So tall a memory

He was emphatic that universities have become filthy environments and postulated that: ‘’If you study in a ranch you will be an animal. If you study in a prison you will be a prisoner; our universities are producing animals’’. That view provoked a furious protest by Professor Elizabeth Okeke. Biodun Jeifo, Chairman of that session […]

He was emphatic that universities have become filthy environments and postulated that: ‘’If you study in a ranch you will be an animal. If you study in a prison you will be a prisoner; our universities are producing animals’’. That view provoked a furious protest by Professor Elizabeth Okeke. Biodun Jeifo, Chairman of that session urged her to ‘’ make room for the use of metaphor’’.
He immediately seized the moment to release his own brutal metaphor, claiming that: ‘’Nigeria is today a refugee camp. So, if you are being educated in a refugee camp, you are a refugee’’. Jeifo was Chairman of the Academic Staff Union of Universities in 1981. He was invited to chair the ‘’National Education Summit’’ by its four conveners, including: the National Association of Academic Technologists; Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions and Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities. He had led the first skirmishes with President Shagari’s administration over higher wages for academics; investment in academic research, and modernised science laboratories. He recalled a team of Vice Chancellors complaining in panicked horror that their frank language was scandalously rude.
Debo Adeniran, Executive Chairman of CACOL, a non-governmental organisation, rolled out a list of warts on Lagos State government’s record on the education sector; with an image of high quality performance promoted with the use of ‘’false witnesses’’. The reality consists of many schools in which ‘’pupils sit on the floor while roofs are leaking’’; both government officials and parents insist that ‘’students by-hook-or-crook must pass examinations’’; and in private schools ‘’teachers write answers for exams on the board for children to copy and score high marks’’. Children are abandoning attending classes ‘’to go and play football’’ or ‘’want to become Nollyhood actors’’; seen ‘’as shortcuts to acquisition of wealth’’. Teachers, like those in Ekiti State, went ‘’on strike because they were to be tested for ability to read and write’’, let alone knowledge of subjects they are paid to teach. This dismal situation made him demand that a ‘’state of emergency should be declared on the state of Education’’ because education is the root of all else in society.     
There was rage against Nigerian governments since the days of General Olusegun Obasanjo’s withdrawal of free meals for university students; General Babangida, after 1985, certifying wealthy individuals to run private universities; and current plots to get TETFUND to give public funds to private universities. There were claims that despite open sabotage and corruption of examinations and admissions by officials, most graduates from public schools ‘’easily outclass people from private universities’’. No voice countered this claim.
Despite evidence that countries ‘’like Cuba have proven that public-funded education is a must for developing countries’’, Nigeria’s wealthy classes have chosen the path of ‘’haemorrhaging the country’s wealth by exporting their children for education abroad’’. In Britain, Nigeria comes third after China and India in the number of her students harvested through vigorous marketing inside Nigeria by British agencies.  In 2014, there are 16,650 Nigerian students in Britain: with each paying 19,000 pounds sterling annually; for a grand total of over 316 million British pounds sterling. In 2014, the United States received, from Nigeria, investments totalling 136 million American dollars as fees for children’s education in that country.
The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) got both bashings and friendly hugs. A furious Vice Chancellor accused the agency of non-transparently imposing contractors and consultants on beneficiaries while ‘’everybody keeps quiet’’. Professor Angela Miri, a former Commissioner for Education and Health in Plateau State, wondered why ‘’services that work elsewhere when introduced here it rather dislocates us’’. She had discovered that local officials lacked capacity for using funds allocated to them by TETFUND. She avoided putting blame on ‘’corruption’’; urging ASUU to push for officials being trained and retrained.
‘’We must tell ourselves the truth’’; several participants insisted. Professor Omotoye Olorodo asserted that since 1976, a culture of anti-democratic administration of universities has been promoted by IMF’s dictation for ‘’managerial Vice Chancellors’’ whose dictatorship ignored university committees. They were against subsidies for students. The ‘’accreditation’’ exercise by the National Universities Commission was accused of being cynical by encouraging malpractices, including:  universities seeking official nods by resorting to hiring professors, books and laboratory equipment to hoodwink visiting committees.
 Comrade Niyi Fasanmi accused teachers of ‘’creating parrots’’ by teaching in ways which do not train Nigerians who will ‘’participate in the transformation of the world’’. Professor Joel Babalola was more brutal: accusing academic staff of ‘’ethical failures’’; promoting ‘’cascading mediocrity’’; while a new species known as ‘’Internet Professors’’ sprout out that do their field research with computers in their bedrooms. University executives, he lampooned, practice ‘’a level of impunity that is difficult to exaggerate’’.
The picture is deeply distressing. President Nyerere and Professor Ade Ajayi saw education as a vital tool for protecting the independence and security of countries, including Africa. The spectre of Nigeria’s bureaucracy filled by graduates gloriously illiterate is desperately alarming. These critics were once persecuted for ‘’teaching what they were not paid to teach’’.