Adebajo: Silencing criticality in the ivory towers

THE University of Ibadan has recently been in the news for a very wrong reason. It announced the rustication of one of its students, Kunle Adebajo, for writing an article on the cosmetic renovation of one of the halls of residence, published in one of the national dailies, which the university not only considered critical but an embarrassment to it. The university has had to respond to the barrage of criticisms it faced after the announcement by explaining that the processes leading to the rustication of Adebajo conformed to its laid-down regulations and that it was simply following its own internal rules and regulations with the announcement of the rustication, suggesting to all criticising it to advise Adebajo to avail himself of the opportunity to utilise the appeal system in the university by penitently approaching the Governing Council to look into the case.

It has to be stated that the statement by the University of Ibadan seeking to justify the rustication speaks more to the currency of aversion to intellectualism at the institution than anything else. For the university was not even suggesting that the rustication could have come from some wrong workings or applications of rules, but was insistent that the normal running of the institution would produce such an anti-intellectual end. But, pray, where in the world do we see a university, the expected platform for critical disputation, frowning on and punishing criticality? What kind of university would want to silence elucidating writings by its own students? Which university would insist on interpreting its rules and regulations as frowning on students expressing themselves freely about happenings and developments in the university?

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The truth is that universities, by their tradition, are bastions of discourse and arguments about extending and expanding the frontiers of knowledge and students are especially to be tutored in this tradition and understanding. Therefore, it would be expected that the University of Ibadan would want developed in its students, a healthy and robust identification with criticality as part of efforts to make them students and graduates with worthwhile credentials. And this is the tradition in which Adebajo must have written his article about the practice of papering over fundamental renovations at the university in order to shed light on this practice and perhaps by so doing help the university to change its way in that regard. That the university now wants to turn this around and conceive of his act as negative and deserving of rustication necessarily calls into question its claim regarding the promotion of scholarship, which has to be a through critical engagement.

The university, therefore, has to realise that it has not done any positive thing for its own standing as a repository of knowledge with the rustication decision and should seek to immediately reverse itself in order to repair and restore its image. This, it should do by promptly requesting a letter of appeal from the rusticated student in order for the case to be revised and the rustication annulled. The issue here is not that students should not be punished for infractions. It would indeed be legitimate to impose sanctions where students misbehave or even write about their university without regard to decorum and ethical considerations. But students ought to be encouraged  to critically express themselves as Adebajo has done with his article and not be punished for such intellectual engagements.

Unfortunately, this aversion to intellectual engagement has become a growing concern and is characteristic of virtually all universities and higher institutions in Nigeria. It would seem that while universities everywhere else are striving to advance criticality, Nigerian universities are busy seeking to contract the intellectual space by silencing criticism. We think that this will further distance them from the rigour and tradition of intellectualism and it would be appropriate and expedient for them to seek a return to the critical ways of scholarship by accepting the reality of criticality and criticism within the ivory towers as a defining characteristic, starting with the University of Ibadan showing the way by reversing the rustication of Adebajo.