The first part of this topic, published on Sunday, 15 September 2024, was the debate between the Marxist scholar at the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Ile-Ife, Dr. Segun Osoba (as he then was), and another (conservative, foreign) lecturer in the same institution, Prof. Beverley Halstead over Osoba’s acceptance of the request by the university’s Student Union Government to “give a small talk” to the Great Ife students on the occasion of the third anniversary of the gruesome murder, on 1 February 1971, of a University of Ibadan undergraduate, Adekunle (‘Kunle) Adepeju, during a peaceful student protest on the U. I. campus.
Accepting the offer, Osoba intimated the students that he would speak on ‘Student Power in a Situation of Public Moral Crisis’. We saw in the first part how Halstead felt it was not part of Osoba’s duties to give what he perceived would be an “inciting” talk to the students and how he said the university authorities were sitting on edge over the matter. Osoba, on the other hand, argued forcefully that it was both his responsibility and patriotic duty to address the students. Today, we are publishing the “small talk” delivered by Osoba. We shall return to make closing remarks:
“Our nation is in the grips of a serious moral crisis and value disorientation. We live in an age when our consciences have become so blunted and de-sensitized by the greed for personal wealth and power that the suffering of millions of our compatriots do not move us. Millions of Nigerians, even in the best of times, are undernourished, are ill without the hope of receiving healthcare of any description, live in intolerable conditions of squalor and degradation (sometimes sharing the same living room with their goats, chickens, and dogs!) while a handful of us enjoy scandalous opulence and luxury.
“What is even more pathetic, our highly-remunerated, high-living, well-housed, over-fed, and over-dressed elites are so lacking in modesty and basic human decency that they flaunt their prosperity in an unblushing manner before the masses of our poor compatriots – the wretched of the earth – who, ultimately, pay the bills for our elite extravagance and criminal exhibitionism. We sublimate our moral poverty and degeneracy in consumer culture, like a psychologically-disturbed person who tries to drown his mental crisis in a sea of alcohol.
“It is against this background of public moral bankruptcy and degeneracy that we must look at the phenomenon which has become famous as ‘student power’. Student power, crudely put, is the ultimate ability of the student community, being the largest and, perhaps, the most homogenous in the university institution, to paralyse the life of the university in the pursuit of student objectives: the ability to demonstrate that, no matter what the university administrators, professors and lecturers think of their own importance, no university institution can function without the cooperation of students who are willing to learn and be taught.
“This essential but crude aspect of student power has been repeatedly displayed loud and clear since the fateful episode of 1 February 1971 when Adekunle Adepeju, one of your illustrious members, was felled by the bullet of police power. He was a victim of the operation of naked power but he is also the hero and indestructible symbol of student power and it is only right that you commemorate his heroism and immortality.
“However, student power, if it is to make a significant impact on the depressing situation of public moral crisis in Nigeria, needs to have more of it than one solitary hero and symbol. It needs to have a clear moral vision with which it can gaze beyond the darkness and confusion in which we are all enveloped to a future characterized by an uncompromising sense of social justice, human concern and comradeship, and a life of dignity and usefulness for all our people.
“It is only when our students refuse to be educated out of a keen awareness of the grinding poverty in which our people live, when they demonstrate at every turn that the suffering of our people is their own suffering and that they are willing to work with other sections of our people to terminate it, that this nation will begin to take student power seriously and embrace it with their heart and mind.
“Student power cannot have the moral strength to survive and move this nation if the dominant ethos among individual students makes them see their purpose in a university as securing ‘meal ticket’ or ‘trade union cards’, which alone can qualify them to join the dominant elite group in the elite culture of ‘ilabeism’. Similarly, student power cannot have credibility even among a majority of students if student leadership is afflicted by the same moral problems pervading our society – the problems of kleptocracy and gutlessness.
“Good as rituals are for cementing group solidarity, the annual ritual of commemorating Adekunle Adepeju by boycotting classes is not enough to establish the reality and effectiveness of student power. A more effective kind of student power is one that is not treated as a museum piece, tucked away for 364 days in the year while the rat-race for “meal tickets” and “miliki” goes on, and is then dusted up and brought out for display for one day, after which it goes back to its hiding place for another 364 days!
