PROFESSOR ADELAJA ODUTOLA ODUKOYA

BSc., MSc, PhD. Political Science (University of Lagos)

Professor of Comparative Political Economy

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 ARMAGEDDON?
An Inaugural Lecture Delivered at the University of Lagos
J. F. Ade Ajayi Auditorium on Wednesday, 5th February, 2025

By

PROFESSOR ADELAJA ODUTOLA ODUKOYA

BSc., MSc, PhD. Political Science (University of Lagos)

Professor of Comparative Political Economy

Department of Political Science

Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Lagos

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PROTOCOL
The Vice Chancellor,
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Deputy Vice Chancellor (Management Services),
Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic & Research),
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Dear Students,
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Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen.

ARMAGEDDON?
“The more you know, the more you need to know” - Aristotle
“Do not confuse the reality you live with the idea you have in your
head”- Amilcar Cabral
“Our reality is a part of other realities” – Amilcar Cabral
“Reality is full of contradictions, and we cannot grasp it unless we
learn to think dialectically” –Claude Ake

Introduction
Madam Vice Chancellor, a decree is an order that demands conformity.
A decree exemplifies power through which the seemingly impossible
can become possible based on the change in the probability of
outcomes. The divine decree, which by biblical account preceded the
creation of the world and humankind, “Let there be light,” with all its
seeming simplicity, exemplifies the primacy of power and politics as the

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binary fundamentals of the world. Suffice it to say that politics is power
and power is politics. Onuoha (2021, 4) is right when he notes that “In
fact, 'power' is the subject matter of political science.” In political
science, we define politics as the “authoritative allocation of values”
(David Easton), and more specifically, as “who gets what, when and
how of society’s limited resources” (Lasswell, 1936). Power is
conceptualised by Weber (1954, 323) as “the possibility of imposing
one’s will upon the behaviour of other persons”. Power carries with it
the weight of sanction for disobedience thus constraining the agency of
the person or people over which it is applied. At the time of creation, not
only was resource authoritatively allocated but there was an
unmistakable intentionality in the convocation of a programmatic
end/outcome: our world and mankind. As we shall see later, power is
both overt and covert.

It is germane to note that value, as described by David Easton, denotes

anything and everything. However, value allocation cannot occur in a
vacuum; it relies on previously accumulated resources. This necessity
birthed the third fundamental of the tripod: accumulation. These three
fundamentals—power, politics, and accumulation—are interconnected,
resonating with the declaration by V. I. Lenin that “Politics is
concentrated economics”. My academic trajectory has revolved around
these three interconnected issues, particularly in the context of the
African state and, more specifically, the Nigerian state. Underpinning
these concerns are history, structure, interests, incentives and
outcomes, which form the foundation upon which the issues discussed
in this inaugural lecture are analysed.

In his inaugural lecture at the London School of Economics, titled

“Running while others walk: Knowledge and the Challenge of Africa’s
Development”, Thandika Mkandiwire, (n.d), called attention to the
common danger of generalisation in respect to "Africa," “a continent
with 57 sovereign nations, seven time zones, thousands of languages
and at least seven climates, with about a billion inhabitants and to my
utter astonishment, 14 million not mutually consistent proverbs”.
However, the divergences within the geographical configuration and

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conglomerate called Africa are matched with much more convergence
such that one can take up Africa as a unit of analysis without disservice
to academic rigour. This approach is valid, as Africans largely identify
themselves as a collective group.

The saying, “As it was in the beginning, so shall it be, now and forever
more”, is especially true if no conscious efforts are made to understand
the problems dialectically, aptly applies to Africa’s challenges—unless
deliberate, dialectical, and programmatic efforts are made to
understand and address them. Within the global capitalist system the
African state, including the Nigerian state, continues to be conditioned
by the interplay and struggles occasioned by the trinity of power, politics
and accumulation. These dynamics play out at both the domestic and
transnational levels, shaped by the global political economy and the
influence of imperialism. In essence, this allocation of values, which
politics and power exemplify, ultimately crystalises into the creation of
politics and law whose essence is to compel individuals, groups and
nations into conformity with things they would not individually or
collectively have otherwise done as free agents. Regrettably, this
simple and axiomatic fact is often ignored and not taken into account in
efforts at understanding, analyzing and resolving the associated
developmental problems or challenges plaguing the African continent
and the Nigerian state.

Madam Vice Chancellor, I have devoted my scholarly research and

praxis over the last twenty-four years to lifting the veil of intellectual
obscurity and resolving deliberate epistemological obscurantism
associated with knowledge production in the context of Africa’s and
Nigeria’s developmental problems. This is because the received
orthodoxy promoted by the global intellectual hegemony of the West
fosters literacy without education, scholarship devoid of knowledge, and
pedagogy that misinforms as well as disempowers Africans and,
regrettably, its political leaders, bureaucrats, and intellectuals. For too
long, Africans have been fed with lies and outright misinformation about
our past and the genesis of our present conditions. The banishment of

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history from our curricula has further complicated matters. This should
and must not be allowed to continue.

Madam Vice Chancellor, as an unpretentious intellectual, scholarly

morality demands that I declare at the very beginning that Africa in
general and Nigeria, in particular, constitute not just my scholarly
laboratories but also my root, the sustenance of my life and the
definition of my essence. This informs my radical intellectual
commitment and aspirations for their emancipation, as I am affected
and shaped by their hallowing backwardness, suffocating exploitation,
criminal domination, and mismanagement, as well as unconscionable
inhuman subjugation by the oppressive forces of imperialism.

The continent’s liberation and the empowerment and development of

Nigeria are articles of scholarly faith for me. This position finds
expression in the admonition of Walter Rodney that the relevance of
African Intellectuals can find use and utility in scholarship directed
towards the service of the African people. This is rooted in the Socratic
tradition, which posits that scholarship and activism are two sides of the
same coin. Thus, an African scholar worthy to be so-called must be an
activist deploying knowledge in the service of the truth; an unending
search for the truth, finding the truth, and defending the truth even at
the cost of his or her life.

Madam Vice Chancellor, my explications are, however, guided by the

highest standard of Social Sciences scholarship and commitment to the
rigorous, logical, scientific process and application which benchmarked
the Marxist political economy. An abiding dictum in this respect has
been Karl Marx’s counsel that “To leave an error unrefuted is to be guilty
of intellectual immorality”. Much lies, confusion, misinformation,
disinformation and propaganda have been and continue to be peddled
as truth, especially in policy circles in what Claude Ake (1979) aptly
describes as “Social Sciences as Imperialism” in the context of the
African condition, which I have continuously engaged in deconstructing.
To do otherwise is to unwittingly be an accomplice of the forces
responsible for the “development of underdevelopment” in Africa. It is

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also important to stress unapologetically that at the root of the African
crisis is imperialism, thus making the Africa and Nigeria crises, the
crises of the state and economy (Ake, cited in Ihonvbere, 2001). Simply
put, the crisis is first and foremost a political economy crisis that
concerns the two dominant paradigms for society’s coordination—the
state (politics/power) and the market (economy/resource/
accumulation).

This point, which forms the kernel of my PhD thesis, “A Discourse of

Accumulation and the Contradictions of Capitalist Development in
Nigeria” (Odukoya, 2011a), is that in Africa, imperialism has neutralised
the very forces that made capitalist development in Europe, thus
making the possibility of capitalist development in Nigeria, nay Africa,
remote no matter how well-intentioned. Any wonder, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-
Iweala, former Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Foreign Affairs, one of
the best agents of Western development orthodoxy, described the
reform process in Nigeria which she was at the forefront of as
“Reforming the Unreformable” (Okonjo-Iweala, 2012). Thus Sachs
(1992) is on point when he declared that it is time we write the obituary
of development. Put correctly, given the African experience with
capitalism; since development is seen as capitalist development, I
argue that the requiem mass of capitalist development in Africa is long
overdue.

