Lagos State Governor Batunde Fashola must be a man of deep convictions. And he must have plenty of courage, too. He looked the Nigerian academic community in the face and told scholars and administrators of our universities that they have failed the nation through indiscriminate award of honorary doctoral degrees. He did not stop there. Fashola had unflattering words for the national government in Abuja: it, too, has failed the nation by conferring national honours on all kinds of people. The occasion of Governor Fashola’s punches was the 2014 Gani Fawehinmi colloquium held at the University of Lagos. Fashola’s criticism came in the wake of The Presidency’s publication of names of over 300 persons to receive the 2014 national honours and the list included serving public officers whose sole qualification would appear that they are serving top public office holders!
Perhaps unknown to the governor, he was treading what is now called the Pius Okigbo path. In 1992 Dr Okigbo, Africa’s most decorated and most engaging economist, delivered the University of Lagos convocation lecture. I suspect Okigbo accepted to give the lecture because his good friend, Nurudeen Alao, an eminent geography professor, is, like Okigbo, an alumnus of Northwestern University at Evanston, near Chicago, a top American university where, as Professor Richard Joseph would testify, the budding Nigerian economist did all black people proud with his encyclopaedic knowledge while a research student before proceeding to Oxford University for a postdoctoral research fellowship. At the 1992 lecture which has remained memorable, Dr Okigbo lamented the indiscriminate award of honorary doctorates by Nigerien universities. He accused higher institutions of selling the so-called honours to only “men and women of power and money”. He provided data on the number of Nigerians conferred with such honours in recent years by each university. Over 90% of recipients were either people in government or very wealthy citizens who made their money in questionable ways, unlike in the past when such people as Professor Wole Soyinka, Professor Chinua Achebe, Chief Simeon Adebo, Chief Emeka Anyaoku and Alhaji Liman Ciroma were recognized by our universities. The lecture was appropriately titled “Crisis In The Temple”, apparently influenced by T. S. Eliot’s famous drama, “Murder In The Cathedral”. The economist was of the belief that universities should see themselves as temples, which must at all times be safeguarded against the rottenness in the larger society.
It says something about our national values that a whole 22 years after the famous Okigbo lecture another courageous and principled Nigerian has come to the same university to speak truth to both power and the ivory tower over the same issue. Someone says that it shows that nothing has changed over the decades. Well, the person is not quite right. Things are actually worse. As if to deride Okigbo, Nigerian higher institutions now went on a binge of conferring doctorates and fellowships on ignoramuses, once Sani Abacha assumed office as Nigeria’s military head of state in November, 1993, and appointed all manner of people to high public office. As Okigbo himself would say, the tragedy of Nigeria is the phenomenon of “educated people capitulating to the superior wisdom of the ignorant!”
Now, with the return of democracy since 1990s, the universities have turned the award of doctorates into a bazaar. Even the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) has been “conscripted” to join the craze of conferring honorary doctoral degrees on serving ministers and governors, among others. The awards are conferred after huge sums have been paid, often from the public treasure. Rich states like my own, Akwa Ibom, are the biggest “beneficiaries”. This is why it is reassuring that there are exceedingly decent public offers like Governor Fashola who can afford to pay for such doctorates but has resisted the madness. It has been reported that the Lagos governor has turned down offers from as many as eight universities. This action of his brings to mind his principled refusal to buy an executive jet in the name of his state’s use, even though Lagos is far the richest state in Nigeria.
Fashola is not against honorary doctorates or national honours. But he argues that such awards should not be given to serving public officers. They should be bestowed on citizens after they have left office and the records show they, indeed, have done well. As someone who walks his talk, Fashola last year politely rejected President Goodluck Jonathan’s offer to be given the high honour of Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR)! This is leadership by personal example, the absence of which has been the bane of our country, as the great Professor Achebe argued eloquently in his famous treatise on the Nigerian condition, “The Problem With Nigeria”.
It is truly odd to see high public office holders charged with monumental fraud after being awarded high national honours. How do our universities feel anytime they are confronted with the fact of their honoring Etete, Useni and Adisa? Useni , for example, has been found guilty of gross abuse of office, and so several houses in Abuja which he acquired illegally have long been retrieved from him. Etete has been sentenced to prison by a French court in absentia for mind boggling corruption in Nigeria. HI sometimes wonder how President Olusegun Obasanjo felt when the inspector general of police, Tafa Balogun, was found guilty of stupendous corruption upon the national honours he received in office. This is why it shocked all decent human beings that Obasanjo still went ahead to confer the country’s highest national honours on incoming President Umaru Yar’Adua and incoming Vice President Goodluck Jonathan in the hopes that “they will do well”. Where in the world are national honours bestowed in expectation? Needless to state, Obasanjo himself was to become critical of both Yar’Adua and Jonathan presidencies for below average performances.
t is tragic that our leaders and higher national institutions are helping in the devaluation of the country’s values. We thank God for people like Governor Fashola for providing a glimmer of hope. Fshola reminds me constantly of my dear friend, Dr Pius Nwabufo Charles Okigbo, with his rigour, principle, broadmindedness and foresight. May his tribe of decent and far-sighted leaders multiply.
