Universities and the Academic Gold Standard in Nigeria DENNIS AUSTIN BEFORE going to Nigeria after several years' absence I prudently consulted those who had kept a closer acquaintanceship with its life and times. I talked to Nigerian friends and to English colleagues who visited the country regularly. What was it like? In the tales I was told, there was always a particular thread of description woven into the general picture. Nigeria was said to be extraordinary--chaotic, ebullient and remarkable; its politics-like its commercial life---were corrupt and corrupting but not at all servile. There was immense resilience amidst the dangers of communal distrust and new-found avarice. Wealth was conspicuous--the Nigerian millionaire was by no means uncommon; poverty was ubiquitous despite~ or even because of--oil wealth and a growing industrial base from which inflation and injustice had spread through most aspects of Nigerian life. It was not a popular country in the eyes o~ expatriate businessmen, notwithstanding the scope for profit. The quality of food and service in the overbooked hotels was abysmally low. Outside the capital, the roads were dangerous, the expressway to Ibadan and Ife lethal--a continuous graveyard of machinery and men. Still, Nigerians were resilient. They coped. There was a large measure off hope, abundantly so at local levels where every young Nigerian, it seemed, was confident of becoming either president or a millionaire or a businessman or a civil servant. It was also thought that the return to civilian rule in October 1979, within the huge federation of 70 or 80 million people, was about to rekindle expectations that had been extinguished by civil war and 13 years of military control. I turned these phrases over in Nairobi in the gross discomfort of my expensive hotel while waiting for the delayed American flight to Lagos. It was Maundy Thursday, an appropriate day for reflection. The following morning the aircraft arrived and we left, apprehensively, for Zaire; a momentary stop in Kinshasha, alongside the American war-planes and the slovenly members, heavily armed, of what was presumably the Zairean army, then out across the widening estuary o~ the Congo River, coffee-coloured, massively flowing, immensely broad, and moving sluggishly between flat banks of scattered trees and scrub towards the Atlantic Ocean. It was Good Friday; and I was, astomshingly, the only passenger bound for Lagos. My companions of the delayed flight, mainly American, were disbelieving. " Y o u getting off in Nigeria? " In what I hoped was a reasonable measure of English understatement, I said that I had arranged to visit a few friends and spend Easter weekend in Lagos.

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Protest was added to disbelief: " N o b o d y goes on vacation to Nigeria, not to Lagos ". The aircraft landed at Che New Murtala Muhammed Airport, a memorial to the assassinated general. I was passed very courteously through "immigration ", past the soldier with the gun at the barrier, then into the large customs hall. At this point I was stopped by an army officer. I told him I was visiting his country after many years away, and he was interested. " H o w do you like our new airport? " I said I thought it was splendid, and indeed it was unusual to, be the only passenger-almost the only other human being--in so immense an edifice. "Fully air-conditioned and fully automated, you know." " Y e s ", I replied, " i t must be a good deal warmer out there "--gesturing to the steamy forecourt where taxi-drivers and porters were gathering beyond the exit doors--" but what actually is automated? . . . . Your luggage ", said the army officer, "will be delivered by conveyor belt automatically; it will arrive through there, along the loading channel, and be deposited at the very spot where we now stand ". "Excellent ", I replied, "really, very good. But what are those porters doing? .... Porters? ", said the officer, "porters? Those porters are, I'm afraid, carrying your luggage. Something has gone wrong." We looked at each other and laughed, he boisterously, I a little nervously. "Teething troubles ", I said, "that's all." He was pleased. "Exactly. Teething troubles. But we shall extract the teeth, and then it will be fine." I was unsure of the analogy, but summoned the porters to carry my luggage into the mephitic air of the city where friends awaited me.

Expectations and Disappointments In the extraordinary world that is Nigeria, universities are still a novel feature of the landscape. At the end of the 1970s, when I revisited Lagos, there were still only thirteen: The most renowned, Ibadan, dated from 1948; others were established throughout the federation in the: 1960s and 1970s. They rise out of the suburbs of Lagos, Ibadan, Benin, Nsukka and Port Harcourt, or stand out against the savannah skyline of the north at Zaria and Kano, as a huddle of modern buildings: stone, concrete, steel, glass. They look like fo,reign imports and are considered by many of their critics to be precisely that. Yet there is great local pride in "having a university ", matched by resentment in the half-dozen states which were nat chosen in the mid-1970s as the site for one of the new foundations. Quite apart from whatever academic merit it may possess, a university is important simply by virtue of i.ts existence. It also provides local employment and a market for goods. But it is the notion of the university as a gateway to employment, and the wealth which 1 Older institutions were Ibadan (Oyo), Nsukka (Anambra), Lagos, Ire (Ondo), Benin (Bendel) and Ahmadu Bello (Kaduna). Newer institutions were Jos (Plateau)~ Port Harcourt (Rivers), Calabar (Cross River), Sokoto (Sokoto), Maiduguri (Borno), Ilorin (Kwara) and Kano (Kano).

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education undeniably brings to its beneficiaries, that determine its chief attraction. Graduate unemployment is still a good way off and one might readily suppose, therefore, that relations between universities and government in Nigeria were cordial: the relationship of nineteenth-century Oxford perhaps, Ibadan playing Balliol to civilian cabinets and their party leaders, or directing the public service on behalf of the military junta. The reality is different. It is a story of discontent sliding periodically into conflict. Benefits are expected in large measure from universities as suppliers of "educated manpower" and as agents o~ natioaaal unity or an African identity. Yet they are regularly deprived of funds, bullied and controlled or dosed down by successive governments. Only the natural Nigerian resilience or the 13 universities as an attractive force for the educated young, helped by the inconstancy of their critics, has ensured their survival. Survival for what purpose? None of the 13 universities is quite like its neighbours. Yet they have one characteristic in commo,n: uncertainty-uncertainty of purpose, and uncertainty about their function and operation. What are they for, and how sho.uld they carry out their duties? In the early period of the foundation of the University College of Ibadan after the Second World War, many of the newly appointed teachers, registrars and vice-chancellors--Africans and British alike--struggled to establish themselves in the period before and after independence. Many seemed at the time to be "unanchored souls ", carried backward and forward on a current that had no clear direction. They were uncertain above all of the nature of the university and its place in Nigerian society. The students were African-speaking and English-taught. The College was locally established but linked thro,ugh the arrangement for external degrees to the University of London. It was also a federal institution in a land that lacked definition; the country was to move from three to four regions, then briefly--under military decree--to a unitary system, then to 12 and finally to 19 states. Until the, end of the 1950s there were very few students--fewer at Ibadan than in universities abroad--yet the College had to serve a huge population beyortd its walls. Should it not perhaps have expanded its numbers rapidly to become a factory of teaching rather than an ivory tower of knowledge? There was much talk at the time of a university "gold standard " - - L o r d Ashby's phrase--of international validity; but there were others who were early advocates of what was later to be called an "intermediate technology ", who saw the task of the university as transmuting the learning of the European world into useful kno.wledge for the dependent poor, a kind of alchemy in reverse, producing base metal from gold. The difficulty about many of these arguments was, essentially, the o~r mark that stamped Ibadan as " m a d e abroad ". Like other foreign imports the College was expensive to maintain, yet it lacked financial independence; it was also related to more distant centres of achievement than to local

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endeavour, a n d uneasy in its relations with government. Even the students were unsure of themselves. They were by no means from the wealthiest or most westernised families whose sons if not daughters-were at universities in Britain or America. They were still climbing up through the privileged world of the Nigerian educated and beneath the surface confidence of a new 61ite there could be detected the nervousness about origins of a hardly formed, middle-class-to-be. Not far beyond the teaching faculties and the halls of residence--visibly present even within the University among the large number of servants and gardeners~lay the uneducated o r scarcely educated majority whose peasant labour had to sustain the privileges o,f the small university community. The contrast made for unease. It actually fostered notions of the students' radicalism that later, much later, came to be directed not against their own privileged position but against the post-colonial state of the party leader and the soldier-politician. It was easy enough in the 1950s, as it still is today, to say that the primary function of the university in Ibadan or Zaire or Nsukka must be to "transmit learning ". Lord Ashby thought that it should be to transmit the learningof Western eivilisation, an assumption that is no.t quite as parochial as one might think, given the immense spread of European ideas and manners throughout the world. (Much of the literature of radical exhortation about the need to end what is said to be. the "neocolonial dependency of African universities" is itself dependent on remedies drawn from European-based beliefs.) But can there be a crossfertilisation of learning between Europe and Africa without ending in sterility: asses crossed with donkeys'?. And to whom should the learning be transmitted: to the nation, or an 61ite, or an intellectual community, or a governing class? There has been no shortage of advice from party and military leaders in Lagos who have been eager to determine the function of all 13, state-supported universities under fc:leral or federal and state control. Metaphors and similes have. grown with the exhortation. African universities ought not, they declare, to be "ivory towers" but "engines of progress ", "architects of unity ", "pillars of state and power ", '" houses of learning ". The National Policy Paper on Education issued in Lagos by the Ministry in 1978 called on the universities, to "provide high level manpower within the needs of the economy ", "inculcate a proper value-orientation for the individual and society", " u s e the talents and expertise in the universities more for national development and decision-making than at present ", "encourage a spirit 'of service in the students" and "serve as effective instruments for cementing National Unity ". A good deal to,o much in fact has been expected of universities in the short term, a problem that time alone is unlikely to remedy, for if the maturing of a university is long, the life of a party politician or soldier-ruler in Nigeria is likely to, be brief. Nor is the problem only one of friction between universities and government,

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although it is certainly that, but of a growing sense of futility among university teachers. It has carried with it the danger o.f a loss of any urge towards scholarship or knowledge unrelated to the expectation of immediate reward, in a society that has always been prone to take a utilitarian view of the advantages of education. How great the danger is may become clearer when we look more closely at what has actually been achieved. But, first, something has to be said, quite briefly, of the national play of forces of which university politics have usually been the reflection or, to alter the analogy, for which they have often been a sub-plot. The Political Background

One must remember that, despite the celebration in October 1960, Nigeria entered independence in a very uncertain manner by way o,f an uneasy coalition between the Northern People's Congress and the Ibobased National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroo.ns; it was opposed by the Western, Yoruba-controlled Action Group. The fate of the government under Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa as prime minister, and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe as president, should no doubt have been foreseen. Each region--there were four by 1960--was extensive enough, in African terms, to be considered an independent state and sufficiently dominated by a powerful community--Hausa, Fulani, lbo, Yoruba--to raise the possibility ofsecession. Nationally, it is true, there was a familiar pyramid o.f power, common enough in most African sta~es, buiIt from layers of wealth and educational attainment upon a large peasa0, t base; throughout the federation, society was densely stratified in hierarchies of political authority and social power which, if they fell Short of being social classes, were certainly divided b y wealth and status. But :the ethnic solidarities which formed the main slopes of the Nigerian pyramid were always a dominant element in the political struggle that persuaded the British to withdraw. A disputed census and a roughly fought election in 1960 established Alhaji Abubakar as prime minister in Lagos, until January 1966 when Major C. K. Nzeogwu decided to bring the army into politics. He attempted to draw together--in his own words--" a truly Nigerian gatheri n g " of junior officers against their commanders in Lagos, Enugu, Ibadan and Kaduna in order to put an end to "tribalism, nepotism and regionalism ". It was to become a common programme of hope; often repeated in farcical terms, but the first military coup was indeed tragic. It killed federal ministers and regional premiers, precipitated a further coup in July 1966 against Ibo army officers and Ibo traders in the north, provoked Colonel Ojukwu into declaring the Eastern Region an independent "Biafra state" and General Yakubu Gowon into using a vastly expanded federal army to crush the secession. The middle 1960s were an unbroken

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time of tragedy, cruel and bloody. The slow work of reconstruction after the end of the civil war in 1970 was very much to the credit of all Nigerians, but it was interrupted by further disasters. In July 1975 Gowon was dismissed after exactly nine years in office, from July 1966 to July 1975. He was replaced by Brigadier Murtala Muhammed, who was widely regarded as an honest, forthright northerner. Then in February 1976, Lt. Colonel Dimka and a number of '~ disgruntled elements ", disappointed by lack of advancement, killed Muhammed and tried to overthrow the Supreme Military Council in the hope, it was said, o~ restoring their fellow-countryman, Gowon, as head of state. They failed, and Gowoaa remained in exile. Dimka and some 40 or 50 others were executed publicly, some at Bar Beach, others outside the Kirikiri prison in Lagos. Muhammed's successor was Lt. General Obasanjo, who continued the programme of demilitarisation. It included the drafting of a new constitution and the holding of elections at federal and state levels and culminated in the formal transfer of power o.n 1 October, 1979, to Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the National Party of Nigeria. Looking back at these 20 years, it is not difficult to conclude that they have been full of "tribal chauvinism" and "personal ambition ". By 1979 the wheel had turned full circle, back to a northern Moslem leader, elected once again on a wide franchise. Full circle, but not without change. During these two decades oil wealth enormously increased federal revenues. It was truly manna from the underworld. Agriculture, on which three quarters of the population still depended for their livelihood, declined from 63 per cent. to 23 per cent. of the gross national product; the export value of agricultural products fell from over 80 per cent. to no more than 6 per cent. of the total. By the end af the 1970s, Nigeria was the sever~th largest producer in the world af oil--high-quality, low-sulphur oil. Revenues from oil comprised 90 per cent. of total earnings. They brought into being not only a substantial Nigerian business sector but a sizeable class of entrepreneurs as middle-men between expatriate companies and the government--" co.mpradores" to those who disapproved of their rote--and a large labour force. " I l l fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay."? Much depends on what is meant by "accumulates ". Wealth in Nigeria has tended to accumulate at the top: the poor have remained poor. Income per capita for the population as a whole is as law as $280 a year--poor even by African standards. 2 Problems, Troubles and Embarrassments How have the universities been affected? The picture is still changing, and statistics are uncertain. But something can be said generally about By far the best account of recent politics is Panter-Brick, Keith, Soldiers and Oil (London : Frank Cass, 1979).

