| Urhobo Historical Society |
Mr. Chairman
Chairman of Council
Lions & Lionesses
Distinguished Ladies & Gentlemen
Let us establish a first caveat. You are going to hear me use
‘I’ quite a few times today. Those who know me well
know that Pat Utomi is not a favorite discussion topic of mine.
In seeking to escape from accusation that most critics do not
walk their talk, I have chosen to expose myself to flak by using
my experience for illustrations. This is why, I, will sound
forth today even if I care so little for what I may or may not
represent so long as I give everything I do my best shot.
In this pretence to a form of grand excursion through the
challenges of both building a University and nation building, I
intend to explore a host of reasons that, in my opinion,
agglomerate to keep
Taking a multidisciplinary approach almost naturally brings me
to a time for tributes which are offered in part as an apologia
for the broad nature of our approach and in some sense as
celebration of liberal education. Homage here goes to the
tradition at the
So profound in erudition and clarity of thought was his Ex
tempore presentation that a very surprised audience rewarded him
with a spontaneous and sustained standing ovation. Afterwards, I
went to congratulate him, and his modest response was
‘thanks to GS’. That is what the
On a personal note, I identify with Agu when I think of those
who are resentful of the fact that I am seen as comfortable in
several disciplines. In some cases the resentment proceeds from
those who may be discipline purists or
‘monogamists’. The
others may have reasons to quarrel with my ‘intellectual
randiness’ and apparent flirtations across labeled turf,
which they do not make obvious. What I do know is that I have
profited much from being at home in several disciplines and I
too, like Agu, owe this to the seeds sowed by the GS tradition.
It was the broadening of my horizon by the course system and
then GS that led me pursuing formal academic study in several
disciplines after I originally arrived Nsukka to pursue a course
of study in Journalism.
As some of you may recall I recently terminated persistent
criticism of my position on an issue as economistic, the point
being that I tend not to appreciate the import of politics, by
reminding the critic, a political science scholar, that I wrote
a doctoral thesis and was awarded a Ph.d in political science.
Somehow he did not realize that I had a political science
background because I am generally more identified with Business
Administration and Economics in the media.
I have also refused to block myself from the wealth of the
liberal arts. The fact that a few respected periodicals like the
Economist have been generous in highlighting my thinking on
Economic matters in
I owe all this to a track that only UNN offered in the early
days of the evolution of tertiary education in
Let us now turn to how I have chosen to present this lecture
which I hope will generate more questions that will set us
thinking than answers.
MODUS OPERANDI
To proceed from here in some form of order it is my plan to
speak to the Nigerian question, which is for me, in the main, an
attempt to understand the political economy of stagnation. We
will then turn to the very idea of a university and how
town-grown relationship in Nigeria has degenerated to a failed
promise for nation building not only in terms of producing
people who both in character and learning can capture the
imagination of the moment and promote the common good therefrom,
but in terms of advancing the ethic of discovery. After that we
turn to scripture and the Prophet Nehemiah for a philosophical
basis on which to commit to reconstruction of both the
University and the polity. Finally, we prescribe how we could
proceed as a country and then sum up our effort.
THE FALLEN HOUSE OF
Let us now burrow into our subject proper beginning at the
macro level with the fallen house of
It is to Illustrate how differently we have fared that my
classes in the Social and Political Economy Environment of
Business (SPEB) usually begin with a graph tracking nominal GDP
per capita in six countries:
The guide for my class in these discussions is the 3E framework
(the emerging economies environment framework) which I first
developed for presentation to a seminar at the World Bank in
In a new framework I am using to explain
rapid sustained growth, culture is the core variable,
interacting with and affecting institutions, education
entrepreneurship and policy choices to produce economic
performance. Just as Collins and Porass argue cogently after
years of painstaking research, in the book Built to Last that
corporate culture was the predominant variable in evaluating
corporate success my observations suggest that we may find
explanation for
HOW WE GOT HERE--- the evolution of the Nigerian political
economy
I like to break the evolution of the Nigerian political economy
down into three broad epochs. Beyond the pre-colonial
subsistence moral economy of the peasant, I identify a Cash Crop
Colonial period which gradually gave way, with the approach of
self-government; a season of developmental competitive
communalism, with its focus on fiscal federalism. That period
was to be supplanted, under-military rule, by the very corrosive
tradition of bureaucratic prebendalism with its rapacious
characteristic rent seeking conduct.