Africa and Nigeria: Ontology of Confounding Paradoxes

Madam Vice Chancellor, we know for a fact that Africa is the birthplace
of humanity and the cradle of ancient civilizations. With a land mass
measuring 30,365,000 sq. km, which is approximately twenty percent
of the globe, Africa is the second largest continent. About sixty percent
of global arable land is on the continent. Paradoxically, however, many
Africans today face immense existential crises. Though physically alive,
they are, for all practical purposes, "dead to life." As Falola (2021)
correctly notes, “Most Africans are not living. They merely exist.”
Africans are the proverbial living dead. The contemporary conditions of
Africa exemplified by such unedifying yokes as poverty, diseases,
malnutrition, illiteracy, social disorganisation, maladministration,

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governance crisis, wars and underdevelopment contrast sharply with
the Africa from the days of yore. Strangely, the present conditions of the
continent mirror the conditions of the now prosperous West before the
15th century when their coordinated assaults, exploitation and
appropriation of Africa and its people began and later institutionalised.
Europe at the time was marked by calamities such as the Hundred
Years’ War (1337–1453) between England and France, the Thirty
Years’ War (1618–1648) between Catholics and Protestants, and the
Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648) involving the Dutch revolt against
Spanish rule.

While during this period of European backwardness, Africa had its fair
share of problems, comparatively, Africa was a bastion of prosperity,
education, culture, administration, governance excellence and
development. At this juncture, recounting this flourishing past should
not be seen as romanticising history but rather as spotlighting a once-
thriving Africa. Today’s Ghana which hitherto was known as the Gold
Coast was so named because of the rich deposit of gold found there in
the 15th century by the Europeans as well as the primacy of gold in the
economy. Elmina Castle, a protected trading post on the Gold Coast
was constructed by the Portuguese for the exploitation of the gold
deposit. The gold was so much that it was fabled that people literarily
picked gold on the streets effortlessly.

The Great Pyramid of Giza; one of the more than one hundred pyramids
built as tombs for Pharaohs in Egypt, is a testament to African ingenuity,
mathematical, architectural and technological advancement. It still
stands as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The pyramid was
built from 2589-2566 BC; a period of twenty years, rising 481 feet (147
meters) above the ground and covering a space of 13 acres, with about
2.3 million stones weighing an average weight of 2.5 tons, 5.5 million
tons of limestone, 8000 tons of granite, 500,000 tons of mortal. Other
intriguing architectural wonders of the Great pyramid are the alignment
of the three sides of the Great Pyramid with the four cardinal points; the
base forming almost a perfect square as well as its ever-constant
interior temperature of 680F (200C). Its weight is put at approximately

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5.7 million tons. Shipbuilding, navigation, emergence of city building,
and road networks, medicine, anatomical knowledge, Edwin Smith’s
Papyrus (1600 BCE) the oldest treatise on surgery, mummification
(embalmment), geometrical calculation for constructions, astronomy,
introduction of the 365-day calendar year, the decimal system and
fractions, writing, irrigations, crops rotation, centralised government,
law enforcement, organised and efficient taxation, beauty products,
musical instruments, such as flutes, harps and drums and even games
were some of the gifts of Egypt to humanity.

We also had Mansa Musa who ruled the Mali Empire between 1307 and
1332. He was arguably one of the world's richest men whose wealth
was said to be about $400 billion valued at today’s rate. Mansa Musa’s
pilgrimage to Mecca with an entourage of thousands of people and tons
of gold remains a legendary fairy tale and mark of the economic
prosperity of Mansa Musa’s Mali. This pilgrimage was beyond religion;
it was a political and diplomatic masterstroke as it put Mali on the world
map and earned it international recognition and acclaim. Mansa Musa’s
generosity knew no bounds. The price of gold was said to have crashed
in Egypt as a consequence of the gold he dashed out on his pilgrimage
to Mecca. Mali Empire under Mansa Musa produced about 50 tons of
gold yearly. Beyond gold, Mali was in effective control of the Trans-
Atlantic Trade and forged economic partnerships with Europe.

At the political level, Mansa Musa was an excellent military strategist

and great empire builder. He had Mali Empire under his control, which
spanned modern-day Mali, Guinea, Senegal, Gambia and parts of
Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania. His decentralised administrative
system with regional autonomy was a precursor to contemporary
federalism. His tax reforms which allowed for centralized and efficient
collection of taxes were mark of administrative and governance
dexterity and ingenuity. Mali became a renowned center of Islamic
scholarship with scholars from the Islamic world making intellectual
pilgrimage. A special mention must be made of Timbuktu where Mansa
Musa established the Sankore University, which made Mali an
intellectual hub, as well as a center of trade and culture. His reign

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witnessed the construction of several architectural master pieces
across the empire, of which the Great Mosque of Timbuktu stood out. It
was to Mansa Musa’s credit that a legal code for governance and a just
justice system was put in place under him. The scholar, Ibn Battuta who
visited Mali empire after the reign of Mansa Musa, remarked that the
empire under Mansa Musa was “the most extensive, powerful, and most
wealthy of the kingdoms of the blacks (Levitzion, 1973, 188 cited in
History tools, 2024).

Madam Vice Chancellor, these feats were not isolated cases or

incidents. Coming home to Nigeria, we have had great civilisations and
historic empires and kingdoms such as Benin, Oyo, Kano, Katsina,
Ijebu, Nri Kingdom, Kanem Bornu, Nupe, etc. reputed for arts, culture,
military prowess, knowledge, architectural mastery, administrative and
governance excellence. In arts, under the Nok culture, Africans
practised the famous terracotta art between 500 BCE -300 BCE same
time as Ancient Greece (500 BCE). Good examples were Igbo-Ukwu,
which was famous for terracotta pottery between (700-1500 CE), Ife
(900-1200 CE), and Benin Kingdom. The artistic genius of the Benin
Kingdom in Bronze casting (the Benin Bronzes (13th -16th centuries),
wood carving, iron melting, ivory carving (the Queen’s mother ivory
mask (16th century), textiles coral and beads were exceptional. The
Oba’s throne as far back as the 16th century was another iconic artistic
achievement. There was also the forgotten Benin Wall (Benin
Earthworks) of defence and symbol of the power of the Oba of Benin
built by Oba Ewuare the Great (1440-1480 CE) which was destroyed
most maliciously by the British colonizers in 1897. The interconnected
wall which started in 900 AD and took 150 million man-hours to build
and stretched over 10,000 miles was two times the Great Wall of China
(5,500 miles). The Benin Wall which width was 66 feet (20 meters) wide,
a depth of 33 feet (10 meters) and a height of 66 feet (20 meters) were
lasting evidence of the architectural and engineering accomplishment
of the Benin people.