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tho position of the 13 universities in relation to what was once expected of them. On the one hand, there is the "' Ashby model ", still not quite discarded by governments and university authorities. It is the traditional, very British model or a "university on the gold standard ", presented with the seal o~ internatio,nal approval and charged with high ideals. It was intended to educate a locally rooted, nationally minded 61ite able to unite the young federation as civil servants and professional men and women, while upholding academic standards as members of a wider universe of learning. If all went well, it was expected that the growth of a Nigerian university system would signal the arrival o{ a new intellectual community and businessmen of whom their early expatriate tutors could be justly proud. And on the other hand? There has, unfortunately, been the reality of struggle between the universities and government, between university staff and students, between students and the military, between university teachers divided by ethnic origin, and between faculties within a particular university over scarce resources; a struggle, in fact, not only to secure for the universities a lasting place in Nigerian society, but, more prosaically, to give academic value for what are, after all, the very large sums of public money entrusted to them. A subdued note o.f apprehension ran through the African pages of Lord Ashby's study, an uncertainty--almost a disbelief--in respect of what was happening, in the former British colonies? There was conflict where there ought to have been co-operation, and distrust in place of confidence. How was the "gotd standard" to, be maintained ff universities fell out among themselves, as at Ibadan and Lagos, or if they were set upon by governments, as under Nkrumah in Ghana? Patience was counselled, and a hope expressed that, though governme~ats come and go, universities endure. By such means, it was said, Nigeria might yet be saved for university education. In practice, however, the Nigerian picture is probably not substantially different from that in most African states, although it is often presented with greater hope. Despite the military and the civil war, and widespread poverty, there is still a belief--not only among the expatriate fathers of Ibadan or Lagos--that in the end, at some unspecified time, the Nigerian universities will be well placed or, at least, better placed than in most African states simply by virtue of the size and diversity and energy o{ the federation. It is the old belief in "resilience" and in Nigeria's ability to cope with its misfortunes, including the difficulties evoked by the precipitate growth o{ 13 universities. That Nigerians are adept at making the best of the worst is readily acknowledged by anyone who has experienced not only the harshness but the civility of a large part of Nigeria~n society. There is a courtesy among many who, asked for help in small matters, frequently go beyond what a Ashby, Erie and Anderson, Mary, Univemitles, British, lndian, A]rican: A Study in the Ecology o/ Higher Education (London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966).

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is requested. I t is perhaps the communal generosity of village life not yet extinguished by the growth o.f cities or the acquisitive fears of the educated minority. Sympathy, whether in the guise of deception or the presentation of gifts, is a common Nigerian experience. It can charm, and may even modify distrust. But it cannot solve difficulties of national dimension, or prevent animosity between those who are in competition for scarce resources. Reading through reports of the National Universities Commission Nigeria, the findings of numerous visiting missions, and local accounts of university matters in senate minutes and the press, I was almost as impressed by the energy with which the universities have struggled with their problems as by the problems themselves. But the latter are certainly considerable. They cart be strung together in a simple chain of discomfort. Expansion in numbers becomes distorted by pofitical demands resulting not in diversity but dispersal, dividing the university 61ite among 13 universities; the effect has been to, engender distrust, weakening the capacity for research and teaching, increasing reliance on expatriate help, straining resources and--inescapably--provoking conflict between staff, students and a federal government which forced the expansion without either counting the financial cost or understanding the difficulties of imposing a centralised control on the university system as a whole. The result has been to handicap each of the 13 universities very seriously. It has also dissipated the limited intellectual resources of Nigeria at precisely the time when they are most needed. Perhaps it might have been different had the expansion o~ the university system been started earlier or promoted more rationally. Mr. Paul Beckett and Pros James O'Connell note that progress was very slow during ,the 1950s. " M o r e Nigerians studied abroad than in the Ibadan University College i[and] at independence in 1960 the total number of graduates produced annuaUy at home or abroad w a s . . , less than 1,000 ,,.4 Thereafter it was all hurry--political hurry--and expansion was "extremely rapid ,,.5 Student enrolment moved sharply upwards after the civil war when the continuing flo~ of oil wealth and political pressures at state level enlarged the university community beyond recognition from the first graduation of 18 students in 1951 from Ibadan. In 1977 the Third National Development Plan envisaged a total enrotment by 1980 of 5,000 postgraduates and 55,000 undergraduates, 44,000 or whom were to be in the familiar three-year degree pattern; the others were in programmes of "basic studies" as a preparatory period. (Table I). Not all the new universities were " n e w ". Ahmadu Bello had placed its department o,f Islamic studies among the neem trees of the northern city of Kano in 1963 and the Abdullal Bayero University built on that early start. Jos was a "sub-campus" of Ibadan which had established a 4 Beckctt, Paul and O'Connell, James, Education and Power in Nigeria (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 197T), p. 9. 5 Ibid., p. 12.

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TA~I.F. I

Student Enrolment in Nigerian Universities: 1977-78 Ahmadu Bello Benin Calabar Ibadan Ife

7,366 2,264 1,335 8,900 8,706

Ilorin Jos Kano Lagos * Maiduguri

442 1,280 1,958 5,982 1,176

Nigeria 6,860 Port Harcourt ? 300 Sokoto 194 Total : 46,763

9 Figures for 1976-77. 1" Figures for 1978-79. SOURCE: Report o] the Academic Planning Group (Lagos: N.U.C., 1976), p. 205.

school of basic studies on the Jos-Bauchi Road site in 1971. Calabar was similarly related to Nsukka. Ilorin made good use o,f the Kwara State College of Technology and Maiduguri housed itself in buildings formerly comprising the North Eastern Co,liege o,f Arts and Sciences. Soko.to could indeed claim to be a wholly new foundation, having to borrow governmental buildings for its teaching until a more permanent site was ready north-west of the state capital. Port Harcourt, too, started from scratch on its "40,000 hectares of g r o u n d " north-west of the city from which it took its name. But old or new or very new, the decision o.f the federal military government in September 1975 to expand the university sector under the Third National Development Plan of 1975-80 was truly extraordinary. As the Academic Planning Group o,bserved: " I n 1971, the total enrolment in the then six universities was about 17,000. The number o,f teaching staff was about 2,200. In early 1977, just over five years later, the total enralment had more than doubled to 40,000. The teaching staff had also doubled. . . . ,, 6 Similarly the extent of the financial reso,urces sunk into the university system through the National Universities Commission is very revealing. The total budget for universities for the year 1970-71 was 39m Nairas. In the year 1976-77 it was above 320m Nairas. And the signatories concluded: '" In 1971 if such projections had been made they would probably not have been believed." It is not clear whether the Academic Planning Group believed its own forecasts. It admitted that its projections were "extrapolations based on current trends" which were extremely difficult to foresee. " E v e n while we were doing our work, far-reaching parallel decisions were being t a k e n " in politics, in education, in the production of oil.' All the Planning Group could do was to move forward as fast as it could. The effect on many academics of the decision to found seven universities was that Report of the Academic Planning Group (Lagos: N.U.C., 1976), p. 200. The group was established by the Nigerian Universities Commission in February 1975. See also, Overseas Liaison Committee, American Council o f Education, Future Nigerian-us Linkages in Higher Education Overseas (Washington, D.C. : U.S. Department of State, May 1977). r Report of the Academic Planning Group, p. 200.

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of a whirlwind without any still voice of caution. Still, there were obvious advantages for younger teachers in this " d o u b l i n g of the teaching staff ", and the simple, view of the Nigerian Universities Commission had much to commend it to those who ignored the problems. T h e money was now there,--or was believed to be there; and since universities were what Nigeria ought to have in order to meet the demands coming up from the even larger programmes of expansion at primary and secondary school level, why not have them? Dr. Aminu, secretary to the commission remarked : . . . existing institutions were each conceived in isolation, often in the heat of intense regional rivalry and financial restraints . . . . The situation is completely different now, with the nation united and financially well off. . . . s And the Academic Planning Group noted under Item C, of its introduction: Budget. At present, budgetary constraints do not appear, within reason, to be the limiting factor to academic planning. The Group should therefore make recommendations only on the basis of what should and can be accomplished2 So the universities were driven forward in the 1970s in the style of all Nigerian driving--with immense speed and a blind trust in fortune. Early in May, travelling to,wards the University of Benin, I became increasingly alarmed at the clear intention of my driver to overtake, on either side of the road, every vehicle in fro,nt o.f him. I asked him how he knew, when overtaking on a sharp bend or the brow of a hill, whether or not he would meet head-on an opposing petrol bowser or lorry? H e turned briefly and smiled: " M a s t e r , matter of luck! " And with that I had to be comforted. S% too, for the National Universities Commissio~ and all 13 universities. It was, after all, almost a matter of luck whether one or all of the new universities should be awarded a medical school or a faculty of agriculture: Originally, the Federal Military Government decided to establish [our new medical schools in the Plan period in Calabar, Jos, Maiduguri and Sokoto . . . . However in the last few weeks, and as a result of pressures from certain quarters, there has been a ruling that each of the seven new institutions should have a Medical School by 1980.1~ Among the older universities, four had faculties of agriculture.-Ibadan, Nsukka, Ahmadu Bello and Ire. (Ire also had an Institute of Agricultural Training and Research.) In 1971 the National Manpower Board concluded that "existing Agricultural Faculties are under-Utilised and it should not be necessary therefore to establish new ones ,,.n The s ,, Address delivered by the Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission, 2 February, 1976, at the opening meeting of the Academic Planning Group, Lagos." Report o / t h e Academic Planning Group, p. 8. 9 Report o / t h e Aeademle Planning Group, p. 20. xo Ibid., p. 8. i x Ibid., p. 8.

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Federal Ministry of Agriculture, on the other hand, " d i d not agree with this and recommended that a new Faculty be started in each of the new Universities before 1980 ", The Academic Planning Group hesitated and the National Universities Commission eventually agreed---a matter of luck?--to go ahead with four: Calabar, Maiduguri, Sokoto and Port Harcourt. It was not difficult to sympathise with the problems facing the Commission or the Academic Planning Group. Money was suddenly available in very large measure or so it seemed at the time. OPEC had bestowed its gifts. Why should the federal government not use them? Moreover, there were unanswerable questions that encouraged a bold forward push. How many doctors, for example, did Nigeria need? In a population of 70 million, there were no more than 4,000 medical practitioners of whom one-third were not Nigerian. The average expectation of life was only 41 years. The existing medical schools--Ibadan, Lagos, Ire, Benin, Nsukka, Zaria--enrolled just over 3,000 students and guaranteed, annually, some 245 doctors, many of whom entered private practice in the larger towns. 1~ Why not push forward with the proposal to raise the number of medical schools to 13 ? If, however, one effect of the expansion was to create problems over standards of entry in the effort to recruit undergraduate numbers, another was to force a return--inescapably--to earlier times and a large reliance on expatriate staff. In engineering, for example, where the attraction for Nigerian graduates of emplo~yrnent in private business or governmental corporations was very strong, a figure of 200 or more teachers from abroad was fixed on. They were needed not only to staff the newly founded faculties of technology at Benin, Ibadan and Ife, and the proposed new departments of engineering at Ilorin, Kano and Port Harcourt, but to maintain laboratory work and teaching in the longer established schools at Zaria, Nsukka and Lagos. The number of Nigerian graduates in engineering was actually quite good: they were expected to exceed 1,000 a year by the early 1980s. But as the American Council on Education noted in 1977: " t h e needs o,f government and industry are very great and the Universities must manage with the small f r a c t i o n . . , who are inclined towards teaching ,,.1~ So the Nigerian Universities Commission began to send out visiting missions of enlistment and opened recruiting offices-not simply for engineers in London, Ottawa, Washington and Cairo. It also examined a number of schemes, some implausible, others very difficult, to try to increase the number o.f Nigerian academics--itinerant teachers who might perhaps move from university to university, the repatriation of Nigerian teachers, and plans for accelerated training pro12 In the United States in 1975-76 there were 112 fully accredited medical schools, four provisionally accredited schools being planned; 56,244 medical students; 30,330 full-time Ieaching staff; 380,000 doctors. la Overseas Liaison Committee, American Council of Education, op. eit., p. 87.