COMPETETIVE COMMUNALISM
It seems to me that the core characteristic of the
authoritarian colonial state was minimalism. That which was the
minimum required to attain the goal of raw materials flow to the
colonial metropole and pride of empire determined government
conduct. The cash crop economy that it produced was to
accumulate significant reserves in the accounts of the Marketing
Boards, as Pius Okigbo tells us in several of his writings, but
these reserves were quickly depleted on attainment of self
government (Okigbo 1973).
Some may turn to corruption as part of the explanation for this
depletion of reserves between 1957 and independence in 1960 but
that would be largely incorrect. The reserves were drawn down
for investments to provide what the minimalist colonial
governors failed to provide, industrial estates, infrastructure,
and urban development projects (Cocoa House etc). Underpinning
this race for development was competition between the regional,
more or less ethnic, communities. I owe a great debt to Robert
Melson and Howard Wolpe for a less than pejorative understanding
of ethnicity in the Nigerian context (Melson and Wolpe 1977).
From their work comes the construction of my views on
competition between blocs of nationality groups in the period
immediately following self-government. This regional competition
sustained by fiscal federalism produced the biggest season of
real development in
Let us note here how generally selfless the leaders were then.
In spite of the reasons advanced for the 1966 coup we all know
now how Okpara presided over apportioning of Enugu GRA and how
he practically had no where to live when he left office and how
little the Sarduana had in his name. I join Prof. ABC Nwosu in
raising the question he put forward at the Zik Lecture in
I am concluding here that competitive communalism was marked by
leadership sacrifice for the common good of the ethnic
nationality and it produced distinct measurable progress in the
community, whether it be WNTV – first in
MILITARY RULE AND PREBENDALISM
Military rule was to mark the eclipse of that era. In its
essence the epoch of military rule is dominated by the
ascendance of the patrimonial state where the lines between the
state, the operatives of the state and their private economic
interest became increasingly blurred. Here I owe some of my
ideas for the building blocks of this era to Richard Joseph and
his concept of Bureaucratic – Prebendalism which he forged
to describe a pattern of conduct in which the obsession is for
bureaucratic doling out of prebends – share of the
national cake.
So pervasive has the prebendal culture become that most
energies are invested in getting a piece of the cake than in
creating wealth. The biggest symbol of this culture is the
continuous binary fission that has seen
Indeed leadership behavior in the prebendal epoch remind me of
a joke during our undergraduate days
when I was in the students union
executive here at Nsukka and Paul Erokoro as Secretary of the
Students Union in Enugu Campus used to humorously chant that
‘the masses must survive so the aristocrats can
enjoy’. The coincidence of the centralizing tendency in
military hierarchy which entered the public arena with military
intervention in government and the so called oil boom created
the archetype of a prebendal State. The creation of so many
parastatals and government owned enterprises in which cronyism
was the basis for many appointments showcased the tragedy of the
commons writ large. That which belonged to all belonged to none.
Managers of public enterprises went so wild, they even gave
corruption a bad name. While I recognize the danger of
generalizing so broadly I can quote here a permanent Secretary
at the federal level, a UNN alumnus who is the chief accounting
officer for the ministry of Industry who I told I wanted some of
his time for interviews necessary for case studies I am
currently writing on NAFCON, ALSCON, The paper mills and
Ajaokuta Steel Complex. When I said my object was to find out
why these organizations have under performed he smiled wryly and
said “Each set of executives that went to manage them
simply saw their turn to loot. They stole the places
clean”. One can also say that the prebendal culture
extended the same effect on the public service which stimulated
the parastatal creation frenzy as part of their empire building.
The public service had partly become that inclined from the poor
morale following the 1975/76 purge which laid ruin the concept
of tenure in Weberian bureaucracy.
If we recognize that bureaucratic organizations have a tendency
to stimulate goal displacement as Charles Perrrow argues stoutly
in his book: Complex Organizations (Perrow 1976) we can then
only imagine what instability in the system and lack of security
of tenure could do to focus on organization goals. What we have
witnessed in
You can extrapolate any which way you want but the naked truth
is that in this prebendal culture that suffices till this day
corruption is the simple most salient factor of national life.
You can find in it the nature of public choice which has
resulted in our prolonged economic stagnation. We can therefore
not understand where we have come from until we can understand
corruption.