The achievements of Ile-Ife were no less remarkable. With artworks

reputed for their symbolism, intricacy and naturalism which were given

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expression using wood carving, terracotta, bronze casting and stone
carving, natural creativity were unleashed. The Ife Bronze Heads, the
Ife Terracotta figurines and the Olokun sculpture remain some of the
leading art achievements globally. These and several other African
artworks were stolen monuments on display shamelessly in different
Western museums. These artifacts which today serve merely as artistic
expressions for the whites hold strong spiritual importance for us as
Africans. As such, they should be returned without further delay. It
amuses me when those who are unjustly in possession of stolen goods
are at the forefront of the campaign for transparency, accountability and
anti-corruption. This pretence (stinks) is a paradox. No matter how well
packaged or euphemistically adorned, a thief is a thief! There is the Ifa
oracle which tells an important story not just of African spirituality, but
also underscores in an unspoken manner the erudition and techno-
scientism of our forebears. Not many people know that the same eight
binaries (Eji Ogbe) of the Ifa corpus are the basis of modern computers.
It is time for the return of our artifacts and spiritual warheads
accompanied by requisite apologies and financial compensation.

The Worrisome African Condition

Africa is a shadow of its glorious past. Odukoya (2020a) notes that
several decades after the harvest of independence on the continent, the
hope associated with independence has hopelessly been perpetually
elusive. Odukoya (2023a) shows how neoliberalism and the
dollarisation of majority of the African economy have been a serious
burden for economic development. The continent, defined in terms of
corruption, diseases, low life expectancy, droughts, poverty,
malnutrition, crimes, banditry, terrorism, conflicts, wars, backwardness
and underdevelopment, is seen as a drawback to human civilisation.
The Central African Republic (CAR), South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia and
the Republic of Congo (DRC) were five of the ten countries classed as
least peaceful countries globally in the Global Peace Index 2022 of the
Institute for Economic and Peace (IEP). At the governance level, the
harvest of democracy that started on the continent between mid-1980s
and late 1990s seems to be fast yielding space for authoritarian military
regimes, with ten coups occurring between 2020 and 2022. In at least

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five countries, the military staged a successful return to power with
thunderous welcome: In May 2021, Colonel Assimi Goita and his boys
took over in Mali; in September 2021 in Guinea, President Alpha Conde
was sent packing by the military; April 2021, Chad suffered a
democratic reversal; Sudan’s turn came in October, 2021. In September
2020, Burkina Faso witnessed a counter-coup with President Paul-
Henti Sandaogo Damiba administered a dose of his coup poison by
Captain Ibrahim Traore. Both Gabon and Niger witnessed military
incursions into their governance structures in July and August 2023,
respectively. The Economic Community of West African State
(ECOWAS) who made feeble attempt at railing back the military in the
three West African Countries suffered fragmentation resulting in the
three countries, with apparent foreign backings, breaking away from the
sub-regional bloc. The international backing of the ECOWAS-ECOWAS
breakaway nations also calls attention to the transformation of the
continent to sites of global power struggles like it was during the Cold
War. As noted by The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)
(2021):

In sub-Saharan Africa, this trend is even more pronounced. Twelve

so-called internationalised-internal conflicts (i.e., civil wars with
external intervention by a state) were recorded in the two decades
between 1991 and 2010 (counting each conflict that occurred across
multiple years only once). In the following 11-year period (2011–21),
27 such conflicts were recorded. In 2021, there were 17
internationalisedcivil wars in sub-Saharan Africa – more than twice
the number of internal conflicts without external intervention.

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Figure 1:
Source: NON-STATE CONFLICTS BY REGION [Davies, Shawn, Garoun Engström,
Therese Pettersson & Magnus Öberg (2024). Organised violence 1989-2023, and the
prevalence of organised crime groups. Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 61, No. 4]

Table 1: 20 COUNTRIES WITH THE LOWEST HUMAN

DEVELOPMENT INDEX 2023
HDI HDI
COUNTRY HDI CATEGORY RANK VALUE
Gambia Low Human Development 174 0.495
Eritrea Low Human Development 175 0.493
Ethiopia Low Human Development 176 0.492
Liberia Low Human Development 177 0.487
Madagascar Low Human Development 177 0.487
Guinea-Bissau Low Human Development 179 0.483
Democratic Low Human Development 180 0.481
Republic of Congo
Guinea Low Human Development 181 0.471
Afghanistan Low Human Development 182 0.462
Mozambique Low Human Development 183 0.461
Sierra Leone Low Human Development 184 0.458
Burkina Faso Low Human Development 185 0.438
Yemen Low Human Development 186 0.424
Burundi Low Human Development 187 0.420
Mali Low Human Development 188 0.410
Chad Low Human Development 189 0.394
Niger Low Human Development 189 0.394
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 Central African Low Human Development 191 0.387
Republic
South Sudan Low Human Development 192 0.381
Somalia Low Human Development 193 0.380
Source: (United Nations Development Programme, 2024, the 2023/2024 Human
Development Report, New York)

Madam Vice Chancellor, how do we explain the reversal of our

continental prosperity, creativity, and development? At the heart of this
tragic development is the chain of historical causation (Moore, cited in
Gutkind and Wallerstein, 1976, 7) dated back to the 15th century when
Africa made contact with Europe. A contact underscored by brutal
oppression and rapacious exploitation. It is no coincidence too that the
unenviable developmental conditions of Europe changed radically from
this historical point in time. Given that history is the prerogative of the
victor, the truth of what really happened has remained obscured or
spoken in hushed voices. However, Odukoya (2024a, 11) contends that
“Historically, Africa’s development at the point of contact with the
Europeans was comparable if not much better.” Hence, we can clearly
reimage Africa’s development trajectory through the prism of four
periods based on the continent’s contact with the outside world. These
are namely: the pre-mercantilist; the mercantilist; the colonial, and
neocolonial. This periodization resonates with Ndlovu-Gatsheni's
(2020, 45) assertion that:

At the centre of African political economy (the very convergence of

politics and economy) is the rampaging journey of capital and the
world division of labour. This remaking of the modern world system
and its global orders explains the perennial question of how Africa
came to occupy a subaltern position in the modern world system and
global order since the fifteenth century.

Consequently, contemporary Africa is meaningful within the colonial

matrices of power, which according to Mignolo (2018, 97 cited by
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2020, 46), refers to “a complex structure of
management and control composed of domains, levels and flows” and
as a “theoretical concept that helps make visible what is invisible to the

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naked (or rather nontheoretical level) eye”. The integration of Africa into
the global capitalist system relied heavily on strategies of deceit,
manipulation, and violence. The civilizing mission logic of colonial
imperialism made Africans pliable and to applaud their dehumanization,
just as it rationalized and moralized violence, exploitation and
inequality. It sought to free the Christian colonizers of their obvious evil
against the African people. Phiri (2020, 63) submits that “Africa was
incorporated in the global capitalist architecture through draconian laws
and institutions that justified inequalities and violence”. Colonialism in
Africa was an action unleashed by uncivilised, conscienceless and
godless colonizers, propelled by rabid greed that had no repulsion and
inhibition. Using God's name, these colonizers perpetrated egregious
acts of violence and oppression.

The idea of incorporation and/or domination of Africa resulted in

entrapment of the continent. As Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2020, 46) notes, “At
the political level, entrapment entailed lodgment into coloniality of
power. Entrapment is the coloniality of power that began with physical
conquest and then dragged the colonized into the nexus of modern
racial global asymmetrical power relations". This entrapment for Amin
(1972) produced different Africa; namely: Africa of the colonial trade
economy; Africa of the concession-owning companies, and Africa of the
labour reserves.

As noted by Phiri, (2020), in terms of development, Africa in its organic

state was at par with other parts of the world. In similar vein, Rodney
(1972) has supplied copious evidence of deindustrialisation and
deliberate actions at holding Africa back by the Western powers in
different fields where the continent was way ahead. Phiri (2020, 72-73),
notes that “The inception of mercantile and colonial capital altered
social formations and the precolonial mode of production to reflect the
interest of imperial powers. Phiri (2020, 76) further opines that, “The
social fabric of precolonial African formations was incorporated into the
dehumanizing project that Europe had embarked on since the inception
of an unequal globalisation in the late 1400s”.

