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Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe: Five Years A Captain Of Our UNILAG

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Dele Jegede In Conversation With Prince Yemisi Shyllon

By Toyin Falola
University administration and management are not easy anywhere in the world, and it proves more difficult in the case of renowned, older, and more popular universities. Such universities are another world, with their modus operandi, several systems and workflows, and myriad problems. If such a university is domiciled in Nigeria, the challenge of management and administration more than doubles. Little to no attention is paid to the Nigerian education system, and the support that may be readily available for universities elsewhere is non-existent for Nigerian universities. Ironically, for a system that receives little support, funding and resources from the government and other supposed stakeholders, the Nigerian tertiary education system, especially the universities, receives a lot of criticism.

Accepting to manage a Nigerian university is almost an impossible mission that would expose one to public criticism and put one’s political, technical, and diplomatic abilities to test in ways one may have never experienced. However, Vice-Chancellors like Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe have demonstrated that no matter how Herculean the task, it is possible to effectively run Nigerian universities. In the past five years, the University of Lagos (UNILAG) has enjoyed the services of an administrator who profoundly grasps what it takes to manage Nigerian universities.

I have a warm relationship with the University of Lagos and have known Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe for years, even before he ascended to the topmost management position at the university. Aside from his administrative strides, his life and career as an academic have been nothing short of wonderful, with awards, grants, and discoveries to his name. His work history is the definition of excellence. He is a technocratic administrator, a unique leader who understands the technical know-how and diplomatic aspect of governing a body and managing people. It is no wonder that despite the tribulations that nearly ended his Vice-Chancellorship, Prof. Ogundipe could steer the ship through the storm.

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Before becoming the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe demonstrated strong academic planning and management abilities at various levels of authority, from Head of Department to Deputy Vice-Chancellor in charge of academics and research. They say present responsibilities prepare one for even greater responsibilities, which is true for Prof. Ogundipe. His position as the administrative head of research and academics at the University of Lagos prepared him for the work of Vice-Chancellor.

Since Prof. Ogundipe has been Vice-Chancellor for the past few years, the University of Lagos has reclaimed its prime position as one of the nation’s best universities. There is also a deeply admirable thing about how the astute administrator and academic has managed the university, which is how he has reinforced the academic and research focus of the institution and openly supported and promoted extracurricular activities like sports and public speaking that contribute to holistic university education. Additionally, the University of Lagos has single-handedly or collaboratively launched initiatives such as the African Student Leaders Network to help its students and staff serve as societal change agents and innovators.

Prof. Ogundipe’s time as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos has seen the university receive research grants running into tens of billions of naira. The great thing about this is that the university’s research focus has encouraged academic members to pursue research projects and included students. The University of Lagos’ research focus under Ogundipe has been designed to produce some of the nation and continent’s best researchers, a mission that the prime and award-winning researcher and foremost botanist led by example.

Another remarkable aspect of Prof. Ogundipe’s administration at the University of Lagos is its progressiveness. The seasoned administrator and his team are forward-thinkers who have gauged the future of work and the transformation of this world post-COVID-19. They are introducing new programs to the University of Lagos system to supply Nigeria and the African continent with the type of skilled workforce the future requires. It is also worth noting that the institution was the first federal university to adopt a fully online mode of learning during the coronavirus pandemic, lending credence to the progressive mindset of this dynamic man.

READ ALSO: 20 Years Of African University College Of Communications (AUCC): Looking Back On The Achievements And Looking Forward To Innovative Upgrades

Furthermore, knowledge and its application are two distinct things, and the fact that one is informed in a specific field is no guarantee that one can apply such knowledge to achieve the right results. This phenomenon has manifested its truthfulness among leaders and administrators in Nigeria, including university executives, who, although knowing the theories of management, perform woefully in managerial positions. Prof. Ogundipe, however, is both knowledgeable and has demonstrated his ability to handle the administration of a university system. One memorable instance of this was at the first convening of the Carnegie Conference on Higher Education in Africa, where Prof. Ogundipe was the keynote speaker. His contributions demonstrated his sound knowledge of the intricacies of higher education in the African region, especially in Nigeria, including the problems the system faces, the causes of these problems, and why solving them has been somewhat elusive. Prof. Ogundipe’s inputs and observations that day take more than theoretical knowledge. It requires someone who has worked their way up through the system trying to make changes.

Prof. Ogundipe is one man who is more concerned about doing the work than revelling in the office or position. With such people, it is difficult to get back at them by relieving them of their position because their self-esteem, fulfilment, and joy are not tied to the position but to their service, people, and contributions. Thus, Prof. Ogundipe was not ruffled as many would have expected when he was briefly removed from office by the University of Lagos Governing Council, an action that subsequent happenings have further confirmed untrue and misrepresented the leadership, commitment, and excellence of the Ogundipe-led administration.

