Dr. Ademola Adesola had a stint with the newspaper industry in Nigeria, served in the administration of former Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State as a Senior Special Assistant (Speech Writing and Media), worked as a lecturer in King’s University, and was the pioneer Media Officer of the Technical University, Ibadan, before travelling abroad for his doctoral research. A Nigerian-Canadian, Dr. Adesola is now an Assistant Professor of Postcolonial Literatures at the Department of English, Languages, and Cultures in Mount Royal University, Canada. He divides his time between Canada and Nigeria largely. Recently he was in Nigeria for the Lagos Study Association’s annual conference where his new book, Representations of Child Soldiers in Contemporary African Narratives, was the subject of a roundtable. NPO Reports’ SAFIU KEHINDE sat down with him for this interview.
What were the circumstances that led to you leaving Nigeria for Canada?
Well, different things and factors always are responsible for why we make certain decisions. I did my first and second degrees at Obafemi Awolowo University. For my doctorate, I went to Canada. I should note that I had initially started my PhD at OAU before I made the decision to go do it in Canada.
I wanted something beyond the shores of this country, for the very reason that, to be clear, the socio-economic and political realities of Nigeria at the time drained one’s confidence in a relatively meaningful future here. And my observation has been that the country is under the influence of demonic human beings. As such, if you give the country another 100 years under such demonic forces, there is not going to be progress.
I am quite saddened that since I left about ten years ago the affairs of the country have not improved for the better. The Nigeria that I return to annually since I left is always negatively different. Yes, there are changes, but they are surface ones and are not the viable kinds that positively improve the conditions of the people.
The developments that successive administrations at various levels credit to themselves are not any meaningfully life-enhancing developments. Whatever positives there may be are tokenistic. They do not go far enough. They only scratch the surface of things in terms of really, really transforming the conditions of existence, of life.
So, for me, human life is too short to spend a substantial part of it struggling with human-made problems. The challenges we are dealing with in Nigeria are not above our capacities as Nigerians to address, but we are unfortunate with the folks who have been superintending the country.
There is no doubt that they don’t mean well. And as I have time and again argued, the biggest entity that is responsible for the mass exodus you witness in Nigeria to other places is the government at different levels, the federal one being the main driver. What governments in Nigeria do very well is to decimate lives, make them miserable.
Even when people are not concerned about getting anything from the government and they’re making their own efforts, the government still gets in the way and devalues their efforts. So, people must make choices. People don’t have forever to live. All the admonitions of government to Nigerians to endure pains are how Nigerian lives are colossally wasted.
So, for me, the need to be able to make a more meaningful use of myself and to contribute to human progress are some of the reasons why I made that decision to excuse myself from the Nigerian house of consistent underdevelopment.
It appears you have a very rapid growth in your academic attainments in Canada judging by when you left Nigeria with a master’s degree and now, you are an assistant professor. What would you say helped with such a fast pace?
I completed my PhD in about four years. A few months after I defended my dissertation, I got two tenure-track job offers. To clarify, I responded in application to seven institutions. I received five interview invitations. It was from the five job interviews that I got the two offers I referenced. I had the pleasure of having a pleasant problem deciding which of the two full-time offers I would settle for. Maybe I knew which of the two I wanted seriously while undergoing the interviews. In any case, I chose Mount Royal University. Yes, my academic attainment, as you put it, is reasonably fast and involves hard labour and sacrifices.
But it looks smooth, easy and straightforward. That was not the case. Of course, there are all kinds of challenges here and there. But I stayed on course. I also had a wonderful advisor to work with. And having an organized, competent, supportive, and respectful supervisor is important in a work of that kind. I also had other professors, colleagues, family members, and friends who were there for me for different reasons.
But I had to contend with acute aloneness in the first two and a hald years of my programme because my immediate family was in Nigeria at the time. I also had to deal with the loss of a dear family member at the time. Nonetheless, I gave myself to work. I taught many classes just as I was minding my research commitment. I did my work and got myself prepared for what would be the next stage after my doctoral undertaking.
It’s important for opportunities to always meet preparation. People, especially young folks, need to realize that it’s important to always prepare for great opportunities. You’re not just going to have things thrown on your laps. It’s not going to happen; you must be ready to take advantage of opportunities when they come knocking. I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said, “I will prepare myself and one day my chance will come.” There is a need for people to prepare.
In my case, there was no doubt about what I wanted to do with my own life, even right from Nigeria. As I told you a while ago, after my first degree, I worked as an arts journalist. I would also go on to serve in an administration in an appointed capacity. But these places were just temporary stops for me. They were not the places I wanted to be. I had my mind set on being a teacher, a university teacher. Even when I took up the form to apply for my doctoral program, there was clarity in my mind about what I wanted to do with myself.
Given a role to play in Nigerian university now, would you return to teach in Nigeria?
