Great Nimi:
I have been thinking about you for three days for the wrong reasons! As I read Farooq's piece on Pantami and later one written by Moses (via Farooq sending it to me as I am not on Facebook), I began to think of you that assuming you did not do your PhD (in two years if I remember), would I not have recommended you to become a professor? I would have. Could this have been a "fraud"? No.
There are too many things about the Pantami's case that trouble me. There are talents out there who could be professors without any form of corruption. You already had a solid body of work before you decided to do a PhD. Behind your back, I had nominated you twice for an honorary doctorate. On one occasion, they decided to choose Patience Jonathan instead!
I decided to think about myself as well. I did not want to go to College, talk less about becoming a professor. I don't like to be called a professor. My favorite name/title is TF. It takes away all needs for titles, status. When people call me Professor, I tell them without being rude not to call me a professor.
Why does Pantami want to be called a Professor? He already has tremendous power, both in secular and theological terms. He has even acquired the power of a Non-Governmental Individual (NGI) for the rest of his life. In Weberian terms, he is power. Why not become a Chancellor? And Farooq will not have a point to make. I don't see the entire incident as a "fraud", with an apology to Farooq, but as an excess of oxytocin that produces excessive flights of imagination.
In these flights of imagination, I have heard about women who want to become witches, pastors who see themselves as Jesus Christ and enter the lion's den thinking that nothing will happen to them, professors who see themselves as winning the Nobel, a small store owner who thinks he is Dangote, a lizard who actually thinks that he is a crocodile.
Where Farooq sees "fraud" I see a variety of madness. There are four types: bad-mad, mad-mad, sad-mad, and glad-mad. May be this case illustrates a case of one.
I welcome your thoughts!
TF
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Nimi Wariboko <nimiwari@msn.com>
Date: Tuesday, September 14, 2021 at 10:25 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Pantami And The Ruination Of Academia
Toyin Adepoju, this is an interesting story. Thanks for sharing.
Nimi Wariboko
On Sep 14, 2021, at 8:55 PM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
Good Lord!
You have below the stuff of an excellent memoir.
TF
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, September 14, 2021 at 7:51 PM
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Pantami And The Ruination Of AcademiaAs a youth corper at the University of Benin, I used to aspire to the title of ''professor''. I even composed my professorial titles and the names of the universities in different parts of Africa where they would be held and pasted these on a part of my room where I would see them daily.
No studying in the West for me, I resolved. I was determined to contributing to breaking Western epistemic hegemony by achieving maximum success without the benefit of studying within their citadels.
I was so happy to be a lecturer. Anything was possible, I thought.
''Get a degree and the world becomes yours for the choosing'' my mum would urge in those years when I had resisted going to the university, preferring to educate myself.
''Which is preferable, the [ then rustic looking ] white garment church priest or the refined Catholic priest? Which would you wish to be?," she would urge, equating the white garment priest with my self education path and the Catholic priest with the university graduate.
''You oppose the educational system as misguided and therefore have chosen to drop out. Are you not like a person trying to put off a light bulb using his breath, rather than simply flicking the switch for that purpose? You cannot change the system from outside. You must belong within it to do so" she would conclude, she being a primary and secondary school teacher and eventually a lawyer, having got two degrees in different disciplines, even after giving birth to all her children.
''What others do all kinds of bizarre things to achieve, you have achieved and discarded?!" my father would respond incredulously to my unilaterally dropping out of uni in my first year after eventually entering the university following the pressure from my family and the various people assembled to convince me to enter.
Having been one of the earlier elite attending such schools as the then University of Ife, his alma mater, when they were still new, my father, an accountant with various professional qualifications, could not understand why his son could not grasp the socio-economic implications of the world opened up for a Nigerian by a university education at a time when such education and middle class status were automatically correlative.
He could not understand that his son had entered into another world, though still active in the conventional social universe.
Other teengaers were focused on girls, school, parties, cars, friends, music, etc. All that had little value for me.
Reading the books my father had bought for the family library had transformed me. I wanted to be like the Buddha, seeker of the ultimate meaning of existence, who had abandoned everything for that quest, and about whom I had first read in Charles Connell's World Famous Rebels, one of those books in the family library.
Looking within myself in meditation, following the inspiration of Abdrushin's In the Light of Truth, another of those books, I had discovered within myself a raging fire, a desperate hunger for knowledge, like a voracious lion.
Nothing being offered by society could satisfy that quest for knowledge of ultimate reality unifying all existence, the focus of this force, which took over my being.
''The mass education of that system does not suit me'', I would insist.
''An education that is not centred in exploring the questions of why we exist, where we are coming from, where we are going to and how we should live, is a focus on illusion, the distraction of lost travellers who have no idea of the purpose of their journey,'' I would argue.
''Sounded intelligent but meaningless" my younger sister later told me was how she saw those protestations from me in those teenage years.
In retrospect, I wonder how my efforts at expressing those aspirations would have sounded at the time, having had little formal education beyond secondary school and just beginning to enter into sophisticated reading and with little practice in crafting and communicating philosophical ideas. Ironically, whatever lucidity those ideas now demonstrate has taken me decades of tertiary schooling, academic scholarship and self directed study to achieve.
'' Is he being troubled by a love affair? Is he smoking or ingesting dangerous substances? Does he use intoxicants?'' various adults would ask at that time of my rebellion.