Whether good or bad, everything comes to an eventual end. This finality of everything about life means our deeds are what sustain us. People have negative thoughts about individuals whose periods of dominance and authority fueled personal and selfish interests at the expense of general progress and development. Likewise, posterity and legends are always kind to those who dedicate their life to stellar service. For Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, the end of his tenure as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos has come, and, without a doubt, posterity and legends will be kind to him for his commitment to the institution and how he proved that commitment through service. Wherever the new season may bear him, whether to the intellectual walls of an academic office, the technocratic boardroom of an international organization, or the intricacies of a political office, Prof. Ogundipe will deliver on the mission as he is wont to do.

READ ALSO: UNILAG VC Ogundipe To Give Keynote  Address At Impact Of Private Universities’ Conference

Congratulations to a decorated captain! May the ship bearing all your endeavours not capsize when you hand over the controls. Keep my song of victory on your walls and minds.
CAPTAIN OGUNDIPE

Like an agoyin-girl story,
Who danced to the melody of agony,
Selling happiness from a hot pot that hurt her head,
Making ends meet; ends that are never met,
To being beaten like a whore in Sweden,
Is the tale of many lives before the enthronement of Ogundipe

****
Like any other passenger in a ship of murky waters
In between life and death,
Ups and downs,
Troubles and more troubles;
We stayed sleepless and helpless,
But Captain Ogundipe came on to save us

****

READ ALSO: Conversations On The Impacts Of Private Universities On Public Universities In Africa (1)

Half a decade is gone
Years have passed
UNILAG waxing great
Lives formed; dreams built
Great strides, untold achievements
UNILAG breaking borders
Men are born; Kings are made
Legacies live on; kingdoms end
But Ogundipe’s vision is clear;
His name was a word that never missed in people’s mouths
In prayers; In talks; In ceremonies
His name was the theme song for all,
Students sang it, Staff sang it, Friends and family sang it
God blessed us; He gave us Ogundipe
And now UNILAG is great again!

****

Ogundipe, you’re “The Captain”
Whose power can drive a clan
Breathing in and out
Gasping, sighing, screaming, and shouting.
Spreading his arms wide and smile
Making himself tall, as tall as a mile
Doing the impossible
One, two, three or ten times

****

A milestone of achievements
Five solid years of making a name
The one that stays long even after death;
You surely deserve a statue
On the streets of UNILAG and its environs.

Falola is a Nigerian historian and professor of African Studies. He is currently the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin.

 

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Opinion

Kemi Badenoch’s Bad Knocks  On Nigeria 

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By  Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha

One of the interesting proverbs I picked up in our General African Studies (GAS 201) course with the late Professor Jabez Olowo Ojoade in the University of Jos in 1979 was ‘it is a bastard child that points at his homestead with his left hand! The Akan people of Ghana put it this way: a bastard child points to his father’s house with his left hand’. The Yoruba say that ‘a person who points to their homestead with the left hand is not a good person’, while the Luhya of Kenya say that ‘when pointing to your village, use your right hand’. It is in the Swahili language that a sort of generalised use of the left hand is concretised when it says ‘the left hand is for personal hygiene, not for pointing!

Bastard child! Homestead! Pointing with the left hand! These three constituents and functional parts of the proverb tickled my teenage imagination to no end. What is it about the left had that it should not be used to refer to one’s family? Why is this metaphor common across the continent? Indeed, there must be something about the family, about the homestead, about one’s origins that deserves respect no matter the circumstances.

By the way, some Nigerians in the diaspora also point to Nigeria with their left hand. ‘That country’, is often used to describe the place where some spent eighteen or thirty of their lives as they tried to find their feet. So, in a sense, Kemi is simply doing what some full-blooded Nigerians do in reaction to the anomie which currently rules the land. Kemi stands out because of her delicate and prominent position in the world. We all took offence when Bully Donald Trump referred to ours as ‘shithole countries! At that level, who said what becomes very important, that is, the message is given prominence because of the stature and calibre of the messenger.

            The proverb, according to Wikipedia, is ‘often used to convey that someone who is not respectful or grateful to their roots or heritage will eventually be rejected or ostracised by their community! The left hand, we are told, is for personal hygiene. We don’t use it to give or receive gifts; we don’t use it to serve drinks or for traditionally important functions.

             In the African context, a bastard child is not one who was born out of wedlock or whose father is not known to the family. Bastard child represents a person who is disconnected from their family. Pointing to the family house with the left hand is indicative of disrespect.

