Kperogi vs. Fasua: What the Professors’ Pay Debate Tells Us About Nigeria’s Broken Knowledge Economy
John Onyeukwu
Kperogi vs. Fasua: What the Professors’ Pay Debate Tells Us About Nigeria’s Broken Knowledge Economy
By John Onyeukwu
In any economy serious about transformation, knowledge is not ornamental, it is productive infrastructure. That is why the ongoing debate between Professor Farooq Kperogi and Tope Fasua over academic pay deserves more than philosophical musings. It raises urgent questions about Nigeria’s intellectual capital, institutional priorities, and long term competitiveness.
Tope Fasua’s rejoinder to Kperogi’s column on the underpayment of Nigerian professors (Premium Times, July 17, 2025) is robust and wide-ranging. But while it celebrates stoicism, entrepreneurial dignity, and cultural discipline, as exemplified by Professor Nasir Hassan-Wagini of Umaru Yar’Adua University who combines scholarship with vegetable trading, it risks romanticizing what is, at core, a structural failure.
Fasua argues that professors must "pull levers" and contribute to nation building beyond salary demands. But in development economics and institutional theory, incentives matter. Without them, all calls to virtue ring hollow.
Let us be clear: the problem is not that a professor sells vegetables. The problem is that in one of Africa’s largest economies, the intellectual class is forced to moonlight to survive. In Japan, which Kperogi referenced in his syndicated column (July 2025), professors are among the best paid professionals, second only to top corporate executives. Why? Because the Japanese state understands the role of research in industrial policy, innovation, and productivity.
By contrast, Nigeria treats intellectual labor as charity. The consequences are clear: low research output, brain drain, minimal patenting, and the near collapse of applied innovation ecosystems in our universities.
Fasua points to cultural discipline, citing Japan’s post-Olympic stadium cleaning athletes and Uganda’s Makerere mobile food processors (which he saw during a 2013 trip). But these are not purely cultural phenomena they are institutionalized behaviors, supported by incentives, education reform, and deliberate policy engineering.
It is disingenuous to expect Nigerian professors to perform like their counterparts in Tokyo or Seoul while operating in systems that neither protect nor reward excellence. Even South African universities, cited by Fasua, have better governance, more stable funding, and clearer links between academia and industry.
From a philosophical standpoint, as John Rawls reminds us, justice must include the fair distribution of social goods, including status, opportunity, and income. When a nation pays comedians more than chemists, and TikTok influencers more than technologists, it signals a crisis of national purpose.
Politically, the failure to fund universities is a failure of statecraft. Nations that succeeded in knowledge driven growth, like Singapore, Finland, and South Korea, deliberately rewired their higher education sectors through funding, autonomy, and performance linked innovation.
Economically, academic underpayment distorts human capital flows. Brilliant graduates avoid academia; research stagnates; local problems go unsolved. Fasua asked why Nigerian universities do not tackle gully erosion the way Japanese universities address earthquakes. The answer is: no funding, no incentive, and no continuity.
Rather than debate morality, let us propose action:
Reform Budget Allocations: Enforce UNESCO’s 15–20% education budget target. Guarantee at least 30% of university budgets go to research and innovation, not just personnel.
Incentivise Industry-Academia Collaboration: Offer tax relief to companies that fund university research. Encourage clusters in agriculture, ICT, health, and green tech.
Rethink Curriculum Design: As Fasua suggests, shift final year projects from solo theoretical exercises to group based, problem solving outputs linked to local needs.
Restore Integrity and Autonomy: Address the reputational rot within academia, exam malpractice, student harassment, politicized vice-chancellorships. Let the university system regain its moral and intellectual authority.
The political economy of education is about more than blackboards and chalk. It is about power, agency, and development. Nigeria cannot diversify its economy, reduce inequality, or build digital infrastructure if its knowledge producers are demoralized and underpaid.
To valorize the humility of a professor turned vegetable seller while ignoring the state’s dereliction of duty is to glorify survival at the expense of structure.
It is not virtue we lack, it is vision. And that is what, in Nigeria’s public discourse, policy elite, and academic leadership must now summon.
http://www.policy.hu/onyeukwu/
“Let us move forward to fight poverty, to establish equity, and assure peace for the next generation.”
-- James D. Wolfensohn
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