CORRUPTION AND WHERE WE ARE
I do not exaggerate when I say that I am convinced corruption
and AIDS are the biggest scourges afflicting
Ronald Hope Sr., and Bornwell Chikulo in a volume they edited
titled ‘Corruption and Development in
The abuse of power for personal gain or for the benefit of a
group one owes allegiance has had widespread effects that have
affected the development process in a way that is responsible
for the mass poverty that is our lot today. Rick Stapenhurst and
Shahrzad in a chapter on the Overview of the costs of corruption
in the edited volume by Rick and Sahr Kpundeh note that
corruption is costly if only because it distorts choices.
Corruption, they point out, distorts the public expenditure
process leading to the funding of inappropriate mega-projects,
diverting public funds from more efficient uses. If you think of
capital budgeting at State, local government and federal levels
in
Stapenhurst and Sedigh also show that corruption (1) increases
the cost of goods and services (2) contributes to decline of
standards (3) promotes unproductive investments that are not
viable or sustainable (4) increases a country’s
indebtedness and impoverishment and (5) leads to loss of
government tax revenues.
In
It is easy for the discussion of corruption to come down to
good guys and bad guys. That would be so incorrect. If many of
our leaders realize the true cost of corruption as these
examples suggest, I am sure they may be more reticent. As it
were absence of institutional assurance of basic living
standards which make many do damage ostensibly in the bid to
secure tomorrow, combined with their ignorance of the true
consequences of their action, and the arrogance that blocks any
chance of learning, creates the nightmare that is our
experience. It is the realization of the foregoing that has
caused me to be so impassioned about this subject and to use
platforms such as the Concerned Professionals to advance this
plank. Some of you may recall how my opening remarks at the
recent national symposium organized by the Concerned
Professionals was built around Mahatma Ghandi’s famous
Seven Deadly Social Sins among them: Politics without
principles, Wealth without work, Commerce without morality,
Science without humanity; pleasure without conscience and
Worship without sacrifice. These sins, all of which are
grievously offended against in
Imagine that our politicians were principled. Imagine that our
reward system ensured that those who worked hardest earned the
most rather than those who have access extracting the most
economic rent ‘thriving along with society’s most
clever fraudsters’. Imagine that all our graduates are
people of character. If this was reality, nominal GDP Per Capita
in
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE PATRIMONIAL STATE
It should be obvious that corruption is at the heart of the
stagnation we experience. What is more frightening, however, is
that it progressively erodes the legitimacy of government.
Seymour Martin Lipset in that seminal book, The First New
Nation, teaches without ambivalence that all governments seek to
establish legitimacy because they require it to be able to
govern. Corruption has unfortunately eroded the legitimacy of
the Nigerian state and has lead the citizen in Nigeria to
distrust government so intensely that policy ideas that make
sense, such as deregulation where institutional frameworks are
in place, are rejected outright even though they may actually
serve the interest of the citizens. As Adams Oshiomole, the
President of the Nigerian Labor Congress said to me in front of
the NICON Hilton a few weeks ago – I understand what you
mean by deregulation and I believe it is what is best for the
people but these government people understand it differently
from you, more importantly I do not trust them, they are only
thinking of how to extract more money from the people. How can
you argue with a man who makes so much sense? I just passed on
the subject.
To summarize, corruption has vastly eroded the legitimacy of
governments in
When that time comes I guess we will account for whatever we
did and what we failed to do. I do not, personally expected to
escape blame. There was probably much more I could have done to
check the rot. My hope is that my prolonged contestation of
public space in criticism of the extant order, even at the risk
of threat to my life will serve in mitigation. That Abacha sent
death squads after me is not a badge of honor but I hope
historians will remember that when they try to locate blame for
that part of our history. My biggest pity is reserved, not for
the perpetrators of injustice, it is reserved for those who
stand by watching. I take this position because I side with
Dante in his characterization of the hottest part of hell, which
is reserved for those who in the face of a moral crisis take
refuge in neutrality.
In defining a matter that is both of general or broad interest
and also of particular interest to some holding deeper insights,
I have usually found it of benefit to begin with a general
understanding and proceed to fuller and more wholesome
unravelling of the subject. I think it appropriate therefore to
begin this excursion into the idea of a university with a
general more commonplace explication of what a university is.