            These thoughts flooded my mind when I read recently elected leader of the Conservative Party in the UK, Kemi Badenoch, gave some hard and bad knocks to Nigeria, the Nigeria Police, and governance in her Nigeria, her ancestral home. To be sure, nobody who has encountered some men of the Nigeria Police in action can fault Kemi. Her chemistry of being brutally frank is what has taken Kemi to the heights in Conservative Party politics. Whether she can indeed lead the Party to victory in an election is a different kettle of fish. As the potential leader of the British government, all cards will count when push gets to shove. Which is why Kemi should remember that no well-trained child points to the family house with the left hand.

            Nigeria is in process. It is a building site. And we started this project of disparate and different cultures fused together when the British pounced on our ancestors to create Nigeria. We look back to the years when a British monarch, King Henry VIII (1491 to 1547), who ate two of his six wives for breakfast and dinner. Wives Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were executed by beheading. Jane Seymour died under mysterious circumstances. Perhaps if Diana had emerged in the 15th century as wife to a British monarch, the reigning king would have sent her to the guillotine instead of the tunnel in Paris! Some British monarchs actively participated, supported, and profited from the transatlantic slave trade. British monarchs oversaw the colonisation of indigenous lands in Africa, North America, and Australia sometimes through genocide! No where in Africa, our dear left-handed and grandly insolent Kemi, would a Prime Minister allow his wife to remain in an adulterous relationship for decades as Harold Macmillan did with wife Lady Dorothy Macmillan did with the bisexual Bob Boothby in the 20th Britain!

            We may need to remind Kemi that racism still dominated policing in Britain as it does in much of the Western world. Yet, we have not painted the entire police system as being racist. Indeed, Kemi, without officialdom around her can still be profiled by a police officer if she were found driving alone in some areas of London! Her skin colour, is not typically British, I dare say. Yet, we have not said that Britain is racist. The ‘how dark’ racist discussions which precipitated Harry and Meghan fleeing the British monarchy is still very fresh and raw in our consciousness; yet, Nigeria’s Vice President has not called the British monarchy a racist institution.

            Time will fail me to discuss the Damilola Taylor case in year 2000 when the Metropolitan Police handling of Taylor’s murder was seen as slow and inadequate due to racial bias. By the way, Damilola was both British and Yoruba like our illustrious and petulant Kemi who believes in giving hard knocks! What about the Stephen Lawrence 1993 murder case which the Metropolitan Police badly handled owing to racial bias? In 1999, Roger Sylvester, a Black man, died in police custody and an inquest showed that the police used excessive force. In 2009, newspaper vendor Ian Tom died after being struck by a police officer during the G20 protests in London. The 1999 Macpherson Report, which investigated the Stephen Lawrence case, concluded that ‘the Metropolitan Police as institutionally racist! As late as 2017, the Lammy Review which was led David Lammy (MP) concluded that “black and minority ethnic individuals were more likely to be stopped and searched, arrested, and imprisoned than their white counterparts! Need I say more?

So, our dear daughter and bright star Kemi in the British firmament, we shall not point to you with our left hand, because in spite of you, you are our daughter. We can only say that the Nigeria Police is in good company of the Empire of the Police system which was created in 1820 by your progenitors from the other side! Colonial vestiges are not easy to shake off!

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Afe Babalola And Dele Farotimi: On Justice, A Just Society And The Nigerian State

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Prof. Tunji Olaopa

By Tunji Olaopa

The feud between elder statesman, Chief Afe Babalola and civil rights activist, Mr. Dele Farotimi, is perhaps the most significant discourse that postcolonial Nigerian state has thrown up for the moment, one in a class of those grand defining disputations that surely will gather dust which will take some time to abate. And it is one case that is fraught with all sorts of legal, jurisprudential, moral and political traps and complexities that speak to more than the trivial interventions—leveraged around the David and Goliath motif—that are attending the matter. Those who have been able to go beyond the surface of the case will agree that it goes to the very foundation and founding of the Nigerian society, and the fundamental objective of crafting a good and just society for Nigerians. That the issue revolves around the dispensation of justice immediately alerts us to the deep insinuation about the idea of social justice itself, and how the conception of fairness could be written into the very fabric of the Nigerian society. And yet, the complexity of the case is what makes it a case that is too critical for a public servant like me to dabble in.

