THE TOYIN FALOLA INTERVIEWS: A CONVERSATION WITH PROFESSOR OLU OBAFEMI
Toyin Falola
A CONVERSATION WITH PROFESSOR OLU OBAFEMI, PART 3
Transnational Experience
Olu Obafemi
PART A
THE INTERVIEW
(Unedited Transcript)
Toyin Falola
- How did you end up studying in Great Britain?
Olu Obafemi
The idea of going abroad to study was not even one of our most distant dreams as young students. Names like Wole Soyinka, JP Clark and soon being abroad were to us some special names with talismanic wonder. Not to talk of the fairy stories of an Azikiwe in the thirties, stowing away to America in Lincoln or Awolowo borrowing money to study in UK. In my time in the seventies, and with the kind of opportunity put on our laps as young university teachers offered on a platter of gold called Staff Development in which Graduate Assistants with a Second Class Upper or higher being sent abroad to study after just one year of teaching, going abroad had become a reality—for the exceptional students and young teachers was golden. The University of Ilorin just started with us as first set of teachers, under government higher education policy in the north—I think something close to that may have happened in the Western Region, but with us, in the northern States, it was a real occurrence for young graduates in the academia. All you need to do was to apply. The educational system and standards were equivalent with what obtained happened in the universities in the United Kingdom especially. You did not need to write any examination or qualifying examination to attest to your proficiency in English. Our Cambridge exams or General School Certificate, Advance Level, which was used to admit us to Nigerian universities was also used to gain admission to the UK, even for the Bachelor degree. All you needed to do was to apply, send a copy of your degree certificate, with a letter of recommendation from a senior person in academia, preferably a Professor and your admission letter came. As soon as you secured your admission, the University authority in IIorin, on the recommendation of your Head of Department and your Dean, gave you the Staff Development Award which was nearly enough for your studies for the Masters. If you did well, and your supervisor at the doctoral level certified that, you continued your studies until you finished. So, to Sheffield I went and later to the School of English, Leeds. Your salary was also paid to give you a comfortable stay abroad. This must breed a load of nostalgia in our present system nowadays! With these opportunities, I secured admission to the University of Sheffield in 1977 and went off to Leeds in 1978 for my doctorate
Toyin Falola
- You have been to many universities in many countries. What have the encounters been like?
Olu Obafemi
I have been to a number of universities in the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, and Africa, especially South Africa and Ghana. Apart from my Study years in England, I have returned there a few times as a Vising Scholar and have given a few guest talks in a few British Universities. My visits to the other countries were short visits. None was more than three or four months at a time. I found my student life quite interesting. I had very good relationships with my supervisors in Sheffield and Leeds. Both Professors Christopher Heywood, a South African Africanist Professor and Professor martin Banham, certainly one of the most humane and genuine Africanist scholars I have ever encountered. My time in Sheffield was nearly wholly spent studying for my MA, specializing in African Literature. Outside of the classroom, the experience was not as pleasant. In fact, it was nearly traumatic given the kind of racism that I faced in 1977. Imagine a young man, fresh from Africa and the kind of cold attitude that I confronted in the trains, bosses and taxi cabs, in the bitchy coldness of Winter. I found that I had freedom to use three seaters in the car or the bus as people fled for me once I entered as if I was leprous or carrying a contagion. At that stage, the racism was not subtle at all, even though it was not official or overtly institutional. The worst part of it was the second degree racism or is it xenophobia that my friends and I, especially Bengal Owojaiye (now a retired Director of FAAN) suffered in the hands of two Afro-Caribbean girls with whom we shared a flat on Marlborough Road in Sheffield. It was a very rude shock. If you refer to the experience in the buses, as culture shock, how could one define the experience of black girls originally from Trinidad or Jamaica, I cannot remember now. We got there and felt a great relief—that you have escaped from the city racism to the warm hands of Blacks like us. They carried on their shoulder an unearned, unmerited feeling of superiority that was totally unimaginable. They were ashamed to share a bathroom with us, so they woke up about dawn, every morning, to scrub the baths for hours before using it, if we were the last to use it the previous night! We just managed not to commit murder, the level of our fury mixed with disappointment. We had to stand up to them verbally, until they fled. These were girls who were studying for their OND, feeling superior to comfortable Nigerian postgraduate students from the biggest part of Africa. Besides, it was still in the days where landlords were unwilling to give their houses to blacks to rent—the kind of experience Whole Soyinka described in that beautiful poem, ’Telephone Conversation’. Inside the campus, and in the refectory, life was free and enjoyable. It felt like not going back to the streets through the buses or going back to the house. We spent free time in the pubs where real human beings carried on with their lives. In the seventies, racism was still quite raw in Britain, never mind governments, public diplomacy and anti-racism laws. In those days, it was not every night club that a black man cool stroll into for cooling off, no matter how impeccably cut their three pieces were.
Life in Leeds, barely a year after, was the opposite. So much friendliness in the theatre workshop where I studied, and warm, near-parental care and love that radiated from my supervisor, Professor Martin Banham and the other staff and Lectures in the School of English. Such was the warmth that I got a multi-racial cast for my two plays that I premiered at the Workshop Theatre in Leeds (Nights of a Mystical Beast (1980) and Naira Has No Gender (1990) when I went back as a Visiting scholar.
My experience in Germany, mainly at the University of Bayreuth, in the overseeing company of that great African theatre scholar, the late Eckhard Breitinger was simply animating. He and Jürgen, the East German who first invited me to Germany, were simply fantastic human beings. Under the DAAD Fellowship, I went to Germany every year for four years in the middle of the nineties. Life in Germany was made most accommodating with the company of that great Austro-German culture buster, whom I referred to as border smasher, Ulli Beier, was simply memorable.
I taught and produced plays in the United States; first at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville for a few times and at the Western Illinois University, in Macomb. I had great hosts and plenty of exchange with students. My host in Tennessee, Professor Kurt Eisen behaved like an African, even though he had never stepped on the soil of Africa. It is memorable to recall that the first time he came to Africa was to Nigeria during my Sixtieth Birthday and he truly enjoyed himself. It was with a lot of grief and pain for to learn of his death in the year 2019 when I was on my way to the United States.
