Renaming Unilag: What is (is not) in a name?

I spoke then, with a heavy heart, but unalloyed persuasion that the action deserved serious and immediate re-think. I did not think I would find it either necessary or expedient to further comment on the action, especially given the various opinions offered, for and against the pronouncement by Nigerians across great divides—pro and anti- Good […]

I spoke then, with a heavy heart, but unalloyed persuasion that the action deserved serious and immediate re-think. I did not think I would find it either necessary or expedient to further comment on the action, especially given the various opinions offered, for and against the pronouncement by Nigerians across great divides—pro and anti- Good Jonathan commentators. Another reason I thought it was no longer of much need for me to offer furtherand written opinion on the renaming is because there are more depressing, urgent national issues on the ground for our country to ponder over and find urgent solutions; what with the DANA tragic crash and the recent bombing of a church in Jos which has claimed so many lives and left hundreds in critical state of injury. Somehow, however, the debate on the renaming of Unilag after the late Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola continues, not only unabated, but with greater seriousness and profundity of analysis.

These continual and prolonged debates come after the President had, having been jolted by the raging fire of criticism or through some half-hearted re-think (not reversal of action, but a mitigation of action), sent a Bill on the change of the name of the University of Lagos to the National Assembly, smuggling along with it two other renaming, vide, the Federal University of Agriculture at Umudike and the Federal University of Technology Yola for retroactive approval. Let me restate my position on this matter, since of the viewers on the screen felt that my position was tentative at first and became unmistakable at the end. Before then, lets it becomes misconstrued in the process of analysis, I should state that neither myself, nor any other group of people, stake-holders, partisan politicians, public commentators, or even those who appeared disinterested by not commenting publicly, think that President Goodluck Jonathan’s action of honouring and immortalizing Chief M.K.O. Abiola, the symbol and martyr of June 12 democratic struggle for Nigeria, was not politically correct. If anything, given two decades of deliberate historical amnesia or plain disregard of and curious disdain for popular will that this great hero ought to be given a stout, enduring and purposeful place in the nation’s annals, it is impossible not to commend Goodluck Jonathan’s action, no matter under whatever motivation—political brinkmanship or expediency or an act of patriotism. It has been stated and repeatedly rehashed for positive emphasis that the democratic dispensation we enjoy today, and since 1999, including the beneficiaries of the fall-outs of the June 12 struggle (Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in particular and his subsequent successors in the PDP ruling acme of power in general) is a direct product of thestruggle for which Chief Abiola lost his life. Recognition coming to him through the handmaid of a PDP government is aworthy action.

What is not so worthy is the murky, largely arbitrary and pointedly unlawful manner in which that honour came—detracting and defraying from the ultimate value of the noble action, raising great suspicions about the original intendment, noble instinct and altruism of the action. There is also the question of the in/appropriateness and inadequacy of the value and space of honour. What do I mean by these?  University of Lagos, though a Federal tertiary institution, is located in the South-West– the spatial and temporal location of the most robust anti-June twelve protestation of the abominable annulment of a Presidential election which had so much to commend it as the freest, most credible and most popular Presidential election in the country up to then and perhaps since. Most opposers of Unilag as the space of honour for MKO believe, among other reasons, including the negative indices that renaming a child about to celebrate her Golden Jubileeportend, that it was politically parochial and not sufficiently national for a national hero’s martyrization.

Secondly, there is the widely-held view that naming a University after Abiola is too much of a token—ephemeral merely. Some, including myself, feel that what is needed is not just a monument, an edifice, but an enduring idea in the form of a formal political acceptance of the mandate that he cinched(not ‘presumably’ as the President quipped) and officially listing him and notionally crowning him as a former President of this potentially great country with all the honour, attributions and garlands of a past President. Many may think that this is the imaginative pastime of a creative thinker; but we know of someone being honoured and decorated as a past Head of State of this country, with all entitlements due to a Head of State, whonever dreamt of staging a coup nor contested an election! Abiola won the Presidential election, smashing all the burdensome taboos of our nation—tribe, religion, ideology, and so on.

The issue of legality, due process and constitutionality has been addressed by legal purists and probably needs no rehashing. Even Mr. President has acquiesced to that fact, however willynilly. That action has also put paid to outlandish claims of authoritarian inviolable(s). In a democracy, as I said in that interview, no issue of national import and concern can acquire the stature of irreversible finality. Even in military dictatorial reins in this country, when we were told that there was no alternative to SAP, when the ordinary man in the street was being SAP-ped out of being, the people said an alternative was possible. That history is still inconclusive. In a nation where the constitution enables freedom of speech and association, it is not sagacious to rule democratic possibilities out of existence. I think the President has outsmarted some otherwise informed members of his bedroom cabinet by leaving the National Assembly a chance to perform its function. His realization, albeit retrospective, is a confession to the power of divergence of opinions, discourse, debate, consultations and the reversibility of any and every matter(s) in a democratic dispensation, however afflicted.

In the end, it is heartening that President Goodluck has moved away from the position of a precipitous cul-de-sac called irreversibility. He has left an elbow- room for due process and the power of democracy to determine the drift of national choices. He may yet, whichever way the national Assembly allow itself to go on this matter, allow history to acknowledge the small step he has taken to remember a giant of all times—MKO.