I have been convinced severally and without doubt that I was my father’s incarnate. This conviction gets stronger by the day. The more I look at him, the more I seem to realize our innate similarities besides the outright physical semblance. A good chip off the old block, you may say. At least, I no longer need to doubt my paternity but of course that’s on a lighter note. It was never in contention.
As I sipped my early morning cup of tea right across the dining table from him – a ritual we both engaged in every morning on my way to work since I moved back home – I couldn’t but steal a short glance at him. He must have noticed for he smiled back. By the way, that early morning tea and breakfast is the best thing that happened to yours truly since he moved back home from the eastern hinterland some eight months back.
In the middle of our cultivated alliance of a breakfast silence, many words were spoken and many were understood. That’s his style. My Dad could say a million words just by merely looking at you. I had once decided not to take a new and better paying job because of “that look”. His “look” really did help me make up my mind against taking the job at the time. I never regretted that decision.
Fathers, they say, are the son’s first hero and the daughter’s first love. Mine is my first role model. The one thing that I had wished he was since I was a younger, I intend to become. And no, it’s nothing negative or profane. He’d be proud if he were to know of it. I hope to be a profound intellectual and academic. He wasn’t an academic by work but a big intellectual who retired from working with the State Government. The three biggest lessons from him were independence, family and security.
However, this is no boring rendition of who or what my father is. I only had to revel, for a brief moment, in the gratification that I was my father’s son. Traditionally, that makes “him” the primary legacy I look on to. “Him” here does not in any way refer to material inheritance. He’s not a rich man to start with. Rather it refers to his non material legacies which might be quite an expansive and expensive shoe to step into. Longing traditions, however lofty, can be troubling and unassailable.
In the midst of this simple realization and on that lonely road to intellectualism and knowledge acquisition, one discovers that nothing has changed in the deplorable educational system that betides our national landscape. I have once written about this putrid mess of a system called education in Nigeria in a blog titled “Of a Nigerian educational Milieu” on these pages. There, I argued the importance of an all round education of the mind, body and soul. I argued the need to discourage half baked education in our youths just to aid their getting a “lofty” job after graduation. At the time, I thought it belittles the whole essence of education. I still think so. I also thought the educational process and model in our universities were faulty.
I was to prove myself further right upon commencing a Masters Degree program in UNILAG College of Medicine, now unfortunately MAULAG. We’ll come to the appropriateness or not of the change in name of the great academic edifice. What’s in a name after all? Does a name make an institution or the institution makes a name?
Truth is the arguments for and against the re-naming of UNILAG holds water whichever way one decides to look at it. And for anyone with a sense of Nigeria’s mostly unrecorded history, the immortalization of UNILAG for MKO Abiola is not too much. Agreed!!! But what does the relevance of such a change portend to the international integrity and traditional culture of an academic institution of more than 50 years repute?
The question is whose memory is bigger? That of MKO Abiola or that of UNILAG? For me, they are two different histories whose paths are not same and should not shadow one another. The concept of monumentality and immortalization in this context is, of course, very debatable. However, let’s leave the ensuing dispute for the appropriateness or not of the re-naming to the appropriate quarters to deal with. I still await a reviling rejoinder from the academics in the UNILAG community. If I don’t get one, I’d be surprised.
Let’s dwell on more far reaching issues. To say that “the traditional university system that our fathers attended and were exposed to in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s is different and nonpareil from the sham of university education in the present day” will be a cliché. It’s as bad as MSc students have to write exams with wooden slabs placed on their laps in a whole UNILAG (MEDILAG). The quality of education and exam itself is a sorry pass. Exams are set to encourage students to cram and pass their examinations. To make appropriate allusion, this is an academic medically oriented MSc where utmost understanding should be key. What more, these are the same students who are to become PhD holders in a near future and train newer set of students. The most appalling of all is the dearth of adequate laboratory facilities to engage the students in the requisite medical, scientific and research skills needed.
Truth is these problems and much more persist in all departments and faculties of the more than sixty universities spanning across Nigeria. One fears for Nigeria; One fears for her lofty ambition and tradition; One fears for her development; One fears for her survival. At the end of the day, it’s not the number that graduates that matters but the quality of those numbers.
It would come to my attention recently that two #yahoo boys from my days in Great Ife were recently arrested and facing possible jail term for armed robbery in the same Ile Ife. And no, they were not friends. One did graduate from Great Ife while the other was chucked out of the system. You may wish to google #Asafa Teslim and #Iyiola Bolaji. I’m guessing they resorted to armed robbery when 419 scams seem not to bring in the goodies anymore. One wonders if there’s any line between sanity and moral imperatives for these guys.
What educational tradition are we thus building? One premised on decadent morals or one premised on adequate learning, culture and values. I admonish us all to take a look at our university system and weep not for ourselves but for our children who may still have to attend these same universities. Our traditions may never be the same.
I leave us to our thoughts now.
May the souls of the #DANA 153 rest in peace.
Foye.