My teaching experience in Western Illinois was facilitated by my former student, colleague, friend and son, Prof Abdul Rasheed Na’Allah who was heading the Department of African American Literature there. I enjoyed the environment and the entire university management once came, including the University President, one each day of the week to have breakfast with and to discuss scholarship and university experience. The only university culture difference I had was my encounter with a student in one of my classes. It could never happen in Nigeria. The attitude was that they have paid for your tutorship and you were beholding unto them. This particular fateful day, this young lady came twenty minutes into the hour with the most carefree, in fact uncivil attitude you could imagine. Coming from the kind of background I came from, I had asked her to leave the class or I leave. She said it was up to me to choose what to do as she had a right to receive the Lectures since she had paid for it. The rest of the class was unperturbed and I had to leave. I received my lesson of the different temperaments between the American system where the student was the boss and must be pleased in order to be well rated and Nigeria where the teacher was in charge. My experience in Ghana and South Africa were commonplace and, in the University of Limpopo in particular, the students were truly bright and I enjoyed all my theatre workshop hours with them under the direction of Professor Femi Abodunrin. These are a few examples of my Diaspora experiences. As I said, my life in the Diaspora was not enduring as I am the quickest to run back home after my short schedules. I am like the proverbial lizard on the Nigerian wall, who could not depart from it for too long. But as you said, I have been in many places in the Diaspora—Turkey, Japan, Cuba, South Korea, France, Serbia, Mexico, and so on.
PART B
INTERVIEW ANALYSIS AND REFLECTIONS BY TOYIN FALOLA
Photo: An Ilorin Market
In-Between Spaces: Olu Obafemi and His Transnational Experience
Migrations and displacements experts and scholars have opened our eyes to the motivations behind human movements. One of the most valuable lessons we derive from their informed and objective positions is that the push-pull factors of migration are time or era-dependent. Apart from the historical mass exodus of Africans orchestrated by Europeans engaged in trans-Atlantic slave trade, migrations have always fostered international unity. However, in contemporary times, something new has happened that has changed human history, or more specifically, the African migration trend. The accelerating speed of African migration, either to Europe or the Americas, reflects ambivalent social conditions. While we must present these conditions so that people would understand the trajectory of human movements in contemporary times, we will look at how push-pull factors influenced Olufemi Obafemi’s diasporic experience. The story behind his revelation of people’s interest to study abroad conceals a record of the period’s political assurance between the 1940s and 1970s in contrast to what we have today. The uncovering of this obscure past would help our understanding of their transnational success and the cause of today’s downturn in the international image.
To be more specific, the British government, which was the colonial force that took control of the nation, established a diplomatic relationship with the countries at the tail end of their existence as a colonial power and immediately after granting independence to them, especially Nigeria. It was because of this diplomatic relationship that some people, including the globally accepted literary giants of Nigerian ancestry, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark, or political stalwarts like Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe (although he studied in America), among others in academia, migrated to these international communities to continue their pursuit of education. They did this mainly as a goodwill effort by the government of the time. Even when they could have stayed back to work for their individual financial development, they were more concerned about the Africanization, or if you like, Nigerianization, of their home country, so that it could be detoxified of the colonial influences that were continuously changing their identity configuration. The nationalistic persuasion suggests that the generation was interested in developing their country because the government had a clear roadmap for their future. The saying that “the spirit is willing, but the body is weak” did not apply to the country and the people because both the government and the people were genuinely ready.
Barely four decades after this period of identity rejuvenation and nationalist pride, there appeared to be a sharp decline in the Nigerian government’s zeal and energy to develop its citizenry, who would, in turn, build a virile economy and accommodating environment required for subsequent greatness. It was suicidal for any government indisposed to the people’s welfare to expect genuine patriotism in return; for a hungry man, as the popular saying goes, is an angry man. Within these alluded four decades came corruption of unprecedented magnitude, economic despoliation came with protruding stature, insecurity surged high, and leadership deficit became ubiquitous. In their way of responding, individuals immediately considered the option of limping out of the country in surprising numbers. Even when the means of accomplishing this are usually stringent, the determination to undergo what they consider as momentary pains to access better welfare packages overseas is bewilderingly stronger. Because they faced pressure that has increased the dread of push factors, Nigerians in contemporary time migrate to European countries, the Americas, and other destinations, even to the level of being stowaways. The story is not the same thing with the generation of Obafemi, however. He carefully followed in the footsteps of his Nigerian predecessors in obtaining a higher education degree from Britain as part of a nationalist project meant to intellectually develop their people so they could contribute to building the nation.
Obviously, these two generations’ stories are unequal, and as a result, their reactions and focus would be different. For example, Obafemi’s generation and the ones preceding him contributed excellently to the country’s development. They used their intellectual powers to build a foundation that could comfortably carry the weight of Nigeria to a considerable extent, provided that the succeeding generations continue to make conscious efforts for its management. Although the reality that the Western environment could have been harsh on racial climate with these generations cannot be overemphasized, it cannot be contested that they were exposed to the European political and social systems that helped them import ideas from there to their home country. They modeled their political philosophy, economic system, and social philosophies after these countries. The patriotism was high, and the urge for individual contributions towards developing their country was electric. The challenge of international suspicion against Nigerians or Africans was nonexistent. Respect and dignity were mutual, and thus, Obafemi’s generation made their invaluable contributions to the advancement of the Nigerian cause. The government invested in their educational pursuit, and they equally repaid the government by moving the society forward with their ideas.
The University of Ilorin sponsored Obafemi to continue with his graduate studies, and because he did well, he proceeded to do his PhD program in Britain. We should also note that the opportunity to study abroad was tied to their academic performance as undergraduates. Anyone who did not secure a ticket into the second-class upper category and above would forfeit this opportunity. Apart from being successful as a student under this requirement, Obafemi also became a known figure in the diaspora because of his exceptional intelligence and productivity. For this reason, it is impossible to doubt Obafemi’s academic brilliance and his subsequent intellectual engagements at the national level are positive evidence of his outstanding academic skills.