For that, I have turned to the ever-handy International
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. It tells us that:
“Universities are organizations engaged in the advancement
of knowledge; they teach, train and examine students in a
variety of scholarly, scientific and professional fields.
Intellectual pursuits define the highest prevailing levels of
competence in these fields. The universities confer degrees and
provide opportunities both for members of their teaching staff
and for some of their students to do original research”
(Ben-David, 1968)
Yet another definition tells us that Universities are:
“Institutions of higher education, usually comprising a
liberal arts and sciences college and graduate and professional
schools and having the authority to confer degrees in various
fields of study. The modern university evolved from the medieval
schools known as
studia generalis. The earliest studia arose out of efforts to educate Clerks and
Monks beyond the level of Cathedral and Monastic schools which
were institutions in which the essences or universals were
studied.” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968) These essences
or universals set the course of higher education at this
ultimate level along a path that was deliberately comprehensive
in scope. This point is in fact more richly summarized in the
1952 preface to John Henry Cardinal Newman’s
The Idea of a University.
He takes the view here that a university is a place of teaching
universal knowledge. This implies that its objective is on the
one hand, intellectual not moral; and on the other the diffusion
of knowledge rather than the advancement of it. The diffusion
need brings the student but they will lack the osmotic
capability of absorbing fully the existing base of knowledge
unless the universal knowledge includes values that give
context, meaning and relevance to the knowledge gained in the
university. This is why the university confers its degrees on
people who have been found worthy in ‘character and in
learning”.
There are many who wonder if the character part of this
qualification is still a serious consideration given the values
of graduates in the work place, the incidents of cult violence,
examination malpractice’s etc, that have come to become
pronounced aspects of the public view of the contemporary
Nigerian university.
The idea of a university from the foregoing is of a place that
diffuses ideas to people of character so the ideas can be
properly utilised. But utilised for whose benefit? Since man is
a gregarious animal and has always lived in communities which
provide the non-appropriability goods he requires, it should
seem reasonable that knowledge should be utilized both for his
individual benefit and the benefit of the university community,
and the progress of the society in which the university is
located. A one time chancellor of the
To contribute to human progress, the university has necessarily
to advance knowledge to new frontiers that make living more
comfortable than has hitherto been the case. Bearing all these
in mind, we can say of the university that it is a place of
enlightenment for exploring the frontiers of knowledge and
socializing people into the application of discovered things,
ideas and values; the knowledge of the natural order; for the
pursuit of the common good and individual well being. The
university is an enterprise in which freedom is a critical
variable if the frontiers of knowledge are to be challenged
because the status quo often resists new ideas for, as
Machiavelli reminds us, in The Prince, those who benefit
from extant order usually try to frustrate a new way of
thinking.
The university which we have just defined does not differ in
“The African was conceived primarily as a transmission
belt of high Western culture, rather than as a workshop for the
transfer of high Western skills” (Ibid, 96). African
universities became nurseries for nurturing a westernized black
intellectual aristocracy. Graduates of
“They joined my generation of Africans- the lost
generation of the colonial period. They embraced the new gospel
of respecting Westernism, and the new gospel was not only born
but expanded. The one change which did not take place, was a
transformation in the role of the university. The university
became a place for perpetuating and expanding the Westernized
elite, creating new members for it. The ghost of intellectual
dependency continued to haunt the whole gamut of African
academia. The semi-secular gospel of Westernism continues to
hold African mental freedom hostage”. The imprisonment of
the African academic in Western tradition leads us to the
question of the place of freedom in the advancement of
knowledge.
FREEDOM AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF KNOWLEDGE
The advancement of knowledge which is important for improving
the quality of life of the citizenry and social progress in
general is best cultivated in an atmosphere of freedom. That
freedom is necessary, as we have suggested, to prevent the
current dominant paradigm from blocking out a potentially better
social order. Machiavelli presents the context of this blockage
to advancement:
“It must be considered that there is nothing more
difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more
dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For
the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old
order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who could profit
by the new order. This lukewarmness arises partly from fear of
their adversaries, who have the laws in their favour, and partly
from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in
anything new until they have had an actual experience of
it”.
To be hindered by extant order from the advance of knowledge
seems of its own to be a good reason for seeking academic
freedom but the question is, freedom for what? A colleague of
mine often refers to a metaphor of the university faculty as a
collection of anarchists linked together by a common car park.
