Ayo Olukotun
“The Emir of Kajuru, 30 minutes drive from Kaduna and 12 of his family members were forcefully kidnapped last night. The bandits operated freely for one hour. In my Kaduna state nowadays, it’s no more about who is safe, but who is the next victim.”
Senator Shehu Sani, The Punch, Monday, July 11, 2021.
Kaduna is or used to be an urban planner’s delight combining the laid-back and leisurely aspects of suburbia with the features of a well laid-out city providing spare room for orderly expansion. It was the political and social bastion of the Kaduna mafia, an interconnected group of influential business, bureaucratic and political leaders who called the shots not only in northern Nigeria but well beyond it. Sadly, even tragically, as Senator Shehu Sani described it in the opening quote, Kaduna and its environs are now at the mercy of a republic of bandits inching perilously close to the jugular of that once aesthetically-arresting city.
For the better part of this year, the Kaduna state has witnessed spectacular raids on schools, institutions of tertiary education as well as prominent individuals, the latest of which is the Emir of Kajuru, who, along with his throne and family members were captured and forcibly moved to a kidnapper’s den. The 85-year-old emir was released a day or two later but the bandits cruelly held on to his dependants demanding a ransom of 200 million naira as price for securing their release. Grievously but characteristically, there was no police presence throughout the duration of the nocturnal seizure of Kajuru, notwithstanding the fact that it warehouses a local government secretariat and is a mere half-an-hour drive from the Kaduna metropolis which boasts established police and military presence.
This columnist has returned again and again to the topic of insecurity, not least because it holds the key to economic and social growth, political stability, the prospects of the 2023 elections, and indeed the very survival of the country and its tormented citizens. The Emir’s capture and ordeal are metaphors of a state in the throes of demystification and anguish, its law enforcement apparatus hollowed out and unable or incapable of averting worst case scenarios until they have transpired with momentous consequences. The 85-year-old emir, Alhaji Alhassan Adamu, reportedly wept after his release; it is likely that he wept more for a country so intimately violated and yet unable to offer any resistance even at the highest echelons of political and traditional power. It is unlikely that the emir had lived through such a period of turmoil and arrogant incompetence.
Doubtless, we have always known that the police are undermanned, underequipped and easily overwhelmed by hostile forces. When some weeks back, for example, bandits attacked the Bethel Baptist Secondary School in Kaduna and made away with 121 students, the feeble resistance offered by security agents was easily repelled leading to the death of two policemen, a disturbing memento of inefficiency and shortage of human and material resources. In the same connection, there was this report published in The Punch on Sunday (July 11, 2021) about the breakdown of equipment meant for tracking the whereabouts of kidnappers and locating their dens. The equipment had broken down for several months because of the lack of system upgrade, and apparently, nobody had exercised the sense of urgency required to fix such strategic ammunition in the fight against spreading banditry and high-profile kidnapping.
Ordinarily, beefing up the institutional capacity, fighting teeth and logistical backup of law enforcement should have been part of a state-building project for a visionary political elite. What we get however, are a torrent of words, promises, boastfulness wrapped up in vain assurances in the midst of deepening quagmire. If there is any time to rise to the occasion of a fast degenerating circumstance, it is now.
OSUN STATE UNIVERSITY’S VC’S RACE: REPEATING THE LASU CRISIS
Osun State University, arguably one of our best state-owned higher institutions, has done well for itself in the last five years spanning the tenures of Professor Labode Popoola, Vice-Chancellor; Council Chairman, Yusuf Ali, SAN; and Chancellor, Folorunsho Alakija. To show for their industry, the student population has expanded phenomenally while the institution has transited from an off-campus status to residential standing both in its main and satellite campuses. Admirably, infrastructural development has soared providing for staff and students a more conducive environment for learning and research. This beneficial uptake notwithstanding, there are danger signals flashing a miasma in the ongoing attempt to appoint a new vice-chancellor for the university, a successor to Popoola.
A recent advert for the position of vice-chancellor departs from the norm and the standard of such publications in a number of ways that have not just raised eyebrows but led to insinuations that the conditions stipulated may have been tailor-made to preclude the majority of professors and include a candidate in waiting. Over-stipulating the qualifications of the next vice-chancellor, the advert demands that such a person should have published a minimum of “fifty research (journal) articles with at least 20 of the articles published in high-impact journals as defined by Thomson Reuters, ISI and Web of Science”. As if those were not exclusive enough and ostentatiously peaked above the ken of the majority of academics, the advert went on to demand that the candidates must have published “at least ten research articles in the last three years in high-impact journals as defined by Thomson Reuters, ISI and Web of Science”.
This columnist’s recent experience in serving as a member of the Special Visitation Panel to Lagos State University on the choice of a vice-chancellor made me sensitive to the possibility of pre-selection of candidates through the skewing of criteria advertised for the post. It all begins this way but if not arrested easily snowballs into an unmanageable crisis.
Perusing a similar advert by the University of Ibadan and the one by Osun State University which brought in the incumbent, those conditions mentioned above are remarkably absent from them. The problem is that the advert is over-determined and renders as initial conditions what should have been the assignment of the Joint Committee of Council and Senate acting as a screening panel to separate excellent applicants from also-rans. What this means is that the majority of prospective candidates who do not meet these extraordinary barometers would be prevented from applying with the field left open for possibly favoured candidates who fit the bill.
Beyond that, the advert raises the question whether the work of the vice-chancellor who presides over academic and nonacademic staff is the same as that of an outstanding research director who is expected to stay at the cutting-edge of high-impact scientific publications. This may be an ideal of a kind in years to come, but the current state of academic infrastructure in Nigerian universities makes it, at least for now, an obstacle course and an impossible ideal.
At any rate, why erect hurdles which discriminate against those in the humanities and social sciences as requirements for applications? To avoid another full-blown crisis, it is advised that the current highfalutin advert be withdrawn and be replaced by a more usual one which will spread the dragnet more widely. For effect, the visitor to the university as well as the council should take interest in the matter before it degenerates.
Professor Ayo Olukotun is a director at the Oba (Dr.) S. K. Adetona Institute of Governance Studies, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye.
