A life-long protege of late Chief Bola Ige told me an amusing but sad story. He was a member of a cluster of younger friends around the Cicero, sharing in his ideals and vision. Ige was visiting his Esa-Oke country home during a particular yuletide season and his own, including the traditional leadership of the town, came calling. Apart from seasonal glad tidings, they also came with a request. Yes, the Polytechnic in town, is state-owned, but they wanted an indigene of the town, to be the Rector, and wanted their illustrious son to make it happen. They got an immediate response from him. It was a not-too-subtle rebuke. He allegedly asked in Yoruba language if the office was a traditional stool. That ended the agitation, at least, for the season.
If the slightest signal of support had come from him, the town could descend into chaos in minutes. The body language of leaders, matters a lot. Bola Ige didn’t hate his people. He wasn’t ruling them out of patronage. He only, patriotically, loved them. He was sensitive enough to know the brewing sense of entitlement in town, was a sure tinder that could incinerate everything; the institution, the Esa-Oke community and her economy, livelihoods, even lives and above all, peace. He preferred working behind the scene for them, instead of stoking a blaze, on the altar of clannish populism. He refused to be a reckless hero for his people.
If any community, town or city is in flames today over entitlement mentality, it is likely leaders and elders of Ige’s stature and native intelligence, aren’t in abundant supply, or those available, are possibly lacking in community value, leading to a disconnect between the falcon and the falconer, as they say.
Elders and leaders are the gatekeepers, especially in the maintenance of communal peace. The moment they descend into the arena of conflicts, they become part of the issues to be resolved. Once they become irreverent, they become irrelevant, regardless of titles. Of what use is a title, without a mantle.
Identity politics, arising from entitlement insensibility, used to be an aberration, but it has now been so normed that we are comfortable with whimpering as our best disavowal. And this didn’t start yesterday. Values gradually eroded and the death of merit and dearth of due process, are among the species of maggots crawling out of the decomposing society we are about handing the coming generations.
And they don’t have to be taught, they just learn, watching today’s leaders. Imagine a Professor of Peace and Conflict Management, leading a pack of recusants against the university’s lawful leadership and then gallivanting in front of the class, trying to teach his students the theories his actions are puncturing. They may listen, but they have already internalized the practicals he had inadvertently taught with his reprehensible conduct.
Yes, above may be conjectural, but the struggle for power in Nigerian university administration has recorded worse episode, in recent time. Professors’ wives now serve midnight jollof rice to invaders, laying siege to the VC’s office, while husbands, crowd-fund the destabilisation agenda. Haba!
Appointing public officers is pure politics, except for those living in denial. Yet, within the context of the sad realities swirling around and about the compromised procedures and processes, sanity is still achievable, especially if those Yoruba will call agba ti ko to ile (unreasonable elders) aren’t involved. The biggest tragedy is that most of those always handpicked, to do the job,, aren’t decent men and women. Money is their god. Influence-peddling is their trade and genuflecting before their patrons, is their main qualification for assignments that require tact and facts.
If Ife and other communities, hosting tertiary institutions, are boiling today, self-examination, should be the critical take-off point for all stakeholders, including the appointing authorities in Abuja. It isn’t about big grammar. It is about retooling and resetting, to prevent the shame repeating itself.
King Solomon says there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
Years back, a late monarch of Ife town invited then sitting VC to his palace, for a tete-a-tete. The monarch tacitly demanded for an upgrade in the status of Ife indigenes who are teaching staff. The VC told Baba it won’t be a problem as long as his affected subjects are ready to stay longer in the chalk calling, instead of the widespread practice of quitting for the business world after becoming Lecturer 1 or thereabout. They would need to grow, to compete. Baba understood. In the presence of the VC, he beckoned to his senior citizens around, to hear by themselves, the solution, to the complaints of their people. He didn’t make the VC an enemy to destroy. He correctly communicated the solution to his people through the community gatekeepers. Any arrangement outside of this, is an invitation to anarchy.
I take Professor Rufus Adedoyin’s decent showing in the contest that threw up Professor Adebayo Bamire as OAU VC-elect, as manifest result of the heartfelt counsel of that yesteryears and the Ife gatekeepers, receiving it with single-mindedness, to work on. Ife warriors need not engage in criminality. Someday, it will be the turn of the son-of-the-soil, on the strength of his academic achievements and personality suitability, I must add.
This is however not discounting from the appeal mounted against Bamire’s victory by Adedoyin. If there is any merit in the claim that Bamire was, against established protocol, awarded double marks for being DVC twice, instead of once, as allegedly dictated by the appointment guidelines, a recount should be ordered by The Visitor, and whoever ends up with the highest lawful points, should be picked. The cliche is that there can’t be peace, without equity, justice, and fairness. If courts could be re-awarding votes not cast in their presence, why not a university Governing Council, that did the grading in the first place. And why should it be difficult to have a standardized grading system, in place. Except for the Nigerian factor of fraud, it should be very easy for an average candidate to go into the contest, knowing his preliminary score on the basis of the positions held, within the system. If being Faculty Dean attracts 6 points, it should not suddenly become 12 points for anyone. If the five-man panel awarded a candidate 30, it would be criminal for another to get 60, for same parameter.
(To be continued).
and then