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Africa was seen as Terra Nullius. According to Odukoya (2024a, 29):

Terra Nullius means “no man’s land” in Latin. It signifies unoccupied,

empty and ungoverned space. It is also found in Roman
jurisprudence. The invocation of this concept was used to justify
colonialism and the takeover of the indigenous people across the
world. The Terra Nullius phase was the age of conquests and fake
discoveries of the new lands by the likes of Christopher Columbus
and Mango Park on behalf of other imperial powers in Europe. These
explorations and expeditions were informed by economic greed,
economic glories and empire ambition. Those they met on ground in
the so-called “new found land” were deemed to have no prior
existence and history as well as uncivilized, less human and inferior
to the invading arrogant interlopers who promoted the theories of
racial superiority and super-imposed themselves as the lords of the
manor. This was the age of violent dispossession of Africa by the
West.

Declared as a “no man’s land’ and “ungoverned space”, the ground for
the colonial conquest of Africa was lay. This designation, rooted in its
exclusion from sovereignty, was formalized at the Peace of Westphalia
Conference in 1648, where Africa was denied state status. By this
action, it meant that war and conquest could and was visited on Africa.
It granted a free license to colonial powers, who exploited it with brutal
disregard for humanity. This served as the basis of the scramble and
partitioning of Africa and colonial governmentality (Ndlovu-Gatsheni,
2020, 55). The grand result was the simultaneous and paradoxical
inclusion and exclusion of Africa in the global order created through the
historical trajectory of slave trade, mercantilism and colonialism. This
“simultaneous involvement and marginalization” according to Ndlovu-
Gatsheni (2020, 46), engendered the relegation of Africa and other non-
European societies to the periphery of the global system. The structure
of the international capitalist system that defined this paradox of
inclusion and exclusion of Africa was as follows:
a. the core of the core;
b. the periphery of the core;
c. the core of the periphery; and
d. the periphery of the periphery, where Africa was consigned.
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The division of Africa into the political architecture of Citizens and
Subjects (Mamdani, 1996) and “Civil and Primordial Publics” (Ekeh,
1975) represented this power asymmetric that underscored the
paradoxical logic of inclusion and exclusion from development both in
the context of settler and non-settler colonialism. This dynamic
persisted under both settler and non-settler colonialism, which, despite
their differences, shared the same objectives (Odukoya, 2018a). As
Odukoya (2024a, 11) opines, “Colonialism in Africa, whether settler or
non-settler had the same objectives, which were the violent control and
exploitation of African people and their resources for the development
of the colonizers’ countries. Though rationalized in the narrative of a
'civilized mission,' colonialism along with the slave trade remain the
most uncivilized and barbaric events in human history”.

Arguments have been raised as to whether colonialism was exclusive

to Africa. While it is true that colonialism was visited on other parts of
the world, including America and Asia, colonialism in Africa was
different in several respects, especially in terms of speed and scale
(Odukoya, 2020a). While the partitioning of Africa took merely two
years, 1884-1885, the colonial subjugation of the continent happened
in only twenty-nine years, 1885-1914. Colonialism in Africa contrasted
shapely with colonialism in the Americas and Asia, which took 304 and
345 years, respectively. Furthermore, unlike in the Americas and Asia
whose colonialism was by four and five major colonial powers, Africa
was under the colonial control of seven major powers. Massive
territories were taken over, so much that about forty African colonies
were created and exploited. Odukoya (2020a) calls attention to the
experience of late colonialism in Africa. When comparing the
differences in colonial experiences of Africa and Asia, Odukoya (2020a)
draws attention to Japanese colonialism in Asia. Unlike the rapacious
surplus extraction characteristic of colonialism in Africa, Japanese
colonialism was influenced by the proximity to Japan and the goal of
building a greater Japanese empire.

Ngugi WaThiong’o (2016, cited in Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2020, 48) captures

this thus:

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 Each moment of the journey of capital has Africa as a captive.
Under the slave trade, the African body becomes a commodity.
Under the ensuring slave plantation system, Africa supplies unpaid
labour that works the sugar and cotton fields. Under
colonialism, Africa supplies raw materials – gold, diamonds,
copper, uranium, coffee and cocoa –without having control over the
prices. Under the new global situation of debts, debt serving and
conditionality, Africa is weighed down by debt slavery. Just as
Africa became a net exporter of labour it most needed for its own
development and the net exporter of minerals and raw materials
it most needed for its own development, today, under debt slavery,
Africa becomes the net exporter of the very capital it most needs …
In relation to Africa, slavery is the continuous theme in the journey
of capital: the plantation dissolving into colonial rule dissolving into
debt slavery.

We adopt Amin (1972) periodisation of the continents vis-à-vis its

European disruption. The pre-mercantilist period was before
mercantilism became a preoccupation of European nations. It started in
the 15th century and lasted till the 17th century. At this time, Africa was
agrarian, pastoralist, self-governing and organised into kingdoms and
empires such as Mali, Songhai, Oyo, Bini, Egypt among others. During
this period, Africa traded in gold, salt, textiles, metals, etc. with the rest
of the world and related on equal footing. There was remarkable
development within and between different social formations in Africa
evidenced by different degrees of socio-political complexities and
sophistications. This could be understood given that the continent had
different, and sometimes, overlapping climatic and vegetation types.
These are: Tropical, Desert, Savanna, Temperate, Alpine and
Mediterranean. This is not to contend that it is possible to analytically
categorise these African social formations in watertight compartments.
However, there is a sense in which it is possible to talk of African culture
marked by similarities in ways of life in terms of belief system, religion,
culture, music, dance, pottery, weaving, architecture, literature and arts.
At the political economy level, the social relations of production were
largely communal. Given land as the means of production, when the
social organisation became dysfunctional rather than resulting into a
slave mode of production as in Europe, what prevailed was condition of
16
landlessness of those whose land had been hijacked by those who had
become landlords. Rather than implying that there was never an African
indigenous slave trade, my position is that the slave economy which
emptied the continent of its able-bodied labour force, and by extension,
its future was created by the Arabs and, in particular, Europeans.

Next was the mercantilist period birthed in the 17th century because of
mechanised agriculture and industrial capitalism in Europe. The
European forage abroad was in tandem with the expansionist nature of
capitalism which was inevitable in the desperation to resolve the
inherent crisis and contradictions of capitalism: the crisis of over-
production and under-consumption. This crisis and contradictions of
capitalism were rooted in what Karl Marx described as the law of capital
accumulation in terms of the concentration and centralisation of capital.
Suffice it to say that Europe’s objective during this period was for
primitive capital accumulation (PCA) as against the bogus claim of
“civilizing mission”. Africa served as a source for cheap raw materials
and market for excess as well as inferior European goods. The
Europeans encouraged slave trades across the continent as a means
of getting cheap labour to work on European farms. It is important to
say that the period was characterized by unfair trade practices as
trading was based on unequal exchanges. Africa started “…being
simultaneously at the centre and at the periphery of the modern world
capitalist system” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2020, 45).