By the way, the fact that the then Nigerian government sponsored students to travel abroad reinforces the argument that the country was deliberate and purposeful about its transformation plan, unlike what is obtainable in Nigeria today. The generational gap is too wide to attract the level of development desired in the country currently. Migrants in the diaspora do not get an encouraging signal from their government. However, what has sustained the interest of past and contemporary Nigerians about traveling abroad to get an education is the reliable system available there. Obafemi’s transnational experience is an indicator that systems work when there is goodwill by the government.
Photo: Ibraheem Sulu-Gambari, Emir of Ilorin
Regardless of the internal challenges the Nigerian people faced or the goodwill they received from their government around the time Obafemi had his graduate degree education in the diaspora, there were crippling transnational experiences that demobilized them and dampened their spirits about international politics. Studying abroad provided Nigerian students of his age with easier access to European countries and a well-reserved privilege to teach in their academic environment. For example, Obafemi has visited several universities in the United Kingdom and Germany after getting his graduate certificate in his chosen fields. In these two European countries, he functioned as a visiting lecturer. In addition, he also worked in some universities in the United States of America. South Africa and Ghana are two of the most dominant African countries whose universities Obafemi has visited as a researcher and a scholar. All of these solidified his transnational teaching experience and reinforced his understanding of different countries’ institutional behavior. His experiences as a student and teacher, for instance, in the United Kingdom, is different from what he saw in the United States, even though they were structurally interconnected.
One of his generation’s most traumatic experience in the United Kingdom was racism. There have been successive attempts to downplay racists’ atrocity by the personalities who are comfortably alluding to a sense of superiority to themselves. However, this cannot suddenly undermine the fact that racialization has been a thorn in the flesh of its perpetrators because it portrays them in a negative light. Racism is dangerous not only because its victims are subjected to sub-human treatment but also because it can cause depression in individuals who have suffered the brutal consequences of identity-shattering caused by color difference. Like migration, racialization has been a social issue that changes with an era or a generation. Unlike migration, however, there has never been a period when racism was associated with something progressive, simply because it constantly dehumanizes the victims and triggers a feeling of inferiority in them, making them develop a subservient complex.
In no accurate representation can the pains of racism be felt more than how Obafemi describes it. In one of his experiences, he was treated like someone with a contagious disease. People avoided him on public transport or while in subways, just like anyone else. To the Europeans and their Global North allies, Africans were apes and undeserving of association with “civilized” people. This mindset created lopsided power relations between them and led to the institutionalization of racial superiority and prejudices. The West ascribed greatness to itself, occupied the center, and placed Africans at the periphery. Culturally, politically, socially, and in what would extend to their economic relationship, Africans were treated with uncommon disdain. White supremacists, therefore, carried an unearned and unmerited sense of superiority at the detriment of the African people. In the 1970s in the United Kingdom, the Black man was treated to the unfair status of racial discrimination.
From Obafemi’s experience, it is challenging for people like him who grew up in an environment where color does not connect with degradation. Even if they faced the challenges of leadership deficit in their homes and societies, they had never been exposed to a situation where the blackness of their color was exploited for ridicule. The foreign environment immediately became toxic, affecting them so much that the attainment of their academic objectives was fraught with extreme crises. Compared to the political incivility that they experienced in their countries, racism was a greater pill to swallow. People who had only heard about the power imbalance between the colonizers and their subjects had to experience the pangs of colonialism and its destructive institutions first-hand in the United Kingdom. Although there were anti-racist laws to check the excesses of racism, these laws only functioned within the geography of the book in which they were encoded.
More benumbing is that civilization, which erected the infrastructure of racism, succeeded in transmitting this superiority complex to the successive generations of enslaved Africans transported to the Atlantic world. Through socialization, they have given birth to generations of Africans who have imbibed the culture of hatred between them and their distant cousins. Unconvinced about the similarity of their skin color, these sets of Africans believe that assimilation is separating them from the in-house Blacks in the order of quality or other measurements they choose to employ. Their discriminatory attitude is reinforced by the series of disrespect, racial discrimination, and generational castigation within the intersection of migration. They have been so disrespected that they have internalized a much-distorted understanding of themselves and their origin. Thus, they maximize every opportunity to pour their annoyance, disconnection, and enchantment on available victims. Therefore, whenever they come across Africans of different backgrounds, many demonstrate this superiority complex to console them for the backlog of humiliation they have felt. Racism, as a result, was not something exclusive to the Europeans. It manifested among Africans in what is popularly identified as xenophobia.
Countries in South America, where a handful of enslaved Africans were dropped during the triangular slave movement, now have Blacks that maltreat other Blacks in alarming proportion. Obafemi was exposed to another instance of color prejudices under some Trinidadians and Jamaicans. To him, and perhaps other Nigerians alike, finding someone with whom you share a common outlook was the needed relief to escape the heavily racialized environment’s tension. However, they seemed to have been too optimistic with two young Afro-Caribbean women with whom they shared a flat. Rather than enjoy an intellectual conversation, they experienced a rude shock by the degree of racism they witnessed. To the extent that these women would scrub the bathroom they shared before using it under the impression that they cannot share the same space with the Nigerians, and of course, other Africans. Nothing compounds a man’s woes than to encounter this level of disappointment from people whom they believed would share a similar mindset based on their everyday experience. They managed to live with them and keep their sanity because of the knowledge that they would soon end their program and, therefore, part ways with these racially sensitive fellows.
Photo: John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo, 6 April 1935 - 13 October 2020
Amidst all these challenges, however, the diaspora environment has been a solid foundation for the development of many of these Africans abroad. It became the building blocks of their career development and enhanced their ability to manage multicultural or multidimensional issues. Even though the atmosphere appeared threatening and frustrated all their efforts in the society, the academic community was more welcoming and accommodating. Obafemi’s interactions with some dignified researchers and intellectuals in the school showed him that education has always been a fundamental instrument for refining people. Even though society was bent on constructing a mental barricade between the white and the non-white, education has always helped blur the differences motivated by color status. This thinking ensured that he enjoyed a considerable degree of fairness within the school environment, which helped him promote his trade: the theatre. When he premiered his two plays, Nights of a Mystical Beast (1980) and Naira Has No Gender (1990) at the Workshop Theatre in Leeds, he featured a multiracial cast to show the level of acceptance he received.