Surely freedom is not for disruption and destruction except
where such destruction is a Schumpeter type creative
destruction. Enterpreneurial effort at creative destruction is
the source of economic advance. This is a fact first captured in
economic sciences view of progress by Joseph Schumpeter.
Academic freedom should therefore be able to allow those who
apply themselves to destroy yesterday’s truth to create
new truths or paradigms that advance social well being. If the
house of
The search for freedom in academics is not only a path of
conflict with political order, it is often a battle against the
institutions designed to advance knowledge and sometimes against
the self. The seminal work of Reinhardt Bendix,
Embattled Reason, is for the most part a critique of how the dominant paradigm
of the Social Sciences Research Council in the
Just as freedom is limited by the funding traditions in the
discipline, the idiosyncrasies of academics can become a block
to freedom. My experience in the evolution of ideas about the
Nigerian political situation will suffice to make this point. In
the days of the last elected federal Government under Alhaji
Shehu Shagari, there were academics who for personal, ethnic or
other idiosyncratic motives besides regime performance waged a
war of attrition against the regime in newspapers. Ostensibly,
their objective was to inveigh against the corruption and poor
performance of the regime. When the military intervened, many
were so blinded by this prism through which they viewed the
regime that they warmly welcomed the military and were unable to
think through the putative damage to the social order of
military rule. I recall a series of views I expressed in
interviews on the subject of military overthrow of the Shagari
regime which appeared in
The
New York Times
beginning on
The point I am trying to make here is that the pursuit of
knowledge, which is the pursuit of truth, requires general
principles by which if we adhere we are more likely to be
consistent and eventually come to the truth. Academics who
departed from this found themselves not only in error when the
situation of the 1990’s came along but found they had a
moral problem. Having dressed military intervention in messianic
robes earlier, it was harder to impugn its consequences for the
common good as fundamentally negative. Another problem in this
matter has to do with humility. Not having the humility to
recognize that they may not have full comprehension of the
dynamics of the 1983 intervention, it was hard for many of them
to have a logical rather than emotional appeal for a rejection
of military rule.
THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COMMON GOOD
The freedom of the academic to pursue activities that advance
and disseminate knowledge does not come free. It comes often at
a cost to society. Take the example of tenure. The tenured
professor is free from the threat of loss of his position after
his early work has given his evaluators cause to believe that he
will be able to perform. Becoming tenured means a loss of
flexibility to deploy faculty by the community that sustains the
university. Most universities indeed depend in large or small
measures on taxpayers for funding and have an obligation to
build Town-Gown partnerships that benefit the community. The
cost to the community of the academic being free is a trade off
in favor of the right freedom leading the scholar to ultimately
produce for the common good, for social progress. There remains
the possibility that a tenured professor can choose not to
advance knowledge for the common good without any effective
threat to his position. It is a cost but the value of freedom
makes this cost worth while.
It is also important that the university which grooms the
bureaucrats who man the institutions of society have a sense for
what is the common good that these students will have to deploy.
The common good, which to a large extent is a universal
attribute, is something which universities are honor-bound, in
their tradition, to protect. The values of their essence may,
however, lead them away from it. As Mazrui has shown in the
earlier quote, university values may be as disconnected from
society as the past in colonial
This long discussion of the idea of a University and our
contemporary experience cannot be complete if we do not review the
state of decay in the Universities characterized by much rancor
between faculty and administration, students and the authorities,
strike action after strike action, closure of the Universities and
standards that have been declared hemorrhaging by a recent World
Bank study.
It seems reasonable to posit that the Universities have become a
mirror image of
Should it not be so? No. I posit it should not be so. The
traditions of ancient scholarship in which the academic guards
jealously his knowledge, even in poverty and stays aloof from
being corrupted by lucre establishes the basis for my expectation
that the Universities be different. There dwells enough discerning
intellectual power in the University community to filter out the
contaminating attributes of a society at the brink of
Once, I recall, Mrs. Fola Ighodalo, former distinguished
Permanent Secretary in Western Region talked about how General
Yakubu Gowon, as Head of State on a
visit to the Western region, asked Governor Adeyinka Adebayo what
the problem was with carpenters in
Professors desperate to be state Commissioners cheapened
themselves before young lieutenant colonels. Those whose financial
conducts turned out inappropriate would further worsened matters.