(Un)fortunately, my intellectual maturation, my political science education and my professional endeavor in institutional reform advocacy have prepared me to intervene in this critical matter. I have always been involved with Nigeria, and with reflective thoughts about how to reconstitute her greatness. Three learning encounters with three world-historic icons configured my passion for wanting to see that Nigeria becomes a state we all can be proud of. The first came from my reading of Plato’s Republic. There is a reason that the entire treatise commenced with the question, what is justice? Justice was a fundamental issue in the decline of the ancient Athenian democracy that allowed Socrates to be judicially murdered. The second learning derived from Wole Soyinka’s dense prison memoir, The Man Died. And like most who have read it, Soyinka was troubled by the idea of justice: “For me, justice is the first condition of humanity.” By the time I would be coming to Thomas More’s Utopia, I was already apprised of the connections between my political science education, my professional endeavor as a public servant, and the key elements of institutional reform as a cogent framework for transforming Nigeria.

From Plato to Soyinka, we have a trajectory of political reflection that takes justice seriously as the basis for organizing a just society. This is part of the intellectual frameworks for my undergraduate and graduate studies at the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan. In one of those explosive seminar classes that played some fundamental role in my intellectual maturation in the graduate school, I had proposed an argument through a seminar paper titled: “Is a revolution an option to fix Nigeria?” The topic was meant to titillate the collective yearning for revolution that would serve as the ultimate mechanism for social change that would flush off all traces of corruption and degeneration in postcolonial Nigeria. Revolutions seem to possess some allure for the masses because they constitute a framework of justice that the constitutional justice mechanism might not be able to handle.

However, as Wole Soyinka, Thomas More, Martin Luther and even Galileo Galilei would realize, the need for radicalism is balanced by the force of establishment orthodoxy. The Nigerian predicament has, as a fundamental foundation, a lot to do with the connection between governance failure and injustice in terms of the persistent and protracted class strife between the haves and the have-nots, between the rich and the poor, indeed, in the final analysis between the government and the governed. And in the case between Afe Babalola and Dele Farotimi, the issues boil down to the administration of justice and the entire edifices and institutions of social justice and the rule of law in Nigeria. And so, in outlining the key issues involved in the matter, we must be careful enough to read between the lines and the noises of analysts who are eager to queue behind their favored protagonists.

First things first. Let us remove the surface debris. Indeed, and in this case, the debris points us in the direction to look for the rot within the matter. First, there is the matter of civil defamation and its legal ramifications. And second, there is the issue of the legal and moral protocols involved in dealing with the pursuit of redress by someone who knows and understands the law. Barrister Farotimi has a legal right to seek redress in court. Chief Babalola has a legal right to defend his reputation in court. In raising the specter of legal prosecution against defamation, I see Chief Babalola as being at the forefront of gatekeeping the legal establishment in terms of what is and is not permissible or possible under the law and its conservative tenets. If you are hurt or an injustice has been done to your person, then the best place to seek redress is not the court of public opinion but the constitutional legal establishment.

Unfortunately for him, Barrister Farotimi’s book, Nigeria and Its Criminal Justice System, impugns the entire legal and judicial establishment up to its apex institution, the Nigerian Supreme Court. However, does radicalism preclude moral decency? A book could be written and allegations made without the complement of atrocious language. Or maybe the rot in the judicial system, and the need for a revolution preclude any niceties, especially with those who are allegedly at the forefront of perpetuating and protecting the rot. But then, how to prove what we all consider to be the norm in terms of legal prosecution of judicial corruption remains a hanging question.

No matter how we look at what we are calling the surface debris, we are redirected deeper and deeper into what lies beneath the surface. The ultimate question is that between Chief Afe Babalola and Barrister Dele Farotimi, what we are asked to contend with is the state of the Nigerian judiciary and the corrupt impediment of social justice, especially for an average Nigerian. What Barrister Dele Farotimi said about the Nigerian judicial system is not new. We are all familiar with the rot within the system. Indeed, this is not the first time an alarm would be raised about what we are all familiar with. Indeed, as far back as 1999, The News magazine carried a most unsalutary headline, “Crooks on the Bench: An Expose on the Rot in the Judiciary.” The magazine headlined the names of 47 judges indicted for judicial corruption. What is new is that Dele Farotimi dared to go so far as to mention specific names, and to confront the big players in the legal establishment. And he did this in a most scurrilous manner targeted at getting maximum traction and attention. It is as if Mr Farotimi, through the public sphere, is throwing the gauntlet to every Nigerian and challenging us on our collective responsibility to clean the Augean stable.

