Re-Problem of ASUU and the Way Forward

[Jibrin Ibrahim]

*Re-Problem of ASUU and the Way Forward*

By Professor Ibrahim Bello-Kano 

Ismaila Bala a moment ago gave the example of Moses Ochonu as one obsessed with "talking down" on Nigerian university teachers. Early last year, I did an essay on his usual attacks on Nigerian professors especially his insistence that African academics insist that their supervisees give the "theoretical framework" section of their MA and doctoral proposals a primary focus. Ochonu thinks that that's "old fashioned" and utterly "unmodern" for them to do so. After my critique and another's of his position, (I can remember the other critic), Ochonu made a U-turn and offered incoherent defences of his ill-thought views of the matter. The matter ended there, of course.  The tendency of African academics in Western universities to look down on their colleagues in African/Nigerian universities goes to show that any kind of academic Centrism or any Monist conception of scholarship is very bad for free enquiry and academic freedom. Most so called "scholars in the Diaspora" justify their careers and positions in the Wesyern academe by a sort of Afrocentrism or a kind of "Third Worldism" in which they cast themselves as the gate-keepers or "curators" of Non-Western" forms or kinds of knowledge, at least in the eyes of the Western academic establishment. Such Afrocentric scholars will never be allowed to teach, or publish within, properly mainstream Western branches of scholarship. For example, a close friend of mine in a US university, and who took his degrees in Social Theory from Vanderbilt, was not allowed to discuss a key Western author in the field but only Nkrumah and Amilcar Cabral. Why is that? The reason is not hard to discern: the Western academe gives huge scholarships to Africans, for example, to do "African Studies" because it's non longer possible for native Europeans and white Americans to do the old, 19th century research method of "participant observation" in the light of the huge present changes that have shaped the colonizer-colonized relations of the past. It might be practically difficult or dangerous for a Western researcher to visit many parts of the "third world" in the name of research. To circumvent this difficulty, the Western academe would now grant resources to indigenous academics to get the data out and publish it here and there. Then the Western scholar would use the same set of data to spun epistemic theories and models which the Afrucan scholar would then deploy in their teaching and research! With time, the African academic in the West feels entitled to a parity of sorts with the "master European" scholar. Yet such an academic does not have the linguistic, theoretical, or meta-critical wherewithal to take on the Western scholar but only their own African academic brothers and sisters, those teaching in some of the most abject service and institutional conditions in the world, racked by poor salaries, over-crowded lecture halls, and a government determined to implement the Structural Adjustment Programme in its many guises. This is the basis of what may be called the New Racism---- the entirely shocking process by which many, though not all, African academics in the Western academe look down on their African brothers in the same manner by which racist Western authors, from Carl von Linne, Compte de Buffon and James Beattie to Johann Blumenbach, Georges Cuvier and Hegel, earlier saw Africans as part of a degenerate race, stupid, genetically deformed, unintelligent and perpetually living in the dark mantle of night. That's why Western-driven Afrocentric scholarship is nothing but the other side of a virulent Eurocentrism. Any kind or form of scholarship in which there are monist canons or Centres of dissemination, could potentially end up as yet another intellectual and academic arrogance, a more or less imperfect copy of the worst excesses of Eurocentrism. That's my the inventive African scholar or academic should learn to "master" the canons of the so called Western scholarship in order to critique it from the inside and undermine its untenable cultural baggage. I personally discovered, in my interactions with some Western scholars, that they get extremely nervous and intrigued by African academics who show evidence of deep knowledge of canonical Western scholarship. Most Western scholars have nothing but the heritage of Eurocentrism to lean on. That's the basis of their intellectual arrogance. Once they encounter an African who's pretty well grounded in those canons, they become agitated or outrightly or subtly hostile to such a person. Western scholars and establishments just want to see Africans, for example, esconded in "African Studies", which, more often than not, is an Afrocentrism tout court or by all parameters. So, the Western scholar would happily keep his or her Eurocentrism because the African scholar  is also mired in his Afrocentrism. That's why Moses Ochonu, for example, could attack his allegedly "scholarly deficient" African counterparts because he is just one more purveyor of a dubious Afrocentricism. For example, Ochonu is a Professor of African History and not of American or European History. That's the only status he could ever have in his USA university. He may not even get an academic publisher if he were to write about specifically Western or European History. Thus on the basis of his "ghetto" African History professorship, he can get the licence to denigrate his African colleagues and teachers, even those who taught him History as an undergraduate at Bayero University, Kano in the late 1990s.  To conclude the discussion, at least for now, any kind of academic Centrism is untenable and ridiculous. This is the significance of Jacques Derrida's essay, "White Mythology" (1987) in which he shows the mythological and logocentric assumptions and values behind the Western obsession with ranking all within the hierarchy of "great" and "lesser" figures and systems, an incapacity to free itself from the impulse to hierarchicize all systems of value and cultures and sign systems. A rejection of Centres, myths of origin, and logocentric constructions is at the heart of Deconstruction, which, alas, many African academics have failed to study critically or are hostile to on the basis of their petty preoccupation with centrist research programmes of all kinds. Nothing would stand African scholars in good academic stead more than a consistent and ruthless critique of all myth-making and hankering after an Unaccountable Centre---- of identity, the metaphysics of presence, culture, mind, or origins. One way out of the dead end and epistemic paralysis within Centrist systems, African and other, at least for now, is to adopt the perspective of What Edward Said calls "the amateur", the space of the critical ranging over all kinds of intellectual culture for the purposes of meta-critique AND what Derrida calls "Play" for which there are no essential identities or Centres that must be adopted as a matter of Necessity.  As Derrida writes in "Writing and Difference" (The University of Chicago UP, p. 292), "Play is the disruption of presence... because it plays without security". True and rigorous academics have no need of security, or for a secure, comfortable Centre from which  they may launch attacks on Difference and Multiplicity.