Meanwhile, a couple of European countries have maintained a fair relationship with Africans, as shown in how they relate with the people. During Obafemi’s journey to Germany, he was welcomed by the country’s pleasant and accommodating atmosphere. The brewing zeal of the people and the bubbling society all contributed to his fond memories of the country. They have created a society where individuals would not be utterly disrespected because they are of a different color than others. He enjoyed the company of notable individuals like Ulli Beier, who had undertaken a series of research about Africans and shown professionalism in his work, and a good sense of friendship with the people. In whatever way Obafemi looked at it, Germany was a remarkable experience because it gave him a different feeling from what he saw while in the United Kingdom. Because of the absence of extreme racism and other social forms of crises, he succeeded and has various records of excellence to show for his works.
Obafemi has also taught and even presented plays in the USA. Throughout his teaching and acting experience, he has been accorded maximum respect as an intellectual and a committed playwright. He acknowledged that professors treated him beautifully and acted as his distant siblings, even without stepping their foot on the African soil. It was a marvelous experience. The warm reception in the USA enabled him to build a relationship that spanned geographical boundaries with some very inspiring individuals. Perhaps, because the American environment has a history with the Black populace, Obafemi enjoyed some enduring relationships with some Africans in the country, which helped protect his identity and created a sense of belonging in him.
However, due to cultural differences, teaching in American society was a bit of a different experience for him. The university students in America are incomparable to students in African universities because, while the former delineates cultural factors from the acquisition of knowledge, the latter considers the academic environment where they continue their accumulation of cultural values. This difference in mindset creates the kinds of attitudes that each set of students demonstrates. Obafemi gives Africa to others and receives from others their own culture.
Toyin Falola
A CONVERSATION WITH PROFESSOR OLU OBAFEMI, PART 5
OLU OBAFEMI AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES
PART A
THE INTERVIEW
(Unedited Transcript)
Toyin Falola
- What do you consider as the critical challenges facing the African Universities?
Olu Obafemi
The Universities in Africa suffer from two kinds of perception—exogenous and endogenous. The image that African universities have caught the world outside, especially in the digital, information age, and the way that shapes consciousness regarding African universities—its ratings, its values in terms of access to external educational system and so on requires a lot rethinking, remoulding. This early in 2021 in World University ranking, only one university in Africa is among the best 155 universities in the world. That is the University of Cape Town in South Africa and only Four Universities, all of them in South Africa, are in the 351 -- 400 bracket of world’s best universities. Only 11 or so African Universities are in the QS World University Rankings. Without even making any serious effort to debate credibility of these rankings, it is best to look at the factors or benchmarks usually deployed to evaluate or rank universities global. The commonest among them are the reputation of those universities as judged through stipulated criteria, the ratio of teachers against the studentry, reputation of employers, citations and international Faculty ratio and so on. These are aggregated as performance indications usually based on the volumes of research and international outlook. These are largely external, however credible they may be. No doubt, by whatever measuring yardsticks, African universities are not doing as well as they should and can. Internally, if we call our spade a spade, we know that most of the indicators of performance of our universities leave a lot to be desired. Indicators of highly cited researchers and generally academic and research performers are not so high. We know the factors responsible for some of these things. Volume and quality of research is quantitatively below average. What is African governments’ input and perception of the place of research in the national economy? How many research institutions and universities do we boast of in Africa? What percentage of national appropriation go to education, universities and research? These are areas that need to be visited quite urgently and radically. The effort being made currently by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) is appreciable and should be built upon in Nigeria and other African countries. There is a massive effort being put together by TETFUND to set up a National Research Fund Policy in which I am a participant and I am very excited about the effort. Other African nations must borrow a leaf from this so that a strong connect can be erected between countries’ research activities, the industries and governments for national development.
Toyin Falola
- What other roles have you played in the promotion of higher education that have excited you and elevated your spirit?
Olu Obafemi
I have just mentioned in part such a role. In the past two years or so, I have been involved in efforts by Tetfund and the National Universities Commission to improve and raise the standard of education in Nigeria. I was involved in the Presidential/Ministerial Education Retreat a few years back which came out with the recommendation that the situation with the educational system in Nigeria has attained an emergency status. The President personally hosted the concluding meeting of the Retreat and affirmed the urgency of the situation. I understand that a part of that document is already receiving some attention. I am presently on the Committee of the NUC to carry out a comprehensive review of the benchmark of curricula in the universities. The exercise is on-going. I am participating on three Tetfund Committees; a) Impact Assessment Advisory Committee, b) the Tetfund Advisory Group which is looking at Book development, publishing and journal development, c) I am on the Education Thematic Group of the Thirteen Thematic Groups of Tetfund’s Research and Development Trust Foundation currently working and have reached a very advanced stage. I have been appointed a Chairman on the recently constituted Visitation Panels to many Federal Universities in Nigeria. I am excited by the high possibilities of all these efforts and many more to reposition Nigeria’s education for the better, complicit to the expectations of the knowledge economy in the twenty-first century.
PART B
INTERVIEW ANALYSIS AND REFLECTIONS BY TOYIN FALOLA
OLU OBAFEMI AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES
Building a future
Universities are both physical and non-physical infrastructure, housing numerous intellectuals who generate ideas derived from limitless sources and translate them into concrete results for society’s benefits. Universities are established in response to the challenges that societies face, with the intention that their underlying intellectual engagement would provide necessary solutions to the myriad of problems confronting the people. When a university is not meeting up with these fundamental responsibilities, something is not right. Aside from the traditional role of the academic environment, there are other useful functions that the school is geared towards achieving in contemporary times, such as the projection of a future for a people based on the knowledge they have about the past, inventing tools and materials that are relevant to the present, and developing the students in ways that they can be independent to face the challenges of life with utmost confidence. In essence, experts across different fields of study are considered the social telescope with which people can look into society’s future and make accurate projections. This is their purpose, and it has been their most significant contribution to humankind.