The third period heralded colonialism in Africa. It was founded on the

balkanization of Africa at the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885. The
Europeans in the partitioning of Africa did a very bad job given that the
partitioning of the continent had no human feelings but avarice and self-
interest. The exercise which was based on whims and caprices of the
colonizers was devoid of any systematisation and logic. What God had
put together was torn apart by European covetousness in Berlin.
Meredith (2005) has provided some classical cases executed in a most
unconscionable manner when he notes that:

17
 In some cases, African societies were rent apart; the Bakongo were
partitioned between French Congo, Belgian Congo and Portuguese
Angola. Somaliland was carved up between Britain, Italy and
France. In all, the new boundaries cut through some 190 culture
groups. In other cases, Europe’s new colonial territories enclosed
hundreds of diverse and independent groups, with no common
history, culture, language or religion. Nigeria, for example,
contained as many as 250 ethno-linguistic groups.

Madam Vice Chancellor, Odukoya (2020b, 589) thus notes that “The
cartography of contemporary Africa and its underdevelopment
trajectory has its ontology in the imperialist greed of European
imperialist forces”. Let it therefore be noted with all emphasis that
colonialism, unlike the previous periods, has been a permanent marker
on Africa and its development. The reasons for this, as Aime Cesaire
notes in his Discourse on Colonialism (1972), is because colonialism
decivilized, brutalized, and degraded so much that it engendered greed,
violence, hatred, and inferiority. Colonialism develops an architectural
inequality. For this reasons, Aime Cesaire (1972, 42) submits that
“colonialism = “thingification”, which manifested as settler and non-
settler colonialism.

For settler colonialism, citizens from the home countries migrated to

take permanent residence as citizens in the colonies for direct
governance. In non-settler colonialism, governance was by proxy
through a combination of colonial officers from the home countries
assisted by native authorities under an indirect rule model (Odukoya,
2018a). Despite these apparent differences, which are largely
superficial, both forms of colonialism served the same fundamental
objective: the exploitation and expropriation of the resources of the
colonies.

A major happening during this period which continues to define what

happened in Africa was the institutionalisation of the state structure. As
we shall presently see and demonstrate, it goes beyond doubt that
structure matters. A load placed on a crippled person’s head is bound
to tilt. Similarly, the colonial state in Africa was created primarily as a

18
mechanism for primitive accumulation of wealth from the continent.
Additionally, these inorganic states were forcefully integrated into the
international capitalist system underpinned by an international division
of labour in a relationship of unequal exchange.

Madam Vice Chancellor, contrary to the claims of "civilizing mission" as

the logic behind colonialism in Africa, colonialism was informed by a
highly despicable, uncivilised and diabolical strategy in order to realise
an exploitative objective. Among the penetration strategies deployed to
institutionalize racial capitalist order in Africa were monetization,
imperialism of trade and foreign investment (Ake, 1981). While
monetization ensured the introduction and enforcement of capitalist
exchange and market relations, exploitation took place through unequal
trading and with foreign investment, which opened up Africa as market
and source of raw materials and cheap labour. These resulted in the
disarticulation of Africa’s economy and society; market imperfection and
monopolistic tendencies, narrow export economy; dependence, and
problematic social relations of production which engendered
complexities and discontinuities arising from the misalignment as well
as the negative impacts of the capitalist mode of production on the pre-
capitalist mode of production (Ake, 1981). The result of this insidious
journey of capital as Aime Cesaire (1972, 49 ) notes is “about societies
drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions
undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic
creations destroyed [stolen] extraordinary possibilities wiped out.”

This was made possible as a consequence of the strategies of

coloniality. As Grosfoguel (2016 cited in Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2020, 48),
has argued “what was imposed after these dehumanizing processes is
economic extractivism, ontological extractivism, and epistemological
extractivism”. These tendencies underscore knowledge domination and
exploitative practices under conditions of power imbalance between
Europe and Africa. Odukoya (2024a, 12) in this context succinctly notes
that:

Colonial imperialism created the hierarchy of beings and knowledge

based on racial superficial categories informed by the imperialist
19
 idea of human and sub-humanity which in turn was underscored by
the assumed capacity to reason, think and create. This was a
convenient basis for the domination, oppression, exploitation and
imposition of Western ideas on African indigenous people [deemed]
as primitive and less human.

This was how power was used in the devaluation of Africa’s indigenous
knowledge and the epistemological terrorism by the West on the
continent exemplified in epistemic injustice under the over-arching
power of imperialism. It is therefore apposite to spare some thoughts
for imperialism given that it is at the base of the contemporary African
crisis. It cannot be overemphasised that colonialism was but a form of
imperialism, hence, the formal end of colonialism was not the end of
imperialism but its mutation into neocolonialism. Onimode (1982)
periodized imperialism into four phases, namely; mercantile
imperialism, monopolist imperialism, free trade imperialism and multi-
lateral imperialism.

Imperialism is intricately connected with the state which was conjured

into existence as a consequence of “irreconcilable class antagonism”
resulting from the predatory actions of exploitative social forces in
societies. Thus, Toyo (2001, 3) notes that “Because the ruling group in
a predatory state is predatory, strong states have embarked on
conquest, the destruction of rivals to wealth and power, and the
subjugation of weaker states or communities”. The reason for this lies
in the expansionist tendencies of capitalism, particularly as joint-stock
companies took the place of one-man business as the preferred model
of capital organisation towards the beginning of the twentieth century
(Toyo, 2001). The impulse for expansion by these joint-stock
companies in search of new markets and cheap raw materials birthed
colonial imperialism as a basis for permanent exploitation.

Toyo (2001) notes that with America’s emergence as the new hegemon
after the World War II, imperialism mutated into neocolonialism. This
new form of imperialism emphasised collaboration among imperialist
nations, replacing their previous rivalries. Central to this collaboration
was the role of international organisations like the World Bank and the
20
International Monetary Fund (IMF), which became tools of multilateral
imperialism. A major angle to this collaboration was mutual hostilities
and conspiracy against socialism globally. Added to these were
monopolistic competition and the re-emergence of inter-imperialist
competition. Associated with this development were arms and the arm
race of which the United States of America (USA) was the leader
promoting conflicts, hostilities and wars across the globe with terrible
implications for peace, progress and development in the global South.

This resulted in the military-industrial complex, with the USA becoming

the global police and bully and almost a bandit state in the promotion of
its interest everywhere and anywhere. The role of the USA as the global
settlement banker (underscored by its hegemonic and military power)
whose currency is the basis of international trade settlement, was firmly
established at the time. With this, while economies in the global South
must be earning dollars in order to conduct international trade, America
only needs to print or pay with its currencies, giving it an undue
economic and political advantage over other nations. This marks the
beginning of the dollarization of the African economy which has become
a kiss of death.

Africa and other nations of the global South were affected in a very
negative manner by the rise of America as the new hegemon and its
related politics thrust after World War II. The imposed global hegemony
of the American dollar after World War II; the establishment of the
Breton Wood institutions - the World Bank, and the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) - as the global capitalist enforcers; the
institutionalisation of multilateral imperialism through these two
institutions; and the imposition of liberal democracy are part of the grand
strategies to ensure the hegemony of America in order to compensate
its lack of colonial territories.

In this context, Toyo (2001) calls attention to imperialist economic and

political policies that followed on the heels of the World War II. At the
economic level, America led an unprovoked trade war against
socialism, cutting it out from technological advances. Westernisation

21
rooted in the modernisation orthodoxy was also packaged and sold to
countries of Africa, Caribbean, and Latin America as recipe for
development. This way, America and the West became the godfathers
of development in whose image the world must be made rather than in
terms of self-mastery, self-reliance, equality, full employment, popular
empowerment, and prosperity. Paternalistic developmental orientation
undermined Africa’s development agenda. The recommended
development path hinged on capital importation and western-oriented
consumption through loans and foreign direct investment is responsible
for the debt traps in these countries (Toyo, 2001). More recently, the
Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) and the imposed neoliberal
conditionality by the Breton Wood institutions wreaked havoc on the
economies of African state. Reform has proven incapable of producing
domestic bourgeoisie oriented to productive accumulation. Sadly,
reform has deepened the appropriation of scarce capital from the
continent through different strategies none the least direct exploitation,
repatriation of profits, debt repayment, land grab, minerals explorations,
among others.