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grammes in local graduate schools. But, in the end, its Academic Planning Group had to conclude that if the 13 universities were to be adequately staffed, "3,000 additional teachers would need to be fed into the system by the beginning of 1980" and " t h e vast majority will be expatriates -.i, Other estimates put the figure at 2,500 of whom 1,500 needed to, be recruited overseas. No one knew for sure. It was all conjecture. And the whole exercise was absolutely predicated on getting the additional number of students. The truth of the matter is that in 1973 and for the rest of that decade, the federal military government was as much concerned with demands at state level for what was vaguely known as "development" as with "university standards ". The uneasiness with which the members of the Academic Planning Group examined their instructions comes through very clearly in each section o,f the report. They knew that the decision to establish seven new institutions had been taken not only " i n respo,nse to planned manpower expectations" but in order " t o articulate geopolitical demands" 15--a clumsy expression for local pressures from powerful state interests. They knew, too, thatl the new universities had been "located in such a way as to correct the national geographical maldistribution of these institutions . . . . and to bring the advantages that accompany proximity to such a body ", despite "building delays, staff shortages, admission inadequacies and the inherent difficulties in largescale management ,,.is Where was the gold standard now? Most accounts of what has happened since the mid-1970s call attention to the " f a l l in educational standards" Of course it may be that the Universities must get worse as they multiply in number before they get better. But for the present the picture is pretty clear and not at all attractive. Expansion has meant taking students who want very much to go to a university but who lack the qualifications once thought necessary for admission. The fall in educational standards following the massive expansion of the sector 9.. is largely related to the very high failure rates in the West African School Certificate Examination... and the poor equipment and staffing in the Secondary Schools. This has led to the official creation of remedial Schools of Basic Studies, preparatory classes and the like . . . . 17 In effect, therefore, the university world could not expand without altering the requirements for entry. The Planning Group. was quite candid: " a s the projections show, based o~n the current matriculation requirements, the numbers of available students in the next few years will be insufficient for all the Universities, new and old . . . and it will be necessary to admit less qualified students if sizeable enrolments are to 14 15 1~ ir

Report o] the Academic Planning Group, p. 63. Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., p. 21. Ibid., p. 82,

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be achieved ,,.i~ The deficit in students during the 1970s varied a good deal, the older institutions suffering particularly as the newer foundations drew students away from them. In 1973-74 Ibadan was 20 per cent. under the expected " t a r g e t figure ", Lagos was 26-4 per cent., Zaria 11-7 per cent (in 1972-73) and 22 per cent. (in 1973-74). 19 Something had to be done and the obvious solution was to offer pre-degree courses. It was soon put in hand. " A l l the universities now run pre-degree courses, though Ibadan and Lagos confine themselves to science subjects ,,,20 the most adventurous in this respect being Zaria: In an effort to increase enrolment, Ahmadu Bello opened a School of Basic Studies about five years ago [i.e. 1972]. The University admitted into the School Ordinary Level candidates who would not otherwise have met the matriculation requirement into the two-year, certainly not the one-year, pre-degree courses. Other institutions, like the former North East College of Arts and Science, later followed the example of the Ahmadu Bello University31 Reflecting in this way on the evidence assembled, it is possible to draw tentative conclusions about what may be taking place. I have chosen three areas of scrutiny, each related to the part likely to. be played by the universities: leadership, national unity and governmental direction.

Leadership Nowhere is the Nigerian contrast between intention and result so poignant as in the matter of "61ire training ". In the early days of Ibadan, there was a good deal of speculation in conversations by the university swimming p0ol, or over drinks in the senior common room, about who the students were and what they might become. The idea of Bailiol in the sun was attractive. It had long antecedents in that most British of concepts--training for leadership. It echoed down the colonial years, and can still be heard occasionally in romantic assertions o,f the need to find '~ socialised inducements" in Tanzania or Angola or Ghana in order to persuade students to come to the aid of the ruling party. Similar notions had been held, mutatis mutandis, in the early years of colonial rule when administrators and mission teachers struggled to devise a distinct pattern of education fo,r the so.ns o.f chiefs " t o fit them to fulfil their duty to, the State and toward their own people as their leaders ". So ran the Annual Report of the Tanganyika Education Department in 1926, and the sentiment was common enough throughout the African territories. Corrupted, the doctrine produced Bantu education. Elsewhere, it turned local scions of traditional leaders into successful allies of the administration--until the times changed again. 28 Ibid., p. 51.

29 The " d e f i c i t " at Ibadan, Lagos, Nsukka, Zaria, Ife and Benin together was: 1970-71, 9.8% ; 1971-72, 11"2% ; 1972-73, 13"8%; 1973-74, 11-8% ; 1974--75, 8.0% ; 1975-76, 6-9%. Ibid., Table 31, p. 205. 2o Ibid., p. 50. 21 Ibid., p. 52.

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In 1930 there were six Houses in the College and I was the head of the one called Illela. This won the banner for cleanliness but perhaps we were rather more pleased by winning the prize for cricket. I was very fond of that game and did so well in it that I was given my College colours. . . . My favourite game, however, was fives. This had been introduced by Mr. S. J. Hogben who brought to us the Eton variety of the game . . . . I was captain of this game at Katsina and taught a lot of men who have now reached positions of prominence in the service of Nigeria... among them the Prime Minister of the Federation, Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa . . . . In fact the list is quite extensive, for at least three-quarters of those who, coming from the Northern Region, have held office as Minister of the Federation, or of the Region, or as Chairman or members of Boards of various kinds have been ex-students of Katsina College. 22 The Elliott Commission on higher education in West Africa continued the same theme. The universities were to become the instrument of a new kind of " i n d i r e c t r u l e " for the nation-to-be: Somewhere in West A f r i c a . . . a new state will be born. It will be strong. Its voice will be listened to . . . . It will have a vital need for counsellors, its own counsellors. Now is the time, and the time is already late, to train them for their work. 28 It was a very Winchester and New College, Eton and Balliol, Foreign Office and Treasury view of the state, enshrining belief in the need to link education and political power by the right sort o~ training in the hope of producing that esoteric model of British government which Professor W. J. M. Mackenzie suggested should be placed alongside more conventional analysis: The esoteric model is very different. The classical statements are in Walter Bagehot and in what survives of the political thought of A. J. Balfour (reflecting his uncle, the great Marquess of Salisbury, and reflected in turn by the writing of Sir Sidney Low). This doctrine has been in general taken as a matter of course in educated society, but it is not appropriate for political platforms. Its basic propositions are not all shocking, but they are not very suitable for public oratory. Perhaps they can be reduced to three propositions. First, social power is fundamental ; politics are superstructure, and forms of political institutions don't in the last resort matter very much. Secondly, social power (provided its social ties with the armed forces are right) has no serious rival except economic power. So strong a rival should be handled with circumspection; self-made men and their sons should not be rudely rejected, however base their origins or sources of wealth. A compromise deal reasserting the primacy of social power is always possible; war to the death never makes sense. Thirdly, social power is built into the structure of society, and loses its force only with the dissolution of society. Its nature can be represented as a pyramid. The career of the active individual in society is one of climbing or of penetration; to some extent he can hand down to his children the footholds he has gained . . . . The model is one of an astute, imperturbable, flexible oligarchy, self-perpetua2z Bello, Ahmadu, M y Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 29, 30. ~a Commission on Higher Education in West Africa, Report 1944-5, Cmd. 655 (Lortdon: H.M. Stationery Office, 1946), p. 18.

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ting but not exclusive. Corruption is its main constitutional form, not election nor yet heredity. The model (like all these models) purports to describe the truth about a pofitical system; but in so far as it makes good its claim to be factual it also establishes a norm. This is the myth by which successful men explain to one another their own success within what they believe to be a successful form of government.24 N o r is it difficult to understand why British advisers, many of whom were drawn from that " a s t u t e and ttexible oligarchy ", should have fashioned a pattern of university education for West Africa drawn from their own experience of how a state should be run. What other experience had they to draw on? A t its most extravagant, it gave expression to, the belief that the basis of political control and o~ university teaching--the " g o l d s t a n d a r d " in practice--should be classical precedents and English culture: Miss Perham asked her audience to accept as evidence for this view the enthusiasm which Africans show for western learning: she spoke of boys on the Gold Coast acting Euripides with "tremendous satisfaction ", and an African graduate at Fort Hare whose eyes lit up when he confessed that his research problem was the poetry of Dryden and Pope. She drove home to her audience.., the special function of the university as a training ground for leaders and the immense importance of insisting on the same standards of achievement as are required from students in Britain. z~ In practice, alas, Nigerian universities came too late for such glory. Their problem was also immensely more difficult than any that faced their British mentors. They had to try to educate a new 61ite at a time in the 1950s and 1960s when political power was shifting dramatically, not by a slow extension o.f the franchise as in nineteenth-century Britain or during the sleepy days of colonial control, but by the precipitate grant of adult suffrage to a practically illiterate population followed by the abrupt intervention into politics of a barely literate army. It is of course true that office and privilege in Nigeria are necessarily the preserve of the educated minority, whether army officers or party politicians. But it is not the preserve o~ the university-educated. The political class has become too numerous, the universities have grown too slowly or were begun too late. Who governs Nigeria? No one knows and perhaps it is enough simply to accept the fact that it is governed. It has survived civil war and thrown off military rule. It is federally administered and taxed. In 1979 the electorate managed, with some difficulty, to choose a national president and several legislatures throughout the federation. Even Balliol may not be quite out of the question. Shehu Shagari's cabinet included two former vice-chancellors, a professor of medicine and three o,ther university teachers. (None of the four military leaders---Ironsi, Gowon, Muham24 ,, Models of British Polities", in Rose, Richard (ed.), Studies in British Polities, (London: Macmillan, 1966),pp. 53-54. 25 Quoted in Ashby, E. and Anderson, M., op. cir., p. 32.

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med, Obasanjo--was a university graduate, although Obasanjo trained as a military engineer at Shrivenham in Britain.) But Nigeria is unlikely to produce a single oligarchy of power for many years to come, and great credit is due to the non-graduate civil servants and army officers, as well as to the small group of graduate administrators, who have upheld the state since the civil war. As time goes by, the number of graduates will increase and the universities are bound to fill a wider range of professional and administrative posts--very possibly party posts, too--at both federal and local level. Will they also one day produce a single 61ite? Current evidence does not support it, although the statistics carefully assembled by Mr. Beckett, Professor O'Connell, Dr. Olagunju and other scholars are not always easy to interpret. From a large jigsaw of pieces Mr. Beckett and Professor O'Connell have produced a very uncertain picture of the present generation of Nigerian students. 2e The fault is not theirs. Many of the pieces do not fit together easily. In respect of the occupation, income, religion and educational attainment of the students and their parents, the information is reasonably clear; and the findings are categorised sensibly by region, state, university and language of origin. But still the picture is uncertain since the university-educated are at best only an "61ite-in-formation ". There are certainly no signs yet or the emergence o~ a social oligarchy of power spread across the country, entrenched firmly in positions of power and in close alliance with both economic wealth and military and religious leadership: no nationally based, long-established families alert to preserve their position by an intelligent combination o.f co-option and inheritance. There is more than the shadowy outline of what may become a national 61ire, although no one doubts but that the political and administrative leaders o,f the past 20 years or so have been busily engaged in using their power to buttress their privileges. But the older members of the 61ire are divided among themselves, and the younger are still in the process of "becoming "; they are emerging from the much greater reservoir of clerks, traders, local officials, teachers and both educated and uneducated farmers. It is suggested that a consolidation of 61ire interests may appear " a s the children or the large groups of senior administrators, professionals and others who benefited from the localisation policies of the period before independence reach university age -77 But the obstacles to such a unity of interest are very great, and the general impression conveyed by the data examined by Mr. Beckett and Professor O'Connell is still that of a high degree of social mobility, regionally generated and ethnically placed. Only in the main urban areas can one detect a hardening of social stratification along new lines of wealth and status: ...the probability is that, whereas the class structure remains relatively fluid and open with regard to recruitment from rural and farming backgrounds, 28 Beckett, P. and O'Connell,J., op. cir. 2r l b i d . , p. 47.

