Development as ‘Monkey – bridge’ somewhere in Benue State
Scholars, friends and critics are looking forward to January 28th, 2020 to connect with the Pre-Retirement Luncheon and Lecture in honour in honour of Prof Dipo Kolawole at the university. A number of reasons can be adduced for the wait and why this isn’t going to be a run of the mill event.
One, the resource person who will drive it is the Head of the Department of Political Science, the University of Ibadan. In academia, nobody is anybody’s boss since the university works through the committee system. That notwithstanding, the HoD of the Department of Political Science in Ibadan carries with him the Ibadan legacy when we talk about the university system in Nigeria. The implication is that Prof Adefemi Isumonah, the Guest Lecturer is not going there as himself but as the bricoleur of Political Science in Nigeria.
Two, Dipo Kolawole, the retiring professor for whom a Committee of Friends is staging the Pre-Retirement Luncheon and Lecture has been a Vice-Chancellor. He is likely to seize this occasion to make a conclusive statement about why the university system is in the condition it is in Nigeria today. It is not too terrible to say that everyone agrees that the universities are in a shape beyond words at the moment.
As Ebonyi State sees it
Development as Kano sees it. When all three are compared and contrasted, what sort of development can we then say we have had?
Third, the theme of the luncheon and lecture is or should be inherently interesting to nearly all else – political leaders, intellectuals of development, private sector leaders and the global policy mill. This is more so that the title carries the marker of dissident scholarship in the word ‘interrogation’. It is likely that the brains behind the framing of the theme are out looking for conceptual temples to rupture and bring down. They might not go far before getting good evidence to support the mess that development has been reduced to as no more than physical infrastructures over devastated souls crying for intellectual, religious and material renewal.
The fourth reason is no less important. The Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife has a history of culinary excellence in its comparatively better organised cafeteria. Although this rating is based on 1992/4 experience, it is unlikely to have deteriorated to the typical peasant catering system that many Vice-Chancellors permit on many campuses, especially in new universities where there have been no standards to refer to. Good food with some home touch is no longer to be taken for granted in this day and age of intrusive digital capitalism pursuing everyone with over-processed stuff.
