How does one celebrate scholarship, particularly one with an excellent icing? Is it by rolling out drums in the thrills and sprees of a feverish gyration in recognition  of landmark achievement or by pouring encomium on the achiever on the pages of a newspaper and other media, or by ruminating in stupefied awe of such academic exploit?

Indeed, I have voluntarily left myself to be buried in thought of how best to acknowledge the academic exploit of a man who had willingly dug his hands into the fire of academics without looking back.

Consciously, if I was told that someday I will come within arm length, needless to mention as a student under Prof. Darah, I would wave it aside as wishful. The reason being that I have veered from the scholarship of English and Literature to a more prestigious Law profession. But here I am, an MA student under Prof. G. G Darah, and more symbolic at the twilight of his enviable academic exploit as a university don.

Before now, the first and closest contact I ever had with him was on paper. Then, it was during the legal fisticuffs between the then chief executive of Delta State, Chief James Ibori and some persons who had engaged the services of the  late Gani Fawehinmi to legally unravel the mystery surrounding a James Ibori before 1999, and another James Ibori who was the chief executive of Delta State.

Prof. Darah, a cabinet member of the Ibori government was probably in court to give his principal the needed moral support to swim out of the identity dispute. The late Gani, a supposedly close friend of Darah, was not comfortable that Darah was in court on account of Ibori. The altercations that took place between Darah and Gani in the court before the judge as reported in the media are still fresh in my memory.

It is an immutable fact, if not in public domain, that successive Nigerian governments have not given institutions of higher learning the desired attention they deserve. If it is true that the recognition of a country  in a comity of nations is solely on the strength of the numbers of scholarship which are carried out there and relative breakthrough at researches and not the numbers of barrels of crude oil exported daily then, our country, Nigeria, is on its path to doomsdays.

Certainly, governments of the Western and Orient worlds couldn’t have been wasteful in efforts expended in establishing institutions of higher learning in the nooks and crannies of their countries. For instance, the American state of Indiana has a total of 137 universities. Also, Tokoyo, a fairly new city has a university for virtually every human’s field of endeavour. Relying on the last survey, the Orient metropolis of Tokoyo alone, and not the entire Japan had already established the 12oth university, perhaps on love making!

The ridiculous take-home-pay of university dons, if not Poor funding of the tertiary institutions in Nigeria by most regimes which is the reason scholarship is at its lowest ebb cannot be disputed. The grim realities starring us stalk naked in the face is the turnout of half baked graduates into the Nigerian labour market. Applicants are subjected to written interviews because employers of labour are critical of the competency of Nigerian university graduates, particularly, those of the early 1990s till date.

Add to the foregone is the limping Nigerian economy which has further worsened the situation. Times are so hard that the intelligent ones are compelled, upon graduating to seek for job no matter how menial. The resultant effect has been an unimpressive numbers of students taking up doctorate studies. Commonsense will tell that in a long run, an acute dearth of don in the Ivory tower will definitely be our Achilles’ heel.

The dearth of dons in universities across the nation did not occur of a sudden, and as a surprise. Past Nigerian governments have been alerted of the imminent vacuum but such warning was taken with a pinch of salt. Today, most universities are not running doctorate programme because they lacked the personnel to do so. Every year, scores of professors come within the brink of retirement yet we lacked the Ph.d holders to walk tall into the shoes of these relieving professors.

Prof G.G Darah happens to be one of such professors whose shoes, I am stone sure won’t be too “hallow” for Dr. Sunny Awhefada to step in. But who steps into Dr. Sunny Awhefada’s to make the circle a complete one? This remains the big question hanging dangerously loose.

Although, the situation might be biting excruciatingly in the Delta State University, Abraka, but Dr. Moses Omoniyi Ayemoni of the English department, University of Ife affirmed that the crisis was not peculiar to the Delta State University alone but a national threat to the nation’s Ivory towers.

It was wet morning in July, and I was going to have a meeting with Prof. Godini Darah. I couldn’t get by the pulsating feeling and the building up anxiety.

Without any sign earlier that morning that it was going to rain, I set out for Abraka. The lecture was taking place in Prof. G.G Darah’s office, so I was informed by other M .A student, who came late, and like me, she was coming for the first time. At Prof. G G Darah’s office, although, far beneath the status of his scholarship, he seemed comfortable and happy in it. I installed myself on an empty space on a chair to the extreme of the left hand side of Prof. G.G Darah, and not at a direct view.

At the end of the lecture and several others, it was obvious that the Delta State University was going to miss the scholarship of Prof. Darah. More painfully, will be the vacuum his absence, on retirement will create in the English and Literature department of the university. With Prof. Mabel Osakwe also at the rim of retiring, the English and Literature department of the Delta State University for a while, may be deprived of the services of a professor.

The mass drift of brains from the shores of the country notwithstanding, Nigeria is blessed with enormous human and natural resources. But the economy as well as the university community has not helped that much in the direction of encouraging scholarship.

While some MA students have not been too zealous about this level of study owing to matrimonial and job commitments, MA supervisors have also been backslapped for not been too friendly and dedicated. There is a dire need to inspire, and sometimes veers out of one way to assist students, particularly MA students get books and journals. Our bookshops no longer stock academic books because patrons do not come for them as they do for religious and inspirational books.

More importantly, the likes of Prof. Godini Darah, who is yet 80years, but incredibly energetic should not be allowed to go on retirement without an extension of contact and time to shop for a replacement. Even at above 70, Darah has not betrayed any sign of youthfulness, why retire him?  Speaking the minds of very many, a Darah cannot be exhausted, no matter how much toll age was going to have on him.

OKOFU UBAKA, a social critic wrote from Koko, Warri North LGA