At the political level, the focus was on arresting the increasing popularity
of socialism globally. Furthermore, the anti-colonial and national
liberation struggles, which spread like wildfire in Africa as a
consequence of the Atlantic Charter of 1941, which supported the right
to self-determination was arrested and sabotaged. The North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) was the military force created for this
imperialist agenda. With the Union of the Socialist Soviet Republic
(USSR) leading the formation of the Warsaw Treaty Organization to
counter NATO and defend socialism, the arms race started. The spread
of liberal democracy and market economy globally became an
American clarion call for global capitalist development with President
Harry Truman’s 2nd Inaugural Address of 1948 titled the “Four Point
Programme” became imperialism article of faith.

The African State

With the advent of capitalism, the state has become very important and
this importance cannot be over-emphasized. Whether for good or bad,

22
state actions and or inaction affect all human beings within its borders.
No man is stateless or can exist outside of the state. In this context
Alatas (1997, 286) opines that “While many are uninterested in the
activities of the state, nobody is unaffected by it”. Odukoya (2020a, 3)
succinctly notes that the state is the engine room of human life and
national development, as even market order exists [is ordered] and
functions under state guidance and direction. Aristotle drew attention to
the primacy of the state when he noted that “everyone lives in the polis
[state] except a god or a beast”.

The African state by the circumstances of its birth suffers developmental

infirmities. The state structural configuration of Africa is a major
weakness and impairment of its capacity and states. Accounting for this
development, Young (2004, 24) notes that this is because “Some core
elements of the colonial state ideology passed intact to its successor”.
As Chandoke, (1984) argues, “Since their inception African states have
been in a state of flux moving with regularity in and out of misfortune”
resulting from their non-organic constitution and their roots being rooted
outside the continent. Expectedly, the founding objectives of the African
states by the colonizers were neither nationalistic, developmental nor
people-oriented but rather, imperialistic, exploitative, oppressive and as
an instrument to disempower the African people. The control of the state
over resources, which it distributes as it pleases, is a factor that have
resulted in the over-politicization of the state and society. Rather than a
politics of consensus, a desperate politics of unending conflicts, which
in most cases is a politics of warfare, has ensured. Because of the
primacy of the state in accumulation, external interference and
sponsorship are behind these struggles over accumulation.

For all intent and purposes, the post-colonial African state is the
continued institutionalisation of imperialist oppression and
accumulation. This explains why Gana (1985, 127) argues that “the
African state functions on the basis of the logic of imperialist
accumulation that has been internalized”. In this regard, the African
state has worked for the interest of foreign capital behind which was
private capitalists in the advanced capitalist nations for capital

23
accumulation. Similarly, Kinsey (2006, 38 cited in Ndloyn-Gatsheni,
2020, 52) captures this private commercial thrust in the mercantilist
imperialism thus:

The sixteenth century saw the creation of a new type of

commercial entity, the mercantile company. Chartered by the state
to engage in long-distance trade and establish colonies, the
mercantile company drove European imperialism for the next 350
years. They were unusual institutions in that they distorted the
distinction between economics and politics, non-state and state,
property rights and sovereignty, and public and private.

This shows clearly that, Public and Private Partnership recently given
exaggerated economic currency under neoliberalism has always been
a major part of the imperialist exploitative equation. In every capitalist
order, the line that divides the private capital from the public is very thin.
The private and public sectors have always been the two sides of the
same coin of primitive capitalist accumulation with both interpenetrating.
This raises a very critical question on the acclaimed utility of the private
sector as the engine of development when politically the continent has
been made prostrate for exploitation by capitalist interests of all
manners.

This explains Ake's (1996) succinct declaration to the effect that: “The
problem is not so much that development has failed as that it was never
really on the agenda in the first place. By all indications, political
conditions in Africa are the greatest impediments to development”. How
can we have development when the very core of development has been
programmed for depletion and rapacious exploitation by capitalist
gangsters within and outside of the state? This was possible because
of the arbitral and absolutism of the colonial state all over Africa which
was given expression in economic statism, violence, authoritarianism,
exclusion and alienation of the colonized who were treated as subjects
rather than citizens.

Independence in Africa was not a tabula rasa. Rather it came with

underlining colonial pathologies. To worsen this situation, Ake (1996, 9)

24
argues, “The ideology of development was exploited as a means for
reproducing political hegemony: it got limited attention and served
hardly any purpose as a framework for economic transformation”. It is
sad that Africa is seriously marginalized in matters of its development.
Africa’s development and strategies for the development of the
continent have become a paternalistic project of the global North with
the covert objectives of keying the continent into a perpetual state of
arrested development and underdevelopment.

Madam Vice Chancellor, the very forces responsible for Africa’s

underdevelopment are now masquerading as benevolent development
partners and “do-gooders”. Hence, Sunmonu (2004, 63) argues:

We African people have not been allowed to decide for ourselves

whether we want our hair cut, nor have we been allowed to decide
the style of our haircut, nor the barber! So when our development
partners talk about human rights, we in Africa will be excused for
wondering whether these human rights apply to us in our relations
with them or are reserved only for Euro-American and the
developed countries.

Development for the advanced capitalist countries and the global

financial superstructure which work covertly for the advancement of
western business interests is highly exploitative despite pretenses to
the contrary. For the development patrons from Washington, to London,
Paris, and other western capitals, profit takes precedence over people.
The people of the global South are the commodity and, in fact, victims
of Western developmental misadventures. It is to this effect that
development has become dysfunctional and a monumental illusion. For
development to happen, it is a categorical imperative that the shadow
chasing must be terminated. Western developmental orthodoxy for
Africa is a dinner with the lion; the result only requires commonsense to
predict. To paraphrase the title of Omole's (2024) inaugural lecture at
the University of Ibadan, Africa is literarily walking in the shadows of its
imminent and final developmental catastrophic destruction.

25
While the submission by Rodney (1972) in his magisterial work, How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa, remains unquestionably valid, it cannot
be over-emphasized that there are internal factors to the African
continental crisis of development. As noted by Odukoya (2011b, 323),
“State weakness, maladministration, ill-digested and externally-
imposed policies, irresponsible leadership, corruption and unproductive
capitalism are some of the major factors behind the African crisis”. The
continued intensity and deepening without hope of redemption of this
crisis in most parts of the continent continue to alienate citizens from
the African peripheral and dependent states which they considered as
dysfunctional, useless and irrelevant. The unending and perilous
migration across the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea in
search of greener pastures in the Western world highlights the
desperate need for survival at all costs. This unrelenting exodus reflects
the harsh reality that Africa, the cradle of humanity, has become a land
of shattered dreams for its young and growing population.

The African crisis and the reform agenda proposed to address it by the
international financial institutions have affected the African dominant
classes in no small way, eroding their traditional basis of primitive
capital accumulation, especially in the context of neoliberal reforms
which accords primacy to the interests of Western capital and the new
regime of transnational capitalism promoted by globalisation. To cope
and survive, the dominant classes in Africa in partnership with
transnational capitalist class have become increasingly and rabidly anti-
people as the recent events of the #EndSars and #EndHunger in
Nigeria and Kenya. #RejectFiananceBill2024, #Rutomustgo protests
illuminate.

