Thread by @iSERVE2050

How do we re-imagine our Educational Institutions?

History is important...#PostcardsFromALAIGBO

An old but very relevant piece by Obi Nwakanma

1/ "As a result of Azikiwe’s own ideas of the university, he pushed for the establishment of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka,.."

2/ "Zik passed the charter of the University through the Eastern Nigeria House in 1955. The University of Nigeria, Nsukka was established in 1955, but it opened its gates for the first 280 students on Oct 7, 1960, just one week on the attainment of Nigeria’s independence..."

3/ "Aside from Azikiwe, the next most important figure in the establishment of University of Nigeria was Dr. I.U. Akpabio, Minister for education in the government Azikiwe led in the East. Akpabio & Zik traveled around seeking funds across the world for the proper establishment."

4/ "Nsukka was conceived as the “New Sankore” – a place where every global black intellectual, scientist, social theorist might find a home in the modern era. That’s how come Dr. Eluemuno Chukwuemeka Blyden, Grandson of Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden became the first orator.." #FixUNN

5/ "And Director of the Hansberry Institute of African Studies. Azikiwe’s plans for Nsukka were of course radically abridged, first with his removal as Chancellor of the University in 1966 by the military governor Odumegwu-Ojukwu who replaced him with Ado Bayero, Emir of Kano.."

6/ "This was followed by the radical diminution of the university, from 1970, when it was taken over by the Federal government, at the end of the civil war. As a matter of fact, UNN was nearly closed down, when on seeking their opinion on what to do with the university post-war."

7/ "Some western Nigerian intellectuals who ironically had taught at Nsukka before the war, advised Gowon to close down the University of Nigeria, distribute its faculties, students to already existing universities at Ibadan, Ife, Lagos, ABU and the then newly established UNIBEN"

"But this move was seriously resisted, and it took serious lobbying, and the intervention of the late Emir of Kano, Ado Bayero, as quondam Chancellor of the university to dissuade Gowon. Nsukka’s role in Biafra was pivotal..." #FixUNN #FixALAIGBOPublicSchools #InvestInPEOPLE

9/ "For a while, Nsukka harbored the “returnee” intellectuals from Ibadan, Zaria, alongside short-lived University of Technology, PH, Nigeria’s first Technological University established by Ojukwu in 1966, with Dr. Kenneth Dike, who had resigned/fled from Ibadan as its first VC."

10/ "These universities became the fulcrum of Biafra’s war production & resistance. The scientists that gathered in these two universities, experimented with energy, fashioned new weapons, calculated the ranges of Biafra’s rocketry & Missile production..." #FixUNN #InvestInPEOPLE

11/ "...under the mathematician Ezeilo, Produced Rocket Fuel under Mang Ndukwe, Alchohol and Chemicals under Garrick Leton, and food production and preservation under Bede Okigbo, and so many more." #FixUNN #STEM #FixALAIGBOPublicSchools #TVET #InvestInPEOPLE

12/ "For the first time in postcolonial Africa, the relationship between the university, research, and social need found a terminus. And this was the mistake that the Federal government made after the civil war: it did not utilize the experience of Biafra and her war industry..."

13/ "..as the template for connecting national industrial production to a national university system. The University of Technology, Port-Harcourt was dismantled. Nsukka itself became the perfect example of a more profound contradiction: it became an eagle that forgot how to fly."

14/ "When you bring highly talented and egotistical men together with limited opportunities, the instinct for self-preservation & survival drives them ultimately to incoherence and self-destruction, particularly in the absence of visionary leadership."

#FixUNN #LeadershipMatters

15/ "The removal & spiting of Professor Eni Njoku as the Vice-Chancellor of UNN, and his replacement with the anglophile Professor Herbert Kodilinye, was a fatal mistake. Igbo intellectuals at the end of the war had also become very cynical. They had lost a war and a nation..."

16/ "And they did not find the new environment welcoming. That’s precisely what happened with Nsukka: it became weighed down by post-war cynicism, and in-breeding..." #FixUNN #FixALAIGBOPublicSchool #STEM #LeadershipMatters #ALAIGBO2050 #IgboRenaissance
A new generation rebuilds!

17/ "UNN's growth was stunted by the kind of in-fighting ignited between Professor Kodilinye on one side, who wanted to restructure Nsukka to follow the Oxbridge collegiate model, and the opposition on one side of Achebe, Nzimiro, Eteng, Ikoku, and the entire Nsukkascope group.."

18/ "Nsukka did not survive that fight. The University of Nigeria, Nsukka suffered from the vicious and deadly petty rivalries that made intellectual and collegial life difficult and unproductive, and it has remained so..." #FixUNN #STEM #Arts #Humanities #SocialSciences #Civics

19/ "From a global university – the leading African university of the twentieth century as envisioned by Zik – Nsukka increasingly became a very provincial, Igbo university: the faculty, the administration, an overwhelming number of the students were Igbo..." #StopTheInBreeding!!

20/ "Great universities seek diversity. As a matter of fact, self-respecting universities across the world hardly employ the students they trained at the Postgraduate schools, and only in few cases, when they have first proved themselves elsewhere..." #FixUNN #StopTheNepotism

21/ "But one of the greatest tragedies of Nigerian universities is a deadly kind of “in-breeding.” There is something called the academic or intellectual tradition – a culture of the university. These have been destroyed in Nigeria. Nigerian universities have no culture." #FixUNN

22/ "There is a certain savage impulsion that currently drives the universities. In the American university where I teach as Graduate Faculty, one of the greatest measures of success is to register with proof, how quickly within the given time of research,..."#FixUNN #ALAIGBO2050

23/ "..that the graduate student under your supervision completes their program & defends their ideas successfully. In Nigeria, there is almost a maniacal, almost masochist pleasure in making students suffer..." #FixUNN #FixALAIGBOPublicSchools #StopTheInBreeding #ReformEducation

24/"It is the mark of the power of university faculty to delay, subvert, deny, destroy the prospects of students simply as a means of protecting one’s presumed territory, or asserting blind power. The problem is, over the years, the universities no longer attract quality faculty"

25/ "Whether in terms of junior faculty, or in terms of specialized faculty. The stock of the current academic staff in Nigerian universities is of very low quality. There are still some good ones. Very few indeed who could pull their weight anywhere in the world,..." #FixUNN

"I have read the writings of full Professors of English in Nigerian universities, including one, sadly, who is currently a Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Humanities, who submitted a review full of howlers, the kind that would make the devil of printers blush with embarrassment,.."

#PostcardsFromALAIGBO | #FixUNN #ALAIGBO2050

"Nigerian Universities (Parts 1 and 2) by Obi Nwakanma

vanguardngr.com/2017/10/nigeri…

Also recommended: Do a search on Twitter and read the thread by the late Pius Adesanmi on Nigerian Universities and ASUU...

Onye kwe, chi ya ekwe

Dalu

"Nsukka was conceived as the “New Sankore” –a place where every global black intellectual, scientist & social theorist might find a home in the modern era."

"The depth of infrastructural decay at UNN is unbelievable and calls for URGENT attention of stakeholders." -@NwachukwuAni

@NwachukwuAni "Restoring the Dignity" should not be mere rhetoric.(Online) outrage is insufficient! UNN needs reconstruction & infrastructural upgrade."-@NwachukwuAni #FixUNN|Read this investigative piece by @thecableng The decayed infrastructure serving as UNN hostels bit.ly/2KvSmxd