Business and accountable governance in Nigeria: The obligations of leadership

BY SEGUN IGE

Is there any difference in the topic above and – “The untold truth: The need for recalibration”? For those who were present truly today at the Second Annual Lecture of TheNiche Newspaper would have grappled with the rightly analogy typified by those two semantically and lexico-grammatically similar topics right away. The untold truth appears to have been told today as the guest-speaker, in particular, Professor Anya O. Anya, faithfully furnishes the far-reaching delinquencies that are deeply-ingrained in the architectures of the discourse-contested nationhood of Nigeria. As he traces the transcendentalism of the neonatal Nigeria, one critical-minded point that he cites, scholarly and intelligently, seems to be the deep-structure of my discussion: Technological change is not one of the engines of prosperity: it is the most critical one. More or less, Professor Anya buttresses the onerous business of leaders in the academic environment. Indeed, the obligations of leadership in the academia have not so extremely been flouted, in one way or another, particularly with regard to the Singaporean tripod of accountable governance delineated by one of the astute commenters – that is, meritocracy, pragmatism, and honesty.

The need for recalibration of the building block of the Nigerian education system is very alarming – and disturbing to thinkers. Not surprisingly, a law graduate daringly declared to a lecturer that the Nigerian educational system is run on a platform of deception. What could be more convincing and evincing than that seemingly attestable and unarguable submission? Moreover, that student’s contention stems from the verifiable fact of graduates roaming helplessly but desperately hopefully seeking jobs and, sadly, some may well be graciously employed by someone who had no educational background. The lecturer had to refute and repel that a posteriori conclusion, perhaps thinking the law graduate would recant the statement. Even more interesting, he was earnestly contending that the students themselves SHOULD know or have known that there are no jobs in the country and that they should be fervent defenders of their precious fates. This particularly reminds me of the rather memorable conclusion of the representative for the APC National Leader and former Governor of Lagos State – namely, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and this is: Take your destiny into your hands and move and be in charge of your future. Evidently, this was the undertone of the lecturer’s epistemic but excusatorial lacuna, which the law graduate found mind-boggling, having been used to the rigorous rigmaroles of reading.

Oh in those days when graduates used to ride exotic cars! Now, in the campus world today, students have, in fact, been brainwashed to believe in, or psychically reduced to, the traditional “pencil-and-paper” approach to a fast technologically- and knowledge-driven competitive world. Since year one, they have been conjured and constrained to class attendance, to be sure they have been programmed to pattern their lives according to the operations of their institutions. What they believe has been imputed to them. The untold truth is not told in the four-walls of the lecture rooms: the untold truth of getting employed after graduation; the untold truth of securing some job after graduation; and the untold truth of not hovering and hauling despondently in streets are strictly sacrificed at the altar of selfishness and self-thoughtfulness of these lecturers. And they wouldn’t say all these because every student has been assured of the sufficiency of their varying degrees. All of these truths are noticeable and noted by students who desirously separate themselves from the class-consumed crowd and the inconsistent teaching and honesty of these lecturers.

I have leant. By and large, the Nigerian educational system is not in consonant with the demand of the societies. I don’t think anything can be more exemplary as does my elder brother’s case. By the way, lecturers’ espouse, now and then, that their primary objective is to teach and research. That is to say that they have no business with timely obligations of their leadership over the students. In other words, the students are as sheep having no shepherd. Gbenga Ige is a First Class graduate of Mathematics and Education at the Department of Science and Technology, Faculty of Education, University of Lagos, Akoka, Nigeria, indeed the overall best at the department of the 2015/2016 session. During the Professor Rahamon-Adisa-Bello vice-chancellorship, two best students graduating with at least 4.0 WERE usually retained at the end of their programs. Needleless to say, this initiation was to compensate the students’ efforts, on the one hand, and to break the barriers of unemployment in Nigeria, on the other. After his tenure, that problem-solving initiative was recalibrated, and yet another foundation was re-built. And so my brother began hustling and doing menial jobs for merge salary, just to survive the center-sensitive micro-economic system of the nation-state. Isn’t this baffling and unbecoming? That instead of continuing the good works established, and thus walking and talking in that geometric and/or mathematic matrix and index of eradicating, in some way, unemployment, we use the same hands and mouths to respectively deconstruct and deemphasize the good old days.

Well, I think it’s about time students rarely began governing their lives. It becomes their onerous business, therefore, since leader-lecturers have rejected or relegated to the background the “active talents” in them. William Shakespeare informs us through Cassius in his wisdom-woven play Julius Caesar that, even until now, “Men at some time [were] masters of their fates”. Similarly, Wole Soyinka succinctly submits that “Destiny [is] self-destination”. After all, God created man in his own image and, as such, no students should be enslaved and subservient to men and women who have the same potentials and prowess as themselves by reducing their creative innovativeness and inventiveness to a mass of ruble. They should uncompromisingly appropriate that uncommon, old-time, age-old, age-long mastery of one’s fate and destiny. Accordingly, if they don’t choose what they want, they will accept what is chosen for them. Be determined!

Ige can be reached via [email protected]