However, it raises a chain of logical questions when schools underperform in these social roles assigned to them. This is because education has been the only choice known to humans from the beginning of time in developing themselves and the society. In Africa, there has been a barrage of questions raised about the importance of universities, especially when compared to other continents. Africa is unarguably lagging, and there are statistics confirming the underwhelming performances of universities and their academic staffs. When this argument surfaces, two things are likely to be asked or considered, as Olufemi Obafemi did. The first one is to examine the hands, the human capital, in African universities to see if they are lower in intellectual capacity compared to their colleagues in other climes. The second one examines the place of the universities in the country’s political process. Without a doubt, these two factors are important because they mutually determine the time to which people’s educational system would go and the level at which they would be beneficial to their host society. It is almost impossible that there would be no consensus on evaluating the quality of scholars in many African universities.
First, African scholars are not the albatross of African university education. This is because we have had many of them as close friends or colleagues, and we are aware of their adequate transformational capacity and transcendental impact when they migrate to other places for similar engagement. They stand at par with their contemporaries in other climes regarding their intellectual brilliance and enriched intelligence. However, they are victims of a system that frustrates their efforts for political, rather than philosophical, expediency. Underpaid and overworked, the productivity flow of the African intellectuals is crushed and made insignificant. Africa is home to one of the fastest-growing populations in the world, and despite the immediate demand for more capacity-building in the academic front to enable opportunities for a growing number of people, many countries in the continent are unconcerned about the need for a transformative change or improvement in their educational sector.
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Obafemi was implicit in his response that the bulk of the blame for the poor performance of the African universities compared with their contemporaries in other climes rests not exactly on teachers but the various government agencies of these countries. Poor environmental conditions are products of the political insincerity of many African leaders. Because of the quest for political recognition, individuals who are offered educational management positions may even be unqualified. Ironically, the same lecturers stuck with the system in Africa miraculously do brilliantly well when they migrate to countries on other continents. This shows clearly well that the problem may not reside in the scholar but in the system itself.
Second, another factor that can be categorized as the reason for the initial point is the flawed policy statements for which many governments in African countries are known, especially when it comes to educational decisions. Apart from South Africa and a few countries in the continent that dedicate a good part of their budgetary allocation to their educational system, many African countries have deplorable financial attitudes to their educational institutions. Their meager concentration of funds to the education sector has reflected their distrust in the capacity of academic institutions to become the problem solvers that we naturally expect them to be. This thinking handicaps us because we have not only sabotaged our collective development, but we have also refused to provide alternative solution-finding institutions to the school. From the budgetary allocation accorded to the African universities, one cannot understand why industrial action is the readied route through which academics advocate for their rights. They have seen it as the leverage for dragging the government into their demands. Naturally, one would consider this a wrong move. However, one cannot but remain grossly flummoxed when one understands the breakneck allocations awarded to sectors with minimal national significance.
Obafemi considered the above factors as endogenous and explained that they continue to frustrate scholars’ efforts in the African universities to make a prodigious impact on the continent’s educational system. Citing several South African universities, he opened the can of an age-long controversy that centers on Africans’ capacity to manage themselves. Apart from the fact that the Europeans extended their stay in South Africa, which allowed them to plan its corresponding engagement, they have also dedicated a substantial amount of their time to the erection of an educational system, laying a foundation built upon in the contemporary time. The exclusion of South African schools on the global ranking statistics would mean that there is no single African university among the top 400 in the world. Even though there are reservations about the ranking system and process, this does not erase the insinuation that African universities are underperforming and have continued difficulty occupying an inspiring global rating position.
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When we understand that school is meant to solve society’s problems and that the African schools have not been doing well, we will connect the dots as to why Africans continue to be consumers and not manufacturers. Most of the things imported into the continent are made by trained individuals in their country’s educational system. Therefore, it is worrisome that even though Africa is confronted with unemployment, lack of infrastructures, institutional deficit, among many other myriads of challenges facing the continent, their universities have been so ineffective in providing solutions to these nagging challenges. Observed intimately, one would notice that the numbers of research institutions are comparatively low. While there are different countries where research institutes occupy a significant position in their national and continental politics, saving their people from doom and providing them critical solutions to their existential problems, this has been a problem in Africa because there are few research institutes to undertake this social and intellectual responsibility. Therefore, the absence of these lofty institutions can be categorized under the endogenous factors that continue to limit the capacity of the African university system.
To talk about the availability of research institutes is to address the secondary; the primary is the availability of teachers in the university systems, as no nation can rise above the qualities of its teachers! The private-owned ones, in surprising numbers, now surpass the government-owned university institutions in the early 1960s, which are more in number than the private-owned ones. Of course, this is nuanced ideologically, but it is not rocket science that the ratio of the people who enroll in government-owned institutions is proportional to the poverty level of the people, which statistically is high in Africa, by the way.
Due to their financial conditions, many Africans cannot afford the private-owned schools even though every parent now wants their wards to acquire university education. Consequently, this overstretches the school system as the ratio of teachers to students remains seriously fearful. The number of students comes at a geometric ratio, whereas the personnel is far below the needed number. It kills the productivity drive of teachers who are incapable of engaging their students as specific academic exercises demand and are also bombarded by unprofitable work. This unalloyed engagement prevents many of them from facing research engagements and precludes their possibility of being awarded needed grants for developmental research projects. Instead of becoming solution finders, they become problems themselves, seeking resolutions from anyone who can provide it.
Photo: Prof. Olu Obafemi with Prof. Dele Layiwola and Prof. Olutayo C. Adesina, during Prof. Adesina’s investiture as Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters at the University of Lagos.
Obafemi remarks that the exogenous albatross of the African university education can be observed in the contextual imbalance criteria used for the ranking system―a political feat meant to reinforce the West’s pessimistic assumptions against Africans. He laments, however, that Africans allow the West to do this because of the attitude they show to their educational systems. For instance, international academics’ attraction is impossible in an academic environment where the lecturers are underpaid and overworked. The encouragement to function maximally in this form of environment would be impossible. The effects of this are far-reaching, one of it being that the multicultural and multidimensional educational contributions would not be achieved. This is coupled with the fact that it would deny many of these universities the opportunity to create expansion.