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within the urban sector the beginnings of a more rigid, closed and permanent class system may be visible as the children of the middle and upper elites are disproportionately drawn to higher education.., and the children of workers, for whatever reasons, are largely excluded.~s Elsewhere, across the length and breadth of the federation, the novelty of university education and its sudden expansion in the mid-1960s and 1970s has kept open a fluidity of movement between social go,ups. After all, the university 61ite, tho,ugh growing, is still very small. It is much less than 1 per cent. of the total population. The single most helpful factor in climbing the ladder to university entrance seems to be to have had an educated father: "generally speaking the data suggest that the offspring of parents who had some formal education are more likely to reach the university . . . . ,,-,9 (Undergraduate women are usually from more prosperous, professional classes.) But even the gift of educated parents may be random. The family may have lived near a mission or state school, may have sent their children almost by chance to be instructed in "Western education ". It is again our friend, "' matter o.f luck ". And luck was unevenly distributed. The result today can be seen in the wide regional variations, particularly between the north and south, between Moslem and non-Moslem among the Yoruba, and between the " dry N o r t h " and the " l o w N o r t h " Dr. Olagunju has described the effect of these regional differences on entry into the public service from a handful of northern schools and colleges. 3~ Competition for university places has always been less intense in the six northern states where the problem has been a dearth of candidates. At the beginning of the 1950s there were under 2,000 students in secondary school out of a population of some 17 million. Even by 1975 only 12 per cent. of northern school-age children were actually receiving some form of education. No wonder there were so few northern students at Ibadan or Ahmadu Bello in their early years. The effect has been all too clear, and plainly recorded. The report of the Public Service Review Commission of 197~-the "Udoji report " - noted the regional imbalance among civil servants: Northern 4"3 per cent. (54 senior administrators); Eastern 37 per cent. (468); Western 39.5 per cent. (499) and Mid-West 12.8 per cent. (162) plus Federal District 6.3 per cent. (79).sl The figures correspond closely to university enrolments over the previous decade. Even among the northerners who did receive some form or education there have been great social differences. The native authorities had recruited local men of Western education and ability for their clerical staff, many of whom were " c o m m o n e r s " (talakawa); social power, on the other hand, and indeed party political power, 2s Ibid., p. 42. 29 Ibid., chap. 2, "Social Baekgro.und: an l~llte-in-Formation ". 30 Olagunju, O. O., The Higher Civil Service in Northern Nigeria 1954-1968 (Manchester : University of Manchester Press, 1980). 31 Cited in Beckett, P. and O'Connell, J., op. cit., p. 47.

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rested with the emirs and their councillors (sarakuna). The attempt to "northernise" the administrative service in the 1950s and 1960s, through various programmes of reform backed by the Administrative Training College at Zaria, recruited both social catego,ries, and a common educational pattern helped to draw the northern students together at Ahmadu Belle University. But still the differences were there, not only between the Hausa-Fulani-Kanuri dominated states, and the " l o w North ", but between the families of our sarakuna and those, say, of " a young man whose father they knew as nothing better than a farmer and whom they often laughed at as a naked child playing in the sand outside the emir's palace ,.82 How very distant such pictures are from any notion of a consolidated and consolidating Nigerian 61ite. " T h e role played in former days o,f' the proof o,f ancestry' as a pre-requisite for equality o~ b i r t h . . , is nowadays taken by the patent of education." 83 That may be so in Western bureaucracies and civil society, but not--or not yet at least--in Nigeria where status still assumes many different forms. Messrs. Beckett and O'Connell endorse Dr. Olagunju's findings and conclude that even in the north " t h e picture of a modernising aristocracy can easily be overdrawn" since " m o r e than one-third of the ABU Moslem students' fathers were poor and were farmers . . . . ,, 84 There has been an extraordinary rapidity of change throughout Nigerian society, north and south, east and west, and it does not seem to be slowing down very much. " A very sizeable proportion of the students at all the universities still come from groups, particularly farmers, that are extremely poor: only a little over or less than 15 per cent. could be considered' rich' ", in the sense of having a parental income of 2,000 Nairas on " t h e threshold of car-owning status ,,.35 Such a picture confirms the earlier account of Ibadan: " A t a rough estimate something like half of the students come from ' c o m m o n ' Nigerian families, i.e., are the children of illiterate or barely literate parents with a social background of small-scale farming, petty trade or manual work." ~ The exceptions, however, are interesting. Students in faculties of science and technology " t e n d to come from more well-to-do families "."~ There is both hope and danger in such descriptions. The hope is of a growing cluster of education and talent along the higher slopes of the political pyramid, modifying the sectional pull of communal pressures, 32 Kirk-Greene, A. H. M., " Bureaucratic Cadres in a Traditional Milieu " in Coleman, James S. (ed.), Education and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 387. aa Weber, Max, Economy and Society, G. Roth and C. Wittieh (eds.) (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), vol. 2, p. 1,000. 3~ Beckett, P. and O'Comae~, J., op. cir., p. 46. an Ibid., p. 32. 36 Van den Berghe, P. L., Power and Privilege at an A]rican University (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 153. a7 Beckett, P. and O'Connell, J., op. eit., p. 44.

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and offering a reasonable chance of national stability. In so complicated a country as Nigeria it is probably wiser not to cry up nationality to the point where demands are made of politicians or the army or universities beyond what they can give. It may be better to settle for a working balance between 6lites who, though drawn from territorially based interests, recognise a common ground of interest among themselves. Since there is unlikely to be a single concept of nationality that altogether fits Nigeria, it may be helpful to see the universities as standing only in a modest relationship to the former colonial state, serving local needs, sustaining a loose administrative structure from Lagos, and concerned more with immediate teaching interests than with the "gold standard" of an external world of learning. Leadership in that case might fall short of the early claims made on behalf of Ibadan, Nsukka, Lagos and Zaria as the nursery of a new national 6rite. But it might none the less serve the state at a humbler level of achievement. Such at least might be the basis of an argument to justify some measure o.f hope. The danger on the other hand is more familiar, and very likely inescap,able--that of exploitation, of the growth o.f a dominant class of administrators, politicians, professional leaders and business managerscure-entrepreneurs; an elite of the nouveaux-riches whose passion is money and whose service to the state is directed to the retention of private wealth. It would be the world of the Veneerings and of Hard Times. It is in fact already foreshadowed in the many novels of pro.test by Nigerinn writers. It may be true--as Mr. Beckett and Professor O'Connell write---that most of the present generation of students " r e t a i n ties with their home communities" and that "relations with families seem, in the students' own view, surprisingly unaffected by the cultural gap between most students and their relatives ". But these are early, formative days. The force of a ruling-61ite~to-be has still not been felt. And if it does come fully into the promised land, it may be a good deal less sympathetic than it is now with its social origins. Most Nigerian novelists--and there are many of them--have taken as their theme the pressures of money, corruption, status and the solidarity between kin and class that leads to exploitation, ss

National Unity Whether the present university 61ite is likely to be attracted to a collective view of its interests, or whether its members will remain suspicious and distrustful of each other, is still an open question. One can hope for the future and talk of a loose concept of unity, or o2 a working balance between elites, or of the triumph of future hopes over past experience as characteristic of Nigeria. But that is to ignore a good deal of the past. ss See Austin, De~nis, " T h e Darkling Plain: Literature and Politics ", in Politics in A/rfva (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979).

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The fact remains that the present generation of university teachers, administrators and students has been a divided 6fire, fractured by distrust-an equally distinctive aspect of Nigerian fife, perhaps its most distinctive feature. There is still a haunting sense of political imbalance. It is very often framed by those who accuse others of particularism in broad regional terms--too large a population in the noa-th, too disproportionate a spread of edueation in the south, too great a concentration of resources in particular regions of the conntry. Very fikely it was always unrealistic in the 1950s or 1960s to hope that Ibadan or Lagos, as federally planned universities, would provide a national leadership sufficient to redress so gross an historical diversity. To come anywhere near such an ideal the two, universities would have needed to retain a monopoly over university education after 1948 or 1962, when Lagos began to admit students. But the pollticaI will required for such a decision was never there, and was never likely to be exerted under party or military rule. Indeed, the current of desire flowed in a quite contrary direction--towards Nsukka, Ahmadu Bello, Ire, Calabar, Port Harcourt. And where union had once bred secession, division then bred rancour. Rancour rather than division. In a thousand different ways Nigerians struggle to preserve the semblance of unity. Easter Monday--when I moved fearfully along the new expressway from Lagos to Ibadan----is a popular time for weddings. I was staying at the University and was very kindly invited to a ceremony at the local memorial chapel: Methodist in form, Nigerian in content. The chapel was full and, judging by the quantity of (illegal) lace worn by men and women in full Yoruba costume, the congregation was wealthy, Prudent, too,. An elderly lawyer presided' at the wedding feast that followed the service, an elegant youth, with a Ph.D. in computer science, announced that he was master of ceremonies; a minister was at the reception, and the first vote of thanks was proposed by a prospective Oyo state senator, seconded by a neatly uniformed ~ army officer. All five, I was told, were related to the Yoruba family o~ the bride. They clearly had the right connections: law, commerce:, church, state and army. The bridegroom, however, was from the south-east ofthe country, from Calabar, a plump, educated youth in a dark suit and white cravat, seemingly very biddable. I was delighted at this marriage o f West and East and told my companion how pleasant it was to see so striking a representation of the new Nigeria-to-be. "Indeed, yes ", she replied, " t h e y make a fine appearance." The ceremony was everything a Nigerian wedding should be: groom and bride, maids of honour, pages and ushers. Hymns were sung, prayers delivered, photographers were busy. We moved out of the chapel to. the, sound o,f Mendelssohn into the blinding sweaty heat of mid-day, a g a y procession of young and old alike, all eager for bottled beer and cake. Yoruba was widely spoken, which I d o not understand, and it occurred to. me that the groom's relatives wonld be similarly disadvantaged. The mar--

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riage service of course had been in English, but how could those who had journeyed from the East manage during the reception? " I t won't be a problem ", said my companion, "since there are no members of the bridegroom's family present." Then I was told what, after all, everyone knew. The wedding was enforced. The bride was pregnant, had become so when studying for her degree. The bridegroom had been willing to marry but had been put under interdict by his family, which had other plans for a young man in whose education they had invested a large sum o~ money. When the bride's family prevailed, the relatives of the bridegroom refused to attend. It was, after all, a shot-gun marriage of West and East, and in that sense was fully representative no doubt of a Nigeria in the 1980s. "Perhaps ", I said, " t h e child will be the symbol of a Nigeria-to-be ", only to. be told : " O n e way or the other there will have to be a full settlement between the two families if the child is not to be made miserable." And on that sombre note we went forward to congratulate the happy pair. In 1979-80 it was probably fair to say that Nigerian politics and society were still uneasily placed between forces pulling the country together and contrary tendencies pulling it apart. There was much to be said now on the side of unity. The civil war had bequeathed its legacy of a federal victory. Oil wealth focused attention and needs on the central government; Lagos stood in superior relationship to the 19 states unlike its old weakness before three or four powerful regions. The elections o~ 1979 produced a nationally based party government. And even within the university world there were residual, unifying ties oanong a number of senior academics and administrators who had been educated at Ibadan. Eleven of the 13 vice-chancellors in September 1979 has spent some time as students o.r teachers at Ibadan; and Ahmadu Bello stood in similar though lesser relationship to the three new northern institutions. Thedecision to found seven new universities had after all been national policy, monitored by the Universities Commission which was strongly dirigiste under its executive secretary, Dr. Jibril Aminu. Several directives from the National Universities Commission's office in Lagos had sought to channel all communication between the universities and government through a committee of vice-chanceliors and the Commission; and each of the 13 universities was dependent on federal funds. (In August 1975 they were all brought under exclusively federal control.) Students, too, were nationally organised--until the government forced the dissolution of the National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS) in 1978; they claimed a national role in political matters, including direct representation in the constituent assembly that for nearly two years debated the new constitution. Nigerians have always been more successful when uniting against, rather than for, some:thing or somebody; and the universities had been no exception in their relationship with the military leadership of Gowon, Muhammed and Obasanjo.