Professor Jibrin Ibrahim

Senior Fellow

Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja

Follow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17

[Farooq A. Kperogi]

IBK was my teacher, but this philistine, error-ridden drivel is beyond embarrassing. That you think it is worth sharing is even more embarrassing.

Farooq

Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
 

Sent from my phone. Please forgive typos and omissions.

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[Dr BioDun J Ogundayo]

Esteemed Professor IBK:

All cultures have the capacity to, and do indulge in myth-making and hierarchisization. Otherwise, there would be no value systems, no standards of excellence, or of mediocrity. Be these in Nigerian, African, or Diasporan African contexts.

Also, sir, Edward Said, whom you cite, also operates from a position of privilege, that is, he is an “insider” with accumulated intellectual (and ideological) capital/street-cred that confer upon him the power of authority, expert, thought leader, etc... such that his pronouncements have the status and heft of “truth”, compared to the perorations of my aunt the buka mama, or to the wisdom of my uncle the vulcaniser in Otako... Which is why I find his “amateur” concept somewhat glib and disingenuous.

Also, so much ink, if not sweat and blood, has been expended in the last several days on this platform on ad hominem and professional attacks. 

Yet Ochonu’s initial point remains: 

that there is a crisis within the Nigerian academy that merits our attention, concern, collaboration, and conscientiousness in addressing the same. Of what relevance are our academic credentials and egos (bruised or not) to the current state of affairs in Nigerian (higher) education today? Especially to the needs of the younger generation we are responsible for teaching, mentoring, and influencing (positively) for our nation? Why is Ghana doing a far better job managing its educational systems, and why are our young people eager to flock to their universities? 

that ASUU needs to be more nimble and adapt to changing circumstances across Nigerian governments and leaders whose stock-in-trade is the totally and consistently anti-education, anti-intellectual boiler-plate lip service.

that ASUU risks being perceived as too self-interested, and thus no different from other self-interested groups, especially the Nigerian ruling class(es).

that ASUU risks becoming irrelevant to their primary constituency (students and learners), and thus needs to recalibrate with this constituency in foremost in mind in terms of its practices, both professionally and ethically.

Yet.

The sad reality is that any discussion of Nigerian higher education and professoriate easily becomes a multi-faceted, and nauseating and tedious criticism of WHAT IS WRONG WITH NIGERIA and her institutions, and thereby readily perceived as attacks on individuals operating (within), or operationalizing these systems.

Those of us in the Diaspora know what “dues” we have had to pay, including a consistent reminder of our “unbelongin”. Plus, the very painful feeling of not being able to effectively contribute to changing things for the better back home because of entrenched attitudes and practices that serve the selfish interests of a very small group that benefits from the debillitating status quo. 

Predictably, the  back-and-forth in/of the last several days on this platform has taken on a typically Naija flavor—distract and disrespect—personalizing the issue, instead of problematizing it in order to expend energy on WHAT needs be done to improving the situation for our university students whose most basic learning needs are dedicated and adequately provisioned teachers, available and affordable materials, relevant curricula, and respect for the students. If students are so disenchanted with the system to the point of seeing university education as irrelevant to their future, it doesn’t  matter how many publications, how many accolades, or how erudite the professors are. The so-called ‘arrogance’ of Diasporan Nigerian/African counterparts/compatriots, real or perceived, does not really matter in these discussions...

Falola, for example, has written countless op-eds in the Nigerian print media that could be the very blueprints for a billion, jillion, educational policies for both state and federal governments in Nigeria. Yet, I wager that he has seen the system so darn up close that he must have made the choice to promote and support the careers of so many both from home and outside here in North America.

On a personal note, I am a product of Ghana’s educational system under Nkrumah to Rawlings, and also of the University of Lagos. An intense awareness of the soul-killing conditions under which my professional  peers back home operate makes me bite my tongue and pull my punches in any discussions about their academic (not intellectual!!!) performance.

Yet, and yet. 

Things need to change. Not because those of us (we seem to have all been tarred with the same brush of arrogance and superiority complex) in the Diaspora wish so, but because we are as concerned as our fellow acadas back in Nigeria, whose leaders seem to excel in a lack of leadeship and respect for the nation’s youth.

Respectfully,

‘BioDun

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BioDun J. Ogundayo , PhD. Arokesagun

[Gloria Emeagwali]

"This is the basis of what may be called the New Racism---- the entirely shocking process by which many, though 

not all, African academics in the Western academe look down on their African brothers in the same manner by

 which racist Western authors, from Carl von Linne, Compte de Buffon and James Beattie to Johann Blumenbach

, Georges Cuvier and Hegel, earlier saw Africans as part of a degenerate race, stupid, genetically deformed, 

unintelligent and perpetually living in the dark mantle of night."

Interesting point.

Gloria 

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