Naked gods: Presidency, UNN crisis and culture of impunity

At issue in the crisis is the 14th Governing Council’s interrogation of the manner the Vice Chancellor, Professor Bartho Okolo, has been running the University. Sundry allegations against the Vice Chancellor include appointing a retinue of ‘special assistants’ and aides, (in the manner of politicians) with one such  aide, Mrs Christiana Oriola, who was designated […]

At issue in the crisis is the 14th Governing Council’s interrogation of the manner the Vice Chancellor, Professor Bartho Okolo, has been running the University. Sundry allegations against the Vice Chancellor include appointing a retinue of ‘special assistants’ and aides, (in the manner of politicians) with one such  aide, Mrs Christiana Oriola, who was designated as ICT director, placed on a monthly salary of N2.3m (a Professor earns less than N500,000 a month). The Vice Chancellor was also accused of contract splitting (the same offence that sent Bode George to jail). For instance the contract for the construction of the School of Postgraduate Studies at the University was allegedly split into four – with three of these, totalling over N1billion naira, awarded to one company, Syndicated Construction and Commercial Services Ltd. It was also alleged that the University operates without a Budget and does not have audited accounts since 2008. There were equally allegations that some projects that are fully paid for remain at about 20 per cent completion – several months after such projects were supposed to have been completed. The Vice Chancellor was also accused of highhandedness – of placing several staff who disagree with his style of administration on suspension (and hence half-salary) for years. Student unionism was equally proscribed.
Following the announcement of the suspension of the pro-Chancellor various labour bodies and alumni organisations of the University, which felt the Vice Chancellor was being shielded using ‘Abuja connections’, came out smoking. Members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities (NASU) and the National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT) embarked on what was described as the largest protest in the history of the University. They grounded all activities at the university as they demanded the probe of the university’s Vice Chancellor, Prof. Bartho Okolo and the reinstatement of Dr Enejere. Similarly, the University of Nigeria Alumni Association, UNAA, petitioned President Goodluck Jonathan asking him to institute a full scale investigation into the activities of the Vice-Chancellor and for the immediate reinstatement of the ‘suspended’ Pro-Chancellor. Members of the Alumni Association said the “callous” and “discourteous” manner in which the Pro-Chancellor was suspended and the motive behind the move was an affront to the UNN, whose motto is: ‘To Restore the Dignity of Man’.
University politics are often “the worst of all kinds of politics because the stakes are so small”, said Henry Kissinger, the German-American political scientist and US Secretary of State between 1973 and 1977 (a variation of the quote is also attributed to several other public intellectuals including the lexicographer Samuel Johnson). I believe this is true only in climes where University politics primarily revolves around contests over ideas – leading to the formation of different schools of thoughts and ideological orientations. In Nigeria, especially since the demise of the Left, it will, in my opinion, be a fallacy to regard the stakes in campus politics as ‘small’. Unlike in other climes, the critical issues in academic politics here do not revolve around abstract ideas but about Naira and Kobo – the award of contracts, dispensation of privileges and the sharing of lucre. The race to become a Vice Chancellor in Nigerian universities could be more vicious than running for Governorship election in some states.
There are several reasons Nigerians and the Federal Government should take more than a passing interest in the current crisis at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka: One, it was not long ago that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) called off its six-month strike. One of the grouses of the striking lecturers was the alleged inadequate funding of Universities by the federal government. With ASUU strikes and their concomitant disruption of academic calendars now being an annual event, it makes sense for a shift of focus during this interregnum from how much the federal government gives to Universities to how available resources are managed.
Two, while I believe Obasanjo’s letter to President Jonathan was actuated by malice, the letter nonetheless raised a number of very relevant issues that will benefit the government if it pays very close attention to them. One of these is about self-serving aides who mislead the President. Obasanjo wrote: “Please Mr President, be wary of assistants, aides and collaborators who look for enemies for you…. If you allow them, everybody except them will be your enemy. They are more dangerous than identified adversaries” (p.12). Though this advice will be very handy to all political leaders, it will seem that one of the aides Obasanjo had in mind was the Supervisory Minister for Education Nyesom Wike, who is at the centre of the current crisis at the UNN. Not only did Wike reportedly suspend the Pro-Chancellor of the University without the courtesy of informing him of his sins – if any- to rub salt to an injury, he allegedly appointed his own lawyer in Rivers State as his replacement. If this allegation is true, then it is simply self-serving impunity.
It should be recalled that Wike’s less- than- refined approach to issues also helped to prolong the ASUU strike. One of his wrong-footed moves was the ill-advised ultimatum to the lecturers to return to class or be sacked – a threat that hardened the resolve of lecturers to continue with the strike. Dele Momodu, the publisher of Ovation magazine, in his column in Thisday newspaper of November 30, 2013, entitled ‘Before Wike Sacks All Nigerian Lecturers’, said the following about Wikes: “If Wike was already crowned the King Kong of Rivers, our Minister surpassed himself days ago as he launched a blistering attack on the warring members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities. In a tone and demeanour reminiscent of our inglorious military era, Wike instructed the lecturers to return to the classrooms or face immediate sack from their academic jobs. There was no time for any form of diplomatese, as Wike belched fire and brimstone while addressing newsmen.”  Momodu further argued that having Wikes in the Ministry of Education was an error because education “requires someone who’s very cerebral, elegant and sober.” There are many people who believe that the face-off between the President and Governor Amaechi (who by the way is not completely blameless in the whole affair) will probably have been better managed by a more “cerebral” aide. In my opinion, Wikes is one of the aides that could be accumulating enemies for Jonathan at a time that the President desperately needs friends.
Three, given that universities are places where one finds the highest concentration of eggheads – people who know and those who ought to know – one would expect that leaders in Ivory Towers should be the closest approximation to Plato’s Philosopher Kings. Universities are therefore expected to be insulated from some of the prevailing recklessness in the wider society. One for instance expects to find in universities institutionalized ways of doing things and an accompanying routinized system of rule observance. If the allegations against the vice chancellor of UNN are true, then rather than a place where rule observances are routinized, what you have are personalized rules, with the man of the moment (i.e. the vice chancellor) carrying himself as a thin god, who is not insulated, as he should be, from the common vices that plague power wielders outside the gates of the Ivory Tower. The current crisis at the UNN – which also echoes in several other Universities in the country, including the University of Abuja – is an opportunity to find out why our universities are not living up to this ideal.
Four, The UNN crisis raises questions about the people we need to run our university system, in particular the person-specific qualifications candidates for vice chancellorship should possess. There is often a wrong notion that a bright professor in one field will necessarily bring his competence from his narrow field of specialization into administration. Hence we see Professors who have never managed two million naira budget in their life being made ministers to manage billions of Naira budget or being appointed as vice chancellors. While there are academics with gifted administrative skills, we need to revisit the belief that being a head of department or dean of faculty gives a professor sufficient administrative training to run a university.