Fear History – 3

By Bolanle BOLAWOLE
[email protected] 0705 263 1058

If you have been following the story, before Dr. Segun Osoba’s lecture to the students of the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University (“Great Ife”), Ile-Ife, on 1st February, 1974 in commemoration of the 3rd anniversary of the police killing of Kunle Adepeju, an undergraduate student of the University of Ibadan during a peaceful student protest, an ideological argument, as someone called it, took place between Osoba and Professor L. Beverley Halstead. After the lecture, Halstead still would not let sleeping dogs lie but dragged the matter with Dr. Osoba.

Titled “On Dr. Osoba’s drama”, he again said the following: “The 1st of February is an occasion of commemoration of the death of a student, Adekunle Adepeju, at Ibadan, killed by a police bullet during a demonstration in 1971. In Ife it was known that on this occasion there was to be a demonstration against the university authorities, the Vice-Chancellor in particular, over a wide series of issues. Dr. Osoba was scheduled to speak to the students on “Student Power” immediately prior to the march to the VC, bearing placards which had little relevance to the death of a student three years previously.

“This was an explosive situation charged with emotion that worried many people, including students. By good fortune, I met Dr. Osoba in the Staff Club where I was acting as chairman at the Geology conference dinner. One cannot but commend Dr. Osoba’s power of recall even though certain critical items seemed to have slipped his memory. I recall expressing my opinion that I felt it was inappropriate in such an explosive situation to be addressing students on the subject of student power; inappropriate to the extent of being irresponsible.

“I went so far as to suggest that if matters got out of hand, he would bear much of the responsibility for this. His reply was that if the mob got out of hand, it would have nothing to do with him – his conscience would be clear. I failed to understand his secretiveness over the text of his address – if it were so innocent why could it not be seen? I cannot understand Dr. Osoba’s motive in all this. He knew that people were worried about what might happen but he was not interested in allaying anyone’s fears; merely scoring a few cheap debating points: His first responsibility is to his conscience, as he said. In the meantime many people spent a worried night wondering what the morrow would bring.

“We knew that violence was intended; in retrospect, we know a serious crisis was averted and that Dr. Osoba merely paraded his conscience before the students. Thank you, Dr. Osoba”.

Osoba, not one to take prisoners, responded in kind: “Dear Professor Halstead: Your letter of 13th February, 1974 is an unequalled achievement in self-exposure. Having denied on Thursday, 31st January, 1974 any responsibility to the students of this university beyond teaching them Biology, you have now in this letter admitted, without apparently being aware of it, that the only other responsibility you owe them is to spy on them and, on the basis of this espionage work, ascribe all sorts of spurious motives to their actions and those of your colleagues on the academic staff who would not spy on students or treat them as congenitally irresponsible and destructive mass of people.

ALSO READ: Anambra Tops At The 2024 Presidential Prizes For Secondary Schools In Nigeria

“Unless I was maintaining a spy-ring among the students, how was I to know, as you and some others apparently claim to know by the evening of 31st January, 1974, that on the following day ‘there was to be a demonstration against the university authorities, the Vice-chancellor in particular, over a wide series of issues’? How was I to know in advance, like you, that after my address they were to ‘march to the V-C, bearing placards which had little relevance to the death of a student three years previously’?

“You claim in relation to my motives in addressing the students that ‘he (i . e. Osoba) knew that people were worried about what might happen but he was not interested in allaying anyone’s fears, merely scoring a few cheap debating points… In the meantime many people spent a worried night wondering what the morrow would bring’. The presumption, even crass dishonesty, of this kind of assertion is amazing in a man who, by his own admission, is committed only to his own professional career. If one were to dissipate one’s limited nervous and emotional resources in allaying self-induced fears reinforced by the testimony of spies, then, one would be likely to become ‘nuts’ like those being haunted by the hobgoblin of their own mind.

“Professsor Halstead and his crowd ‘knew that violence was intended; in retrospect (they) know a serious crisis was averted…’ Professor Halstead’s power of divination with respect to planning and averting violence are all-embracing: they are both predictive and retroactive! Even the British M15 and M16, the American C.I.A. and F.B.I. and the Soviet KGB may have one or two new tricks to learn from him and the other wizards of espionage and counter-espionage!

“In Professor Halstead’s near-divine wisdom, he knew that ‘Dr. Osoba merely paraded his conscience before the students’ but failed to tell us what his own stilled conscience – some amount of parading and airing of it, even before students – might help somewhat in reactivating and making it tick again.

“One can only hope that this university community is not paranoid to the point that it cannot isolate self-identified spies and thereby render them irrelevant to its main business of inculcating into our young men and women the habit of learning and the virtues of responsible citizenship in a hate-free, fear-free environment”

We still have in our universities today robust exchanges such as was witnessed between Osoba and Halstead. That, perhaps, is where the similarities end. In Osoba and Halstead’s own days, university senior teaching staff members belonged to the upper middle class and could afford the luxuries associated with that class. No more! A preponderance of that class is today numbered among the struggling and the poor who cannot afford the basic necessities of decent living. And the free fall hasn’t ended yet!