Others who rejoiced at hearing their names on radio lost the moral
courage to speak up when they were dropped same way. The military
was successful in demystifying the academic and then in
humiliating him. Reduced to ‘average stature’, the
academic imported the vices of macro Nigeria; extorting money from
students through the sales of handouts, abuse of students for
sexual and other favors and engaging in sales of grades. The
Universities have become as corrupt at all levels as Nigerian
Ports. Whatever happened to oasis of sanity and centers of excellence.
In declining so low the academic lost his moral authority and his
historic duty to use the trust of student-teacher relationships to
build in the student a state that reflects positively on the
Hegelian notion of the measure of society as a function of the
character of its youth. Today, tomorrow seems frightening because
of the loss of utopia which more contemporary philosopher Jurgen
Hebamas sees as the legacy of Western intellectual tradition. But
today we do not see ideals in young men and women, as was the case
in my time here.
I once criticized the academic community, following the tradition
of Hebermas, for building utopian mindsets that invariably left
policymakers somewhat helpless in the face of these idealized
constructs of reality. Social ideas were too idealistic to
reasonably expect effective implementation in the real world.
Today we have swung to the extreme of the demise of ideals. The
student is hardly different from the motor park tout in the
construction of social meaning. This is his cross and
society’s burden from the fallen university tradition in
To liberate
I recall how in 1986 when the Alpha fraternity marked 25 years of
its existence, I was responsible for a homecoming and symposium in
Nsukka to which I invited Tony Ukpo and Emeka Omeruah then
Governors of Rivers state and Anambra state. I had been very close
to Tony Ukpo and spent a bit of my time offering him advise in the
early days when he served as Regime thinker, strategist and
information minister. Just before he was reassigned to
Close as I have been to the system I have deliberately never
requested, hinted or implied interest in any job in Government. I
have also always been determined that whenever I am asked I would
clearly state my conditions. I do not say these things to show off
purity, rather I offer them as examples that you can retain your
dignity and still not lose out. I do not believe that I am
necessarily worse off than those who begged their way to
positions. I also feel obliged to acknowledge that contentment is
a gift from God of which I have enjoyed the privilege.
Lest I be seen to deceive, nothing I have said here is designed
to indicate that I am lacking in ambition. On the contrary I am
very ambitious. When I left for graduate school the very day NYSC
ended my intent was to quickly prepare to become a media mogul
through additional training in business administration. Those who
may have read my autobiographical reflections: To Serve Is To
Live, may then recall that when I was encouraged by a Professor at
Indiana to think of public service, instead, my further graduate
studies emphasized public finance and budgeting and policy
economics because I was hoping then to become finance minister or
budget adviser. What I have chosen to do is to have the proper end
in mind and allow key values and principles to guide the pursuit
of ambition as Stephen R Covey and other personal effectiveness
gurus counsel. Like the title of a book I am currently reading Lee
Plaines: Influence with Honour; The university man committed to
restoring the dignity of man should see engagement with power as
an effort to exert influence with honor. How then do we rebuild
the fallen house through exercising influence with honor?
As Nehemiah prayed the King Artataxerxes for relief to return to
The University can redeem itself by regenerating the Nehemiah
complex. As Nehemiah began by crying to God in acceptance of the
culpability of Israel which had forsaken the Lord’s
commands, the University needs first to admit that it too is of a
fallen nature and that its mere culpability should be not in using
the instruments of its tormentors to fight back and continue the
spread of the malignant tumor afflicting Nigerian society but by
creatively using intellect to guide the people’s inevitable
efforts to reclaim their power. There are far too many in the
academic community who are on a vendetta path with those they
consider oppressors in the way they see students. Could this not
be misplaced? Fewer and fewer of the children of the sources of
their anger are in our universities. They are ‘safe’
abroad. Think how much good can come from the professor seeing the
student as a vehicle for rebuilding the fallen house.
The Universities need to recommit to rebuilding civil society if
the walls of the Fallen House of Nigeria are to be rebuilt. But
they cannot do it through a few rabid iconoclasts who lose both
the respect of the elite and earn the suspicion of the masses as
to whether or not they are ever capable of seeing good in what
someone else does.