Lacking a strong material base and unable to challenge or negotiate

new concessions from imperialist capital, African petty and comprador
ruling classes have resorted to harsh measures such as vicious
taxation, suffocating economic policies evidenced in privatisation and
commercialisation, deregulation and liberalization of foreign exchange
as dictated by the ideology of neoliberal market fundamentalism.
Consequently, the African dominant classes and the states they control

26
have become liabilities to the development of the continent as well as a
serious threat to the flatting liberal democratic project whose liberal
pretensions have given way to civilian-authoritarianism as shown
conclusively by the state's vicious responses to Nigerian and Kenyan
protesters. The spate of military coups and their popular support by the
citizens in Mali, Niger, Guinea, and Burkina Faso attests to the
decreasing utility and resounding failure of the democratic project on
the continent.

The African Dominant Class and the Theology of the Market

The theology of the market is the core of neoliberal globalisation. With
globalisation, transnational capitalist exploitation and accumulation as
well as the peripheralisation of Africa have accelerated and intensified.
All nations are now subsumed within the orbit of transnational capitalism
through the centralisation and control of capital. Globalisation has
ensured the calibration of the global in the interest of transnational
capital (Odukoya, 2020a, 11). This is where dominant discourse that
situates the analysis of the African problematic within internal factors
without consideration of the role of imperialism gets it all wrong. We are
in a new era of capitalism. We now have a capital traversing the globe
without nationality and free of territorial limitations. This has serious
implications for the nation state and the possibilities of development in
Africa. For Odukoya (2020a, 12), “The nation-state is historically frozen,
being a product of a foregone era of capitalism”. The seriousness of the
transnational nature of capitalism is the difficulty of African state
accumulation outside the global capitalism within which they have been
historically marginalized and are increasingly so.

The nature of the African class and the ideology they subscribe to are
important for a proper understanding of African misfortune. The problem
of ideology is linked with the utility of political power as a means of state
capture. The African petty bourgeoisie is a secondary, not a primary
class, in the African social formation. It is a highly non-hegemonic class.
It wields power in deference to the foreign capitalists’ class whose
ideology of neoliberalism it subscribes to either overtly or covertly. This
class condition produces ambiguous class relations. With the

27
superficiality of the capitalist mode of production, which allows the
continued influence of the feudalist mode of production with associated
ethnic, religious and other parochial tendencies, class consciousness is
blurred. Thus, no serious challenge to the hegemony of the control of
the African petty bourgeoisie and its foreign allies' control of state
power.

Because of this, “the primary contradiction is not between two groups

within a state each trying to gain control of the state structures or to
bend it. The primary contradiction is between the interests, organised,
and located in the core countries and their local allies, on the one hand,
and the majority of the population” (Chandoke, 1984, p. 166). To this
end, Onimode (cited in Odukoya, 2012a, 29) opines that “The operation
of the ISI (Import Substitution Industrialization) also promotes
inequalities between the African people and their leaders who profit
through commissions, interests, profits and primitive capital deprived
from association and participations in these businesses”. This is evident
in the absence of a national bourgeoisie, comparable to those in Asia's
developmental states, which have driven economic growth. The lack of
national bourgeoisies is a major challenge for development in Africa.
The idea of a national bourgeoisie in our context is not in the sense of
geographical location but in terms of commitment to domestic
accumulation and national development. Unlike its counterpart in Asia,
the African bourgeoisie is an unmitigated liability. Being majorly
unproductive and dependent on state power and resources for survival
and reproduction, the African bourgeoisie is predatory and parasitic. It
lacks the least aspiration and capacity for state transformation. As a
dependent beneficiary of imperialist accumulation, it works in alliance
with imperialist forces to underdeveloped Africa.

The African petty bourgeoisie “In Fanon’s words, is a greedy class, avid
and voracious which sees no further than the end of its nose, and
reveals itself as incapable of bringing national unity into being or of
building up the nation on a stable productive basis” (Chandoke, 1984).
This finding has not changed one bit. In fact, it has been further
exacerbated by neoliberal globalisation, with its excessive market

28
fundamentalism and the coloniality of markets, which mark capitalism
as the ordained system of economic organisation and Africa as a new
site of accumulation (Ndloyn-Gatsheni, 2020). On this tendency,
Thiong’o (cited in Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2020, 57) notes that “… modern
capitalism mutates into a religious system, with the market as the
mediating deity in the conflicting claims of its adherents. The market is
the supreme deity guarded by a band of armed angels, apostles and
priests who assign Hell for the unrepentant sinner, Purgatory for those
showing signs of repentance and Paradise for the saved”. Thiong’o
(cited in Ndloyn-Gatsheni, 2020, 58) further opines that:

There is only one God, his name is market and the West is his only
guardian. Enter ye and throw your fate at the tender mercies of the
market.… The voices of those who might see the writing on the
wall are drowned by the calls for the worship of the market, literally,
with the common credo of privatization, reducible to a maxim:
Privatize or Perish.

While economics is a known science of alternatives, neoliberal market

fundamentalism of which the former United States of America (USA)
President, Mr. Ronald Reagan, and the United Kingdom’s Prime
Minister, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, were leading protagonists, books no
alternative with its arrogance that There is No Alternative (TINA).
Regrettably, Africa’s commitment to the capitalist path rather than
engenders paradise has been suffocating hellish. Why all these long
stories, you may ask? The reason is simple; it is an undeniable fact that
politics is the mother of history. More often than not, history is the
narrative from the point of view of the powerful. Thus, today’s politics is
tomorrow’s history, which animates the present in very important
respects. Suffice it to say that the past is intricately woven into the
present through a path dependence that cannot be overlooked. Ignoring
this connection reflects ignorance and results in an existential crisis with
severe and far-reaching developmental consequences.

Nigeria: The Crippled Dilemma

Madam Vice Chancellor, that Nigeria is a “crippled giant” has been
loudly proclaimed by Osaghae (1998), hence it is beyond dispute.
29
Odukoya (2006a, 247) elucidates on the implication of this apt
metaphorical description of Nigeria which he deems “not accidental
rather a programmatic outcome”. Odukoya (2006a, 247) further
contends that this depicts Nigeria as not only structurally and
functionally impaired, and “unable to institute her hegemony, promote
development and institute democratic order”. Like a Yoruba’s adage
says “amukun eru e wo, isale ni ewo” [The awkward load on the head
of a knock-kneed should be blamed on the blemishes of his legs]. This
underscores the primacy of structure in understanding Africa’s and
Nigeria’s development trajectory. Nigeria is a perfect metaphor of the
African underdevelopment pandemic. As Odukoya (2020b, 596) opines
“Nigeria exemplifies Africa’s tragedy of underdevelopment in the midst
of abundance”. The fate of the country is intricately linked with that of
the continent, such that its problems or prosperity robs significantly on
other African nations. This influence does not stem from dependency
on Nigeria by other states but from its vast population, large size, and
abundant natural resources.

With Nigeria estimated population at over 200 million and Africa’s

population at about 1.3 billion, Nigerians constitute about 15 percent of
Africa’s population, making it the most populous nation on the continent.
Occupying 923,770 sq. km of the continent’s 30.37 million sq. km
occupied by fifty-four African nations, Nigeria is the seventh biggest
African nation following Algeria, Congo (DRC), Sudan, Libya, Chad and
Angola. Blessed with invaluable resources such as crude oil, gold,
limestone, iron ore, coal, bitumen, gypsum, rock salt, gemstone, tin,
bentonite and baryte, columbine, kaolin, lead and zinc, among others,
Nigeria is undisputedly Africa’s powerhouse. Hence, the country lauds
itself as the “giant of Africa”. It was also for this reason that when the
country was granted independence from the Great Britain on 1 st
October 1960, beyond joyous Nigerians, the black race globally beat its
chest in self-congratulations that Africa’s “game-changer” that would
bring racial pride and development to the continent and the black man
globally had finally arrived. How mistaken!

