By Dele Sobowale

“The argument really is no longer about whether university tuition and other fees should be increased in Nigerian universities. Rather, the argument is [and should be] about when and how to go about it.” Professor Niyi Akinnaso, PUNCH, May 5, 2015, back page. “The truth shall make you free; but first, it shall make you miserable.”

(VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS,  p 235).

Professor Niyi Akinnaso deserves one of the three prizes for courage in the last 10 years for being the first practising academic in Nigeria to openly advocate for fees increase in Nigerian universities. This is a subject which the President, every governor and Council members of Nigerian universities had avoided like EBOLA for years.

Niyi might turn out to be a prophet with honour on the university campus, but it is doubtful. He will most likely end up as the martyr for what is clearly an inevitable decision nationally.  Akinnaso will be vilified by the majority. It would not be surprising if he had already received critical reactions, threats and maledictions.

If my experience in November 2011, when I launched the campaign for Christian Governor in Lagos State, is any guide, those he seeks most to help, governments and university authorities, will not even come out openly to offer him support. It is the opponents who will come after him immediately and persistently.

When my column, LAGOS STATE GOVERNORSHIP -2015 CHRISTIAN AGENDA -1, was published in December 2011, 708 text messages came in response, from Christians and Muslims. I logged the text messages. Exactly 37 were in support. The rest, including those from people who identified themselves as Christians, were against.

Uniformly, they accused me of wanting to start a religious war in Lagos. Thirty-seven carried thinly-disguised threats. Today, Ambode, a Christian is now Governor. One of his toughest decisions will involve fees at Lagos State University, as well as other institutions of learning run by the state.

I brought it up in order to warn Prof about the challenges he will face as the arrow-head of this radical proposal.  For whatever it is worth, he has my support. Not because I feel sorry for him, but because I strongly believe he is absolutely right. Arrayed against him will be all the popular collections of conventional “wisdom” plus socialist philosophy.

He has probably been reminded several times that he was one of the beneficiaries of Awolowo’s free education at all levels and having benefited from that programme and become successful, wants to close the door on others less privileged. He will stand accused of being an economic saboteur and a stone-hearted individual who does not give a damn about the poor. He might also receive death threats, if he persists in promoting the highest “sacrilege” anybody can commit in Nigeria.

He can expect them to dismiss as “rubbish” the fact that when Chief   Awolowo as the Premier of the Western Region, first introduced free education, he ran a geographical territory which had been split into Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Edo and Delta. Second, Awolowo operated with 17 cabinet Ministers and nobody in government had more than one official car. There were no Special Advisers.

Today, each of the states carved out of the region, has a Governor, just as many Commissioners, innumerable Special Advisers and the Governor’s Office is like a luxury car dealer’s lot.

Akinnaso’s critics will dismiss one of the cardinal truths making it inevitable to increase fees because they want to cling to the national self-deception that we can have bloated public service sectors and free education at the same time. One of Awolowo’s successors once appointed 1000 “Special Advisers” and he was applauded for that economic lunacy by the same people who are now on strike for unpaid salaries.

Is it possible that a government which fails to pay staff salaries can fund universities adequately? Pervasive self-delusion has made it impossible for us to come to terms with the fact that if we want “free education,” we must elect governors and presidents, like Awo, people who don’t spend a lot of public funds on the Office of the First Lady for instance.

There are seven of those parasites now; instead of Mrs Awolowo alone – who did not have an Office of the First Lady. We need not list all the reasons now. If we don’t want fees increased given rising costs of running our universities and diminishing subventions from governments, we must force our Governors to reduce the cost of running government significantly.

Suggestions regarding how to accomplish this include, but are not limited to, closing the “parasites’ office” called Office of First Lady, reducing the fleet of cars operated by Governors to two, appointing no more than fifteen Commissioners and four Advisers; merging Ministries and curbing corruption everywhere.

Without facing squarely the causes of our inability to provide low cost public education, we will invariably have to pay more as prices rise just to maintain the dreadful standards prevalent now.

LAST LINE: Four days after this article was written, Professor Kayode Soremekun of NATIONAL OPEN UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NOUN, in an article titled Ben Bruce, Akinnaso and Noam Chomsky, PUNCH, June 2, 2015, opened the first barrage of fire on Akinnaso. It wouldn’t be the last.