I suspect that the astute reader may have noticed the somewhat incompleteness of the title: The fact that the coronavirus is a pandemic and that it should have served as its fulcrum. But indeed, that cognition isn’t the stronghold of our controlling idea.
The ASUU strike and VC removal are arguably pretty much dire than the coronavirus pandemic. We should more be quarantined and isolated from these two pandemics which, potentially, can wreak more wanton destruction and deprivation – particularly with a swathe of lives on the verge of very vituperative coup d’arret.
The very vocabulary of hate speech mechanism seems to have been nestled in the ideological architecture and nature of the “First Choice and Nation’s Pride” institution.
The lamentation and lampoon was born out of lots of unspoken actions, which are extremely much telling of the Headleyian “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” phenomenology.
Here, the looting is the future of young, impressionable intellectuals, in particular, the hoi polloi, who have been manageably sent to further their education. And the shooting, as it were, is unleashed by the humongous daggers-drawn altercation ensconced by Vice-Chancellor Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe and Pro-Chancellor Dr Wale Babalakin.
Typically, the pro-Ogundipe and anti-Babalakin flag-bearers have generated lots of fracas in the political-cum-academic scenes of the body politic, spawning, of course, mass-pooling of opinion pieces. Many ‘mis-readers’ and ‘mis-writers’ have, to be sure, been misguided by the masochistic machinations, they say, being meted towards the verdict. Others who have earnestly contended the fate of the VC are assiduously containing the pandemic.
You’ll agree with me that the year 2020 is an exhumation of vexed venality with internal, fraternal brazen brigandage. In the contextual control and convoy of the column I would not have to necessarily gear the guiding grundnorm. So I’d rather gunpoint the point.
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is on strike. And the school is struggling to decide whether or not the VC is an academical misfit. Like Lukashenko who’s been told by Tikhanovskaya-group: ‘Go away’!? Or like Trump, by Pelosi – ‘ethically unfit and intellectually unprepared’!? Alas, our students are at home with no, if there are, introspective, sympathetic concerns to put them at the forefront of fine-tuning finer ways of continuing their education amid the coronavirus pandemic. First we need to sharply, and as quickly as possible, provide some vaccine for the ASSU-strike pandemic. We shouldn’t be wearing facemasks amid the grave consequences of taciturnity. Second, now that the VC has reportedly been tested positive for some gross imbalance and inordinacy, we have yet another pandemic pervading and permeating the school premises, in particular. This one, the principle of social distancing mightn’t work; the principle of kowtowing to cruel perpetrators of evil; the principle of sanitizing and separating from serious events that require belligerent outspokenness. They won’t and can’t help us in containing these devastating pandemics.
I’m sorry the situation demands some impassioned angst which may have impaired my coherence and cohesion some way or other. But even so, I believe my expressive intuition has not been hijacked to achieve the overall legitimate message.
I pretty fear parents, in part, whose steadfast and sure hope is anchored on the firm persuasion that their children can survive with the provenly poor educational system in Nigeria. The pandemics have so much been steeped into the texture of the system. Yes, the system of producing annually tens of thousands of graduates, who still have to find the right bearing to begin their journeys in life. Real education is patterned after the social and demanding realities of life. Not the “lacram-lapour” weary, hypocritical mechanism of impacting knowledge. Not the sex-for-grades epidemic of epistemic lacuna. Not the unskilled “5-pointers” who cannot create anything with their “dy/dx”. Our children wandering like the Wordsworthian wandering clouds with no pathfinders for their destinies. What a shame, isn’t it?
Yet, UNILAG, pitifully the country’s “Nation’s Pride”, or, in reality, “Nation’s Bride”, is still grappling with inconsequential matters – oughtn’t more intimately, honestly, and internally resolved? When two elephants fight, won’t the grasses suffer? And who are these grasses we’re talking about? Well, someone said, quite proactively, the masses. So have the masses been so made to be on the receiving end of odium and opprobrium of heinous collision? He pointed out that none of their children school in this country. So why worry? Such belated responses emanating from the student whose visions before graduation have been distorted – but thankfully, recalibrated – even amid the third pandemic.
The epidemic of disrupted academic calendar, making disgruntled students very unpleased, ramping up their academic years, is a burgeoning one we need to immediately contain. The epidemic is so worrisome that it’s become the “new normal”. More often than not, academic semesters are suddenly ousted by some militarized “ASUUers”. And the students are looting and shooting away their future in some well-intentioned coup d’état and in some well-meaning esprit de corps.
A moment of soberness and deep thinking is a moment the coronavirus has earmarked for thoughtful and soul-searching individuals. As we reflect and ponder on the dire impact the COVID-19 has had on us, behold: It is a blessing in disguise. How? It’s helped us to discover what we need to concentrate on, so that we can be fully prepared for the foreseeable future. How? We have got to be tech-proof in our approach to teaching and learning. Not the “you-have-to-come-to-class” modus operandi of our forefathers. We are in the dawn of a new beginning with daunting tasks that demand fast-tracking, fruitful, and fortified systemic, functional educational methodology. Technology is the nucleus and neutral network of the 21-st Century.
Our professors shouldn’t be professors of papers but professors that can pioneer scientific breakthroughs patterned after the similitude of “scholarly commons” in the history of education in Nigeria.
Professor Tunde Ope-Davies says as much in his 2018 Inaugural Lecture entitled “Reconfiguring our worlds through words: A critical mapping of discourse in human socio-cyberspace”: “The age of technology now forces every one of us to communicate to the global community how we are spending the resources of government. Professors must indeed possess the capacity to really and truly profess their professorship not just within the four corners of our offices, the corridors of our faculties or within the local university community.
“We must be able to attract sufficient international attention and visibility. Every professor must be able to deploy professorial discourses within the international intellectual space. We must redefine and reframe our scholarly communication.
“The culture of recycling archaic and ancient ideas and lecture notes must be discouraged. We must keep pace with current developments, advances and new trends in our disciplines and strive to give the best and the latest to our students.
“We must debunk the insinuation suggested in the statement made recently by a certain professor in the California University accusing Nigerian institutions of dispensing ‘expired knowledge’.
“The end users or consumers of our products deserve the best. We must begin to produce a critical mass of graduates that can compete successfully with their peers on the global stage (emphasis mine).”
Segun Ige is a graduate of English, University of Lagos, Nigeria
He can be reach on 08141688084
Email: igesegundebayo5@gmail.com