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All that is true, or could be said to be true o~ the time I visited Lagos and the north. But just as, prior to the civil war, Ibadan and Lagos expressed the jealousies and conflicts that produced the war, so one could see in current trends among the 13 universities a precariousness of national politics that seemed likely to persist into the 1980s. The wedding at Ibadan had been sadly illustrative of an unpleasant paradox that has constantly plagued university--and more than university--life: a distrust among educated Nigerians that often exceeds communal hostility within the population at large. Mr. Beckett and Professor O'Connell were pleased to discover that most of the students they observed were not far removed in their affections and interests from those, who, at a much lower level of education, had helped to finance their going to university; communal ties were retained despite the ''~ 61ite s t a t u s " of the students. But that is by no means the whole story. The unpleasant truth is that "tribalism '" has commonly found a readier home among the educated--including not simply students but academic staff at all levels--than among the. genera/ population. Because competition for employment or status or position is fiercer at national level, the Nigerian 61ite is intensely interested--competitively interested--in politics and the state. Peter Enharo may say: " E n g l i s h m e n talk about the weather. Nigerians talk about tribe." ~9 But that is educated talk. The village farming communities are much more self-contained. They work the land and know little o,f distant peoples. Only when incited against " f o r e i g n " traders or clerks in a nearby town or village are passions aroused, as among Northern Moslem farmers against the Ibo in 1966-67. For the most part, the poorest among the Nigerian rural communities are closer to Carlo Levi's peasants in Lucania in the 1930s, who saw the state and its officers as simply one further source of alttictic,n: To the peasants the State is more distant than heaven and far more of a scourge, because it is always against them. Its political tags and platforms, indeed the whole structure of it, do not matter. The peasants do not understand them because they are couched in a different language from their own and there is no reason why they should ever care to understand them. They live submerged in a world that rolls on independent of their will . . . . Such things as reason or cause .and effect, do not exist; there is only an adverse fate, a will for evil, which is the magic power of things. The State is one shape in this fate, like the wind that devours the harvest and the fever that feeds on our blood. There can be no attitude towards fate except patience and silence. Of what use are words? And what can a man do? 40 Tlie educated Nigerian is different. H e sees the government as an instrument of service for himself--a power that can be captured and held against those who, similarly educated, also seek to arm themselves with its authority. Too few to constitute a settled national class, but also too a9 H o w to be a Nigerian (Ibadan : Caxton Press, 1966), p. 3. ~o Christ Stopped at E b o l i (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1947), i~. 78.

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many to be able to agree on how to share the spoils, members of the educated 61ite not only quarrel among themselves but extend their rivalry by seeking the support of their less literate followers. Hence the often quoted criticisms voiced in 1966 by Kenneth Dike, the first Nigerian vice-chancellor of Ibadan, who was much beset by ethnic quarrels : It must be said to our shame that the Nigerian intellectual, far from being an influence for national integration, is the greatest exploiter of parochial and clannish sentiment . . . . As you leave us, you are going into a Nigeria torn by tribal strife, a country in which deep suspicions exist between different sections. You will be no credit to this university if you leave us to join the band of educated advocates of tribal divisions and strife and worshippers of tribal gods. 41 And President Gowon said in 1967: Unfortunately, our universities instead of playing their proper role have fallen victim to some of the evils which have plagued us in this country. Take tribalism, for instance; it is a matter for regret that the University of Ibadan, made up of eminent scholars, has not been able to set the right example for the whole country by containing the more glaring manifestations of tribal chauvinism. Far too many individuals have tried in this institution to use tribalism as an instrument for attaining personal ends. 42 In the early 1960s Ibadan was very much a case in point. Conflict within Ibadan over appointments became quickly fused not only with quarrels between the vice-chancello,r--Ibo--and the registrar's officers--largely Y o r u b a - - b u t with political factions outside the University. The times were serious. The academic world was beginning to divide. With the help of Michigan State University, Azikiwe had brought his University of Nigeria into being in October 1960--with 256 students under very rough condit i o n s - a t Nsukka and Enugu in the Eastern Region; Lagos, A h m a d u Bello and Ife admitted their students in 1962. At Ibadan, hostility between Ibo and Yoruba drew into opposed camps those who supported the vice-chancellor and those who looked to the registrar: teachers versus administrators, many (though not all) Ibo versus most (though not all) Yoruba. Tempers were short, jealousies grew, and the struggle became farcical. T h e vice-chancellor accused the registrar of " a c t s of sabotage and disloyalty ,,.,3 The registrar retaliated in kind, in an opera bufja of ill-manners : '" exchanges of countermanding memos, leaks to the press, telephone threats, calls to the police, the locking of the Registrar out of his office, sit-ins by the Registrar in subordinates' offices and a legal cross-fire o.f injunctions and counter-injunctions which lasted until December 1967" 4, - - a year after Dike's resignation when the outbreak o,f war brought the exodus of Ibo staff and students. The position of vice-chancellor: was becoming.., a political office...as a direct result of the fact that the 41 42 4a 4~

Van den Berghe, P., op. cit., p. 224. Ibid., pp. 223-234. Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., p. 29.

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incumbent was now a Nigerian with extensive ties of kinship, locality, ethnicity, clientship, friendship, and so on, with thousands of local people, many of whom exerted more or less open pressure on the vice-chancellor to use his position to serve their ends. The extent to which these particularistic pressures exist is largely unrelated to the personality and predispositions of the incumbent. No Nigerian vice-chancellor can successfully resist them and stay in office. 45 So indeed it p r o v e d in the University of L a g o s in 1965. Dr. Yesuf said: Few institutions have been so characterised by tales of woe, crisis and nearcrisis, rumours, vilifications and mutual recriminations as the University of Lagos . . . . They were the result of an admixture of national political chicanery, academic immaturity, tribal chauvinism, personal ambitions and, ultimately, the national crisis . . . . 4 6 Lagos followed m u c h the same p a t t e r n of events as in Ibadan, of t e a c h e r s and administrators being caught up in national quarrels f r o m which t h e y could not, Or would not, sever their o w n ambitio~s. T h e story is well documented. 47 It is also w o r t h recalling. M o s t a c c o u n t s h o w e v e r do not take sufficient notice of the political b a c k g r o u n d . T h e actual crisis within the University was sufficiently d r a m a t i c to c o n centrate attention on the tribal and academic squabbles that divided L a g o s in 1965. It is a tale that has the registrar Chief E k e , a Y o r u b a - - o p e n l y opposed n o t only to his v i c e - c h a n c e l l o r - - D r . Eni N j o k u , an I b o - - b u t t o the senate m a j o r i t y o.f expatriate and Nigerian academics in order t h a t the Y o r u b a - d o m i n a t e d council of the University m i g h t appoint Dr. S. O. Biobaku, a Y o r u b a , as. the new vice-chancellor. A f t e r a n a s t y quarrel and a good deal of political chicanery, D r . B i o b a k u was appointed in Dri N j o k u ' s place; the students rioted, the University w a s closed, P r o f e s s o r G o w e r - - d e a n of the law faculty on w h o m a large part of t h e c o n t r o v e r s y r a t h e r unfairly centred 48__was dismissed and m o r e t h a n 50 of the 75 a c a d e m i c staff--British, A m e r i c a n , N i g e r i a n - - r e s i g n e d in protest or w e r e sacked by the university council. T o those deeply affected, it seemed at the t i m e - - F e b r u a r y and M a r c h 1965~-that the new University in the capitaI city of the Federation was " m o r t a l l y stricken ,,.,9 I n June Dr. B i o b a k u w a s 4~ Ibid., p. 37.

4~ ,, The University of Lagos ", in Yesufu, T. M. (ed.), Creating the Alrican University (London : Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 257. a7 I have drawn on various pamphlets of the time: Berrie, G. K. et al., University o] Lagos: The Truth About the Change in Vice-Chancellorship, July 1965; Chairman of the Council, University o/ Lagos, Change in Vice-ChaneeUorship, 16 June, 1965; The Crisis over the Appointment o/ Vice-Chancellor o! the University O/ Lagos (by senior members of staff), 19 March, 1965. See also, Minerva, III, 3 (Spring 1965), pp. 412--416; ibid., III, 4 (Summer 1965), pp. 592-601; Yesufu, T. M. (ed.), op. cit., pp. 261-263; and Ashby, E. and Anderson, M., op. cit., pp. 324-326. 4s Professor Gower used an unfortunate phrase during the debate in Senate, saying that members would " all feel very upset, and even rebellious, if there were to be a change in vice-chancellorship ". The word "rebellious" was seized on by his opponents, particularly the registrar who was reported as saying: " I do not hate Njoku, but I do hate Gower." (Berrie, G. K. et al., op. cir., p. 22.) Gower was later professor of law, UniverSity of London, then vice-chancellor, University of Southamtpon. (He was for many years chairman of the Law Commission of the United Kingdom.) 49 Ibid., p. 32.

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stabbed by an irate Yoruba student during his installation ceremony. Yet by the beginning of the academic year o,f 1965 and 1966 the University was in full session, although disturbed once more by the outbreak of war the following year. Early in 1968 Dr. Biobaku, still vice-chancellor, was sufficiently in control to warn his newly graduated students not " t o suc,cumb to tribalism or nepotism for at the root or both lies the wish of the ,aspirant to obtain a position for which he kno,ws he is not qualified. A corrupt society is one in which merit has been thrown overboard and influence reigns supreme." 5o Or, more succinctly expressed perhaps: do not as I do, but as I say. Why was there such drama.? The simplest explanation is that "personal ambitions" and "tribal chauvinism" had flourished in the rich soil of federal politics. A general election had been held in December 1964 between two allied camps. On one side were the Northern People's Congress and a Yoruba faction--the New Democratic Party; the two had come together as the New Nigerian Alliance. Opposed to them was a United Progressive Alliance of the NCNC under Azikiwe and ano,ther Yoruba party, the Actio~a Group. By the beginning of 1965 everything was in disarray. The Progressive Alliance had boycotted the election. There was no federal prime minister because Azikiwe as president had declined to call on Alhaji Abubakar to resume office. A number of leading Yoruba politicians were in prison, including Obafemi Owolowo who had been convicted of conspiracy. Within the university world, matters were already disturbed. Dr. V. L. Allen, a British lecturer, interested in trade union studies, had been imprisoned in November 1964 on charges of sedition. Students were excited in bo,th Lagos and Ibadan. Eventually, Azikiwe did ask Abubakar to form a government--a northern-based coalition dependent on Yoruba support. In March, elections were held in the Eastern Region and the NCNC captured most of the seats. At federal level, Abubakar continued to rely on the NNDP under Chief Akintola whose followers now began to exact a price for their support--jobs within government or public corporations or the universities. During the Federal Elections... the NNDP had taken as the subject of its Election Manifesto the removal of people of one tribal group from posts of responsibility in Federal Government institutions and their replacement by those of their own group. The spokesman of the party made statements to the effect that the Vice-Chancellors of the Universities of Lagos and Ibadan... would be removed in accordance with this policy?* 50 ,, Address to the Congregation on the Occasion of the Installation of the Chancellor, Major General u Gowon and the Conferment of the first Degrees of the University on 18th January, 1968, by the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. S. O. Biobaku ", Annual Report o[ the University of Lagos 1966-67 and 1967-68, p. 15. Dr. Biobaku paid uneasy thanks to his predecessors: " pride of place m u s t go to the chairman of council, Chief Dr. E. N. O. Sodeinde and my predecessor in office, Dr. Eni Njoku. Of the latter this is not the time to speak." 5, Quoted in Berrie, G. K. et al., op. cir., p. 10.

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After Biobaku's appointment, Chief S. L. Akintola---premier of the Western Region--was reported as saying at a rally in the Ake Palace Square in Abeokuta, Biobaku's home town, that such appointments were " a forerunner of many good things that await Yorubas at the Federal Governmerit level ,,.~2 Political loyalty was universally seen as having a price and a price that needed to be met. The problem was that the number of claimants exceeded the rewards available whether for individuals or for whole communities. In respect of whatever is meant by " n a t i o n a l u n i t y " it is proper to observe that even the " L a g o s a f f a i r " was never a straightforward ethnic quarrel. T h e University divided between Yoruba and Ibo, but it was also divided among rival groups of Yoruba; and the votes cast for and against Dr. Eni Njoku in the senate included most ethnic groups, plus expatriates, on one side, and a particular Yoruba faction on the other. " T r i b a l i s m " is never the simple antithesis to nationality. Loyalties in Nigeria in 1965 and 1966 were uncertain, not precise, whether in relation to communal ties or national interests or university position. But teachers at the University in Lagos, as at Ibadan, were very conscious of the politics of the time. Even to travel from Ibadan to the capital was hazardous in the mid-1960s. Violence was growing, and olae never knew whether a road block would be manned by bandits or police or soldiers, or indeed whether it made much difference what particular gang exacted tribute from travellers fearful of the journey between the two universities. It was therefore against a darkening sense o~ impending disaster that the quarrel between rival university factions developed when: On 28th January, 1965 the Vice-Chancellor received without warning or explanation a letter from the Registrar, Chief A. Y. Eke, stating that he was directed to ask the Vice-Chancellor to convene a meeting of Senate for the purpose of submitting to Council a report recommending three or more names for appointment as Vice-Chancellor. Knowing that the Council, of which he was a member, had not met the Vice-Chancellor asked the Registrar on whose instructions the letter was written. The Registrar :[replied] the Chairman of Council. 5-~ So the excitement continued until more sombre events overwhelmed not simply the urtiversities but the whole country. By January 1966 the Ibo Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi was in command after the first coup had killed Alhaji Abubakar, Chief Festus Okotie-Ebo,h, Alhaji Sir A h m a d u Bello, Chief S. L. Akintola, Brigadier Ademulegun, Brigadier Maimalad and Colonel Sodeinde--a terrible slaughter of very many leading figures. 5, In July there was a secolad co u p - - t h e return match 55--when Ironsi and 52 Daily Times, 26 June, 1965. 53 Berrie, G. K. et al., op. cir., p. 7. 54 See Luekham, Robin, The Nigerian Military (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). 55 B. J. Dudley's phrase; see his Instability and Political Order: Political Crisis in Nigeria (Ibadan : Ibadan University Press, 1973), p. 134.