As the world continues in its engagement, more changes are needed to answer modern time demands. Scholars must rise to the occasion of transforming the African academy. Obafemi is forward-looking, and his contributions to the status of African university education are impressive. As a distant observer, the rot in the educational system cannot be difficult to spot given the wide-ranging effects it has on developing versatile products that would have used their intellectual excellence to improve the country’s condition. The failure to produce intellectually-informed minds expected to offer pragmatic solutions and a logical way out of the myriad of challenges facing the continent is a powerful indication that African education is heading in a tragic direction. To deny that these problems are capable of wrecking the continent is to compromise the moral standards expected of an average individual deliberately. The situation is daring, the rot is glaring, and the consequences are devastating. However, solutions to a problem usually take different approaches and dimensions. The way out of the said challenges lies in consolidating individuals and government’s efforts to be effectively defeated.
Photo: Prof. Olu Obafemi with the JAMB Registrar, Prof. Is-Haq Oloyede; President, Women Arise & Centre for Change, Dr Joe Okei-Odumakin; and Prof. M. S. Audu
Apart from the necessity of having a clear blueprint for developmental progression, African educational planners must identify what works for them and the beautiful ways of achieving their predetermined objectives. Education in the continent is unique for both historical and political reasons. Historically, the pre-colonial African education system was an inclusive one where different agencies of socialization were actively involved in the development of the students/learners. This reinforces the place of communal and cultural upbringing in the development of a child. Even when we are not contesting that the contemporary world’s education system has surpassed this traditional method, we are unpersuaded to believe that it is challenging to integrate this conventional system into the current techniques. Such thinking would delegitimize the African epistemological terrain and affirm the assumption that their educational infrastructure is inferior. Once we agree that all individuals, including those in government and academics, have their roles in its revival, we would begin to think inwardly and creatively at that.
This brings us to the contributions that someone like Obafemi has made as far as the Nigerian education system is concerned. Even though each country’s political system usually interferes with how things work, we cannot still deny the reality that in every dispensation, there are academics who serve on various committees at different levels, such as the Senate and Council. These representatives can speak truth to power. Academics within this said committees and groups, just like Obafemi has done on many occasions, are expected to provide expert knowledge and information when decisions about the educational system or curriculum are made. It is incumbent on these representatives to take an uncompromising position, especially regarding the debates that would facilitate expected progress for the continent’s educational system.
Obafemi has contributed his quota serving in various capacities as a member of TETFUND, the National Universities Commission (NUC), Presidential/Ministerial Education Retreat, and many more. He must have offered well-informed advice to the government on how to revamp the system. An academic in groups where vital decisions are made add to the African university education system’s prospect because he could offer them expert advice on the issue under discussion. As a member of the NUC committee, taking the step to design the country’s curriculum is a significant contribution Obafemi is making to the educational system. Many of the groups that he belongs to are dedicated to developing research institutes and making available the needed fund for people to work with. Apart from being in these various groups, he can be accredited to visit universities to monitor their progress and examine their activities. These are among the different ways his generation is making reasonable efforts to change the narrative of the African educational system. Once people like him make notable efforts to expand the frontiers of knowledge in the continent, subsequent actions would be tailored towards the maintenance of what has been introduced. For now, the area of personnel development, research, and outstanding teaching will move the education system forward.
Photo: Professor Olu Obafemi
Gbemi Tijani
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Toyin Falola
A CONVERSATION WITH PROFESSOR OLU OBAFEMI, PART 6
Olu Obafemi, African Scholarship, and Social Solutions
Toyin Falola
- As a notable scholar/critic and creative writer, what is the essential scope and focus of your work?
Olu Obafemi
I operate, essentially as a scholar/critic and creative writer. As a scholar, I try to contribute to canon formation for the apprehension and cognition of the works of creative writers in Nigeria, Africa and the world. I investigate the aesthetic and ideological preoccupations of writers of fiction, prose and especially drama. What is the relevance of their works to their immediate society and humanity at large? What propositions can we make to advance the level of their engagement in those issues pertaining to the human condition and the mode of expression they adopt or apply-- in terms of technical principles, appreciation, dramaturgy, aesthetic forms and theories that will make their works better accessible to and impactful on their various immediate and enduring audiences. What I do as a creative writer is to apply the medicine I dole out through meta-criticism to other creators—develop a form, whose internal organization, entertainment devices and social relevance carry my ideological vision—my social message. How do I create art that arrests/captivates the attention of my audience, sustains and retains it in an enduring way? If I do doctrinaire art-- art that only weaves a design on the consciousness of my audience; art that is mere propaganda or palpably didactic and moralistic, I will certainly lose that audience whose social contract with me goes beyond indoctrination. I know that the situation in which we find ourselves in Nigeria and Africa compels urgent mediation by the artist in terms, not just of depicting and reflecting the decadence and obsolescence in our body politic but offers measures that will reconstruct and recreate the system and bring renewal to our society—our politics, our social economy which is in a state of doldrums. I know that I have proposed an equipoise in technical and ideological terms; I have to covertly, un-obtrusively instruct in the middle of obvious laughter provocation—create uneasy smile with the ‘truth’ I am telling. We cannot just entertain as a dominant engagement, without dealing with the issues which repress and burden our society in this age and time, when rocket science requires to humanize; wear a human face, serve humanity.
Toyin Falola
- What do you foresee as the way out for Africa in the twenty-first century?
Olu Obafemi
There has been loads of impediments and barriers erected on the path to development and fulfilment for Africa in the past through slave trade, imperialism, colonization, even neo-colonization. Even now, the neo-liberal impositions through economic options of neo-capitalism are there in overflowing abundance. That is the whole essence of the so-called Globalization; the nullification of tempo-spatial distances and the conscious shrinking of the world to make the South more easily exploitable. It is not time for lamentation or mourning. It is time to erect the kind of envisioned leadership that will take the continent out of the woods, realizing that Africa is still the continent of the future in terms of the abundant physical and human resources in Africa. It is also time to grow a critical mass that we confront and awaken the predator class to their responsibility in leadership of rescuing the continent from this present state of comatose that she sprawls in. We have a docile middle class and a drooling, preyed upon masses. The potentials I Africa, tangible and ineffable, is pervasive. That is why the whole world is still courting Africa, in self-interest. We need to bring to power visionary leaders who are patriotic and selfless to turn these favourable realities around to the advantage of Africa. There is a great chance for Africa to still rule the world by first radically transforming itself and reconstructing itself and stopping the mendicancy we display at the shores of those who have raped our continent for centuries.
