Bola Tinubu University and limits of sycophancy, by EMEKA ALEX DURU

Each session of Nigeria’s political class comes with its share of buffoonery and rabble rousing. It often looks trivial, innocuous or garbed with patriotic sentiments but totally superficial and sycophantic with a single objective – earning relevance and gaining from the system.

That is what is playing out in the current National Assembly with the proposal by the House of Representatives for the establishment of Bola Ahmed Tinubu Federal University of Nigerian Languages. The bill for the agenda has passed first reading. We shall return to it, later. But let us reflect on how such outlandish engagements were undertaken in the past and how they petered out.

You will recall a time in the present dispensation, when late Deputy Senate President, Ibrahim Mantu, from Plateau State, swore that he was ready to lay his life for the then President Olusegun Obasanjo to realise his sordid tenure elongation project. On occasions and forums, Mantu made a show of how Nigeria would crumble if Obasanjo was not allowed to continue after his second term. In one instance, he moved a motion in the Senate chambers for Obasanjo to be adopted as the founder of modern Nigeria.

Mantu’s antics were to humour Obasanjo, to retain his position as Deputy Senate President and possibly be made President of the Senate. His clownery began to wane when Obasanjo’s third term maneuvers crashed. There were even suggestions that while promoting Obasanjo-must-continue in the day, Mantu worked in the night to ensure that the third term agenda did not succeed. When eventually he was displaced from his senate seat by a relatively unknown politician, Mantu made a complete turn against Obasanjo and blamed him for the crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Before the Obasanjo and Mantu theatricals, were five political parties that on the surface, appeared the leading platforms in the General Sani Abacha political transition programme. But in reality, they were contraptions put up by the late dictator to oil his self-succession gambit. The parties – United Nigeria Congress Party (UNCP), Congress for National Consensus (CNC), Grassroot Democracy Movement (GDM), Democratic Party of Nigeria (DPN) and National Center Party of Nigeria (NCPN) were formed in 1996 as replacements to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and National Republican Convention (NRC) that participated in the June 12, 1993 presidential election that was conducted by the General Ibrahim Babangida regime. Abacha disbanded SDP and NRC after taking over power from the interim national government of Ernest Shonekan in 1993.

Nigerians initially thought that the five political parties were serious with contestation for power. But over time, it became apparent that they were mere conveyor belts for Abacha’s transition to civilian presidency. It got to a point that late Power and Steel minister, Bola Ige, dismissed them as five fingers of a leprous hand. His prediction began to unfold when the parties adopted Abacha as their sole presidential candidate in the various conventions.

From another angle but on the same purpose, prodded and heavily financed by the government of the day, a certain Daniel Kanu, of fleeting background, stoked the heat among other segments of the society with his Youths Earnestly Ask for Abacha (YEAA) platform. Through the outfit, he staged nationwide rallies, garnering endorsements for the diminutive General. Musical concerts were equally organised by interest groups for the Abacha civilian president project. All however came crashing when Abacha dropped dead on Monday, June 8, 1998, barely two months to his inauguration.

The thread that ran through Mantu, the five ignoble political parties of 1996-1998, Daniel Kanu and other shadowy characters, was what they targeted to gain from the system. I have not identified much difference from those unprincipled moves, with the current efforts at promoting the establishment of Bola Tinubu University. To go by popular street lingo, they are same poison in different bottles. The core mandate of the proposed institution is even laughable.

Section II, Part I of the bill provides that the university when established shall, “Encourage the advancement of learning and to hold out to all persons without distinction of race, creed, sex or political conviction, the opportunity of acquiring a higher education in Nigerian languages and cultures.”

It also aims to “Develop and offer academic and professional programmes leading to the award of diplomas, first degrees, postgraduate research and higher degrees with emphasis on planning, adaptive, developmental and productive skills in the field of Nigerian languages and cultures”. The aim is to produce “socially mature persons with capacity to communicate, understand and use Nigerian languages for national development.” There can be no shorter route to trivializing the university education in the country.

To be sure, existing Nigerian universities – federal, state or private – have various faculties and departments offering Nigerian languages at all levels, with competent teachers. The major challenge that institutions of higher learning in the country face, is not absence of departments or lack of contents but consolidation of learning and standard. It does not make sense promoting a university without value addition to the ones already on ground. Sponsors of the Bola Tinubu University should come clear on their agenda.

Inadequate funding, low morale among staff and poor standard are issues that need to bother the lawmakers concerning the Nigerian universities. Every legislator that is conscious of his mandate as a representative of the people, should be worried at the recent disclosure by the President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Emmanuel Osodeke, that 84 of its members had died between May and August this year due to economic hardship and unpaid salaries. The ASUU chairman is not asking for any special favour for the teachers but fulfillment of agreements that the government freely entered into with them.

Since the last industrial action was suspended in October 2022, the Federal Government is yet to honour its agreements with ASUU which include the removal of the Union from Integrated Personnel and Payroll System (IPPS), payment of outstanding academic allowances, revitalisation fund, and promotion arrears as well as withheld salaries, among others.

According to Osodeke, public universities in the country receive N15 million monthly from the Federal Government as running costs. However, with the rise in electricity costs which has risen to between N200 million and N300 million, most universities have been forced to channel their internally generated revenue to the running of their institutions.

The immediate result is the constant fall in standard and products of the Nigerian universities being rejected abroad. Another notice of strike was issued by ASUU last month. These are matters that should bother the lawmakers, not the hugely trivial Bola Tinubu University for Nigerian Languages.