POSTCOLONIAL ANGST AND THE NIGERIAN SCHOLARLY ESTATE

INTRODUCTION

Praised for their courageous stance against the violation of voice, rights and freedoms by the state and against the economic encroachment of international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, universities in many African countries have achieved an enviable national visibility, exceeding by far the socio-political prominence of their counterparts in more industrialized societies. Yet even as they have received approbation for their role in resisting oppression and state terrorism, the academy and its most prominent intellectuals have often been publicly reviled as the acquiescent apparatus of repressive regimes.1

Within the unfolding political development of African societies, the university has served conflicting functions of legitimization, resistance and social reproductions that have corresponded to the ambivalence of identity of its most critical forces: scholars, students and their unions. This paper explores the conflicted sense of role and identity apparent in Nigerian universities and the socio-political arenas within which such conflicts are being negotiated. While the literature suggests that the role played by scholars in popular resistance to the oppressive state has engendered an erosion of the town and gown complex, I argue here that this is a misleading understanding of the realities in Nigeria and in countries with similar trajectories.

On the contrary, apart from broad-based coalitions in oppositional politics and democracy advocacy during struggles to transit from the authoritarian state, Nigeria's political dramas have actually, and inadvertently, reinforced a strategic philosophical alienation of the scholarly estate from society. This postcolonial framework of relations is informed by a complex set of intersecting pressures and logic that must be understood by observers of Nigerian politics.

COLONIAL LEGACIES AND THE BEGINNINGS OF AN IDENTITY CRISIS

The troubled relations between state, society, and the academic estate in Nigeria are rooted in a history that has been extensively researched and documented.2Among the colonial British and the early nationalists, there was broad consensus that the academy should be "relevant" to social needs as defined by the government. However, colonists and nationalists had substantially different visions of those realities and needs.

The 1925 Memorandum on Education Policy in British Tropical Africa initiated a pattern of official policy on the place of education, stamped by the imperializing gaze of the British. It included the following recommendation: "Education should be adapted to the mentality, aptitudes, occupations and traditions of the various peoples .... The first task of education is to raise the standard alike of character and efficiency of the bulk of the people, but provision must be also made for the training of those who are required to fill posts in the administrative and technical services, as well as those who as chiefs will occupy positions of exceptional trust and responsibility. As resources permit, the door of advancement, through higher education, in Africa, must be increasingly opened for those who by character, ability, and temperament show themselves fitted to profit by such education."3

Echoes of this colonial philosophy of molding a small elite corps of capable natives appear, six decades later, in the 1994 Report on Education in Africa by the World Bank. Both documents, patronizing and authoritarian in their assessment of African societies, treat higher education, in the African context, as a luxury suited only for the best of the breed. Indeed, the British showed little desire to permit the establishment of universities within the colony. At independence in 1960, the University College, lbadan-established in 1948 and the only institution that achieved university status in Nigeria under the University of London system-served a country of an estimated forty million; yet total enrollment during the 1960-1961 academic session was limited to only 1,250 students.4

The practice of official parsimony and refusal to establish degree-awarding universities were all part of a "rational" colonial policy of tailoring higher education to specific openings in government service or in other voluntary agencies. Deliberate prolongation of educational programs-seven years to become a medical assistant and four years to become an engineering assistant-revealed the imperial estimation of the "mentality, aptitudes, occupations, and traditions" of their colonial subjects. But as Nduka observed, those of the "natives" able to raise funds to study in England acquired a full medical degree in a mere five to six years and a complete engineering degree in three.5 Clearly, the practice of colonial education was attuned more to the exigencies of the colonial system than to any measure of "aptitude."

Not surprisingly, in those early years of independence, scholars wrote enthusiastically about the "glorious dawn of the nationalist change of guard" and the changes wrought by the Nigerianization Program, which successfully trained and positioned Nigerians to have an increasing share in running the country.