BEZE ADOGU remembers the good old days at the University of Jos That title was plagiarized from one of my favorite poems of the storied Harlem Renaissance, HERITAGE by Countee Cullen, a transcendent poet. We are all in Abuja, FCT, to honor our common origins, our alma mater (the University of Jos), old friendships, new acquaintances, and our teachers, some of whom are now sadly departed. Shame on me for not immediately recognizing my first-year roommate and good friend, Dr. Emmanuel Emeka Ossai, with whom I shared digs (together with the always entertaining but certifiably dipsomaniac James Yiltzung) at Nassarawa Gwom students’ hostel in our first year at Jos. We solemnly remembered our old friends now across the vail, this time not with as much sadness as with nostalgia: Jimmy Davies. Ephraim Dike. Abraham Babamidele Chibuzo Pinheiro (I kid you not: those were his true monikers). Sunny-James Ezuma. RTB Palomeras. James Yebe. Seneca Fynecountry. And our departed teachers, whose only consolation in a country that rarely remembers to reward talent and excellence, but has over the past decades perversely enthroned an overwhelming culture of crass mediocrity and insouciance, where that proverbial “ivory tower” has since been breached- and overrun- by the nonentity class, is the reverence of their students. Once upon a time, there were intellectual stalwarts like Dr Chiweyite Ejike. Professor Uche Peter Isichei. Dr Brian Cowlishaw. Dr. C.O. Akueshi. Professor DBA Berry. Professor WTW Morgan. Mr. Sonny Oti. Professor Alfred Chikwe Ikeme. Professor WVW Weber. Professor SP Jain. Dr. David Drew. Each one of those men could hold a class of restless teenagers mesmerized for an hour or more with total ease, whilst performing on the lecture stage. Each could make the intricately complex seem surreally within easy reach. It was a gift, not a pretension. Then, in those halcyon days of innocence and hope, to be a teacher was to be blessed amongst men. These were men- and women- who gave their all. And if we are, even marginally, worthy of their collective sacrifice, it is our duty to honour those selfless pioneers without let or reservation. I do not bring up the chasm of disparity between our teachers of our young adulthood and the teachers of today to disparage. Rather, it is to remind us of what we once were, when only our “best and brightest”, to purloin an Arthur Schlesinger aphorism, were handed the existential responsibility of shepherding the next generation. From them, we learnt what was expected of us, what our profession demanded of us, what was important, and perhaps just as important, how to separate signal from noise, the eternal from the ephemeral, the ennobling from the base. If we, who witnessed the very best of Nigeria were to demand for a return to those days, it surely will come. Those were the days of excellence and merit. Long before this Age of Discontent, where charlatans are at the fore, the marginal pretending possession of what they cannot have, and the laity bemused at the ensuing bedlam. If only we choose, if only we prioritize, if only we pay close attention, if only we ask the “hard” questions, if only we could believe the evidence of our own eyes, we could, within another generation, reverse the rot and ineptitude in our body politic. Every major university anywhere in this world, is built upon a single currency: a perception of excellence. The founding of the eminence gris of public institutions, including Cambridge and Oxford, both of which I know pretty well, were plagued by uncertainty, politics, canonical inviolability, impecuniosity, and invariably, active hostility by their host “town” communities. Yet, they each survived, they thrived, and would continue to extend their reach and reputation into the behemoths we now universally acknowledge. In each and every case, the groundwork of reinvention and public acceptance was laid by the alumni. It will be no different for Jos. And in this, our alumni cohort, advantaged by chronological order and the direct appeal of the so-called “founder’s effect” stands to play the leading role. Nobody, according to the great Roman orator, Seneca, ever loves his country because it is great, but because it is his (nemo patriam quia magna est amat). This is a sentiment that pervades nearly all my interactions with my country of birth Nigeria, but perhaps more specifically, my alma mater, the University of Jos. Jos, as the history buffs might recall, started life as a token counterweight to the massive spread of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, midwifed by the United Middle Belt Congress, as a campus of University of Ibadan. Then, Dr. E A Ayandele, a notable man of letters, was promptly dispatched from the “mother ship” to grant it some gravitas-by-association, and the campus was otherwise left to slowly wither on the vines. That was until 1975, when the Murtala Muhammed regime breathed new life into the moribund
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