PART B
INTERVIEW ANALYSIS AND REFLECTIONS BY TOYIN FALOLA
Photo: A choice to go to school
The responses elicited from Olufemi Obafemi when asked about the roles of a dramatist or a creative artiste in the development of their immediate society are inspiring. People can quickly identify with a medical doctor's job, but not many individuals know the roles that creative professionals play in society. To many of their audience, dramatists and literary scholars are mere entertainers whose relevance ends with their ability to make them laugh. However, the social and cultural engineering activities that people in the drama or entertainment industry undertake as their responsibility goes beyond their commitment to providing comic relief to the burdened society or interlude to the barrage of social challenges. They have self-assigned to themselves the duty of serving as the society's conscience while also being known as the eyes of their cultural identity, seeing far into the future and making necessary indications to encourage planning and avoid imminent melancholy. Even when their role is primarily unnoticed, they remain dedicated to their profession with a fantastic work ethic. Obafemi belongs to this category, and from his response, one can deduce the assortment of the ideas he has lent to society through his works. A number of these would be extensively discussed in what follows.
Theatre professionals demonstrate their competence when they organize social experiences and convert them to consumable contents that shape people’s understanding of the complexity of human existence. Through this, their audience imagines themselves in the work of art they are digesting. This is because society is the minefield where the activities shown in the creation of art are drawn. Since the readers or the audience can easily relate to the issues and ideas discussed, they become active participants in their consuming works. This is where the entertaining characteristic of literary productions emerges. A dramatist who adapts the story of a wife constantly abused by her husband has perhaps done so to achieve any of the following aims. One, the writer exposes the gender inequity inherent in the patriarchal structure of their society. Two, while doing this, the writer captures the repressed aspirations of women in such a society. Equally, the intermittent injection of comic relief into the text entertains the audience while the message is passed across. But for a non-professional, their understanding of the text could have ended in the area of entertainment.
Incidentally, Obafemi is both a literary writer and a scholar critic. More importantly, he has remained successful in the two domains. As a literary critic, Obafemi’s cardinal philosophy of evaluating a work of art is to consider its practical import. As an African literary artist or creative writer, the crass obsession with nature does not have a place in African works because writers are meant to address society’s ills and bring them to redress. Writers in the continent do not write just for pleasure. They are bound by some social responsibility to reveal what they face as a people and civilization so that their welfare will receive appropriate attention. African countries are ravaged by insecurity, disease, economic degradation, political insincerity, among many other things. Therefore, it is only logical that intellectuals, especially those from the literary sphere, reflect these challenges in their works to be projected to places not imagined. This is what Obafemi has been doing in his criticisms. In other words, it measures the appropriateness of a particular work of art concerning how it can reflect the people’s sociopolitical conditions under severe sociopolitical conditions. When books satisfy these preconditions, they would be seen as contextually fitting and socially significant to society.
By investigating writers’ works regarding their ideological standings, sociocultural, and sociopolitical exigencies, Obafemi has been recognized as an impartial critic whose judgment of literary material is informed by objective scholarship. To get to this position in academic engagement means one is vast enough in the knowledge of literary theories that are canonized globally. Theories are to literary critics what syringes are to doctors or what gasoline is to every car owner. The former would find it extremely difficult to provide medical services to patients without the mentioned instrument, while the latter would make no observable move without gasoline. Theories are the abstract mechanisms through which literary works are evaluated and appreciated. It is commendable to know that Obafemi has a good mastery of the theories associated with an academic scholarship. He has deployed them in his intellectual examinations and evaluation of the works produced by different scholars. It is also noteworthy that being accustomed to criticism enables one to understand people’s political and economic composition, contributing to society’s configuration.
Photo: Managing hunger
Critics are, by this profession, expert social scientists who reflect on the emerging discourse available in a text to understudy the society and arrive at informed conclusions about things. Looking at the technical aspect of their works as passively mentioned above, one can ask how they are considered nationally significant to their development. To such curious minds, Obafemi states that their trade is appreciated by individuals who can establish the connection between their works and society. For example, the critic understudies a work of art and brings out society’s economic structures responsible for distributing wealth to steer society’s trajectory in a specific direction. He looks at the instances of capitalist culture and how it has been the basis of the social relationships between different classes in society. From there, the critic can be predictive of such a society’s future, making informed projections about the probable outcome of an excessively capitalist adventure and its disposition to birth an overly chaotic and generally detached society that does not cater to the well-being of an average individual. As consumers of such scholar-critic works, one would understand that the society reflected in the writings is sitting on a keg of gunpowder, waiting for an explosion at the slightest provocation. Such works will become exceptionally informative because they would reveal the oddity involved in the appropriation of any philosophy in the running of society’s affairs. Still, they would also show the intricacies of human relationships encouraged by such society's forms of ideas. Whatever the critic shows would become the basis for measuring the society to understand what is most suitable.
As a creative writer, however, the above system’s internalization helps create his artistic productions. Obafemi belongs to a school of scholars who appreciates works of art by using a series of theoretical models as a guide, so it becomes relatively significant to use them in his artistic creations. He is aware that the successful sustenance of the audience’s attention lies in providing sequential and captivating results because that would be the basis for getting their unalloyed attention. This inevitably places a level of pressure on him and every committed artist like him. For reasons that are not unconnected to their desire to carry the audience along, writers must conduct an accurate feasibility study of their intending audience so that the materials handed down would make maximum impact. For example, suppose one targets to write about the moral decadence evident in loose or indecent dressing that has perforated contemporary time’s moral architecture; in that case, the most suitable audience for such work is the youth demographic, who are experiencing the process of enculturation. Therefore, it places some responsibility on the writer to consider the age bracket's language peculiarity to achieve the predetermined goals. Informed critics, who are also creative writers, understand their works' enormity in this sense, and they always stand up to the responsibility.
