By Obi Nwakanma
One of my greatest fears is someday to wake up and to hear that the University of Jos, my beloved alma mater, has ceased to be, and has been renamed the Yakubu Gowon University. Or that the University of Ibadan would come to be known as Olusegun Obasanjo University; and since the inimitable Nnamdi Azikiwe in his lifetime vigorously rejected the moves by Jubril Aminu as minister for education to rename the University of Nigeria, Nsukka after him, perhaps, then it might become Alex Ekwueme University.

Because the University of Sokoto has already been named after Usmanu Dan Fodio, may be soon, in compensation, the federal government would rename the University of Abuja after Shehu Shagari, and thus the university we now know as the University of Abuja will become Shehu Shagari university.

Someday, too, even the University of Port-Harcourt may be called Ken Saro-Wiwa University or even Goodluck Jonathan University. The federal University of Technology Abeokuta will soon also become the Ernest Shonekan University of Technology.

Fellow Nigerians, listen to these names, and the implications of these acts of re-naming: it is called diminution. These renamings will further reduce the grace and the symbolic agency of these institutions; it does reflect the decline of the Nigerian ideal too, this crass celebration of the individual, even those who may be anti-heroes in the Nigerian reality over a common place.

This is what sparked the outrage this past week with the president’s ex-cathedral act, renaming the University of Lagos into the Moshood Abiola University, after the winner of the June 12, 1993 elections who was murdered in federal care under Abdulsalami Abubakar, who himself may soon have a University – the Federal University of Technology Minna, renamed after him.

These are acts that make Nigeria seem extremely primitive and medieval in comparison to other nations here and now in the 21st century. There is a feudal undercurrent in the consciousness of government. This is why on a day which celebrates democracy – the so called Nigerian Democracy day – the elected president of this federation acts in the most undemocratic of ways. Naming a national institution without proper consultation and protocol after an individual, whose provenances are by all indications very divisive. It is divisive politics.

It is myopic action. And I think it is time to test the limits of executive authority in the courts over this act by President Goodluck Jonathan. Since 1999 the PDP government in Nigeria has engaged in the project of revisionism. It renames, re brands, and readjusts Nigeria’s national calendars to suit the limited and personal visions of the PDP and its interests irrespective of the Nigerian reality, starting with the day May 29 as Democracy Day.

In my mind as an Igbo in Nigeria, May 29 is a day of infamy. It is the day that symbolizes the massacre of the Igbo across the land leading to events that spiraled into one of the costliest wars of the 20th century. But the PDP government under Olusegun Obasanjo chose that day, I think specifically, to insult collective Igbo psyche and sensibilityin a very insensitive way.

If Nigeria wishes to enact a democracy day, it should be clearly marked by the day Nigeria assumed her republican status – November 16, which also marks the birthday of Nigeria’s nationalist hero and greatest fighter for freedom and democracy and independence – Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. That is what other nations would have done for symbolic effect. Nigeria’s Republican charter of 1963 clearly marks its day of democracy.

It was the day, by the act of the parliament of its first republic, it broke free of the British Commonwealth. Nigeria started on the road of its republican restoration in 1999 after years of military tyranny. We cannot sweep the facts of our history under the rug on the whims and caprice of just a few individuals.

But let me go to the specific question of the current president Goodluck  Jonathan’s rather antidemocratic action this week in renaming the University of Lagos into MAUL – the Moshood Abiola University, Lagos.

Take note of the acronym, for it indeed is a MAULing of history and the erasure of pedigree. Imagine yourself training as a doctor at MAULTH. There is also the question of whether the president can by a single wave of his hand change the name of a national institution such as the University of Lagos.

The University of Lagos was established by an act of parliament in 1962 with a bill introduced by the honourable Aja Nwachukwu, as minister for education and under the Vice-chancellorship of Dr. Eni Njoku – one of Africa’s finest scientists and administrators in the 20th century.

The University charter is clear on the governance and mission of the University. As a public institution, any changes to that charter – including its change of name and mission – ought to be made by the Governing Council, which is basically, the Trustees of the University, and by the act of parliament under which the University of Lagos was established.

The president thus acted outside of his authority, and basically usurped the functions of an established authority, by acting with such extreme executive authority. It is presidential overreach. Perhaps Dr. Jonathan still imagines Nigeria to be under military rule, where without the oversight of parliamentary or judicial authority, the military head could act with absolute and unquestioning finality.

This is not so. This is a democracy and the president must be reined-in and reminded that in a democracy, there are limits to presidential power and authority.

The president cannot just wake up and announce a change of the name of the University of Lagos without clear procedural integrity.However, more disturbing for me besides the president’s fiat that closed down the University of Lagos following students protest of the change of the name of their University, is the statement that the Federal Government would back down on this matter of renaming the University of Lagos after Kashimawo Abiola.

I do not know what the president knows but this is what I know: in a democracy, the president’s word is by no means final. Nigeria is no longer run by a military junta even though it feels so on occasions. And on this matter of renaming the University of Lagos, I think the president got a terrible advise.

The students, the council, alumni, and parents of the University of Lagos, should test the president’s power in law by taking the current federal authority to court and seeking a restraining order against this arbitrary executive order.