By Douglas Anele

Last week, I received a text message from an anonymous critic (Mr. X for convenience) who responded to my riposte on the national conference going on in Abuja. In the text, Mr. X called me a hypocrite for criticising the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) anytime it embarks on indefinite strike to press home its demands from the federal government while at the same time complaining that lecturers are not well paid.

In the essay in question, I argued that a government which claims it cannot meet the financial demands of lecturers because of dwindling financial resources should not pay each of the delegates to the conference N4 million per month. But Mr. X, rather than appreciating my criticism of financial rascality by the Jonathan administration, claimed that “You are  hypocrite because whenever ASUU embarked on strike for the improvement of staff and sundry matters, you not only dissociated yourself from such strikes, but used your newspaper column to attack ASUU with the hope that government will take note of you as a ‘good boy.'”

Mr. X grotesque comments remind me of an incident that took place some weeks ago in front of the Faculty of Law building, University of Lagos. On a certain afternoon, I was discussing with two colleagues from the faculty when a respected Professor of law interrupted our discussion with the reprimand: “Douglas, I hope now that your promotion has gone through you would stop your vituperations against ASUU.”

Initially, I was somewhat surprised because it had been quite a while I had any conversation with the Professor. However, when he expressed “disappointment” and “disgust” towards my essays criticising both government and ASUU for the deterioration in teaching, learning and general infrastructure in our public universities, I understood the cause of his unwarranted unfriendly rebuke.

Obviously, the “learned” Professor was not happy that a university lecturer could criticise ASUU publicly for frequent recourse to indefinite strikes. As far as he was concerned, the “academe” should not be criticised by one of its own. Anyway, I reiterated my position, and challenged him to identify any faulty reasoning or factual inaccuracy in my articles. But he hurriedly left for a lecture without responding to my challenge.

The incidents I just recounted motivated this essay, which calls attention to the dangers of increasing anti-intellectualism by Nigerians, even among respected academics. Before defining who an intellectual is and the characteristics such a person must possess to be properly so called, it is important to address the issues raised by Mr. X and the Professor, at least to correct deliberate misunderstandings and clarify my own position.

To begin with, I am a highly trained philosopher. Anyone with a patina of philosophical knowledge knows that criticism is the engine of philosophy. Without searching rational criticism, philosophy would degenerate into repetitive hollow banalities bereft of creativity and revolutionary potential that make it the intellectual discipline per excellence that it has been since humans began to philosophise thousands of years ago. Hence, I consider it my duty, both by temperament and as a matter of training, to subject everything, including myself, to ratiocinative scrutiny from time to time.

Obviously, Mr. X does not understand what philosophy is all about. He is flippant in using a negative adjective like ‘hypocrite’; otherwise, he would have been circumspect in using it to describe someone he has never met. From his comments, it appears that Mr. X is ignorant, blind and pachydermatous to the destructive effects of frequent indefinite ASUU strikes on the universities.

Every honest and keen observer of Nigeria’s tertiary education in the last twenty-five years would acknowledge that strikes have been detrimental to the quality of teaching and learning in the universities. I am a stakeholder in the system, eminently qualified to point out areas where things are going wrong. Therefore, as a philosophy teacher who values objectivity and critical self-examination as enjoined by Socrates, I am always prepared to criticise my union, ASUU, with good reasons.

For over fifteen years I have been writing for Sunday Vanguard. Ardent, attentive and unbiased readers of my column know that I never write with the hope that “government would take note of [me] as a good boy,” as Mr. X mischievously alleged. Indeed, in the very essay he was reacting to, I severely criticised the Jonathan administration for wasting billions of naira hosting a discussion fiesta that would eventually generate heaps of ineffectual papers.

I even stated that President Goodluck Jonathan, having been propelled by the complex dialectics of life into the highest political office in the country, has abandoned his original constituency, the poor and the powerless, and is now behaving like the oppressors whose pathological quest for primitive accumulation impoverishes the masses. Mr. X should know that not every academic craves to be invited by a profligate government to “come and chop.”

Moreover, despite growing anomalies in the university system and unsatisfactory emoluments, teaching gives me the kind of intellectual freedom and fulfilment easy money from working for government cannot buy. Therefore, Mr. X, if you are a university teacher unperturbed by the negative repercussions of frequent indefinite strikes, you are one of those lecturers for whom teaching is merely a career for daily bread, not a vocation that requires commitment and dedication in the pursuit and impartation of knowledge. If you are not a lecturer, which, by implication, means that you are not an ASUU member like me, why are you a sympathiser crying more than the bereaved?

The Professor of law who presumed that my criticism of ASUU was due to delayed promotion is completely wrong. In fact, his rebuke is so irritatingly irrational that I just do not understand why he thought my stance against incessant indefinite stoppage of academic work by lecturers was due to promotion issues. Those close to me know that I have never for once complained about delay in promotion. I have been in the university system long enough to know that just as the hood does not make the monk, academic designation does not necessarily translate into solid scholarship.

In universities across the country, merit and excellence are not always the decisive factors in the promotion of lecturers. I know several excellent and committed lecturers that have stagnated in a position for up to ten years or more, on the ground that they were not publishing, whereas clever but uninspiring lazy colleagues who managed to publish mediocre papers are promoted on time. Of course, there are procedures for quality control. Nevertheless, the system is imperfect. Sometimes powerful individuals and groups within the universities manipulate it for their own selfish interests.

The promotion system in our universities rarely rewards good teaching; instead, it places undue emphasis on publication of papers, a sizeable percentage of which were read only by those that assessed them in the first instance, if they were peer reviewed at all. Little wonder that in our universities today, lecturers are suffering from publication mania, with little attention paid to quality of teaching. The lopsidedness must be reversed to ensure a rewarding classroom experience for students.

In different universities, there are dedicated senior academics that do not compromise quality. But their number is going down every year, such that if care is not taken, senior academic positions will be dominated by second and third rate lecturers. I am not obsessed with academic designation or promotion, and will never allow my view on ASUU or on any issue concerning university education for that matter to be dictated by promotional considerations.

To be continued.