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227

a number of fellow officers were killed and Ibos were hunted to death across the northern savannah. By 1970 the civil war had seen the death of many thousands of Nigerians. Ibo students fled the Universities of Ibadan and Lagos; non-Ibo students hurriedly moved west. The University o{ Nsukka was in ruins, sacked and broken into by federal troops; it was no.t allowed to re-open until June 1970. By then, three other regionally based universities were in being--Ahmadu Bello, Ire among the Yoruba, Benin in the mid-West. Civil war and army rule had brought the country under a supreme military council under the leadership of Yakubu Gowon but there was also a loosening of regional ties into first 12 and then 19 states. Diversity and unity? It certainly began to look as if post-war poetics-the concealed politics of military rule---might rescue the older universities from their internal squabbles. By the early 1970s there were six, and by the end of the decade 13 institutions to be shared out among the various communities. The choice of the new sites could hardly be justified on educational grounds since states with a high proportion of " O " level candidates--Imo, Ogun, Ondo--were passed over. 5. But there were understandable political reasoaas for easing the tension within Ibadan and Lagos and for spreading the prize of "having a university" across the country to Maiduguri in the north-east, Sokoto in the north-west, Jos at the centre, and Port Harcourt and Calabar in the south-east. Soldiers and oil had brought the new federation into existence; politicians and politics had now to keep it together. And the 13 universities might reasonably perhaps have been expected to sustain its precarious sense of unity. Unfortunately, however, in the balance between unity and diversity a new weight in the scale began to be felt. There was not only competition between each university--that, after all, might produce a useful balance of interests--but a weakening of relationships between the state-centred institutions: " I n order that the foundation of Nigerian Unity shall be securely l a i d . . , we recommend that a fully-fledged university should be established in the Eastern Region without delay." ~7 Thus Dr. Azikiwe, as early as the 1950s, when advancing the case for his own style o{ university. High claims were made for its local brand of excellence: practical gold, not ornamental. There was to be no "upper class of parasites, who might prey upon a stagnant and sterile class of workers and peasants ": the University at Nsukka and Enugu was to concern itself "with basic occupations and productive vocations -.58 It was also, to mo~e forward at a brisk American pace. None of these distinctions was preserved in practice. But it was soon noticed that the new University o,f Nigeria had begun not only to recruit staff and students from its own region but to draw them away from Ibadan. Its rapid growth after October 1960, when it first ad58 In the " twelve state terminology ", the East Central State--now Imo and A n a m b r a - had 20,712 " O " level candidates in June 1976; Kano had 1,352. 57 Quoted in Yesufu, T. M. (ed.), op. cit., p. 185. 5s Quoted in Ashby, E. and Anderson, M., op. cit., p. 245.

152 ~

152

817

5 5 5 2

.

.

759

747 1 . 2 7 1 1 1324

13 15 1 4

1289 2

N.E.

1500

1197 12 6 179 42 32 32

B.P.

SOURCE: Report of the Academic Planning Group (Lagos N.U.C., 1976), p. 205.

1066

10 9 I 8

3

I

.

1035

799

a Unspecified students not available for the totals.

Total

A H M A D U BELLO BENIN CALABAR IBADAN 1-FE NIGERIA LAGOS

Institution

Unsp~ cified N . W . S . N . C . S . Kano

2155

1472 30 4 307 157 32 153

K.W.

9544

167 98 30 3306 3745 305 189

We~

Total Enrolment by States: t975/76

TABLE II

3819

776

358

153 965 42 1044 481

661

41 26 -160 161 20 253 8295

113 116 295 1375 791 4723 882

1256

89 53 128 207 125 470 184

536

103 47 10 133 71 65 107

554

94 11 -220 62 46 121

32286

6961 5671 6059 4416

515

7299 1365

MW.S Lagos E . C . S . S . F . S . Rivers N.N. Total

~"

;~

~.

to to O0

Universities and the Academic Gold Standard in Nigeria

229

mitted students, and again after the end of the civil war in 1970, saw the majority of the staff recruited from within the country and " a m o n g Nigerians the bulk are those whose homes are in the East Central State where the university is located-.59 It was an achievement that pointed the way for other regional or state-centred universities, most notably for a "northernisation" programme of stag recruitment and student intake at Ahmadu Belio in Zaria. As we have seen, the newer foundations are still a long way from such a goal. They are still massively dependent on expatriate teachers but the trend towards dispersal is unmistakably there. The main body of students is being "separated out "--like the federation itself. Despite mechanisms designed for national selection under a Joint Matriculation and Examinations Board, and a central National Universities Commission, the growth in the number of universities has led to. a drawing apart of the student population. Even before the civil war the percentage of students at Ibadan from the former Eastern Region had dropped from 42 per cent. of the total to 36 per cent. following the opening of Nsukka. In 1963 there was a fall from 11 per cent. to 2"4 per cent. in the proportion of northern students at Ibadan because of the attraction --to northerners--of Ahmadu Bello. A similar effect has followed the opening of each local university. The position in 1975-76 is shown in Table II. In the face of such figures, the notion of a university-trained national dlite, controlling the Nigerian state and giving clear direction to federal policy, becomes much more difficult. It is not simply the paucity of numbers but the de [acto separation of the 13 universities that hinders the formation of a unitary dlite. Multiplication by dispersal may have great advantages in relation to local patriotism, bringing a stronger capacity to meet local interests. But it is not likely thereby to "serve as an effective instrument for National Unity ". The effect might be less pronounced if there were counter-tendencies--as, say, in Germany and Italy--of a centralising kind in respect of language or history or national literature. Nigeria, however, is not only polyglot but uneasily articulated. Myths and symbols do not mark out the unity but the differences in religion, language and origins. The federation once had regions, the regions became states and the states sub-divided. Ahd still no one can say that the present divisions are final. In pre-colonial times, the peoples of what is now the Rivers State constituted a number of independent communities loosely connected by trade relations with theft neighbours. In the colonial period these communities were politically united in the Eastern Region with the much more numerous Ibo people who live in what is now the East Central State. In various ways the Rivers peoples came to feel that they were outnumbered and outvoted by the Ibo majority in the region . . . . 59 Okafor, Nduka, " T h e University of Nigeria, Nsukka ", in Yesufu, T. M. (cd.), op.

cir., p. 191.

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Dennis

Austin

This does not, however, make them a homogeneous people. The present Rivers State is a miniature Nigeria in its linguistic diversity, e~ Diversity must somewhere have an end. But if present complaints are met, there will be no halt yet to the m o v e m e n t out f r o m Ibadan in 1947, f r o m L o r d Ashby's recommendation in 1960 for a limited n u m b e r of universities " o n the gold standard ", f r o m the six universities of the mid1970s, and the 13 that now extend across the federation. T h e prize of a university is too tempting to resist. Criticism f r o m the non-university states has grown. The senate o~ the federal government in Lagos recently debated the question, including the transfer o~ control of all the universities, other than Ibadan, to the state governments: Professor Akintoye, a senator, proposed that " t h e Federal Go~cernment should grant m o n e y to the seven states--Ondo, Niger, Gongola, Ogun, Imo, Bauchi and Benue---that do not have a university ,,~1 " A university was needed ", Alhaji A b u b a k a Barde, governor of Gongola State, told the local College of Preliminary Studies in Yola, " d u e to the hardship encountered in seeking admission to the country's universities ,72 The state governor of Imo, Sam Mbakwe, spoke in similar fashion at Owerri: In 1978-79, out of 113,162 candidates that sat for the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) examination, Imo State had 19,702 candidates but only 2,126 or about 107o of them were offered admission. Therefore we need our own University. a8 If additional universities were founded, up to the full 19 or 20, or m o r e if the states were increased, it would m e a n a further attenuation. The dangers are well known. They have been widely discussed not least by those who have already experienced the disadvantages of growth. Dr. Sunday Asuquo Thomas, of the chemistry department of A h m a d u Bello University said: For the academics the temptation to prostitute from one institution to another in quest of higher posts will be enhanced. Such migrations may arise from frustration and different criteria for appointment and promotion that exist. Some might secure higher posts not because they have anything to show for them but because they come from the "right states" (an unfortunate expression that has found its way into Nigerian vocabulary) . . . . The drifting of staff from the older universities to new ones established in their states of origin cannot be in the overall interests of the country . . . . Our universities are bound to tend more towards being tribal schools. Admissions and appointments are bound to be strongly influenced by tribal or ethnic affiliations. Instead of promoting the cause of unity ethnic differences will be magnified. Standards will not be maintained since lesser qualified people may be admitted or appointed in preference to better qualified persons from the "wrong state ".~ ~0 Bamgbose, Ayo (ed.), Mother Tongue Education (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1976), 13. 135. 61 Daily Times, 18 January, 1980. 62 Ibid., 30 September, 1979. ~a N e w Nigerian, 2 November, 1979. 6~ N e w Nigerian, 15 November, 1979.

Universities and the Academic Gold Standard in Nigeria

231

Dr. Thomas also noted the remarkable, but by no means new, decision by a number of universities to "give preference to expatriates, o.f whom some can hardly speak English [despite the requirement of English at " O " level for students] over other qualified Nigerians who happen no~ to come from the state in which an institution is located-.65 He was of course referring to the continued recruitment of staff from the Middle East and South Asia. What counter-balances are there? Very few, since the drift of events under a civilian regime in a time of political competition is co~tantly towards the assertion of local interests. So far at least the balance has been held against fragmentation. All 13 universities are still part of a national system of education. The federal state holds together and is nationally controlled. But what might begin to put an end to the present degree of unity, such as it is, would be too strong an emphasis on " a u t h e n t i c i t y " or on "locaiisation ", including at some time in the future the substitution of Yoruba or Hausa for English in a growing number of subjects. Two interesting answers to questions put by Mr. Beckett and Professor O'Connell to students at Ahmadu Bello, Ibadan and Nsukka turn on the very delicate question of language. One was that nearly half the undergraduates at all three universities agreed that they were unable to speak either English or their own language perfectly. 6~ And 72 per cent. of the Hausa students at Ahmadu Bello were in " f a v o u r of using one Nigerian language [for which the obvious candidate in Northern eyes would be Hausa] as a national language of the country-.67 If the dangers of an enforced national language, and the use of "mother-tongue languages" at university level, are plain to see in India and Sd Lanka, the deterioration of an imported language is very evident in Nigeria. " A n overriding problem which affects the public service as it does all aspects of society is language. . . . It is perfectly clear to the careful observer that below the topmost levels.., most people are conducting their business in a language which, in varying degrees, they have not in fact mastered." 68 Clearly there is no easy solution. But if a state-based university or group of universities began to make greater allowance for a local or regional language the effect would be to work against a common element of unity. There is no immediate threat of diversity stretching that far as yet. But there is also little sign of any major effort to strengthen national ties through the universities. There are few learned societies, scarcely any specialised institutes of research, and no great force of cultivated opinion to act as a measure of national or international standards. Very likely it would require what is unpopular politically, namely the encouragement, academically and financially, o.f a sharp distinction between Ibadan and 65 Ibid.

66 Beckett, P. and O'Cormell, J., op. eit., Table 21, p. 63. ~ Ibid., Table 29, p. 72. 68 (UdojO Public Service R e v i e w Commission

Beckett, P. and O'ConneU, J., op. cit., p. 84.

