Ife macabre show – the way we are, By Wale Fatade

I still can’t wrap my head round the fact that some of us are surprised and shocked at the macabre show put up at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. The university that mere mentioning its name evoke fierce emotions in its products, including my father and friends.

Perhaps those surprised must have remembered those days when a Kenneth Dike, an Igbo, and a Tekena Tamuno, an Izon, held sway in Nigeria’s premier university, Ibadan, the King of Nigerian universities. Or when an Oladipo Akinkugbe, an Ondo man, was the principal and pioneer vice chancellor of the University of Ilorin. He later became the fourth vice chancellor of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Or when a Cyril Agodi Onwumechili, Nigeria’s first geophysicist from Oji River, current Enugu State, held sway between 1978 and 1982 as the then University of Ife helmsman. Let’s not forget Adamu Baikie, born in Zaria but whose parents are from Gabas, Borno State. He led University of Benin from Oct 1978 to Oct 1986. We can go on and on. Or more recently when my older friend and fantastic medical scholar, Prof. Friday Okonofua from Edo State was appointed the pioneer VC of Nigeria’s first medical sciences university in Ondo, Ondo State.

But those days are over, I’m sorry to tell us. We’ve thrown the universitas away in our universities, they’re no more universal. They’ve become parochial, clannish and tribal conclaves. For Ife, as the university is more known, which had a battery of American, Carribean and British scholars in its early years which gave it an international flavour, to have descended from its olympian heights to one clamouring for a VC from Ilare or Enuwa, we are in a big mess. Our people in Ibadan too asked for a VC from the city as though people got their chairs based on their towns of origin. It’s a regular staple of our universities.

This happened in 2022 with Nigerians heading universities in different countries. But the rain has been beaten us for a long time. Get a list of our vice chancellors and see if a Yoruba is heading any university in the north or east or a Kanuri heading one in the west. Look for an Ibibio or Igbo in the north and see if you can find one. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Let’s put the universitas back in our universities and maybe, just maybe, we can make them universal again.

By the way, when last did you see the convoy of a VC? I hope you see one and then you will know why it’s become an omo wa ni e je o se agitation. Those guys live big and the paraphernalia of office make them look like your regular Naija political leaders.

– Fatade, a journalist writes from Lagos