If Barrister Farotimi cannot prove his allegations in court, it would not mean that his charges are false. It might only imply that the system which is supposed to guarantee justice has become too corruptly dense to achieve its mandate. But there is also the chance that since the entire judicial system cannot be tarred so broadly with the same brush, Farotimi’s allegation might receive a dispassionate hearing that might deliver justice as we expect it. This might be a tall expectation. Nigeria’s postcolonial predicament has inevitable consequences on the capacity of the judicial system to facilitate the delivery of justice. And this failure also complicates the capacity of the Nigerian state to deliver on its social contract to Nigerians. This is what makes the Babalola-Farotimi case too complex to be decided either in the constitutional court or the court of public opinion. The burdens of postcolonial disruptions that the Nigerian judiciary system carries are enormous: judicial corruption, miscarriage of judgments, executive lawlessness, delayed trial due to insufficient infrastructure, financial dependence on the executive arm of government.

To outline the fundamental challenges of the judicial system in Nigeria this way is not to give in to cynicism and a deterministic mindset that we might be caught in a vice that is inescapable. It is simply to say that the ongoing uproar between the two dramatis personae demonstrates that the court has been given a chance to reflect on the role that (in)justice plays in the fundamental understanding of the Nigerian postcolonial predicament and the capacity of a democratic system to correct itself. When Chief Afe Babalola and Barrister Dele Farotimi are given their day in court, we will have no choice but to trust that same judicial system to deliver unbiased judgment no matter our misgivings about how objective and untainted that judgment could be. This is just a way of saying that though our judicial system is not perfect; it is still the best that we have.

The last words on this reflection on the connection between the ongoing feud between Babalola and Farotimi and Nigeria’s postcolonial predicament must be given to Haile Sellasie, former emperor of Ethiopia: “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”

Olaopa is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission,Abuja, and Professor of Public Administration.
tolaopa2003@gmail.com

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Opinion

Fear Of Witchcraft And Politics In Zambia

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Witch Burning, Impunity And Abuses Linked to Witchcraft Beliefs In Benue State
Dr Leo Igwe

By Leo Igwe

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW) is concerned over the reported arrest of two men accused of being ‘witchdoctors’ in Zambia. The arrest underscores the potency of witchcraft fears and the connection between occult anxieties and the country’s politics. These individuals were accused of trying to bewitch the Zambian president, Hakainde Hichilema. The police claimed that they had charms. They planned to use the charms to harm the president. The report says the two persons have been charged under Zambia’s Witchcraft Act. The Act criminalizes “possession of charms”, “professing knowledge of witchcraft”, and “cruelty to wild animals”. The police found the two with assorted charms, including a live chameleon.

This development is utterly embarrassing and shows that the Zambian government is slowly losing its focus and bearing.The country has many socio-economic challenges. Suspicion of bewitchment or possession of charms should be the least of its worries at this time. There should be no place for witchcraft and possession of charms in modern politics because there is no evidence for these beliefs and practices. Zambian authorities should not weaponize the Witchcraft Act or use it to justify this incident. Zambian law does not recognize witchcraft. Zambia’s Witchcraft Act criminalizes naming or imputing witchcraft. It prohibits accusing or threatening to accuse any person of being a witch or a wizard. In this case, it is the police who are breaking the law.

Otherwise, how did they know the two individuals were ‘witchdoctors’? Did these persons identify as witch doctors? If not, the police are liable because they named and imputed witchcraft and have to prove that these individuals have witch-doctoring powers. The police claimed to have charged these individuals for possessing “assorted charms”, including a chameleon. Really?

The police in Zambia have questions to answer: What are charms? How did they know that what was in their possession were charms, not pets? Is a chameleon a form of charm? What makes possession of a chameleon possession of a charm? When and how does a chameleon become a charm? The police need to answer these questions and more before one takes them seriously.

Again, did the individuals describe what was in possession as ‘charms’? If they did, does confessing or designating something as a charm make it a charm? And if they did not, the police are liable because they need to prove how those possessions translated into charms.

In addition, the police claimed that the duo wanted to bewitch the president. What does that mean? How did they know? Are the police not contravening a provision under the Witchcraft Act by professing knowledge of witchcraft? Can one harm another person using a chameleon? They claimed that the two persons wanted to use the charms in their possession, including the chameleon to harm the president. How did they know that? What is the evidence for that?

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches calls for an end to this state-sponsored witch hunt. There is no evidence of harm through witchcraft or charms. The Zambian government should desist from witchcraft- related infractions and violations including arbitrary arrest, and detention of innocent citizens. These allegations are baseless and absurd. The arrest was politically motivated. This development demonstrates that Zambian authorities are out of sync with their duty and obligation to uphold the rule of law and protect accused persons.

Zambian authorities need to act in compliance with the 2021 UN resolution, which urged states to take measures to combat abuses linked to witchcraft beliefs and ritual attacks. End witchcraft allegations in Zambia. End witch hunts in Africa now!

Dr Igwe directs the Advocacy for Alleged Witches.

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