading anything at all. He is actually right!

I know chief executives from President to Vice President, President of Senate, Speaker of the House of Representatives, ministers and governors are given executive briefs by their permanent officials about what is in the press shielding them from what criticisms of their actions the news media carry. Thus they live in ignorant bliss thinking all is well. The reasons why this is so is that these chief executives have no privacy and time to read and reflect because hordes of hangers on continue to inflict their presence on these chief executives from dusk to dawn. I once witnessed the entire cabinet of a state still hanging around the governor’s residence at 3am in the morning. It is true that the affairs and work of government in Nigeria are done in the night! This is neither good for those in power nor good for the country. Governance requires sane mind, calmness, understanding of issues, ability to analyse data and opinions and recommendations of civil servants which a sleep deprived chief executive would hardly be able to do thus many of the state executives sleep-walk through problems that are  of immense importance to our nation . This probably accounts for our continuing to grope in the dark.

To come back to retirement, I believe this is a time of reflection and leaving for posterity ideas which in the course of time may prove useful to those who succeed and survive us, for after all, we are no longer looking for fame or money but to leave a good name which is better than silver and gold. Our pensions are inadequate but as the Yorubas would say “tokete ba dagba tan omu Omo  ni nmu”. That is to say in normal circumstances the children of the old will support materially their parents. Many will say in these days of youth unemployment, it is the old who are supporting the young. This is a topic for another day.