And this is the news: Wike is to deliver a lecture at Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife. According to the Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof. Adebayo Simon Bamire, Nyesom Wike, CON, is to deliver the 2025 Matriculation Lecture on the topic “Partisan Politics, Party Loyalty and the Challenges of Party Supremacy in Nigeria,” which will be held in June. The first thing that came to my mind on reading that Wike, the loquacious Minister of FCT, the very architect of the political crisis in the opposition PDP as well as a chief combatant of the political derby in Rivers State, will deliver a lecture at OAU, Ile-Ife was to recall my student days. Ife of the 70s to early 90s was simply an incredible place to be for an activist, and that experience and exposure have remained an everlasting moment in my growth.
This was the university where the icon of left ideas and struggle in Nigeria, Dr. Segun Osoba, lectured for decades. He, along with Dr. Bala Usman of ABU Zaria, did the minority report to the Constitutional Conference in 1977 which till date is a reference point. Like Bala, his compatriot in the minority report, Osoba did not want to be called a Professor in a context in which a number of those claiming the title could not in all honesty be said to be representative of true professors.
Although like any other university, Ife (I use Ife rather than OAU to underline the fact that I am writing of both the pre-OAU and the OAU years) was deeply divided between the Left and Right (and its internal ideological battles were very bitter), however for outsiders, Ife was readily associated with anything about the left. It was here that Prof. Biodun Jeyifo, the first ASUU president, cut his teeth in radical unionism, and Ife played a key role in the eventual transformation of ASUU from a petty bourgeois staff Association of University Teachers which was only interested in arranging flight tickets to London for summer holidays to a union that became rooted in the imperative of the social transformation of the country.
In its contribution to ASUU, Ife has produced a legend of leaders who stood firm for the working class and the poor in the country. They include Prof. Omotoye Olorode, Idowu Awepetu and Dipo Fashina (Jingo) among many others. These three became a reference point of radical engagement in Ife. Indeed, in Dipo, the presidency of ASUU could once again return to Ife after Jeyifo. And their contributions in ASUU and indeed in social struggle in the country speak volumes.
Let it be remembered that Ife gave us such legal advocates for the poor as Femi Falana, the late Bamidele Aturu and Big Sam, just to name three of the most visible faces of this clan of lawyers for justice for the common man. It has also given us fine and formidable journalists in Owei Lakemfa, who would rise to the position of Secretary General of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Lanre Arogundade, a former NANS President. The campus gave us such cultural and literary giants as GG Darah, Yemi Ogumbiyi and many others, and the Ife Literary Tradition has in spite of all remained rooted in a left-wing commitment to this day.
Within the student population, Ife was as controversial as it had been on other fronts. Its student activists tended to belong to the Trotskyite Tendency, a matter that put it on a collision path with the Patriotic Youth Movement of Nigeria (PYMN), the key organization that was behind the strength of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS). The Ife Trotskyites considered the PYMN as Stalinists who should be fought, just like the ruling class, ensuring that there was hardly unity in the left-wing movement.
When an official of the World Bank decided to tour Nigerian Universities to sell the World Bank/IMF agenda of transforming Nigerian Universities, he was chased away from Ife. Months later, the leaders of the banned ASUU on the campus could organize a National Conference on the IMF and the University System in Nigeria to discuss the World Bank Agenda. While this was the outline for the conference, in actual fact, the conference provided the opportunity for ASUU activists from different universities to meet and strategize on how to continue with the struggle even as their union remained legally banned by the Military Government.
A day after the conference, when delegates were just leaving Ife for their respective bases, the Orkar Coup attempt occurred (Jega and I got the coup story while we were still at the Ife Central motor park, waiting for our vehicle to Kano to fill) and in the panicky response of the Government, it arrested the two arrowheads of the conference (Profs Olorode and Awepetu) along with Prof. Obaro, summarily dismissed them from their jobs and also charged them with treason (coup making) and they could remain detained for many months and only the legal tenacity of their lawyer got them out and reinstated into their jobs at Ife.
Ife was also one of the key nodes of both the Campaign for Democracy (CD) and the Democratic Alternative (DA) as well as fronts of these organizations that were set up to fight the military. And they fought tenaciously for people like PBAT to benefit. Ife was key to the founding of the Socialist Congress of Nigeria (SCON), the closest to what could be a contemporary Communist Party of Nigeria.
On the cultural front, Ife was a non-conformist environment. To be sure, on late afternoons, one was sure to find large numbers of students around the sports arena, members of the Christian Fellowship deep in prayer sessions and on Fridays you would see many men and women dressed for the Jumaat service, but by and large, it was no fertile ground for those warriors on behalf of God. Instead, the ever-watchful eyes of the Ogun and Orisa were there to keep a vigil on the lively campus. Ife was non-religiously religious.
In the past, no government official would like to have an Ife encounter, by taking the risk to address any public gathering on the campus. Even Vice Chancellors who have legitimate mandate to be there had trouble dealing with both their students and their colleagues in the academic union. Ife brooks no halfway measure nor tolerates hypocrisy: you are either for the masses or you are shouted out and escorted out of the campus.
This is the same university that a hawkish Minister will be going to address and tell the audience of the many good things that Uncle Bola Tinubu is doing in transforming the country. Of course, NANS has long been crushed and in its place a cash and carry non-students have assumed the leadership of students, the radical student movement which had been the backbone of NANS has been emptied out of the campuses, the PYMN has long collapsed and in its place mercenaries and rabid fundamentalists of all hues have taken over, while the radical tradition of ASUU is under stress. Who else is there to chase such an unwelcome guest? No one but his own political party in whose name he would be grandstanding.
This explains why a Wike would be at liberty to go there. But what will he say about party loyalty having spent years now serving in a government for which his party is the key opposition party? What party loyalty will he demonstrate when he decided to work against the presidential candidate of his party and worked to ensure that his party lost the election? How can someone who is doing everything possible to prevent the stabilization of his party be a credible person to talk about party loyalty?
Will he explain why the government is only happy to keep academics on poverty wages? Will there be an explanation why the libraries in the universities have no money to buy current journals and books for their shelves? Will there be an explanation on the lack of equipment and chemicals in the laboratories? Or now, come to think about it, will he explain why poverty is on the rampage in the country? These are not party loyalty matters: they tell the test of loyalty to the President.
But these questions were relevant before we lost our road long ago. Those who decided to afford him the podium on this topic have done a dishonor to not only the topic but to the nurturing and consolidation of democracy in Nigeria because they have chosen to promote the worst of party behavior in Nigeria as a possible example worthy of emulation. We wish him and his hosts good luck.