''No. He's actually an introvert who spends all his time reading'' my beleaguered mother would respond.
'' You need to take him to a psychiatrist. There must be something wrong'' some concluded.
All that was demanded of us we have done. The schooling we have done. Working as an academic, one has done. Even further studies in the heartland of the educational system, the West, after unfulfillment with the Nigerian variant, one has been fortunate to experience with the help of my mum and sisters, anxious to assist in fulfilling himself and finding his bearings their intelligent brother who has not been able to fit in fully anywhere.
But one cannot deny one's own spirit.
How shall the wilderness fit in the city?
thanks
toyin
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 19:58, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,
You wanna know, "If the professor title is no big deal, why is the person in question interested in being so titled?"
The best person to ask is the person in question himself, assuming you will thereby wring the truth out of him. Offhand, knowing the quality of the person under your scrutiny, I'd say that the title "professor" is no big deal to him: I imagine that he's doing it for show, hence the ridiculous photos of him holding up the attestation, assuredly water-stamped and dutiful signed by the Chancellor of the university in question. Dr Pantami after all comes from the North where literacy preceded the literacy that later on came to the South, mainly through Christian missionaries. From that point of view, I suppose that for Dr. Pantami, the title Mallam is more elevating, confers more status, than Professor or D.D.. With which of his South Nigerian contemporaries of the Nigerian East or West would you compare the prodigious intellectual output of Shehu Usman dan Fodio, which is still in print and some of which I have devoured?
It's a peculiarly Nigerian phenomena, this fascination with the title of Professor. Understandably, in pre-literate, illiterate, semi-literate and indeed in primitive (pre-technological) societies, he who knows little is king, talk less of he who knows much. In the kingdom of the blind, is the one-eyed not king? So, understandably, some people of otherwise low-self esteem ( inferiority complex, the backside of superiority complex ) want to be beheld in the eyes of their mental and intellectual superiors /equals/menial inferiors, so-called underlings, as intellectual giants "kings", as their intellectual "kings", "professors" of even the lowest-ranked universities in the world, even if they've only got a PhD in geology or mineral extraction.
The erstwhile chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission Attahiru Muhammadu Jega always appeared in the news as " Professor Attahiru Jega", I suppose for added lustre, to give his honesty, incorrigibility, added credibility, if not awe.
We talk of Soyinka, Chomsky, Georg Henrik Von Wright, ritually, without prefacing their names with the title "Professor"
How does Dr Pantami want to be addressed in the future? As Professor Pantami or would he prefer to keep the title in his back pocket?
The best answer to that question too can only come directly from the horse's mouth.
Still in the realm of Professor, this article for your perusal even if as of yet here is no left in Nigerian politickings: Cornel West on Why the Left Needs Jesus
Virus-free. www.avast.com
On Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 17:11, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:
If the professor title is no big deal, why is the person in question interested in being so titled?
On Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 13:17 Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:
As Dr. Alban puts it, in "Hello Africa"
"So why be shy? Why be humble?
I just came straight out the jungle"
Professors, like prophets.
"Full professors",
half professors,
half-real professors,
semi-professors
deputy professors
fake professors..
Who are worse, fake professors or false prophets?
What's the difference?
What say ye about Professor Longhair?
Has Dr Pantami and the institution that honoured and recognised him, so hurt all mankind that they cannot be forgiven, understood, left in peace, ignored?
Over here in Jante Sweden, the title professor is not such a big deal - as Baba Kadiri was joking with me over the phone yesterday, that in Sweden when some gorilla - straight outta the jungle starts beating his chest to announce "I have a PhD" (maybe the first in his tribe to be awarded a PhD), if Mister Svensson is at all interested or impressed - enough to raise an eyebrow, he may politely enquire (more in a mode of challenge) ," in which area of study?" And, of course, if you're from Nigeria he's probably going to be more impressed if you tell him " molecular biology", than if you say, "political science." In any case, he may even believe that it's one of those 419 degrees from this kind of university ...
The fascination with titles such as " Professor", especially in semi-literate societies is what colonialism has done to some of us. What is the aim of those who are so obsessed or incensed with whatever as the motor that's driving them to pursue Dr. Pantami so relentlessly? And, by the way, I'm very impressed by Dr. Pantami's tenure at Medina - I'm impressed by anyone that's qualified to teach whatever, at Medina – and when thinking of West African medical doctors destined to work in Saudi Arabia, I am also impressed by, among others, our own Dr. George Tregson Roberts, for example.
But this professor bug. My Hindu friend used to call me " Professor". Professor? What a responsibility! Not only being a professor of yourself but even a professor of others, having to be teaching saucy nineteen-year-old second-year urchins at some university...
On the lighter side, from mundane realities in Nigeria to the more amusing sideline truths in fiction,; I'm thinking of the role played by the Professor in Wole Soyinka's "The Road" and the Professor in Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent "
Listen to Pepe Kalle saying " Professor," as Diblo Dibala does his thing in
Pepe Kalle Chante le Poète Simaro Massiya
On Monday, 13 September 2021 at 21:31:08 UTC+2 toyinfalola wrote:
https://blazenewz.com/2021/09/13/pantami-and-the-ruination-of-academia/
Sent from my iPhone--
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