The Universities will to do well to educate the young minds
regarding violence that protocol, and language of governance,
does, in creating distance between those who govern and the
governed. This created distance which negatively impacts on policy
implementation comes from a subtle base that many do not become
sensitive to until they are raised to the fore of society’s
agenda. Why must citizens be chased off the road by sirens
escorting an elected official? The
language of the master which constantly flows down from elected
officials and the big man culture of our country in which every
effort seems to be invested to crush the dignity of every other
human being for a big man to recognize he is with it facilitates this disconnect between those who lead and those they
lead. Universities need to shape the consciousness of the next
generation to recognize the equal dignity of all men. Western
progress has come significantly for the elevation of the value of
human life and man in society.
I am also conscious that if those who lead see clear evidence of
the ‘rewards’ of a selfish, corrupt ruling elite, they
may be persuaded that serving selflessly, sacrificing for the good
of all, may ultimately be the best selfish way to proceed; for I
can show many who when they left offices like Gubernatorial chairs
thought they had made ‘good money’ and were taken care
of for life. Many are back on the brink of poverty. Had they
invested enough time in selfless service, most of the things that
drained their savings like generators, bad roads etc, would have
been no issues to contend with. Empirical data presented as
regular part of the knowledge enterprise can make the difference
in re-orienting us towards a culture of service and a focus on the
verdict of history. Just as we honor Nehemiah each time we read
scripture of his sacrifice, so will history honor today’s
men who commit to rebuilding the fallen walls of
I began with a few caveats. But they did not include the fact
that we all operate from behind certain prisms. The prism, from
which I have seen the world since my undergraduate days here,
even if it was not so popular then, was market economy free
enterprise system and liberal democratic tradition as best tools
for pursuing the common good. I do not deny the validity of
other approaches but the paradigm I have functioned under has
led me to certain prescription for solving these problems we
have identified as holding
Last September I was fortunate to participate in a conference
on economic development and Globalization, in
Of the many contending paradigms, if we may so characterize
them, the dominant ones are the Policy versus Destiny debate.
The policy tradition, to apply a shorthand that might not fully
capture nuances, blames the policy choices that have been made
by African leaders for the dawning of Afropesimism and the
continents economic underperformance. The destiny or Geography
counterpoint suggests that
What we have shown in the foregoing is that it is more policy
than destiny but policy alone is inadequate. We are convinced
that along with policy choices, institutions, education,
entrepreneurship and culture count for much. Subsumed under
culture is leadership which can use politics to transform
culture and, in the words of Daniel Patrick Moyniham, save it
from itself.
The net effect of working up the growth drivers is the
preparation for private sector led growth. The implementation of
specific policies that result in an environment for private
sector led growth remains at the heart of the trouble with a
Privatization, deregulation when it means what I know it to mean,
within the competition doctrine, and not necessarily more money
for a monopoly marketer; increasing the quality of human capital
and transparency in decision making, comes on strong in my
repertoire of prescriptions. I do not hesitate to put them forward
again today.
I do so because I am convinced these approaches to public choice
will lead us to a more competitive economy in this globalized
world we inhabit. If we can compete, wealth will be created and
the rampage of poverty will be contained. My reasoning is that the
eclipse of poverty will allow people a realization of their
dignity in a way that will make for more sensible engagement on
the social and political fronts, thus reducing some of the
tensions that have become symptomatic of living in
Building up the production ethic, entrepreneurship skills and
values as against the economic rent orientation, and habits that
reduce uncertainty, are part of the response people expect of an
academic community that has taken on the Nehemiah complex.
There is also the desperate need to build an institutional
support base to stimulate entrepreneurship. The future depends
very much on wealth creating entrepreneurs who are passionate
about their goals. We are the way we are because rent seekers have
displaced entrepreneurs. Liberation is about restoring the venture
spirit.
The universities can also help in the rebuilding of this fallen
house if they are responsive to globalization, its limitations,
the disadvantages and the tremendous opportunities it is providing
us to leapfrog stages of development. If with all the
opportunities that software development has provided countries
like India through gateways like
Bangalore our universities cannot play the roles the Stanfords
have played for IT then we should not talk of rapid growth which
we need desperately because of the deep poverty of the land. That
role is unlikely if microprocessing is yet to make it into the
curriculum of our engineering schools.
Yes, this house has fallen. But the house of
Thank you for your kind attention.
Pat Utomi
24\04\2001