Photo: Poor learning environment
As a result, what the artiste is doing is no less than a leader’s work because literary works simulate leadership roles in many different ways. For one, the audience whose intention is strictly entertainment would not be forsaken at the behest of others whose concern is didactic or moralistic fervor. Thus, it is incumbent on the dramatist to factor in the audience’s concerns so that none of them would have reasons to despise his/her intellectual productions. Apart from the fact that this places much responsibility on the producers of these works, it also brings out their leadership capabilities. This is where Obafemi’s message becomes more explicit. The onus of leadership lies in responding to diverse and differing opinions without making either side feel disrespected. Here, the emphasis is mainly on managing diversity and various views, especially about the world’s current sociopolitical conditions.
At the intersection between globalization and civilization is the responsibility to update one’s attitude to accommodate human society's changing dynamics. Individuals from different sociopolitical backgrounds look up to leadership to provide solutions to their existential challenges and expanding issues. This is one of the numerous lessons that being a dramatist has taught Obafemi. It, therefore, justifies the thematic and ideological focus around which his works are circumscribed. Although it is clear from literary scholars' efforts that behind the production of celebrated works of art is an eternal circle of activities that authors indulge in to bring satisfaction to the audience, it comes at a personal cost.
In most cases, they would have to sacrifice their time and leisure to explore all the possible ways to ensure that their audience is satisfactorily catered for. They view their profession as a means of achieving humanity’s ultimate plan, which is to lighten up people’s lives through their works. While they are duty-bound to make sure that their audience across every setting is sufficiently catered for, they equally must check that they do not sacrifice truth-telling, originality, and ethics in the process so that the quality of their works would not be questioned. They must understand that beyond their desire to ensure that their audience gets maximum satisfaction is the social responsibility to x-ray what is happening in their society through their creativity. A society that is corrupt to an unimaginable proportion or plagued by insecurity caused by the inability to manage its territorial integrity will not be consummately rebranded as if nothing is wrong with its political system. As much as their profession binds them to reduce the social pressure and burden placed on them, they are equally expected to showcase the environment's downsides through their works.
When asked about the possible solutions out of the woods for Africans, Obafemi is very pragmatic and analytical. Like many African scholars, he traces Africa’s underdevelopment to the western imperial system that has erected a barrier to African’s access to their potentials. He laments that this wall was laid during slavery and was succeeded by its destructive accomplices like colonization, neocolonialism, and the contemporary neoliberal economy tailored to exploit Africa and Africans. Being trapped in the middle of nowhere is a condition traceable to Africa’s recent European relationship. For people whose human capital was extracted for more than four centuries, it is impossible that the consequences would not be subsequently seen in their public life. During slavery, the continent’s best hands were forcefully displaced because of the force of expansionist ideologues. Having left their home countries hurriedly, they became outcasts in two different civilizations. Those left behind suffered a psychological backlash from the experience and became incapacitated by their people’s forceful extraction. This would be immediately followed by the colonization agenda where the colonial powers indiscriminately seized Africa’s political institutions and structures.
The continuation of exploitation during colonialism sent Africa centuries back in the development trajectory. Having their political system controlled by the imperialists meant that their natural resources were taken in overflowing abundance. In the process, their institutions worked essentially for the West, to the misfortune of African countries. The assignment of domination and subjugation was in place with colonial infrastructure as its economic and political life subsumed under a foreign one. Therefore, the combination of slavery and colonialism became so poisonous for the people that it comfortably inhibited them from growing maximally. Consequently, every African country, without exception, became vulnerable to economic and cultural predation because they were exposed to activities that critically challenged them beyond what they could handle.
More than a hundred years of dominance meant that these African countries lost touch with authentic or representational leadership and suffered mainly from the experience. They were neither represented nor given the necessary platform to determine their future. The people’s anger was used as a motivation to challenge colonialism’s structures to have access to their own natural and human resources without being placed at the subordinate position for which they have been known in recent time. However, the prospect was ominous because it seemed that the colonial powers had mastered the act of infringing upon the people’s resources by proxy.
The era of neocolonialism began. During the post-independence period, emerging African leaders became willing collaborators with Western imperialists. They offered themselves as conduits for the continuous exploitation and despoliation of African resources. With a tempting financial and political offer, post-independence African leaders succumbed to the colonial Europeans’ pressure and conceded to the unholy demand of sabotaging African development. It was almost unbelievable that the people who should have been the cornerstones of African transformation, despite their awareness of the long-lasting dehumanization that their forebears suffered under the same colonial systems, erected a mercantile political structure in the post-independence period where significant positions and juicy appointments were reserved for the highest bidders. As implied by Obafemi’s response, all of this entangled African progress and civilization because it mushroomed into something bigger incapable of being handled without extreme diplomacy. Heightened by globalization's pressure, the African people became lost and were constantly in a state of flux. They did not have a central philosophy with which their civilization can be developed or launched. Indeed, constructing an effective solution becomes part of the problem.
According to Obafemi, what is needed to combat these existential challenges, having understood that the burden of solutions lies with forward-looking individuals, is to develop the right set of leaders who understands the import of shared leadership. Leadership attracts the necessary encomium whenever something is done correctly, just as it receives criticism for a society moving in a purposeless direction. Thus, understanding this places a responsibility on the leaders to develop the right frame of mind to combat the continent's problem. To do this, the class stratification that has become a part of African culture must be carefully and effectively dismantled. The existence of class presupposes that it would be subject to intimidation. The upper-class occupants would find sufficient reason to challenge those in the middle class, who would, in turn, scout the lower class to flex their muscles against. All of these are a means of weakening social infrastructures, which would have a detrimental effect.
As a realist, Obafemi concludes that Africa still has the potential to leapfrog others in the development index if it quickly works towards translating its human and natural potential into tangible results. This can be achieved by having a structured plan towards growth because it is important to define one’s trajectory of development against going into the unseen future without active plans. To do this, one needs vision, driven by incurably patriotic sets of leaders who would accept the duty of advancing the society as natural and generous. Leaders who cater more to their elitist group above the vast majority of people would have difficulty transforming humanity into something exceptional. Representational leadership starts from how leaders prioritize the people and how they conduct themselves. The ones who prioritize the people above themselves would consider the masses’ welfare as primary and not negotiable. When these leaders occupy the various leadership seats in the continent, they will begin to untangle the colonial and neocolonial web, thereby giving the continent a clear direction.
Photo: Post-COVID home studies