USA Africa Dialogue Series - Bello Kano , The University-as-Pastiche

The university atmosphere in virtually all Nigerian campuses is now heavy with the air of officialdom, office-seeking, and clique groups. The culture of office-taking is threatening to take over the academic and research endeavours of colleagues. The growing bureaucracy and bureaucratization of university life--- reach centres each with a Director, more DVCs, more mundane committees to do small jobs, the rush to build the so called symbols of progress (office edifices) rather than more lecture halls and student hostels, etc. is a virtual new re-description of the idea of the university.

Thus the university as we know it is now slowly becoming an mere Emblem of Narcissism, or is, at least, emblematic of the spectral, the luminous, the fashionable, and the recycling and re-duplication of economic and ideological space. The increasing encroachment of the "civil service mentality" (the mentality not of service but of emblematic perquisites), the quiet re-description of the university authorities as "the management", the introduction of perks for the higher officials, official cars, wardrobe allowance, etc. has given a personal competitive motive and incentive for professors to want to get to the top positions at all costs, and sometimes not bother to be or remain scholars and academically productive people in their respective academic research fields. In campus after campus, academics are falling over themselves to be the Vice chancellor, or other well-heeled positions in the university system and outside it.

Prof. Ibrahim Bello Kano, The Treasure-House of Signs: The University-as-Pastiche


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