—Dr Asuquo, a retired academic, wrote in from Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.
Perhaps unknown to the governor, he was treading what is now called the Pius Okigbo path. In 1992 Dr Okigbo, Africa’s most decorated and most engaging economist, delivered the University of Lagos convocation lecture. I suspect Okigbo accepted to give the lecture because his good friend, Nurudeen Alao, an eminent geography professor, is, like Okigbo, an alumnus of Northwestern University at Evanston, near Chicago, a top American university where, as Professor Richard Joseph would testify, the budding Nigerian economist did all black people proud with his encyclopaedic knowledge while a research student before proceeding to Oxford University for a postdoctoral research fellowship. At the 1992 lecture which has remained memorable, Dr Okigbo lamented the indiscriminate award of honorary doctorates by Nigerien universities. He accused higher institutions of selling the so-called honours to only “men and women of power and money”. He provided data on the number of Nigerians conferred with such honours in recent years by each university. Over 90% of recipients were either people in government or very wealthy citizens who made their money in questionable ways, unlike in the past when such people as Professor Wole Soyinka, Professor Chinua Achebe, Chief Simeon Adebo, Chief Emeka Anyaoku and Alhaji Liman Ciroma were recognized by our universities. The lecture was appropriately titled “Crisis In The Temple”, apparently influenced by T. S. Eliot’s famous drama, “Murder In The Cathedral”. The economist was of the belief that universities should see themselves as temples, which must at all times be safeguarded against the rottenness in the larger society.
It says something about our national values that a whole 22 years after the famous Okigbo lecture another courageous and principled Nigerian has come to the same university to speak truth to both power and the ivory tower over the same issue. Someone says that it shows that nothing has changed over the decades. Well, the person is not quite right. Things are actually worse. As if to deride Okigbo, Nigerian higher institutions now went on a binge of conferring doctorates and fellowships on ignoramuses, once Sani Abacha assumed office as Nigeria’s military head of state in November, 1993, and appointed all manner of people to high public office. As Okigbo himself would say, the tragedy of Nigeria is the phenomenon of “educated people capitulating to the superior wisdom of the ignorant!”
Now, with the return of democracy since 1990s, the universities have turned the award of doctorates into a bazaar. Even the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) has been “conscripted” to join the craze of conferring honorary doctoral degrees on serving ministers and governors, among others. The awards are conferred after huge sums have been paid, often from the public treasure. Rich states like my own, Akwa Ibom, are the biggest “beneficiaries”. This is why it is reassuring that there are exceedingly decent public offers like Governor Fashola who can afford to pay for such doctorates but has resisted the madness. It has been reported that the Lagos governor has turned down offers from as many as eight universities. This action of his brings to mind his principled refusal to buy an executive jet in the name of his state’s use, even though Lagos is far the richest state in Nigeria.
Fashola is not against honorary doctorates or national honours. But he argues that such awards should not be given to serving public officers. They should be bestowed on citizens after they have left office and the records show they, indeed, have done well. As someone who walks his talk, Fashola last year politely rejected President Goodluck Jonathan’s offer to be given the high honour of Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR)! This is leadership by personal example, the absence of which has been the bane of our country, as the great Professor Achebe argued eloquently in his famous treatise on the Nigerian condition, “The Problem With Nigeria”.
It is truly odd to see high public office holders charged with monumental fraud after being awarded high national honours. How do our universities feel anytime they are confronted with the fact of their honoring Etete, Useni and Adisa? Useni , for example, has been found guilty of gross abuse of office, and so several houses in Abuja which he acquired illegally have long been retrieved from him. Etete has been sentenced to prison by a French court in absentia for mind boggling corruption in Nigeria. HI sometimes wonder how President Olusegun Obasanjo felt when the inspector general of police, Tafa Balogun, was found guilty of stupendous corruption upon the national honours he received in office. This is why it shocked all decent human beings that Obasanjo still went ahead to confer the country’s highest national honours on incoming President Umaru Yar’Adua and incoming Vice President Goodluck Jonathan in the hopes that “they will do well”. Where in the world are national honours bestowed in expectation? Needless to state, Obasanjo himself was to become critical of both Yar’Adua and Jonathan presidencies for below average performances.
t is tragic that our leaders and higher national institutions are helping in the devaluation of the country’s values. We thank God for people like Governor Fashola for providing a glimmer of hope. Fshola reminds me constantly of my dear friend, Dr Pius Nwabufo Charles Okigbo, with his rigour, principle, broadmindedness and foresight. May his tribe of decent and far-sighted leaders multiply.
—Dr Asuquo, a retired academic, wrote in from Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.
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