1974: Main Report, p. 4. Quoted in

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Dennis Austin

perhaps Lagos and the others--the giving of full recognition to one or both of the "federal universities" as having superior status and resources. The National Universities Commission made a half-hearted gesture in. that direction in 1976 when it designated a number of departments "centres o f excellence ", except that it very typically spread the rewards as widely as it could: medicine for Ibadan, engineering and nuclear technology for Zaria, nuclear physics for Ife, mass communicatiorls and metallurgy for Lagos, electronics for Nsukka. The major problem in such decisions has always been perfectly plain: money--government money. At the end of 1979, for example, the senate and council at Ibadan proposed to strengthen the standing or the University as " t h e major custodian of standards" and " t h e nation's principal standard bearer in the world of learning" by adopting a ratio of 3 : 1 i n undergraduate-graduate numbers. ~9 But the University was already desperately short o,f money. In 1976-77 it was 7 million Nairas in debt. Nsukka, too,, had a deficit of 12 million Nairas, Ahmadu Bello one of 10 million Nairas. These "huge operating deficits resulted in expensive overdrafts from commercial banks" and were a direct consequence of inadequate funds spread too widely. The universities had asked the federal government, which had recently assumed responsibility for all 13 institutions, for 291,282,966 Nairas. The National Universities Commission recommended a lower figure of 196,314,000 Nairas, and federal government granted 153 million Nairas--" a shortfall [of over 14 percent, on the commission's estimate] far greater in~ our view than the Universities could absorb ,.7o : No descriptiort o,f Nigerian universities makes sense, therefore, without looking at Central go~cernmental policy. Generally speaking the federal government has been unpopular among university teachers and students, although there were periods of mutual esteem in the early years of Gowon and during the brief time o f Murtala Muhammed's rule. Looking back over the 1960s and 1970s, Dr. Yesufu, who had been one of the Yoruba members of the University of Lagos council, drew the familiar conclusion that " t h e lessons of the crisis in Lagos for University administration in Africa are clear enough. University autonomy must be guaranteed unequivocally in law ". The precept is common, its application always uncertain. The "Lagos crisis" arose because of factions within the University located in senate and council, and governmental policy at the time was to keep its distance, nat least because the Minister of Education was also a Yoruba. But something does need to be said now cff relations between government and all 13 universities. e9 ,, Address by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Tekeua T a m u n o on the occasion of Congregation on the 31st Anniversary of the University, 17 November, 1979", Annual Report of the University of Lagos 1978-79. ~o National Universities Commission ~4nn.ual Report luly 1975-1une 1976. The individual amounts are given in Table 12, p. 69. They range from Ibadan 27,050,000 Nairas, A h m a d u Bello 26,510,700 Nairas, Nsukka 24,652,100 Nairas, Ife 20,087,800 Nairas to an initial grant of 1 million Nairis for Port Harcourt.

Universities and the Academic Gold Standard in Nigeria

233

Governmental Direction Autonomy--how many privileges have been safeguarded in thy name? It is certainly a slippery concept, covering a variety of "freedoms ", from the professorial hierarchies of civic universities in Britain to extreme demands for autonomia among left-wing students in contemporary Italy. Its first cousin in the terminology, "academic freedom ", is similarly eIusive. What is needed, I was told by many clever friends in Lagos, is the maintenance of academic standards and a reform of university structures. But all too often what has taken place has been the reverse of that. Academic values and university autonomy have been confused, and vice-chancellors have liked to take it for granted that the protection of autonomy somehow guarantees the maintenance of high standards. But of course that is b y no means the case. Indeed, the attempt to. defend formal structures of university administration left over from the formative colonial years has absorbed a good deal of the critical energy that might more helpfully have gone into teaching and research. I t is not difficult to understand why, since it is much easier to stand guard over a familiar array of privileges:freedom for a university to select its staff and students, to offer permanent tenure of appointment, to award degrees, to spend whatever funds it receives, to plan, administer, teach and undertake research without hindrance within the resources available. All these virtues are well known, but it is by no means dear what relevance they have in Nigeria in 1980. Nor is it possible to understand the Nigerian position today unless the simple truth is grasped that government and universities are so intertwined as to hinder almost absolutely the drawing of a firm boundary between them. It is not that universities stand in any special relationship with soldiers or party leaders, merely that they are one among many institutions that the government seeks to control. The government looms large and tries to act intrusively, precisely because it is insecure; it has after all to manage what is almost ungovernable--Nigerian society and its constant demands on the state. Lord Ashby thought, or perhaps hoped, that what had happened in Lagos in 1965 was an unpleasant episode and a dangerous exception. In fact it was proleptic. And what aroused suspicion then in respect of " a u t o n o m y " causes much less alarm today. Prior to October 1979, vice-chancellors were dismissed or posted about from o n e university or another by order off the military government. The National Universities Commission was a command post for political control of university finance. And it is difficult to believe that the present civilian regime will act very differentIy. One may note that there is still a considerable area of autonomy in teaching and research. But very probably that is because the new regime has too much else to do, and when so much is seen as falling within the competence of t h e , government of the d a y " it seems doubtful whether the universities will escape.

234

Dennis A u s t i n

If conflict is any measure of intimacy, then universities and government are indeed intimately linked with each other. In 1978 the universities were closed after clashes between riot police and students. During crowded meetings at the gates or the University of Lagos, a student was shot and died later in hospital. At the Samaru Campus of Ahmadu Belle six students and their supporters were killed. Several were expelled from Benin, Ire, Jos and a number of other universities. There were excited scenes in protest against the increase in governmentally imposed charges for fees and board until the anger spilled over into Lagos, became fused with proto-party gro~aps, and violence ran riot through the city. It is time, therefore, to let the reader hear the :voice of the Nigerian student. Students and the State- Rehearsal for Soweto?

Many a regime has been toppled by what started with student revolt against the system. The reason is obvious. Students are the conscience of any nee-colonial society. They are students because they possess a critical outlook to society. Having been equipped with the necessary apparatus of thought, they are able to make the required analysis of any government action and more importantly act on the results of the analysis . . . . The students in Ghana, Lagos, Ibadan, Ife, Ahmadu Belle, Nsukka, etc., have jointly and severally struggled against fascism, apartheid, nee-colonialism, imperialism and above all, capitalism. Against this background the revolt against the criminal increase of university and school fees must be seen . . . . A government measure strikes at a definite class of people and the correct analysis by Nigerian Union of Students (NUNS) is that the recent increase in University and secondary school fees was a measure which fell severely on those who could least afford it whereas the children of the bourgeoisie are concentrated in the metropolis of imperialist countries being maintained lavishly and with the sweat of the Nigerian working masses . . . . The peaceful protest of the students on the fateful Tuesday, 18th April, 1978, against the general reactionary measures of the government and school fees in particular brought the engine of repression to the gates of the various universities in Nigeria . . . . At Lagos University... Akintunde Ojo and others were mowed down in cold blood by a police officer. . . . The oppressive brutality was indiscriminate against defenceless unarmed youths just wanting to make a peaceful procession to say simply " o u r parents cannot afford this, please think again ". This is Soweto in Nigeria. rl Once again there is a familiar paradox. Students are militantly hostile to the government and society as they interpret them. They are the proclaimed vanguard of an unspecified revolution. They will pull down the mighty a n d - - a n d what? Put themselves in place of the soldiers and the politicians? The 60,000 students in Nigerian universities are hardly a proletariat or a revolutionary cadre. True, they study under very difficult conditionswovererowded hostels, cramped laboratories, inadequate libraries, poor food, a sweaty climate and n o easy means of coping with its excesses of sun and rain. But the future is theirs within, not against, the system they decry. They are its presumptive heirs. And to be one of ~x The Lagoon Echo, V, 1 (March-June 1978).

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60,000--one in a thousand inhabitants of the huge federation who achieve university status! How marvellous! And how tegible it is to fail! One must strive to succeed since those who invested in one's education ought not to be disappointed. No wonder, therefore, that students are excited and yet conformist, militant and biddable, hostile to government yet dependent utterly on the state. No wonder, too, that whatever their origins, and however splendid their achievement, they are no longer at ease.

Their worst fear, never fully voiced, has been of a decline of the economy when fewer posts might be available in the ministries and private industry, not only for arts graduates but in agriculture, veterinary science, pharmacology and geology, or in the accumulation of engineering skills required in the petroleum industry. By October 1974 the country had begun to produce a peak of oil exports of 2"33 million barrels per day, and the Third Development Plan envisaged output climbing by 1978 to 3 million barrels per day. But in January 1978 production was down to 1.64 million; it climbed to 1.75 million in the following month, dropped again to 1-51 million in March and only slowly grew to 2 million in the autumn. A lasting slump might have imposed its own restraints, but as the oil economy picked up and prices soared once more, the momentary threat of recession bred a nervous exasperation in many sectors of the population which the continued rule of the soldiers did nothing to ease. The critical point was reached in October 1974 when Gowon announced that the army would not hand power back to civilian rulers in January 1976. Admittedly, he was deposed in July 1975 by Murtala Muhammed, but Muhammed's assassination followed. There seemed to be no, open channel for the expression of public discontent which, driven underground, found an outlet in student politics in 1971-72, 1974-75 and 1978. It was as if students were detonators of crises for which the explosive mixture was nationally assembled. There were soldiers and civil servants but no parties or politicians, and the students eagerly filled the gap. They took up national causes and blended them with their own grievances. It had not always been like that. War imposes its own restraint, civil war its own loyalties. G o , o n had been able to address the students at Ibadan in 1969 in comradely terms. The biggest change which has occurred in the university firmament in the last few years has been the change in student attitudes . . . . I would like to congratulate the students of our universities for the comparatively high sense of responsibility they have shown in the midst of formidable exhibitions of student discontent and unrest in the university world outside Nigeria . . . . The nation looks to you for its future stability and greatness and you must not fail us. TM By the early 1970s, however, once the war was over, relations with the r2 ,, An Address by the Visitor, His Excellency Major General Yakubu Gowon at the 21st Foundation Day Ceremony of the University of Ibadan, 17 November, 1969," Annual Report of the University o/lbadan 1969-70.

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military government were soured as demands were made by students and staff for more favourable treatment. The Nigerian Association of University Teachers wanted the full range of civil service benefits, saying that "its members would no longer tolerate penury on grounds of patriotism-.78 Students were more militant---once the war was over. Olu Adgboro, president of the National Union of Nigerian Students, had a long list of grievances. The Union disliked the proposed two-year training in a National Youth Service Corps. It wanted an end to the war-time state of emergency and direct access to the military to explain its needs. It also - - a constant request--asked for "better catering facilities" in all the halls of residence--better food; better service, better accommodation--and a more generous distribution of scholarships. When the students were rebuffed, discontent spilled over into the streets. A gequenCe of events ~followed in 1971 that was to be repeated in 1974-75 and i978, Students of Ibadan, zaria and Lagos held up the traffic, blocked the streets, burned government vehicles, massed in protest on the edge of the University and demanded the resignation of public figures including, Very often, the vice-chancellor. A n effigy of Dr. Audu, vice-chancellor at Ahmadu Bello, was burned; the offices of the central administration at Ibadan were occupied in an attempt to force the resignation of the viceChancellor, Professor Lambo. The protests ran parallel to widespread industrial unrest daring a period of inflation and rising unemployment. Students swarmed across the University o f Ibadan; they were dispersed by squads of police and army units 9with tear gas and batons until, at the last, firearms were Used and a student--Kunle Adepeju was killed. The vice-chancellor at Lagos dosed down the student union; there were angry scenes in the city among indignant students, and sympathy from the public, until the government appointed a commission of inquiry under Mr, Justice Kazeem to look into the disturbances. Its report was critical of the action taken by the police and army, and concluded that the origins of the crisis lay in the very difficult post-war conditions under which the students were obliged to study. The government was much less understanding; there were further excited meetings in protest against the white paper On the report issued by the military government until, by the end of 1971, some semblance of order was re-established in Lagos, Ibadan and Ahmadu Bello. Lectures were held and examinations conducted. But the government made few concessions and had its way with the National Youth Corps, except that students were obliged to serve for only one, not two years, Much the same combination of immediate, local grievances and national moments of crisis produced the second wave of protests in 1974. 74 A common element of discontent, from Jos to Lagos and from Ahmadu Bello rs West Alrlea, 7 May, 1973.