The university environment is no longer as conducive to teaching and learning as it used to be. Lecture theatres and office spaces are crammed beyond belief; hostel accommodation on campus takes only a fraction of students; and the condition of living there also beggars belief; the library and laboratories are archaic; lecturers are ill-motivated and the academic calendar for most public universities have been disrupted as a result of incessant strike action by university workers – teaching and non-teaching staff alike.

Unlike in the days of the founding fathers of Nigeria, appropriate funding of education is no longer the priority of the ruling class. In summary, the universities today are a shadow of their original self; the quality of the education they dispense cannot but be similarly affected. As with other sectors of our national life, a Marshall Plan of sorts is needed to bail out the education sector from its doldrums that border on imminent collapse. But will they? NOW CONCLUDED.

FEEDBACK

Re: Dangote’s refinery and Nigerians’ great expectations

Sir, good write-up as ever (but) you only appear to avoid hitting President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as hard as he deserves this time around! All the identified shortfalls start and end with ill-motivated and irresponsible leadership. All PBAT seems to have as his reason for desiring and ascending unto the office (of president) was just to add the nomenclature and title of “President” to his name! Empty, purposeless and without focus! Like you pointed out in several of your earlier write-ups, speaking truth to power: (he is) a man that leaps before looking, and he acts before thinking! Making excuses for PBAT’s non-performance is, in all sincerity, needless, sir!

Dangote acting capitalist/monopolist; Nigeria’s refineries not functional; NNPC turning supervisory against the objectives stated in the enabling Act that established it and its parasitic existence; Dangote refinery dashing the hopes of Nigerians; manning our porous borders to avoid subsidizing neighbouring countries and giving smugglers the advantage – all these and many more, without gainsaying, is accounted for by just a single person and single act: irresponsible leadership!

It is not about Dangote, NNPC, illegal supply/siphoning/diversion to neighbouring countries and the likes, but it is about the President’s (lack of) political will. Except we are saying it is you and me that should check all the evil and anti-citizen acts going on in the NNPC or we are the ones to address our porous borders when we have a President and Commander-in-Chief in place (who is) acting in trust for us as a nation!

What a gross shame that what a whole nation of over 200 million people could not achieve with all the resources at her beck and call has now been achieved by a single individual taking advantage of our irresponsible and ineffective leadership!

Do we need to remind PBAT to do something about our refineries! Is the task of building a new refinery, attainable by an individual, truly an uphill and herculean task for a whole nation? Was it not the resources of this nation that Dangote took advantage of to build his refinery? Should Tinubu merely watch as NNPC wrestles with Dangote to the peril of the citizens he claims to lead?

Can’t Tinubu have anyone to advise him that the current NNPC leadership has outlived its usefulness and should be disbanded? – Awodire Oyewole Ayo.

My abridged response: I wish you get to a position where you will need to deal with diverse interests! It is not as easy as we see it from outside. Nigeria’s problems are bigger than Tinubu. I wish and pray they will push him hard enough for him to abandon his conciliatory moves and put his foot down on all issues where he is bending over backward to please interest groups. I wish and pray also that they will frustrate him hard enough for him to give up on Nigeria and say, “to your tents, O Israel!”

Take it from me: Nigeria’s problems cannot be solved from Abuja or by anyone in Abuja. Put whoever you like there, they will only get wiser after they leave office. Ask Obasanjo. Ask Jonathan. Ask even Buhari! The forces holding Nigeria down will not allow the right things to be done. Presidents are no islands. Maybe they know or control up to 10% of what happens in their government. Patience told us Jonathan was caged by those around him. Aisha told us Buhari was a stranger in his own government.

Why was MKO Abiola not allowed to rule? Maybe because he prematurely divulged the secrets of how he would govern: That he would act independently of the IMF and World Bank and that once he holds CBN with one hand and NNPC with another, Nigerians could go and sleep! Have these four (IMF, World Bank, NNPC and CBN) not remained our headache?

In my view, Tinubu’s error – if I can call it that – is that he chose to tread where angels fear to. He wants to solve Nigeria’s problems. Either he is cocksure of himself or he underated the enormity and complexities of Nigeria’s hydra-headed problems. Those benefiting from the system as it is will fight tooth-and-nail to maintain, even further consolidate and advance, their advantage.

Now, after a year in the saddle, Tinubu should know better. He must begin to hold the bull by the horns and step on toes. To do that, he needs more of the courage he summoned on his first day in office when he announced that fuel subsidy is gone!

*Former Editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-chief, BOLAWOLE was also the Managing Director/ Editor-in-chief of The WESTERNER newsmagazine. He writes the ON THE LORD’S DAY column in the Sunday TRIBUNE and TREASURES column in NEW TELEGRAPH newspaper on Wednesdays. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.