The 54th Convocation of one of Nigeria’s first generation universities – the University of Lagos (UNILAG) – is at hand. There is a sense in which this Convocation seems not like any other and this for three reasons. One of it the topic of the Convocation Lecture. The topic is “Decolonizing African Higher Education for Transformational Development”. Three variables are crucial in the title and these are Decoloniality, African higher education and transformative development.
Academia in Nigeria is in urgent need of injection of much more decoloniality into the perspectives available. The much of decoloniality we have in Nigeria is concentrated in Literature and Cultural Studies, leaving the social sciences almost fallow. Decoloniality is not free of its own flaws but we haven’t even come to that yet. African higher education is another crucial variable that a Toyin Falola speaking to is a good omen for all. Transformational development is, arguably, what is missing across Africa. much of what goes on in the name of development on the continent is disjointed attempt at infrastructural provisioning, not development. So, a Toyin Falola harping on that theme is welcome.
Intervention’s second feature about the Convocation is award of an Honorary Degree to Prof Attahiru Jega. Irrespective of what people may feel about Jega, nobody has said he has transformed into a moneybag that may be willing to buy an Honorary Degree. What that means is that his Honorary Degree is merited. Closely tied to that is the unifying symbolism the award embody, given recent ethnic profiling and bad blood across the country. In other words, Jega’s award carries an additional message to it. Of course, all three awards are to interesting awardees – a giant of a scholar in History; a giant in public health and a Jega.
The third feature which makes the Convocation an event to watch out for is the number of graduands with First Class result in their degrees. Does any university in Nigeria have the facilities to support a First Class result in any discipline? UNILAG is not the only one mass producing First Class but UNILAG is not a mushroom university. When it joins those awarding First Class results in a country where the staff-student ratio is horrible, where many universities have no enough professors or authorities on key areas and where there doesn’t exist the library facility to support a First Class result in any discipline, then Intervention is bound to ask.
First Class is not what one gets by exam scores or weighted aggregate alone. How are so many undergraduates, most of whom have never heard, much less read, any essay in the top five journals in their discipline, ending up with First Class results?
It may be unfair that the top five journals in almost all the disciplines today are most likely controlled by the Western world but might the response to that lie in crafting a Nigerian criteria for awarding First Class? A ‘Nigerian’ solution that ignores the completeness required to get the sort of result in question could create its own problems for Nigerian students seeking admission into credible universities in other countries, in case anyone is pretending not to know.
It cannot be overstretched that it is a Toyin Falola who is delivering the Convocation Lecture and also receiving an Honorary Degree at the Convocation. Somehow, some of these themes might crop up in his text.
In fact, it was initially thought that it would be one such person that President Tinubu was going to bring to the education sector. It isn’t that the current men and women at the helm of affairs are not good enough but that the university system is in a state of emergency.