74 See Copley, Antony H., " T h e Nigerian Academic Year 1974-5 ", Civilisations, XXVII, I and 2 (1978), pp. 140-162.

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to Benin, was opposition to Gowon's clear intention to continue in office. The list of students' complaints may seem trivial until placed alongside the country-wide dissatisfaction with the federal military government: it was the daily experience of hardship joined with political, o~ften local incidents that brought the students out into the streets. At Benin, for example, the vice-chancellor, Dr. T. M. Yesufu, had to close the University after the government detained a lecturer who---unwisely, to an enthusiastic audience--spoke on "Corruption and Military Rule ". At Nsukka, staff and students were still struggling to re-establish the University in harsh circumstances--" some students take their lectures peeping through the windows because they lack sitting space in the classrooms ",~ A shortage of teachers in nearly every department at Jos, plus discontent over college food and accommodation, brought the students out in support of a local businessman, Mr.~ Aper Aku, who was locked up by the government " a f t e r swearing an affidavit alleging wrong-doing against Gomwalk ", governor of Benue Plateau State; the principle, Professor Ayendele, closed the college. ~ When students at Ife boycotted lectures, they were sent home. When the lecturer in mathematics at Lagos was detained by the police, protests erupted across the city and the University was closed down. So, too, was Ibadan. And there was always the general political ground of discontent to support the particular complaints of poor food, increased charges, erratic electricity supply, too little space and too few amenities. They are no doubt the ingredients of student politics throughout the wOrld. But students are roughly handled in Nigeria. They are beaten, dispersed with tear gas, and some are severely injured or killed by a nervous police force and army units unskilled in riot control. Protest in the mid-1970s was directed against a military regime that had actually turned to the National Union of Students from time to time to try and find support for its rule. That, too, fed the appetite for reform and produced an absurd arrogance of belief in the students' own importance. By the end of the decade there were reports that " t h e NUNS refused to deal with the matter [of increased charges for food] through the NUC and insisted in dealing with Supreme Headquarters alone; the Union even refused to see the Chief of Staff and insisted on seeing the Head of State ".~' A last observation. Students know that their teachers are also dissatisfied and divided. There has been--no doubt there still is---a constant bickering among university staff. The quarrels at Ibadan and Lagos in 1964 and 1965 had the basis at least of explanation in communal rivalry on the eve of civil war. But the 1970s were no better. When the Association of University Teachers' demands for parity with the civil service were ~5 Ibid., p. 146.

7s Gomwalk was executed by firing squad in 1975 after the " D i m k a coup ". rr N e w Nigerian, 22 April, 1978.

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rejected in 1971, the association called its m e m b e r s out on strike. 's There was a running quarrel between the vice-chancellor, Professor Kodilinye, at Enugu and m e m b e r s of his staff over the delimitation of authority within the very hierarchical structure of the University; when the students blamed the college engineer for the miserable living conditions " o n campus ", the engineer promptly blamed the vice, chancellor who built a protective wall of advisers between himself and the rest of the University. Vice-chancellors quarrelled with deans, deans with registrars, and heads of departments with their staff. Election o! Dean Motion by Dr. X: " t h a t Professor Y, Acting Dean has failed to run his Department in any enviable manner and that it will be unreasonable to put him in charge of a larger unit." Counter-Motion: " t h a t Dr. X has been a disturbing influence within the Faculty and that he lacks the polish and quality of a person to be taken seriously." Voting: 10 in favour of the Motion; 11 in favour of the Counter-Motion; 4 abstentions. The meeting noted the information that Dr. X had written a memo on a " V o t e of No Confidence in the Acting D e a n " to the Vice-Chancellor and that the reaction of the Vice-Chancellor was being awaited. The meeting opened at 5.12 p.m. and closed at 8.28 p.m. 79 W h a t kind of a u t o n o m y should be preserved in such conditions? The military government had no p a r t i c u l a r interest in the universities' academic life but it was determined to exert its authority. It supplied the m o n e y and saw no reason not to call the tune. Soldiers do not like rioting or popular protest or crowds in the street, and they reacted sharply. As early as 1972 the federal government had issued a directive that a " v i c e chancellor should be appointed or removed f r o m his office by the Visitor after consultation with the Council ". N o r were some staff-members wholly displeased. Professor Aluko, art economist at Ife, said: For too long some senior academic and administrative staff have been pressuring the Visitor (i.e. the Governor] to save I f e from itself and intervene in appointments, promotions and the general running of the University . . . . The Visitor has thus become the University's Ombudsman and the Governor's Office the office of complaints, s~ Professor Aluko resigned in protest over the decree. Then in the session of 1974-75, student protests took place and, as Mr. Copley observed, " t h e y precipitated a m o r e serio,us conflict of interests, that between the Government and the University authorities ". T h e starting point seems to have been the federal government's acceptance of the Udaji Commission's rers The Association wanted larger allowances for a car (26 to 50 Nairas a month) anti for children (100 to 200 Nairas per annum), increased holiday payments and "the restoration of autonomy to the universities". z9 Private communicatiofitO the writer, December 1978. so Quoted by Copley,A. H., op. cit., p. 159.

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port on increases in salaries in the public service. University staff disliked being excluded from the benefits, the students objected not only to the increases, and to turnouts of still higher rates for the armed forces, but to the diminished prospects for employment; it was now--in February 1975 --that the government announced it would not recruit graduates in the coming year in agriculture, mechanical and civil engineering, veterinary science, zoology, fo~d technology and science-based subjects. When the riots and car-burning had died down, the vice-chancellor of Ire tried to re-open the University but was overruled by the state governor, Chief Rotimi; when Ibadan and Lagos wanted to summon the students back the federal government ordered the universities to remain closed? 1 On 29 July, 1975, came the change of government from Gowon to Muhammed. The reconstituted Supreme Military Council took decisive action to purge the civil service at federal and state levels; some 7,000 were retired or dismissed. And by October it had turned on the universities, largely in respect of the lower paid technical and clerical staff but the list of those removed on the grounds of "inefficiency, declining productivity, ili health, old age, misconduct or doubtful integrity" included at the University o.f Lagos: 146 retired or dismissed, among them the registrar, the deputy registrar, 4 professors (2 of them deans of faculties), 1 associate pro,lessor, 5 senior lecturers and 3 lecturers; at the University of Ibadan: 354 dismissed or retired, including the vice-chancellor (Professor Oritsejolomi Thomas), the deputy registrar, the acting bursar, 3 associate professors and 3 lecturers and senior lecturers; at the University of Ife: 37 dismissed or retired, including 1 professor, 1 senior lecturer and 2 lecturers; at the University of Benin: 57 dismissed, terminated or retired, including Professor T. Bello Osagie, provost of the college of medicine, Professor P. R. Attwood, professor o.f engineering, 1 senior lecturer and 1 lecturer; at Ahmadu Bello University Professor O'Connell, professor of government, was expelled from Nigeria at 48 hours' notice; and at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, the purged included the former dean of agriculture, the Reverend Ilogu, head of religious studies and member or the National Universities Commission, and the bursar. When the further wave of rioting occurred in 1978 the government was incensed. Obasanjo was now head of state and beset with problems. There was a dangerous quarrel between northern and southern leaders over the place of the Islamic sharia courts in the constitution, a new land decree, the growing burden of universal primary education and the whole weight of the carefully planned transfer back to civilian rule. The importance of vice-chancellors, senates, students, staff and universities could be seen in the severe reaction to the April riots. The government appointed a Commission of Inquiry into the National Universities Crisis which submitted its report in July 1978. Its findings, and the government's ruling on them Sl They were allowed to re-open by 1 April, 1975.

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a military government in almost its last year of office--may sensibly conclude this brief survey of the world of the Nigerian university. The Mehammed report 82 began with a bald judgement on the plight of the 13 institutions: " t h e laws establishing the older universities were outdated while the new universities had none at all ". Members of the public and "policy-executors" alike were confounded by the multiplicity of bodies, including the National Universities Commission, the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and numerous advisory councils. Because of " t h e open-door policy under which students had easy access to high Government functionaries ", the National Union of Students had become "swollen-headed ", although there was still something to be said for hayhag a single national body to represent them. The Commission, however, ought not to "interfere with the day to day administration of individual universities nor deal direct with students ". Some vice-chancellors, too, had behaved unwisely. Dr. Ajayi at Lagos had "vacillated" in his attitude to the riots which were to some extent the "by-products of the vicechancellor's acts of omission and commission ,,.8~ At Zaria, protests against increased Charges had become involved with the wider issue of the sharia courts: the calling-out of the army had been " a serious miscalculation and a terrible blunder for which the Vice-Chancellor and the Registrar have full responsibility ". The artillery commandment for the army depot at Zaria has also acted "contrary to the traditions of his corps" by going back to bed at 3.30 a.m. after he had been informed of the proposed intervention by the army. Student leadership at the Samaru main campus was "immature, irresponsible and intransigent ". Members of the Association of University Teachers and students had misbehaved at several universities--at Ibadan where students had "caused a car to be driven over the leg of P.C. Adeogun resulting in its fracture "; at Ife where "saboteur groups bent on destroying Nigerian society had used the student crisis" and where "militant students had contributed to the burning down of a prison yard at Ile-Ife "; at the Ibadan Polytechnic; at Benin where T, M. Yesufu was still vice-chancellor; at Port Harcourt, at Maiduguri, at Calabar.--where Dr. and Mrs. Madunagu were guilty of "incitement to violence by their press releases and their nocturnal lectures to students and others " - - a n d at " o t h e r universities similarly affected ". In general, said the Commission, the fault lay as much in the predicament facing the whole of higher education as in the immediate causes of the riots. The problem "hinged On trying to develop seven new universities and simultaneously expanding the six Older ones. Some universities wish tO go i n t o . . , post-graduate programmes immediately while a good many 82 There were three members of the Commission: Justice Uthman Mohammed, Akintundo Ighadalo, and Dr. U. D. E1eazu. See the government's Views on the (Lagos: Government Printer, 1978). ss One of Jacob Ajayi's " a c t s of commission" was to have given permission burial of Mr. Ojo and " f o r a solemn march outside the University . . , thus government directive on closure and o t t - ~ p u s d~rfi0nstrati0n ". . . . .

Mrs. F. Report for the flouting

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duplicate courses are already available elsewhere, thus thinning out the available qualified.., teaching staff who snap at opportunities for promotion ". General Obasanjo's government was fully prepared t ~ accept most off the Commission's report, particularly where it was punitive. It did not however agree with the recommendation for a reconstituted National Union of Students, and it was blunt in its defence of military action: "unlike the Police, when soldiers find it necessary to shoot, they shoot to kill in accordance with their training ". Other findings were speedily endorsed. The Supreme Military Council directed that "Professor Ade Ajayi should forthwith resign his appointment as Vice-Chancellor, University of L a g o s " and "Professor Iya Abubakar should resign his appointment as Vice-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello ". s' It enforced the dismissal of a number of lecturers and administrators named in the report and ordered that the students criticised by the Commission " b e expelled forthwith and the gates of all Nigerian universities be barred against t h e m " for a varying number of years. Rather more piously, it accepted the need for reform, Ordering the Commission and the Ministry of Education to draw up a further report " o n how to attain a rational system of university development in the country ". There was certainly no doubt that students were distressed, whether rationally or irrationally. I left the University at Lagos for the airport, at the height of the affair, with a Swedish professor of econometrics. The streets were full of excitement, crowded and no,isy. Before we reached the junction for the air terminal, we were ordered out o.f our taxi by several hundred students chanting " ' A l l Must Go, 'All Must Go ". We were told that we, too, must join in: we should shout " 'All Must G o " three times. It was a true incantation. It worked. The students cheered us forward, and we resumed our journey. " W h a t is 'Ali Must Go? " asked my sombre companion. " H e is Colonel Ahamadu 'Ali ", I replied, "Commissioner for Education. An unpopular figure," "Yes, indeed ", he said thoughtfully; "well, 'Ali must certainly go, and so should we. Our flight is called." Eventually 'Ali did go. But the Supreme Military Council also forced the National Union of Students to disband. Perhaps a last word should be heard from the Mohammed commission. It was, it reported, left with the definite impression that the function of a university in Nigeria: is not well understood by either lecturers or their students, and that there is a certain lack of purpose or social responsibility which should inform and direct the nature of the subject taught, the method of teaching and the content of what is taught. Rather the Commission had strong hints that certain lecturers were not s~ Jacob Ajayi was replaced nominally by Dr. Mahmud Tukur from Bayero University, Kano; a month later he was replaced by Professor Babatunde Kwaku Adadevoh, director of medical research at the National Institute of Research. Further trouble broke out, and he, too, was suspended from duty.

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teaching what they were hired to teach but indulged in indoctrination of students with their preferred ideologies and that there was unbalanced exposure to different philosophies with a whole faculty being rightist or leftist and not tolerating other views. The Commission therefore recommends that people involved in such advocacies as racial bigotry or racism, interethnic hatred, religious chauvinism, violent revolution, occult arts and witchcraft, ideological dogmatism, etc,, should be shown the way out. It was certainly time for me to go--out across the city and lagoo~ and the sea in heavy rain and gathering darkness. As I looked through the Commission's report and the government's findings I could not find much that suggested " t h e gold standard" or any recognition of the high excellence once ascribed to Ibadan and its successors. Was it one more fallacy of hope no longer held? To Charm away the drudgery of the flight I sat reading Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths: "Novalis has memorably written that the greatest magician would be one who would cast over himself a spell so complete that he would take his own fantasies as autonomous appearances." Had that been true of Nigerians and their dream of u~aiversity life? Perhaps. But I had no wish to inquire further. I was immensely glad to have returned to so powerfully attractive a country, but it was sensible to leave before hope was abandoned and before I, too, outstayed the welcome accorded me.