Between Agbowo and Akoka

I remember taking my family to Ibadan every Easter holiday until lately when daily demands have made it almost absolutely impossible. Then we would put up in my first cousin’s mansion at Ikoloba Estate, adjoining New Bodija; visit the Ibadan branch of my church at Mokola and go pay homage to some of my in-laws as well as my eldest brother who owns a modest bungalow somewhere around Kankafo Inn area. We were usually over-fed by my cousin’s wife and that was the part my children enjoyed the most!

For me it was emotional taking my family to Kuti Hall Junior Common Room (JCR) where the photograph of the hall’s 1984/85 executive council was proudly displayed among others. I usually used such moments to advise my children to diligently take their studies seriously. And one of the old porters would take me round almost every room in a sampled block showing me the deplorable state of the facility. In my first year, as a “Jambite,” I lived in the F Block, otherwise known as “Preferb.” In my year two, I was my hall’s Finance Minister (84/85), which entitled me to a room on the executive floor of the hall’s B Block. As jambites, we were four in a room while two of us had squatters; as residents of the B block, we were not more than two in a room. In my final year at the D block, the story did not change- two to a room and as usual, I had a squatter.

While the university provided beds and mattresses, I learnt that today you have about nine in a room and the residents put their slim mattresses on the floor. And this arrangement is official! At Unilag where I was a postgraduate student and resident of Eni Njoku hall, we were only two in a room though I had two squatters. I needed to collect my M.Sc certificate at Unilag last year (after 17 years, due to my fault though) and as a good record keeper I had to produce every receipt which I was issued as a student there. I even found those of UI also! What I paid for the bed spaces throughout my four years in the universities was N90. 00! I hear that for you to have a bed space at Unilag today, you need between N150, 000 and N300, 000!

Visiting the UK a couple of months ago made me know that qualifications obtained from Nigerian universities after 1990 are not recognized by the British government- I was reliably told by a friend who has just successfully relocated from Nigeria. How far is this true? But I do not blame the government for taking that decision considering what goes on in our tertiary institutions. Imagine a professor at Uniben who, after putting in 35 years of service was due to retire at the end of the year; he was dismissed a couple of weeks ago after being caught pants-down with a student in a hotel! Apparently, he would not let the poor girl graduate because she refused his advances several times. Despite series of pleadings by the girl’s parents, the randy professor would not budge.

Convinced that the man was possessed, the exhausted parents devised the hotel plot and cleverly set up the sex maniac- and he was disgraced out of office! What a shame! In Nigeria, it is called “sex for marks.” I receive job applicants from time to time courtesy of my friends who believe I am well-placed to refer them to prospective employers. I must confess that 99.99% of these chaps cannot express themselves in good English; and 60% of them came out with second class upper class degrees! What is our education turning into? In the last four weeks, I was tasked by the British Home Office which directed that I should obtain letters from my alma maters that my degrees were actually taught in English! Imagine the order! I tried convincing them at the Home Office that I had a clearly visible presence on the Internet courtesy of over 60 well-researched articles on marketing communication- my profession- all written in English. I was wasting my time as they insisted on the letters.

I was not enthusiastic about going to Ibadan because of the current political instability in the city. In addition, I knew my Ibadan trip would not be one trip because of the usual associated bureaucracy- I therefore took my wife along so as to introduce her to the officials as I banked on her to help pick the letter eventually. Also I did not like the idea of traveling in December- no superstition!
I had to do Unilag four times before the letter was eventually written though I tried calling the official’s attention to a grammatical error and the possibility of confirming the fears of the Britons that our English may not be English after all! The letter says I “convocated” in 1988. It should have been “convoked.” That is a letter from a Nigerian university! Hey, what is happening?

Before then, my wife and a friend of hers had tried to get a lecturer-friend/big brother of mine to help fix the lady’s son in Unilag after failing to make the cut-off point. My wife and her friend are non-graduates so I understood how they felt after witnessing provocative dressing by girls of the institution. For them it was simply a visual assault- all kinds of “lawless attires” that would make even the most religious lecturer fall. “Why do these girls have to dress this way?” asked my wife. My answer was: you are aided into the university not on merit and as such you find yourself in a jungle. How do you survive the jungle? By sleeping your way through!