“Effective student power is one that is in operation all the time and whose presence and impact is felt 365 days in a year. It is power informed by knowledge of men and matters, not one based on ignorance. Student power, genuine student power, must be concerned with an ongoing evaluation of the universities’ programmes of instruction with a view to making valuable contributions to the decolonization of our universities mentally and making them relevant and committed to the progressive transformation of the Nigerian society into the land of hope and charity that all our people want. Effective student power should not leave in government hands alone the initiative to organize students for service to our people.
“To this extent, our students, in association with university teachers and workers who are committed to the ideals of elevating the masses of our people, should, the National Youth Service notwithstanding, organize themselves into small groups which will devote some of their free time to working on some community development projects in our depressed rural areas and without expecting any material reward. We can help the poor peasant farmers to make their hovels more habitable by working with them to repair leakages in their roofs, creating basic sanitary conditions in their environments. We can give them the gift of our abundant youthful energy by helping them to prepare their farms for the planting season and to reap their crops at harvest time. We can unobtrusively and with humility bring to their notice and within their reach the benefits of modern science and technology which we know so much about but which we hardly ever put to any creative use.
“In this way, student power can relieve the problem of mass poverty and enhance mass prosperity and well-being in our society while, at the same time, establishing its own legitimacy and moral strength. Any other course of action by our students can only deepen the crisis of public morality now engulfing our society and lead to cultural decadence and collapse. Considerations of enlightened self-interest alone should enjoin us to commit ourselves more to the essence and reality of student power rather than to its form and symbol because it is only the reality that can lead to a brighter future for us, for our people, and for our nation.
“Long live student power! Long live the people’s power! May our nation achieve its full potential in human decency, social justice and equity”!
After Osoba’s ‘small talk’ to the Great Ife students, another exchange ensued between him and Halstead; that, however, is a topic for another day! Now consider the following: Does Osoba’s first salvo – the opening paragraph – sound familiar, considering what is happening today, not minding that his address was delivered 50 years ago: A “nation in the grips of a serious moral crisis and value disorientation”, even as “we live in an age when our consciences have become so blunted (and seared, I want to add) and de-sensitized by the greed for personal wealth and power that the sufferings of millions of our compatriots do not move us”; where “millions of Nigerians… are ill without the hope of receiving healthcare of any description, live in intolerable conditions of squalor and degradation…while a handful of us enjoy scandalous opulence and luxury”? Does this sound familiar?
And how about this: “What is even more pathetic, our highly-remunerated, high-living, well-housed, overfed and over-dressed elite are so lacking in modesty and basic human decency that they flaunt their prosperity in an unblushing manner before the masses of our poor compatriots – the wretched of the earth – who ultimately pay the bills for our elite extravagance and criminal exhibitionism”? Does this also resonate with you and isn’t it really pathetic!
But, if I may ask: When were things ever good here if, 50 years ago, they were as Dr. Osoba had graphically painted them? Do things ever get better here or they keep getting worse? When we complain about the present, does the bard not appeal to us to wait until we behold what comes up next? The past only appears good when compared with the present. Yet, a popular prayer says may we not know better yesterday!
Comrade, as we fondly called Osoba during my own days at Ife (1978 – 1982) when he taught me History, ended his address to the students with a prayer – or was this unpretentious Marxist only expressing a wish and hope? – that “this our nation achieve its full potential in human decency, social justice and equity”. That was 50 years ago. Such prayer, hope or wish had been expressed since the country got its independence from Britain in 1960. Sixty-four years later, we still talk of Nigeria as a “potentially great country” When shall its greatness unfurl before our very eyes or shall it forever remain in the realm of conjecture, wishful thinking and hallucination?
When biblical Daniel asked how long it shall take for the prophecies he heard to come to pass (Daniel 12: 6 -7), he was told: “… it shall be for time, times, and an half” Apply that to work out the arithmetics of when Nigeria shall fulfil its own potential – if ever!
To be continued
Former Editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of the Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Bolawole writes the On the Lord’s Day column in the Sunday Tribune and the Treasurers column in the New Telegraph newspapers. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television. He can be reached on +234 807 552 5533 or by email: turnpotpot @gmail.com
