Hope and despair on the postcolonial campus

Scholars today generally agree that Africans were among the early makers of human civilisation, including developments in science and learning. Paradoxically, the modern African university is distinctly the creation of the colonial state.

Today, in terms of development and advancement regardless of whatever criteria used, Africa lags far behind. The writer and broadcaster, Ali Mazrui has referred to the African predicament as the case of the Garden of Eden in decay, a place that once had it all but has now lost all.

African universities, now grown tremendously in numbers in the last decade and a half, betray little or none of the vibrant traditions that once animated the continent and that to some extent still permeates rural life in Africa. To arrive suddenly in the middle of a Nigerian village festival is to have a taste of this.

The African university today, whether Senegalese or Malian, has roots not in the rich traditions of Africa, but in Africa’s immediate colonial past. For the neocolonial university is a direct descendant of the university that colonialism erected at the moment of its dispossession of the defeated continent.

Unlike ancient Timbuktu or medieval European universities the colonial university – as it took shape at Ibadan, Legon, Makerere and Fruah Bay – represented no flowering of learning, no celebration of culture. It was limited in scope and scale. It admitted a handful of students, offered few carefully crafted courses taught by colonial professors. The student had no idea of his African spirit.

Colonial professors were what they were, distinguishable hardly from the colonial administrators in town hall. Both had been to college together. Now both were in Africa living the same colonial life in an unjust, unequal, racially divided society.

Though its creators could never admit of it, the mission of the colonial university was the reproduction of the colonial state and the promotion of colonial culture. Postcolonial scholarship makes this point very clear.

History, geography, literature and science were marshalled in the interests of empire. Colonies were forever. Colonial culture was not European culture either. It was something infinitely inferior, something purposely designed to cultivate the attitude of inferiority in the colonised.

Within its limitations, however, the colonial university functioned admirably. Immaculate facade bestowed the grace of a metropolitan campus. The university radiated serenity, civility, wholesomeness. Within its four walls you forgot you were in the colonies. Within its charmed corridors the colonial professor became again the man of learning that he really in many instances was.

Even so, the colonial university was not a marketplace of ideas. It was, in real terms, a retailer of carefully processed, carefully regulated and rationed items of knowledge assembled with care for the colonies. There were exceptions. Some brilliant scholarship was produced.

On the eve of independence, the postcolonial state inherited the colonial university. The inheritance proved its most prized possession. So critical was the hunger, so acute the thirst for knowledge in the colonies. Under empire so starved had been the population for education and for information. To the extent that the writer Chinua Achebe has said of the colonial university that it was the only good thing colonialism did in Nigeria. In spite of itself, the colonial university allowed some light through.

In the immediate post colony, the new president became the new chancellor of what had now become the national university, but it was national in name only. Nothing pleased the president more than when he appeared in full academic regalia and presided over convocation ceremonies on graduation day. A man of style, the ancient monkish apparels made him look good. At those moments, the president was a man in love. It was as though the Beatles sang for him:

I am in love for the first time
Don’t you know it‘s gonna last
It’s a love that lasts forever

By the powers conferred upon me, I confer upon all those whose names have been read, the degree of bachelor of science. Then again: By the powers conferred upon me, I confer upon all those whose names have been read, the degree of bachelor of arts. And so on. Finally the ancient royal drums break the monotony. Choice virgins take to the stage… the African thing, always a celebration, always and the dance. Conrad got this right.

Smart in their new uniform the new postcolonial army strikes the band. The brand new anthem of the postcolonial state exudes its distinctive aroma. Everything was new. The people themselves, the vast majority of them young people, looked very new. Cliff Richard sang for them. Young world shouldn’t be afraid… tomorrow because it’s tomorrow, it sometimes never comes.

The ceremonies were conducted in a postcolonial culture saturated with the music of modern pop. This was the new force, poised to take off from where the last colonial governor had left off. Empire was in safe hands. Diamonds are forever. As the sun went down the smell of vintage wine was everywhere. The neocolonial city was in celebration.

Escorted by the former colonial sergeant, now the major general, the president, days later, dutifully appears on parade grounds at the barracks. The occasion: the passing out parade for new officer cadets. But these were nothing compared to campus ceremonies that attracted just about the entire city, including tourists and city babes in their scores and hundreds. The army thing was nothing at all. It was the loser’s game at the finals.

Observers believe this was the reason the military hit ruthlessly and mercilessly on academia and civilians alike once it wrenched control of state power. In one country the military actually occupied the campus and abducted and killed the vice chancellor along with a couple or so of students for good measure. I will deal with you.

In the days before the ascendance of the military, the state naturally proceeded to multiply its most prized possession. So acute was the hunger for knowledge. There was a need for men and women of learning in all manner of fields. There was a need for all manner of technical skills. In the postcolonial state everything was lacking and in short supply.

