The University of Ilorin recently went through one of the most fraught processes in the calendar of a Nigerian public university: the appointment and transfer of authority to a new vice chancellor.
The contest is not for the faint of heart. Formal qualifications count, to be sure. An applicant must have an earned doctorate from a “recognised university,” That, I take it, excludes all those “universities” that exist only on the Internet, from which anyone can for a modest fee obtain a degree in any subject under the sun and beyond without taking any course work and without writing any examinations.
The bachelor’s degree lies at the lower end of the fee scale. The standard doctorate, a Ph.D, costs substantially more. Not surprisingly, a senior doctorate, the D.Sc or LL.D, attracts premium fees. But the cost is well within what Nigerians who patronise the awarding institutions can afford, plus a contribution to the institution’s “development” or endowment fund.
For his munificence – for it is usually a man – the patron gets by way of certificate a parchment large enough to cover a dining table, inscribed with his name by the finest calligrapher in the neighbourhood, stating how he had not merely fulfilled but greatly exceeded the requirements for the attestation. And it comes with a gold-foil seal as large as a saucer.
Do not be deceived by all the frippery. In fact, I offer it as a proposition that the greater the tinsel, the more worthless is the certificate it adorns.
If the patron is the discriminating type, he can ask the president and officials of the university to fly to Nigeria, all expenses paid, to confer the degree on him in his house or at the local community hall, to the pulsating beat of highlife music supplied by a live band, and with the local monarch and his chiefs and the usual freeloaders in full throng to felicitate with the son of the soil whose genius had reverberated across the oceans.
It is all a matter of cash – cash in hard currency, that is.
To return to the process of appointing vice chancellors in the Nigerian university system: An applicant must have an earned doctorate from a recognised university. It helps if the candidate has also published in “reputable journals,” those which subject submissions to rigorous peer review before publication.
But even a solid bibliography will take a candidate only so far. Connections count, of course. But they are no substitute for hustling of the rawest kind, blackmail, intimidation, disinformation, bribery, voodoo – indeed, everything in the toolkit of skullduggery.
Ask Professor Olu Obafemi, the playwright and dramatist.
The recent change of baton at the University of Ilorin, I gather, was mercifully bereft of such mago mago. But it nevertheless left some rancour in its trail. The integrity of the process of short-listing candidates has been assailed by at least one of the candidates, who has since proceeded to court to seek relief.
Professor Rasheed Ijaodola has reportedly filed a lawsuit before the Federal High Court, Ilorin, challenging the selection of Professor AbdulGaniyu Ambali for the top job, saying the process was “irregular, improper, unlawful, null and void.” Other disaffected contestants have since reconciled themselves to the outcome.
Professor Is-haq Oloyede, the vice chancellor who oversaw process at issue, has handed the reins of office to Professor AbdulGaniyu Ambali, and all seems quiet on campus. There they were, at one of the events marking the change, resplendent in a matching outfit — aso ebi — to call it by its proper name.
The atmosphere had much more in common with a family ceremony in the owambe tradition than with a momentous transition at an institution of higher learning. But Neither Oloyede nor Ambali should be blamed for this. Blame it, instead, on the casual manner in which appointments to that high office are made, consummated, and terminated.
Professor Ojetunde Aboyade, the distinguished economist unfortunately no longer with us was driving back to Ibadan from Lagos when he heard on his car radio that he had been appointed vice chancellor of the University of Ife, as it was called at the time. They had sounded him out, it needs to be stated. But he had rejected the offer firmly.
The great surgeon, Professor Horatio Orishejolomi Thomas, also late, was entertaining guests in his official residence after presiding over the convocation at the University of Ibadan when he and his guests heard on the evening news that he had been dismissed “with immediate effect.”
If these and many other cases of the same kind were the extreme, even the process of handing a senior academic officer a letter of appointment and asking him to report for duty at such and such a time as if he was a clerical officer is only a tad less disrespectful.
And yet, there is never a shortage of applicants for the position, and many of them will stop at nothing to clinch it.
Elsewhere, the assumption of office of university president or vice chancellor is almost like the assumption of office by an elected head of government. It is heralded by an inaugural ceremony lasting several days, a mixture of the academic, the social, and the cultural.
When a new president was named some ten years ago for Knox College in Galesburg, an hour from my base in Peoria, Illinois, and the birthplace of the historian Carl Sandburg, festive bells rang throughout the area.
Lectures and symposia that drew participants from near and far were staged. A command performance of Wole Soyinka’s “Death and the King’s Horseman” was staged for several nights, culminating in the attendance on the final night of the Nobelist himself, during which he delivered a lecture that kept the huge audience spellbound.
It was on that closing night that I met for the first time Dr Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah, then on the faculty of Northern Illinois University at Macomb, Illinois, and now vice chancellor of Kwara State University. From his seat in the rafters, he delivered a citation on Soyinka, improvised óríkí and all, that set off the proceedings on a strong Nigerian note.
This, then, was the context in which the new president delivered an inaugural address, in which he laid out his vision for Knox College. It was not just another routine in the university’s life but a milestone in which faculty and students and staff and the neighbouring community participated, one that would inspire and serve as a reference point for years to come.
That is the way to accord the public university in Nigeria its special place in the scheme of things. After all, it is not a ministry, department, or agency. It is also the way to stamp the office of university vice chancellor with the respect and dignity it deserves.
Private universities, where the vice chancellor is for all practical purposes the proprietor’s factotum, also stand to gain much by this arrangement.
The National Universities Commission should lead the way, working through the Council of each public university.
