Living in the present, dying for the past
By Levi Obijiofor
TO understand clearly how life has degenerated in Nigeria and how the economy has been on a downward slide since the past 30 years, we must reflect on the past. Nostalgia may not offer solutions to our present problems but it will surely tell us how badly we have performed in key sectors such as the economy, education, employment, sports, infrastructure development and servicing, as well as healthcare. Let's start by analysing the life of an average student in the 1970s and early 1980s.
As a student at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, I must admit that life was, to put it modestly, golden. Not only did we have access to relevant books and current editions of reputable international peer-reviewed journals, the quality of the education we received was also much higher than what is currently available. The lecture theatres still retained their plush seats and carpeted floors. Lecturers did not attend lectures with packets of chalk stuffed in their back pockets. And students were not forced to pay for badly written lecture notes generally referred to as "handouts".
Compare the state of facilities at the universities in those days to the existing grubby services and infrastructure that students have to contend with now in many Nigerian universities. In most of the universities today, lecture halls have been stripped of virtually everything that was installed to facilitate research, teaching and learning. Rather than serve as centres for the promotion of scientific experiments, university science laboratories now breed rats, cockroaches and spiders.
The depressing state of affairs in the universities suggests that the federal government, the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Federal Education Ministry do not really expect to foster a culture of science and technology development in the universities.
During my student days at UNILAG, although some lecture halls were filled to excess capacity with students sitting on the floor and others standing outside the lecture halls (something that would be considered as an occupational, health and safety hazard in western universities), that situation pales in comparison to the current conditions in the same universities. Sadly, rather than improve on past standards, educational facilities and services have been depreciating at a staggering speed. And the rot is still continuing. How Nigerian university students, including research higher degree postgraduate students manage to cope in the face of these challenges, never ceases to amaze me.
How can Nigerian universities honestly claim that they are offering research higher degree programs leading to the award of PhDs and MPhils when the libraries are starved of funds, when the libraries have been turned into museums for the storage of artefacts and dog-eared books, when the libraries do not hold current listings of critical journals, when the libraries cannot afford to subscribe to leading journals in various disciplines, and when academic staff are not encouraged to engage in primary and secondary research in order to boost their research and publications' track record?
Let me return to nostalgia, not necessarily because I am interested in glorifying the past, but to underline the degree to which basic services have disintegrated in Nigerian universities. I will start with the simplest of services - food. In UNILAG in those days, the Sunday lunch was a popular drawcard. For example, half an hour before the start of the official lunch time, long queues had already formed in front of the entrance to the main cafeteria at the Akoka campus of UNILAG. Why the long queues for Sunday lunch?
Well, for the unbelievable price of 50 kobo (the cost of the meal ticket), you were guaranteed a sumptuous lunch that included, believe it or not, a good serve of delicious jollof rice, a whole chicken leg or breast, a good serve of ice cream (the ultimate crowd puller), in addition to tea, coffee or Bournvita, with full cream milk and sugar thrown in as well.
The Sunday lunch at UNILAG attracted a large mix of students from other tertiary education institutions in Lagos, as well as non-students from the community. Male students who wanted to impress their girlfriends with an exaggerated idea of their luxurious lifestyle in Lagos invited them to the weekly Sunday lunch. Some of the visitors who patronised the cafeteria also came with food flasks tucked underneath their armpits. Such was the popularity of the Sunday lunch. The food was so good that some students and visitors were prepared to pay double at the cost of one naira (not one thousand naira) to eat the same food as lunch and also as dinner.
Compare the meal ticket of just 50 kobo in those golden years to the current cost of a decent meal in one of the "bukaterias" that are littered around university campuses in the country. Someone might ask: is there a basis for comparing life in the 1970s and early 1980s to the current political and economic mess in the country? Yes, there is a basis. Reflecting about our past should give us ideas about where we went wrong, how we can mend our errant ways and how we can get back on the right track. The problem is that the current political leadership has neither the time to reflect over the country's past nor does it seem bothered about the need to map out a firm programme of action to restore the country on the right path to economic development.
In terms of employment prospects, the 1970s offered abundant job opportunities to university graduates. Many final year students did not worry about jobs after graduation because there were jobs waiting for them before their graduation. Indeed, university graduates at the time didn't worry about unemployment or how to get a car.
The employment system was relatively transparent and it was based on merit, not on mediocrity. Rather than offer university graduates jobs on the basis of the crazy concept of "federal character", the system offered jobs to the best candidates on the basis of their demonstrated academic knowledge and professional skills.
In the 1970s and in the early 1980s, the federal civil service and private businesses such as accounting firms, oil companies, banks and insurance companies conducted job interviews for final year students in university campuses. Such interview opportunities have since disappeared owing essentially to burgeoning population of unemployed graduates, shrinking job vacancies in the public and private sectors, as well as the increasing emphasis on ethnicity, regionalism, religious affiliation and "old school ties" as factors that influence job offers.
The failure of our society to find jobs for at least one quarter of our university graduates is a scandal of immense proportion. It says a lot about the economic planning credentials of the presidents and military dictators that Nigeria produced in the past 39 years. The worst part of the pain is that federal and state governments, as well as private businesses have no ideas about how to initiate programmes designed to stimulate the economy and jobs. The global economic crisis has made the outlook for jobs in Nigeria even more hopeless.
Consider also the current fascination for going overseas to study, to live, to work, and even to engage in fraudulent activities. In the 1970s, not many people were interested in going to study overseas. In fact, those who did were perceived rightly or wrongly as the "never-do-wells", those who couldn't make it in the local universities. This group, of course, excludes those who were lucky to be offered scholarships by overseas tertiary education institutions, as well as federal and state governments.
There was joy at the time in studying at home and working at home. The economy was doing very well. The local currency was much stronger in value than the dollar or any other international currency. The impact of the oil boom was felt across all sectors of the economy. Students received various types of federal and state government bursaries. Vacation jobs were easy to find. Today, no university student can dream of vacation jobs. It is now anachronistic to talk about vacation jobs because those kinds of jobs don't exist anymore.
When you hear people say there is hope in the future, you should chuckle because there is no basis for such hope. Nigeria's depressing case is beyond redemption. Perhaps the optimists are right. Hope is the only way we can maintain our sanity. We are simply living in the present but dying for the past.