That’s an interesting question. There’s nothing wrong with the entity called Nigeria. Its problem, quite frankly, has to do largely with those running it. As to whether I would return to Nigeria if given a role in a university there, my answer is that I have had that opportunity in the past. I did with that chance what I thought was my duty as a teacher.
Modesty compels me to say frankly that the change institutions in Nigeria needs cannot come from an individual. Besides, even if I take up an appointment in a Nigerian institution, I can only be in one place.
Right now, I’m where I want to be in the place of my choosing. And from this place I continue to be useful to different people, from teachers, researchers, to students, in Nigeria. When I visit Nigeria in summer, I undertake different activities that both enrich people in some universities and me. I gift books whenever it’s possible and facilitate the acquisition of journal articles for those in need of them but who don’t have the necessary access to such materials. I continue to cherish my relationship with individuals in Nigerian higher institutions. I don’t see myself as any better than those people.
For example, I still fervently read the works of colleagues in Nigeria, whether they are my seniors or at the same level with me. For example, if I come across a publicity for a forthcoming inaugural lecture and the focus appeals to me, I will reach out to anyone willing to purchase the paper for me.
I teach Nigerian authors and invite some of them to my classes to share with my students. I guess my point is that even without being invited to take up responsibilities in any Nigerian institution of learning, I’m already doing a lot to support teachers and students there.
What are the differences between Nigerian institutions back in the days as compared to what we have now?
I can only speak to my experiences, directly and vicariously, when I was fully here and what I see and hear when I visit yearly. Of course there’re vast changes. Most of these changes aren’t pleasant. For example, there’re now more universities than there were before I left Nigeria. Unfortunately, resources have not increased to support both the old and the new ones. There are programmes that lack experts, or they are pathetically inadequate. Moreover, the welfare and pay packages for lecturers haven’t decently improved. But this lack isn’t the case with the political class. Talk of misplacement of priorities. Students too aren’t faring any better now.
Their learning experiences are poor and don’t infuse them with the confidence to face the world. There’s now even what they call student loans. It means students are now being indebted in retune for inadequate learning experiences. In places where they borrowed the student loan idea students will not be comfortable with not getting value for money. I think here is an opportunity for students in Nigeria who take loans to go to school to find their voices and insist on quality instructions as well as facilities. Student bodies on campuses and nationally have a chance to make themselves usefully relevant in this cause. It’s a fight worth taking up.
Let’s remember that we used to have such a country whose higher institutions of learning were producing the best. In other words, we had in this country universities that were doing very well and were showing very good promises for greater things to come and they were turning out very wonderful minds, preparing people for the world beyond university life, and getting people ready to be useful for themselves and society. And some of our universities then used to be places where you had the best of anybody from anywhere coming to and all that. The good news is that our institutions can still be better than they used to be if they get the right amount of investment and attention. There’s no reason why our thinkers and teachers should endure the kind of afflictions that have been their lots, more the case in the last thirty years.
We can be like those universities we run to study if we get our minds together here and we are putting resources together where we should put them. We have seen it happening in the past as I began by saying that this country and its institution were showing promises of greatness but that got interrupted along the line. It’s still possible. And I want to say that the problems we’re dealing with in this country aren’t insolvable. They are problems that we can solve. They are human-made problems. There’s nothing natural about them. It’s just a case that we are putting the wrong people in charge and they’re using the wrong tools. That’s what is responsible. Otherwise, were we to get our acts together here in prioritizing investment in the human person, going abroad will not be appealing. If we do go, as it is important for people to see other places, it’ll just be temporary. It won’t be the same way we emigrated over the last one decade.
There have been complaints about funding of education in Nigeria. What is your stake on this?
I’d like to make clear that Nigeria isn’t a poor country. If anybody is in doubt, they only need to look at where money is going into. They need to look at how much, on an annual basis, we spend taking care of the very tiny fraction of those who are ruling this country. You know we spend abominably on those human beings right from the councilor to the president and their hangers-on and the so-called people who work for them. We spend stupendously and those are monies that could do some better work in education, in healthcare, in providing meaningful infrastructure.
We have people who are willing to conduct research that can help us understand ourselves even better; that can help us manage our health challenges; that can help us manage even our politics; that can help us manage how we conduct business in this country and several other things and how to be a proper human. We have people who can dedicate themselves to initiating ideas for our progress. They can dedicate time given the right resources to do that kind of work. But we are not putting the money there.
If as a doctoral candidate you are the one who had to spend practically everything you needed to complete that program, I don’t think you would be inclined to think that you owe this country anything. I mean we are talking about a researcher that has not received funding in any useful ways from any agency in this country.