The state genuinely longed for progress and desired development and prosperity for its people. Public corruption, such as we know it today, had not yet taken hold. The spirit to move mountains was present those days. Even taxi drivers exuded it, feeling as though they owned the new independence, as they ferried passengers around town, merrily playing the latest tunes on their Japanese players.

But at the old colonial university, it was business as usual. The old colonial professors continued to do the same things they did before. Some among them grew contemptuous. The idea of independence for the natives, the audacity of it annoyed them. They vented their anger on students. Look at you, they told the uncomprehending freshmen students.

Look at you. In the villages they would be giving you wives now and a spear and a hoe. Here in this white man’s enclave we are giving you books, pen and paper. Look at you. See me Lakayana with my spear. Look at you. The professor assumed a Conrad posture. The natives were welcoming us, cursing us, who could tell.

But the neocolonial student was beside himself and really quite beyond insults. ‘Say what you like, all things love me.’ In my father’s house there are many rooms. The neocolonial city with its mansions, parks and gardens beckoned. Brand new models from the factories of Europe smiled at the student through spotless shop windows, manned by stylish European women.

The neocolonial student was like a young man set upon a hill and the riches of city displayed before him. If you will but kneel before me all these will be yours. The stakes were high; the neocolonial student regurgitated. At the end of the day the neocolonial student received the degree.

Convocations were a prayer ceremony at the shrines. By the powers conferred upon me, I confer upon you… the new young graduate got the goodies. The sense of new powers was sweet. For those whom fate had so positioned, life in the postcolonial world was as good as any. Say what you like all things love me.

Even as it routinely graduated students, the postcolonial university faced daunting challenges, its fine façade notwithstanding. It needed and quickly too, to lift the university away from its old colonial limitations. It needed to avoid falling into the trap of new post colony limitations quickly piling up in the capital like sand dunes. But above all, the postcolonial university needed to quickly put in place the culture of the university.

And more fundamental, the postcolonial university needed to reconnect to the old spirit and traditions of the university, the traditions that had become universal, that had made possible the free spirit of enquiry and learning typical of the great universities of Europe and the United States. Traditions that had animated places like Harvard, Cambridge, Princeton, Yale and Venice, name it.

Nearly five decades on since independence, the question has arisen more forcefully. How have African universities faired in the intervening years? Calling, calling, calling African universities… the spirit of old Africa was shouting from across the void… calling, calling Africa.

In the mid-nineteen seventies a famous African statesman famously declared at Addis, during the African Summit: Africa has come of age. Throughout Africa this was the age of the coup d’etat.

How could Africa come of age without its universities? Was that the example of Japan? Is it now the example of the new India or the new China? Without its universities where would Europe be?

The little known and even less read novel, ‘Marks on the Run’, published in the year 2002 at the Ahmadu Bello University, where I teach, offers some clues. It does so in a way none other has attempted. There is very little debate in Africa about African universities. You are unlikely to encounter anywhere this kind of polemics.

Although its author is far from being a great man of letters and in many ways lacks the gift of a writer, Marks on the Run does manage somehow to let you into the world of the postcolonial university, in a mode that says ‘this is it’.

The old colonial campus is no more. In its place stands a huge edifice, hurriedly put together. Hundreds and thousands of students attend but many have no idea why they are there. To be sure the old colonial professor is gone, nobody there talking disgustingly about spears, bows and arrows. This is good.

But there are lecturers and professors on campus who know next to nothing about their disciplines. Those who know something are gone or if still there, are quite overwhelmed. Classes are huge, dormitories overflow. Living conditions for students are appalling. Rented accommodation in town is worse. The place is a calamity waiting to happen.

The old colonial mission of ‘for the glory of empire’ that guided learning and the curricula, is gone. Good. But nothing has been put in its place. In the vacuum, the regime of marks, grades and the final certificate at the end takes centre stage. It is wielded through the combined dictatorship of lecturers and professors.

The university has become big business. Fake businessmen hunt for contracts. A growing number of lecturers find here a place for marking time and making quick dough. For the majority of students, the university has become a place for picking easy grades and unearned diplomas, a far cry from the rigor and discipline of the colonial university.

Not so long ago, a professor said to me: ‘Here no one earns their degrees. We dash them.’ Dash means to give out. In the novel, learning and things intellectual take a back seat; money and sex get to replace ideas as the mode of academic exchange.

But don’t go away. Not all is lost yet on the postcolonial campus. There are pockets of excellence, gifted professors and students of real promise dedicated to the new Africa. There is a battle raging between the good, the bad and the ugly. ‘Marks on the Run’ by Audee T. Giwa, a one-time lecturer of the Ahmadu Bello University, is a report from the war zone.

Perhaps it is not unrelated that of late I, myself a lecturer of the Ahmadu Bello University, have fallen victim of assassination bids on campus in circumstances that bare the hallmark of an insider job. I carry on my forehead, the Harry Porter mark, a sign that You-Know-Who has been after me. The Dementors have entered the campus.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* John Otim is a lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria.
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