'How much have you contributed to building that jungle? How much did your well loved Jonathan contribute to building that jungle? A person who is incapable of building any good thing takes pleasure in tearing apart the efforts of others.'
On graduating from my BA, my mother appealed to me to go to the West to study.
Knowing how stubborn I was in my views, she got a family friend to speak to me about it.
I vowed not to do so.
My vision was to do all my education in Nigeria/Africa and develop an international reputation from Africa, thereby contributing to destroying the global dominance of the Western academy.
I worked as an academic in Nigeria starting at a time when pay was low, beginning from my youth corp when I was was threatened by students with being killed if I persisted in my culture of catching students cheating at exams,was an ASUU executive through various struggles to improve the well being of academics and experienced losing my job in the process, getting it back with the support of Prof.Egudu who encouraged me to write a grovelling letter of apology to the VC for my stubbornness in refusing to return to work during the ASUU strike, eventually starting a publishing practice of writing textbooks tailored to students needs with the understanding that Nigerian tertiary education publishing would flourish if books that students understood would help them pass exams are published, I used my personal library as a public library that students could use for free, that library being party of a research centre that acted as a base for my research into African knowledge systems, central to my work today.
In the midst of all that, I remember driving from Uniben's Ugbowo campus in the rain and having my car filled with rain water up to the seat of the car, on account of poor drainage in Benin, as well as the Christmas in which we were not paid and yet my sister had come from Lagos to Benin where I lived to have her first child.
That was more than 10 years ago and yet I am reading that academic staff in federal universities had their February 2016 pay slashed by half thereby wreaking havoc to their economic plans-bills etc, in an act that entitles them to sue the govt for breach of contract.
I worked at the University of Benin for 12 years.
So, as my contributions to Nigeria, from within Nigeria, I have been there.
Fort me to have succeeded in my vision of developing a global academic reputation from within Nigeria, I needed to better understand the Nigerian academic and social system, and not be vulnerable to the dangers I would encounter.
It has taken me a long time to understand those inadequacies and how best to manage them, in relation to the opportunies offered by the growth in new publishing technologies.
thanks
toyin
On 2 March 2016 at 18:10, Ibukunolu A Babajide <ibk2005@gmail.com> wrote:
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,How much have you contributed to building that jungle? How much did your well loved Jonathan contribute to building that jungle? A person who is incapable of building any good thing takes pleasure in tearing apart the efforts of others.Cheers.IBKOn 1 March 2016 at 23:39, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <oluwasrividya@gmail.com> wrote:--Oluwatoyin Vincent AdepojuthanksAnything else can only benefit those who are happy with life in the jungle.Form new political parties, debate endlessly about one issue or another, ultimately anything different from close collective examination of the social space called Nigeria, allowing those who want to leave the forced union to do so and those who wish to remain to do so, while establishing the terms for either choice, is a waste of time.It is simply a space where brigands are in control and those who have an understanding with these brigands can do anything they like.All these are expressions of the fact that the social space and geographical entity where all this is taking place is not fit for human habitation, no matter how much people pretend about it.The problem is not the current chasing of political opponents in the name of fighting corruption while ignoring members of the national ruler's team who have spent millions in building a personal website or in hosting a birthday, among other inanities.The problem is not the allocation of millions for books for the office of the Vice-President, or the massive amounts allocated for food in the ruler's residence, along with other silly allocations in mind staggering amounts.The problem is not the strange 2016 budget in which millions were allocated to pay rent on the official residency of the national ruler.A no-mans-land where wild animals roam and among whom some humans insist they want to dwell.What we have is a jungle.We could build all the fine houses we like, engage in as much politiking as we like, we don't have a nation.I increasingly think this object Nigerians call a country is a waste of time.It is akin to pouring water into a leaking basket.
The problem is not with the years long consistent murders, rapes and pogroms by Fulani herdsmen/militia, reaching a climax in the ongoing Agatu massacre in which which whole communities have been rendered full of corpses and razed to the ground as the Fulani move in with their cows to occupy the land while the government presided over by a Fulani man surrounded by his cronies maintains silence or pretends what is happening is a quarrel between neighbours.
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