So, my own take is that we aren’t so poor that we can’t invest in education in a way that can transform lives in this country. We are capable. We have resources, whether human or materials. We have them. It’s just putting the money in the right place, investing in people, not those consumers ruling the country. Investment in consumerism doesn’t yield any meaningful outcome. Nigeria needs to investment in people. All the young folks that we have in this country, all the children that are being born in this country, all the over 18 million out-of-school children in the northern part of Nigeria and elsewhere, put money into cultivation of their minds and this country will never remain the same.
Those who are responsible for cultivating minds right from primary school all the way up, make sure that they are maintained. Let them live decently like human beings that they are. They will be primed and more motivated to do the work that can get them to train people who can be useful in and beyond the borders of Nigeria. Unless we are doing that, unless we are intentional about understanding that the foundation that will do wonders in this country is one that is achieved through education- the framework must be true education, the country won’t far.
I also like to say this because people, in my own observation, confuse these two things as one. There is a difference between certification and education. The truth of the matter is that some of those, many of those who are ruling this country, from councilor to president, are just certificated human beings.
They aren’t educated. It takes a person who understands the value of something to promote it. There’s the saying that when the value of a thing is not known, abuse is inevitable. So, what we are looking at in the Nigerian context is abuse of resources. The rulers don’t know the value and don’t know how to make those resources deliver beyond the present for them and for the country.
So when you see people talk about, “oh, and these persons say they are educated…” No, no, no! Always look very closely because education does something to the mind. It allows you to set up in certain ways that you are able to understand values of things and how you can promote them and how things can get better.
It encourages you to have viable vision, to set realistic, achievable objectives for anything. It allows you to understand that the kids you see today are going to grow tomorrow. So, if they aren’t well cultured, if they aren’t well trained, if their minds aren’t groomed finely, they will be the problems tomorrow. Good education allows you to understand this key point. And it allows you to look for resources that will make you invest in those people in a way that they can make something meaningful for themselves. And that’s important. You can’t help anyone without helping yourself first.
When you are well placed, you can then be a good citizen who understands that what works well is to aid other people when you have the means and to contribute to the progress of your own country. Very important! So, the point I’m stressing is that we can fund functional, productive education across all levels in this country if we have in charge of our system those who understand the value of the resources we have and the ends to which they should be deployed.
Our educational system has no business being what it is. It isn’t delivering the kind of services that is meaningful for this country and you can’t divorce the progress of this country from its educational institutions. So, you must fund it. I mean why do people who go out of this country prosper in their own way and are able to contribute to the places they now inhabit? It’s a simple thing we are asking this country to do for its young people. It isn’t beyond its capacity. It can do it with the right cohort of leaders.
But some people also believe that our Ivory Towers too have a role to play in finding solutions but they have failed. How do you react to this?
Well, those who hold this view aren’t entirely wrong. I guess what they aren’t paying attention to is that the institutions they’re talking about are also in Nigeria. How do you expect them to be different from the space in which they operate? For example, are you saying that an institution that has been poorly funded, or staff that are poorly paid, or not even paid (as we have said in the past), you think that’s going to bring out the best in people? No, it isn’t going to happen. One is not saying it’s totally inevitable that they must be horrible, but the point is that good conditions or, if you like, conducive conditions for living as a human being has the potential to bring out the best in you. What we see largely in our own country is a case of people operating in horrible circumstances and there is an existential threat that they are dealing with. If you’re dealing with hunger, if you’re dealing with not knowing how to get one job or anything, that’s a very formidable threat. And while it might force you or condition you to think more creatively about how you can address that, substantially, especially if you are ill-educated, it only sets you up to demonstrate the worst in you.
People don’t need to forget that at any given time human beings are a composite of two things. We have the capacity for goodness and then we have the capacity for evil. The difference between one human being and another is while one invests in promoting that side of them that is capable of good, others don’t. And what you see is the exhibition of the worst form of themselves. So, it needs to be clear that when we talk about our institutions not being too different from what obtains in the larger society, we need to understand they are still part of this society.
I also don’t know whether people realize how vice-chancellors live in this country. Most of those administrators aren’t different from the president and governors in the manner they cater to themselves. They have recreated the presidency of the country in their own small units. The VCs live large and enjoy such perks that could add up to something if applied to the more pressing needs on their campuses. Here’s where those who criticize our institutions appear to have a point. Our higher institutions of learning are microcosms of the macrocosmic society – our institutions reflect the culture and practices of the larger society.
It’s the same thing with student unions. The executives of those bodies carry on in the same manner as members of the political class. They carry on as lords and terrorize their fellow students. Because VCs too are lords, they frequently clash with the leadership of the student bodies. In the end, because the VCs are more powerful, they proscribe student unions on their campuses. So, like the world outside them, our campuses aren’t democratic spaces; they criminalize dissent; and they’re given to uneven or lack of development. These are issues that require attention, but I don’t think these concerns can be addressed on our campuses if the society out there isn’t transformed.
Who do you then blame for the crisis in the education system? Politicians? Academics? Who?