May be I am wrong, but I still do not believe that any sane lecturer would want to deliberately fail any female student who is decently dressed, hard-working and intelligent. Even if she is the prettiest girl on campus, her lecturers should respect her. Since when has beauty become anathema to intelligence? I witnessed exactly the same thing and gladly corroborated my wife’s observations. Mine even took a strange dimension courtesy of a female friend whom I accompanied to some faculty at Unilag after collecting my letter from the post-graduate school. She had visited my office while coincidentally, she was heading my way. Having earlier written an M.Sc entrance examination to Unilag, she needed to deliver a letter from a legal luminary to the coordinator of the programme for possible assistance.

My God- was the coordinator petty! He would not want to accept the letter because the writer referred to him as “Mr.” My friend did not understand why but I tried explaining to her that it is more civil to put the PhD after a “doctor’s” name without addressing him as “Dr.” Nigerians are crazy for titles, no doubt, but I think it is trivial if somebody misses out the title in my name- just gloss over it. A personal phone call correcting him on the proper address could just be it rather than displaying my anger right before the bearer of the note. I was further angered by the fact that he openly, in the corridor, rebuked the lady for showing the letter to “your friend” (me) as she tried to explain the problem to me. Even before my friend told me that the lecturer had a reputation for “bedding” anything in skirt, including married women, my spirit had already told me so- his yuppie turn-out with a mobile phone hanging on his slacks, when it was obvious that he was beyond 50. My friend is a married woman and she is not keen following up on the letter.

I empathized with two “pretty young things” who looked very worried as they waited to see him. He came out and started addressing them like they had no right to University education- “what’s that your name again…?” I eyed the chap and instantly disliked him. I think lecturers who take advantage of students are cheap and cowardly- they lack confidence and should see a shrink. They were probably “book worms” in their youthful days and did not even know how to toast a girl. As lecturers, they need not toast because they now have authority. But the way to defeat them is not to dress to class like a prostitute. How do you even expect the lecturer to concentrate and do a good job when he is bombarded by micro-mini skirts revealing all shades of thighs and low-neck body-hugs showing almost every part of the breast?

We got to UI and the first thing my wife noticed was the decent dress sense (not code). Funny, I did not pay much attention to the dressing in both schools perhaps because I am used to it, having attended universities in the past. But I must confess that it was not this bad in our days. The problem with my generation was not indecent dressing neither was it cultism. There were cults but they were never unruly. As a hall executive with friends cutting across the various social campus strata, I even sat and cooled off with a couple of my friends in confraternities as they joyfully sang their caucus songs melodiously while the empty green bottle doubled as a worthy musical instrument. That was UI, though since my stay at “Lasgidi” was only for a year. Fine gentlemen made up the “confrans” in those days and you would argue that they could not be if you did not see them in their regalia while they made their way to their meetings if you were lucky to be up and by your window-side about 2.00 a.m.

As my wife inquired about the sharp dress contrast, my answer, again, was: the campus is a reflection of the host community. Ibadan is relatively conservative compared to Lagos. Ibadan is like Sheffield (I have not been there) while Lagos is like London. Lagos, like London, is too “upbeat”- too much hype. The campus is therefore bound to reflect the culture. I was born and raised in Lagos and only left the city in my entire life so far when I went to study at Ibadan. Those of us from Lagos were easily noticeable by our mates from the west and its environs- we stood out in carriage, expression and socializing. Our girls were the same but we all blended well with the “locals.”

However, I was still able to show my wife one or two girls with low-neck tops so that she would not feel I was skewed in favour of UI. I was not surprised when she dismissed my observation because, according to her, there was no basis for comparison with the risqué experience at Unilag. Again, I dare say our so-called soft-sell magazines, a.k.a. “junk” contribute to corrupting our campus girls. How would the publishers feel if some newspaper published their daughter’s photograph and ran a story about her being one of the “hottest chicks” on the campus? It is simply disgusting and irresponsible. Why can they not use their campus page to promote excellence, industry, scholarship, ingenuity, etc? Why does it have to be about who is bedding who, etc?

Whether I like it or not, I am a stakeholder in UI and Unilag- alumnus. Why do we have more Nollywood girls and musicians coming out of Unilag than any other university?
Now I understand why UI, situated at Agbowo, is the Harvard of Nigeria. What do you think?