By Our Staff Writer
This is not about the Ides of March, celebrated each year on March 15 to remember the stabbing to death of Julius Caesar in the Senate, a tale of power and tragedy. As about sixty conspirators killed the emperor, a permanent saying emerged: beware of the ides of March. Instead, I am talking about the great ideas of March to transform Africa by Toyin Falola, its preeminent scholar. He has released three powerful lectures to the media, to be delivered on March 15th, 18th and 19th in Lagos, Ibadan and Oyo respectively.
The month of March carries in its fold discourses important to the development of Nigeria’s political and academic terrains. They are made more significant by recent dramatic outbursts in matters and places determinant of the country’s growth. In the realm of its economy, crises swirl between the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited and local refineries, particularly in relation to the primacy of established political interests versus ventures which, at the very minimum, are theoretically beneficial to us all. In the quarters of governance and accountability, the arm of government to which responsibility has been eminently assigned to foster these mechanisms has embroiled itself in a raw display of bias and discrimination. That its leadership, in the person of the Senate President, so blatantly refused to observe an elemental tenet of quasi-judicial proceedings spells to the average citizen in distinct terms that in the grand scheme of events, power is all that matters to the titled Nigerian. Not responsibility. Not integrity. And certainly not overriding public interests.
Moving away from this, the education sector has been a scene of its share of disquietude and rightly so. From the operationalisation of student loans to policy proposals on age qualification for admission into universities to a rejig of the basic education structure and the flurry of approvals issued for the establishment of new tertiary institutions, a great deal has been underway. It is, therefore, only a fateful alignment that the month presents opportunities for commentary on the ever-evolving yet paradoxically static conditions of the Nigerian state. Falola’s confidence in asserting this is deepened by the symbolism of the season to foremost academics who, in their prime, contributed their eager intellects to constructing novel schools of thought.
March 15, The Badejo Lecture, Power, Privilege and Philosophy
On that score, Falola’s first lecture, which comes up on the 15th of March, will be delivered in honour of Professor Babafemi Badejo, a man whose claim to membership in the cream of the crop in Nigerian diplomatic and political thinking stands undisputed.
The lecture titled “Power, Privilege and Philosophy” aims to probe the nuances of the relationship between socio-political status and ideological underpinnings. It considers this critical in the context of Nigeria because the politics of power is often seen in simplistic terms. Scant attention is given to the intersections between admittedly technical details governing the acquisition and application of these powers and the variety of social interests defining it. The failure to deconstruct confines to the backstages the ability to intimately understand and address the drivers of corruption and poor governance in Nigeria. Lacking these insights, we find ourselves against an obstinate wall of power and powerfully connected networks. We must begin to disentangle the imports of privileged offices on the manoeuvres that present and past leaders are able to conjure.
For example, concepts such as “elder statesmen” are not ordinary titular appellations, they are woven into cultural norms, which, in turn, embody political significance. A cursory analysis of terms such as this suggests that they are intended to signal the volumes of knowledge and experience acquired by said “statesmen,” who, interestingly, also tend to have perfected the art of bending the state to their will in their prime years. “Elder”, in the most realistic sense, therefore, communicates seniority to political players of the current age on the one hand and a mandate to revere to the more ordinary-minded, average individual on the other. It goes without saying that such a complex template of status definition is embedded with its philosophical strain, one that is only feasibly understood through thorough analysis and observation.
March 18, Ayo Olukotun and the Nigerian State
Three days following this, Falola speaks on ‘Ayo Olukotun and the Nigerian Nation.’ This lecture is of intensely sobering quality. During his lifetime, Professor Olukotun invested heavily in rallying the country to action on endemic crises in its political leadership. He lived a life of advocacy, seeking at every turn to, in his sadly limited way, alter the inevitable fate of a flawed country such as ours. In his youth, the professor was an energetic member of the Students’ Union Government. He rose through the ranks to helm the union and in that time, he never permitted the leadership, within and outside his university, to forget that the students existed. All the way up to the senior cadres of the Federal Government cabinet, Olukotun was defiant.
He sent fiery criticisms the way of the Gowon administration, fought back against depreciations in the quality of welfare afforded students, and postured aggressively in a manner that sent the country scrambling to contain him. He did none of these from a position of ignorance. He was well-informed, spoken, and impressed beautifully with the gravity of his positions through writing. Not many can boast of these attributes. Ayo Olukotun’s youth is strikingly in contrast to today where one senses some impotence in the hubs around which young Nigerians previously mobilised. Though we may contest that that has been supplanted by digital activism, the place of direct, physical counters to government missteps cannot be disregarded. It is depressing to observe the lows to which the National Association of Nigerian Students has sunk in its shameless marriage to political offices. Also unflattering is the death of student activism.
These two offer a crystal understanding of the likely reasons behind the inability of the throng of young Nigerian to muster significant resistance to foul policies. Inherently, the implication is that Ayo Olukotun’s life, from his youthful days to much later, supplies objects of critical insight even posthumously. Following his days as a young activist, he relentlessly ventured into remarking on the state of the country through columns in leading Nigerian newspapers.
Olukotun leaves behind him an extensive footprint criticism of multiple spheres of the national ecosystem, even as he was a prominent member of the academia. He represents through this the necessity of refusing to compromise on our collective conscience for selfish reasons. For most, the country is now ruled by the tenets of the individual. One must, above all else, prioritise his immediate existence. Olukotun disagreed. He saw strident reflections on the state as a way to not only survive but also thrive. The lecture consequently intends to extract lessons from the impactful life of a man who never settled for the status quo.
March 19th, Atiba University, Rethinking Tertiary Education in Nigeria through Private Universities for Sustainable Development
Finally, on the 19th of March, Falola embarks on an exercise in disruptive thinking. The question he asked, in essence, is, in what ways can private universities improve the tertiary education ecosystem in Nigeria? The topic comes up at a sensitive juncture in the education sector. As of now, public tertiary institutions are shaking off their association with lower fees. What this implies is a narrower margin between costs obtainable in private institutions and those of their public counterparts. However, the stereotype surrounding private citadels of tertiary learning often categorises them as expensive but of unduly low quality. These are particularly about their admission standards, staff quality, course offerings, quality of instruction, grading, and even students’ freedoms.
Yet, despite these stereotypes, the novelty of many of these institutions also implies that they could well be ahead of the curve in the integration of contemporary academic programmes. These are fields into which older-generation universities have made halting pivots. Being better funded, these institutions could also broaden the exposure of Nigerian talents to competitive specialities, steering them away from direct competition with their aged government-administered rivals into fresh niches. Through this, the country is equipped with the needed human capital for transitioning into the present occupation with arenas such as renewable energy and cybersecurity. Emphasis on these potentials must not be construed as denial of existing flaws, Falola insists. Instead, it is an imaginative search for a new course for these institutions. The conversation on that day will undoubtedly be illuminating to creative growth-seekers in national education.
The nation owes Falola a debt of gratitude for this original set of ideas.