I think we’ve talked enough about those responsible and factors that are responsible, basically human agents. But I think where we are now it isn’t about looking for the culprit per se. Blame game doesn’t cut it. It’s not going to address what we’re dealing with. Our situation now is well illustrated by the popular metaphor of spilt milk. The Nigerian case, with respect to institutions of learning and governance, is a case of spilt milk. And when you have spilt milk, you can choose to begin to cry that the milk you want to take is all on the ground or you can acknowledge the fact that it’s useless crying over spilt milk. And then you coordinate yourself to clean up. And the nature of the cleanup also matters. You can decide to clean up in a way that if somebody comes there, they ask, what happened here? That’s to that the cleaning is bad. Or you can choose to clean and clean very well such that somebody comes in and they have no awareness that something happened there. So, the nature of cleaning also matters. But more importantly, the point I’m making is that it’s no use crying over spilt milk.
There’s nothing to be gained from pointing fingers. If we talk about those who are responsible for the mess in this country, we identify them so that we can avoid having such people in charge of our affairs. It’s part of the process. You can’t change or address a thing you don’t know. In other words, you can’t begin to solve a problem if you don’t know its causative agents. So, in the process of trying to find solutions to our problems, we must know how we got there.
We must figure out, as Chinua Achebe would say, where the rain began to drench us. And the solutions we need may not come from those responsible for the problems. You can’t solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. I should stress again that functional education holds the key to our solution. Sadly, those who rule the land are anti anything education, their loud claims to it notwithstanding. It’s why I do say that in another 100 years Nigeria won’t see the light of enduring advancement if the same thinking and attitude and persons like the current rulers remain in charge.
The challenge now is for the Nigerian people to think about how to rescue themselves from these human hyenas who have resolved in their minds, as their actions indicate, that it’s either they take everything that needs to be taken, or this country has no rest. That’s their philosophy. It’s self-enrichment. It’s taking care of their cronies. It’s taking care of their families. It’s just reproducing themselves. If this mindset isn’t checked, as it has not been, we’ll continue to have this kind of situation that we are dealing with, and we’ll continue to look for who to blame.
We know the problems. We know who the people who are cheapening our lives, or rather who are putting us in bad shape. The sufferers of this country must decide whether they want to continue to rationalize the killing actions of their tormenting rulers or they want to radically turn the table. They’ll lose nothing but their avoidable suffering.
Some persons have asked if Nigerians should be thinking about some acts of revolution. Well, I don’t know. But if that holds a viable panacea, I think they might be looking into it.
But fundamentally, Nigerians need to quit tolerating this wanton and wounding disrespect from their government at different levels. Nigerians need to be truly and really angry and fed up with what is dehumanizing them. And what they do with that anger, what they do with that displeasure is up to them, because the truth is, if a condition is messing up your life, you need to find very strong solutions to it. Sometimes it’s hard not think that hounded Nigerians aren’t displeased enough about their horrible human condition. We don’t talk enough about what bad governance really means.
The phrase, “bad governance,” has become something Nigerians tolerate. It’s now mellifluous music to our ears. We don’t feel auditorily harassed and conceive of it as cacophonous music. Bad governance isn’t appreciated as a mechanism for ensuring the erosion of human dignity, loss of lives, lack of employment, dysfunctional infrastructure, and what have you. We need to be using the language that can help capture our phenomena, our experiences. We should quit using lavender language, language that makes atrocious acts tolerable.
In other words, Nigerians have to take their destiny in their own hands. Nobody is coming from anywhere to save this country. The Nigerian people are the ones who will do that work. The external forces are only interested in operating in cahoots with those who are ruining this country. Talk of the IMFs and the world banks of this world. One morning they wake up and say, oh, the government isn’t doing well. Another morning, they wake up and suddenly, you know, the economy is fine as they have just declared recently.
Well, it needs to be stressed that we shouldn’t be treating matters of development as if they are flower vases that are positioned in one corner of a sitting room, so that if anyone doesn’t go to that sitting room, they won’t know that there’s a beautiful flower there. Development is not like that. If there are developments, if there are positive changes, the lives of the people will tell the story. It isn’t governmental megaphones or foreign institutions that will call our attention to the goodies of good governance. Ours is a society where people are told their lives are better and they are looking for evidence of the declaration.
One other point that bears emphasizing too is that as a people we need to stop confusing critical analyses of events in the country with mere abuses. Constructive criticisms have values. They are useful. As humans, we need critical intervention in everything we are doing. If I’m doing something and nobody is checking what I’m doing and I’m not critically conscious about it, it’s easy to perpetuate mediocrity in that instance. So, criticisms have value. Nigerians should increasingly put the feet of their rulers to the fire and not accept anything from them on its face value. We should also think more about using social media to compel attention to what devalues life in the country and not back down until the change we seek takes place.