The question that sent Professor Tam David-West, fuming, gesticulating, squealing and spilling the beans on the state of our universities was quite a simple one: could you compare the state of things in the university in your own days, with these days. It should be recalled that David-West, renowned professor of virology, former Commissioner for Education in the old Rivers State, former Minister of Petroleum and Energy and later Minister of Mines, Power and Steel, has had a long and distinguished career as an academic, virologist, civil/public servant and administrator.
Educated at a number of universities around the world, beginning with the University College, Ibadan, now University of Ibadan (UI), 1956-1958; Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA, 1958-60 (B.Sc.); Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1960-62 (M.Sc.); and McGill University, Montreal Canada, 1964-66 (PhD), he began his teaching career as a consultant virologist and senior lecturer at the UI in 1969. He was appointed professor of virology, at the College of Medicine, UI, in 1975.
David-West, who has, over the years, come to be seen as an irrepressible fighter of injustice and human rights violations, a fearless commentator on national affairs and a diehard critic of flawed government policies, laughed when asked by Education Review to do a comparative analysis of our universities between his days and ours. “There is no basis for comparison,” he said. What we had then was ivory tower, he argued, but today, what we have is nothing, but mud tower! (his exact words).
“That time, what we had was University College, Ibadan, which was an arm or affiliate of London University,” David-West clarified. “I was talking to some young friends, a few days ago that the university was lucky that it started like that. The standard was very high. In 1956/57, the total university population was less than 700. Today, we have population explosion without facility explosion. Some years ago, I told a Pressman that if University of Ibadan gave me full scholarship to my child, I will not accept and I am saying this with great sorrow because I’ve seen this university blossom. There is nobody on the University of Ibadan campus that can claim to know University of Ibadan as I do.”
Now, when David-West said that, he was not commenting on the state of things at University of Ibadan per se, but using it as a paradigm for the general decay in the Nigerian universities.
Some years ago, in October 1998, at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Victoria Island, Lagos, he had, while delivering the third series of the University of Ibadan Alumni Association, Lagos branch, lecture entitled The Nigeria Academia: The Bloom, The Gloom, The Doom, given an analogy of the deplorable state of affairs in our universities with a cartoon he culled from the Daily Times of March 17, 1982. In the cartoon, an armed robber accosted a bald-headed man in Western suit.
Armed Robber: “Give me your money or I will shoot your brains out”
Mr. Bald Head: “Shoot then!...I know that you can live in this country without brains, but not without money.”
Several years down the line, you had thought that David-West would change his opinion about the Nigerian academic or academia existing or living without brains but he insists in the interview with Education Review that the situation is even growing worse by the day. Excerpts of the interview in which he did an analysis of how we came to this sorry pass, but, first, a warning to you: the account you about to read concerning the meal and feeding situation at the UI, in years gone by is likely to make you salivate like the Pavlovian dog. So? Hold in check your palate!
The bloom
“I started here in 1955 in Junior Staff Quarters, Abadina as a technician-in-training. Ostensibly, I was in Zoology Department because I wanted to be near where I could study Science. I didn’t read Science in secondary school. Here, the professors helped me to do Science. Coincidentally, one Bismarck Ndupu, who was doing his B.Sc. Honours Chemistry, London was one of those I was attached to for Chemistry. He was a fantastic Chemistry teacher. So brilliant! So, I was lucky to be attached to him.
“I will not say that some of the things that used to be then should be repeated or can be repeated. Why? Our population was small. We were only about 700 students. There was one student per room. I was in Kuti Hall, known today as the Hall of Great Men. If you have a guest, you register with the Hall Warden. They give room to your guest. We go to the dining hall in the morning. We sit down and stewards will come and serve us our food. We go to classroom, we come back at 4 o’clock. Then the bell rings for the 4 o’clock tea with cake. We go to play games and come back at night. Then you sit down and a steward will come to ask you: ‘please, sir, what will you eat?’
“And, I was telling them a joke. In Kuti Hall, there would be different types of food - rice or beans or yams, amala or some other food. So this particular steward came to me. I was sitting down. I said, “please, what do you have?” He said, “we have rice and boiling yam (general laughter), not boiled yam.” I said, “please, give me boiling yam, but let it not boil my mouth o”(more laughter).
“Then every month, we had what we called high table dinner. It’s a banquet in which highly-placed guests were invited from outside the university. Students sat in the hall but invitees sat with the university executives to eat and to drink together. They could even serve you beer. Then hall stewards did our laundry for us, every Friday. They washed our clothes, ironed them and brought them to us. Your room was washed and polished for you. Every room had a curtain. Now, that kind of life cannot be repeated because then we were small.
The gloom
“But at that time, we didn’t pass through university alone. University passed through us. Now, you have people that just pass through university. No culture. I’ve seen a lecturer picking a piece of meat that fell on the floor and washing it and eating it (general laughter). I have seen lecturers who do not know how to use fork and knife, who spit on the floor. I’ve seen university women who park their cars across the street and only apologise when you confront them. Not only moral leadership, academic leadership is questionable in some areas. There has been real degeneracy. Don’t blame politicians. Yes, the issue of lack of adequate funding is there. But the degeneracy is too much. I feel like crying for Nigerian universities. The standard is too bad. Professor Niyi Osundare said it all when he said in his valedictory that we have politicians in academic gown. Moral standard is fallen. When we were given our degree certificates, it was stated clearly that the university authority has certified us in character and learning, in that order. But it is not so today.
“Some years ago, one of my students, a Masters student, wrote in an answer to a question: “The patients is…” I said, “Young man, you can go and be a taxi driver. You are not meant here.” At Abadina Primary School, they know that it should be: “the patients are…”
“Let me start with the moral aspect. A number of the professors are corrupt. I have seen a department where professors are sharing the money, the research grants meant for some academic research projects. The university has no more moral lesson to teach the politicians. And that is the sad thing about Nigeria. The university is supposed to be the ivory tower, centre of excellence in both morality and scholarship. But what we have today is nothing but a mud tower, a skeleton, a shadow in every field.
“A number of lecturers and professors are corrupt. There was a case of a professor’s wife who couldn’t be a professor. They manipulated the system and made her a professor. There was a case of a Deputy Vice-Chancellor, now late, whose son stole a book from the university bookshop and hid it in his pants. They covered it up. Two weeks after that, the same son was given his university degree with the same expression: ‘having satisfied in us in character and learning.’ That’s morality!
“We award degrees that should not be awarded. There was a case where an examiner wrote that “this thesis has contributed nothing new to virology.” When an examiner has written this, you cannot mend it. You have to scrap it and start all over again. Yet the Masters student was awarded his PhD. Do you see how rotten we are? A professor forged my signature. He was caught by an internal auditor who sent it to me. When I drew his attention to it, do you know what he said? He said he signed the column meant for me inadvertently. I said if you did so, then your signature will be identical to your own but the one you signed in the space meant for me as Head of Department was not the same. He had no answer to that.
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