Celebrating Great Ife @ 50

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OAU

THIS month, February 2012, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, one of the first generation universities in Nigeria, marks 50th year of its establishment.

 Expectedly, drums have been sounding from the ever proud alumni, students and management of the institution and, not surprisingly, the school’s name has been the trending (term used to describe the most mentioned word on Twitter in a region in a period) word on Twitter in Lagos and Nigeria in the last few days.

 Established in 1962 by the venerable Chief Obafemi Awolowo-led government of Western Nigeria, Obafemi Awolowo University (known as University of Ife until 1987, shortly after the demise of the founding premier) has established itself as a force to reckon with among Nigeria’s tertiary institutions.

 It is one of the reference points in lessons on what visionary leadership can do. A number of classic issues around the school’s establishment, like others of its generation, easily come to mind when discussing the now elusive good governance in Nigeria.

One, it was established at a time the now neglected agriculture, and not crude oil, was the main revenue spinner for the government. Two, the then premier of Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and his deputy, the equally respectable Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, never sited the university in their villages, Ikenne and Ogbomosho, respectively. Rather in Ile-Ife, the ancestral home of the Yoruba people.

 In its five decades of existence, OAU has contributed its fair share to the manpower requirement of the nation, with products that are high flyers not only in Nigeria but also at the global level.

 Although the last one to two decades have witnessed decline in quality, it is nothing but a reflection of the generally waning standards of education in the country, owing to successive governments’ failure to give education the attention it deserves.

 OAU has especially suffered more neglect from the governments in the last one decade. It would be recalled that in the run-up to his election as civilian president of Nigeria in 1998/99, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, while on a visit to the institution, suffered unjustifiable ignominy from the mass of Ife students, who believed his military regime was anti-students, with the infamous Ali-Must-Go crisis of 1978 that led to the killing and brutalisation of Nigerian university students, Ife students actively involved and also victims, the signpost of his education-insensitive posture.

 Not a few observers hold that the neglect OAU suffered throughout Obasanjo’s eight years in office, when other schools like ABU, Unimaid and Unilorin got billions of naira projects, can be traced to the 1998 brush he had with the nationally relevant, politically conscious Ife students.

 Although this has been threatened in the last few years, OAU provides a model of what an ideal university should be. It is a community, not just for direct learning and researching, but also providing a voice that cannot be ignored in the national polity.

 With vibrant students’ and workers’ unions that regularly lend their voices to national issues, Ife has maintained its tradition of being a watchdog for good governance in Nigeria.

From the Ali-Must-Go uprising of the late 1970s, through the June 12, 1993 rape of democracy to the struggle against the despotic regime of the goggled one, Ife students have been at the forefront of the civil struggle.

 Small wonder Nigeria’s most celebrated political critic, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, at the point of his death, mentioned Ife varsity as the institution deserving of having his corpse if the family decided not to bury him.

 It should be noted that the now nationally quoted Senior Advocate of the Masses (S.A.M) honour for Gani was conferred on him by the Great Ife students in 1988.

 It is also noteworthy that Ife is the breeding grounds for most of Nigeria’s finest progressive minds, notably Itse Sagay, Femi Falana (PRO, Ife Students Union 80/81), Mike Ozhekhome, Lanre Arogundade, Justice Oyewole of Bode George trial fame, Opeyemi Bamidele (also ex-PRO, Ife Students Union), Bamidele Aturu and Paul Usoro, most of whom started their activism in their Ife days; not to mention the likes of Wole Soyinka, Dipo Fashina, Biodun Jeyifo, G.G. Darah, and other leading progressive intellectuals connected to Ife as ex-teachers.

 Yet, we will be deceiving ourselves if we say all is well with our university today. As I noted in my article, OAU: Metamorphosis of progressive varsity (Thisday, November 12, 2010), the vivacious intellectual fireworks that our institution emitted in the 60’s to early 90’s have practically been put off.

 The seminal contributions to global and national intellectual discourses through the world class teachers it paraded in years past are fast fading away.

 Since the exit of world class teachers like Professors Jacob Olupona, Biodun Jeyifo (both the only two Nigerian tenured-Professors at Harvard, as Segun Adeniyi brought to light in his Thisday column, August 4, 2011), Wole Soyinka (who got his Nobel prize while he was teaching in Ife), Sam Aluko (unarguably one of the top three most cerebral Nigerian economists ever), Babatunde Fafunwa, G. G. Darah, Itse Sagay, etc, Ife has not been able to fill the shoes of these breeds, much as the remaining legends like Dipo Fashina, Adebayo Lamikanra and few others are trying.

 This intellectual depletion, caused majorly by the brain drain of the 80’s to 90’s, hits Ife more than any other Nigerian university of its generation.

 As we celebrate our great alma mater at 50, it is pertinent for us to reflect on this low point. Segun Adeniyi impressed me by dedicating three consecutive editions of his weekly column to calling Great Ife alumni to stand up for their university.

 This is another wake-up call. We must count ourselves lucky to have passed through the four walls of this great citadel of learning, which to us, is the greatest university south of the Sahara and north of the Limpopo. 

 The only way we can be grateful to this university that has shaped the lives of many of us is to rise for it. Who else is ready?