Where are the Nigerian theories?

Knowledge, we all know, is the driver of the modern global economy and is now fundamental to development and growth in any society. It is the human mind that makes possible all advancements, from health and agricultural innovations to efficient public administration and private sector growth. No country or society can truly develop without unleashing the potential of the human mind in forms of knowledge, innovations, technologies and theories.

Theories are the main building blocs of knowledge. A theory, to be sure, is a set of concepts and propositions that provide an orderly way to view phenomena. Its purpose, especially in scientific disciplines, is to guide research to enhance knowledge by support existing knowledge or generating new knowledge. All scientific and technological advances were only possible through the deployment of theories.

A way of knowing the quality of knowledge generated in every society is the number and quality of home-grown theories and conceptual frameworks generated to solve societal problems. In the hey days of knowledge generation in Nigerian universities, our academics churned out quality theories to help explain complex phenomena in our countries. We cannot but remember the great contribution of the Ibadan school of history, for instance, to the reconstruction and understanding of Nigerian and African history even after the colonialists and western education tried to present the continent as a people without history and culture. We also fondly remember the contributions of great scholars like Billy J. Dudley, Peter Ekeh and Claude Ake to the understanding of Nigerian and African politics and economy. That our country has not deployed these generated knowledge towards solving the many problems of our society says a lot about the town-gown disconnect.

Sadly, in recent times and despite the proliferation of universities and so-called academics, there has been a noticeable absence of quality theories coming from the ivory towers. It appears Nigerian academics have completely outsourced the huge task of generating theories to explain events in Nigeria to foreign academics while they busy themselves with debating and applying these foreign generated theories.

Of course we know why. Our universities in Nigeria are now a caricature of what a university should be. They are now bereft of any serious academic endeavours and our so-called academics are lost in the conversations within their disciplines due to constant strikes, poor funding and continuous watering of standards. Haven cut themselves off from ‘the conversations’ with their global colleagues, they now create illusory ‘fiefdoms’ in the various universities where they are lords, create their own journals where they ‘converse’ with themselves, assess themselves and award themselves professorships with relish. Meanwhile, the degrees from the universities are almost meaningless.

It wasn’t always like that, but the glory years are long gone and what is left is just a carcass whose miasma pollutes and threatens the health of society. At a time when progressive universities are outlawing any form of sexual or romantic relationships between students and teachers, our universities are centres of sexual harassment, rapes and transactional sex. Pray, how can any meaningful knowledge be learnt and transmitted in such environment?

We have been deceived all along by the Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU) to think that the major problem of our universities is that of government neglect or insufficient funding. The former Executive Secretary of the NUC captured it more bluntly at the event when he said that the ranking of Nigerian Universities on the global index will remain poor unless the issue of academic integrity is seriously tackled.

True, the entire society, and not just the university system, is out of joint. The university is part of the society and is not immune to influences from the society. But the society must not and cannot dictate the pace for the university. The University, by nature, is a place for the teaching, acquisition and diffusion of universal knowledge. It sure depends on society for its sustenance, but more importantly, the society depends on it for fresh and revolutionary ideas and knowledge that drives the progress and development of society.

True academics must rise up the challenge of reclaiming and changing the narratives of Nigerian universities and position them to begin to perform the functions they should perform in the society.