30
The hallelujah choruses coupled with the hope and unparalleled
expectations globally invested in Nigeria have proved misplaced.
Nigeria has come to be seen as a faltering nation with stalled
development. The country is a classical reflection of the paradox of
abundance. That Nigeria is a puzzle with missing pieces is axiomatic.
Though the sixth largest producer of petroleum in the world, Nigeria as
a state has no single functional refinery, engaged in massive imports of
petroleum even from countries that do not have oil. Nigeria has no
qualms or scruples “consuming what it does not produce, and producing
what it does not consume”. This situation was aptly captured in a social
media joke which strikes at the jugular of the absurdities in Nigeria. It
goes thus: “Nigeria is a funny land. Someone can leave his four wives
and be chasing side-chic? This is the story of the NNPCL that
abandoned its four refineries to be a distributor at Dangote refinery”. In
Nigeria, poverty not only matches around confidently and unchallenged,
it does so mockingly on four feet. Nigeria wears its big barge of
backwardness and underdevelopment without a sense of shame in
spite of its abundant blessings. This is the sad and damning reality of
Nigeria.

Nigeria is truly a nation in custody (Osahon, 1980) captured by

combined forces: foreign and domestic. As Osahon (1980) opines, “Our
country is under siege, we have long compounded our crisis points”.
The Nigerian crisis is intricately linked with the crisis of global capitalism
in its creation and as it relates to the contemporary condition. While the
country was created as a fallout of efforts at resolving the immanent
crisis of capitalism in Europe, its contemporary crisis has to do with the
crisis of transnational capitalism at the global and domestic levels which
limits hitherto available opportunities for primitive capitalist
accumulation by the domestic Nigerian governing class. In the struggle
for political power and accumulation toward independence in 1960, the
emergence of petty and comprador bourgeoisie against the national
bourgeoisie who could champion national development was a major
drawback. In this sense, no Nigerian nation with national citizenship
emerged at independence. On the contrary, what happened was
independence for a conglomerate of self-conscious and psychologically

31
autonomous nationalities under an independent Nigerian nation more
for political convenience.

With regards to the domestic level, it is also important to stress that the
Nigerian crisis as Williams (1980, 11) argues is due in part to the fact
that “Nigeria suffered, not only from the development of capitalism, but
also from the backwardness of that development”. Truth be told,
capitalism was never introduced in its full force in the country. While all
the negative conditions of capitalism were deeply implanted in Nigeria
during colonial imperialism, only very rudimentary positive forces of
capitalism were reluctantly introduced. The primacy of imperialism in its
contemporary manifestation as neoliberalism which precludes domestic
accumulation for capitalist development in Nigeria cannot be over-
emphasised (Odukoya, 2011a). I am one of the lone voices crying in
the wilderness like biblical John the Baptist about the categorical
imperative to address the foundational issues of the Nigerian
development crisis which finds expression in the nature of accumulation
and imperialist exploitation. Over the past two and half decades, I have
strived to unravel these national development problems, understand
them dialectically and proffers suggestions which are not exactly
popular given the ideological captivity and the imperialist context of
Nigeria’s contemporary epistemological seizure.

Nigeria: Crisis of State and Economy:

A major reason behind the failure to apprehend Nigeria’s state and
economic crisis lies in the tendency to treat them as separate issues
rather than interconnected aspects of a single political economy crisis.
What is required is a dialectic interrogation of both the economic
substructure and political superstructure of the Nigerian state in order
to unravel the core of the crisis.

The state is a unique human institution. All states are products of

historical circumstances and cannot be understood outside the
framework of their specific historical circumstances which are a product
of both internal and external dynamics and dimensions that produce
them. This historical condition particularly as it relates to the structural

32
underpinnings either enhances or inhibits the development of the state
(Odukoya, 2020a). Hence, Evans (1995, 11) notes that “Different kinds
of state structure create different capacities for action. Structures define
the range of roles that the state is capable of playing. State outcomes
depend both on whether the roles fit the context and how well they are
executed”. As Gelinas (1998, 4) opines, though the state is devoid of a
heart like human, it is however conscious of the class interest it
represents.

It goes without saying that the Nigerian state dependent structure

negates the developmental role it is expected to perform. The structure
underscores a particular hegemonic interest which the state pursues.
The Nigerian state has and serves dual interests: the interest of capital
within and outside as well as its interests. These interests served by the
Nigerian state hardly coincide with the interest of the people and their
developmental objectives. It cannot be over-emphasised that
development is a class project. The decision on whether development
occurs and the form it takes is not predetermined; it is a deliberate
choice made by an individual or a group. (Ake, cited in Ihonvbere,
1989). However, the interest served by the Nigerian state, which is
majorly that of transnational capital is at variance with and undermines
the developmental interest of Nigerians.

Against this background, suffice it to note that there are states and there
are states. The idea of state qua state is an unpardonable intellectual
misnomer. Defining the state in terms of its elements; that is, population,
governance structure and systems, territoriality, sovereignty; or alluding
to its functional prerequisites; welfare, security, law and order, provision
of public goods and services, etc., misses the point and unhelpful. For
meaningfulness and to have heuristic value, the state must be seen in
terms of its capacity, autonomy, hegemony, monopoly of the means of
physical coercion, position in the global capitalist system, the interests
the state serves, and the mode of accumulation the state favours.
Against the foregoing prerequisites, the quantum of resources available
to the state comes to nothing as those resources may either benefit
hegemonic forces outside the state or minority predatory elite within the

33
state. In this wise, most African states, Nigeria inclusive, lack the
required attributes of stateness and suffer the paradox of abundance.

The state is an organ of power over and above everything within its
spheres of influence. Whatever the ideological persuasion with which
one views the state, it is an undeniable fact that a state finds expression
in the nurturing and optimisation of the human condition in a class
directed manner. The raison deter of the state is therefore the
transformation of human condition through enhanced potentials,
mastery, dignity and well-being. For this reason, a state is defined in
terms of its stateness which is underscored by its capacity, legitimacy,
autonomy and effectiveness which are indispensable for the state’s
ability to enforce its hegemony within its territorial boundaries.

Like most post-colonial states, the Nigerian state suffers a terrible

deficiency in organic compositions, resulting in aborted statehood from
inception. Not only were strange bedfellows mauled together in a forced
marriage to form Nigeria, but these different entities are forever busy
pulling apart while pretending to be working towards unity. Nigeria is
thus facing an acute state-building crisis on account of the course of
history, misuse of state power, competing social forces and the inability
of the state to extricate itself from inter and intra-class contestations
which robs negatively on its legitimacy and effectiveness. Sixty-four
years of political independence and over 10 decades of the
Amalgamation, Nigeria remains “a mere British intention”; a “mistake of
1914” (Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, cited in Onwuka, 2021) and a “mere
geographical expression (Obafemi Awolowo, 1947)”. Nigeria is a
theologian and fictional state; a state of political make-belief, an
abstraction without concrete substance in the minds of its supposed
citizens. This is why when Nigerians are to discuss the future of the
country in a constitutional conference; successive governments have
always been in the defensive habit of sounding the caveat: “Nigeria’s
unity is not negotiable”. To this end, Nigeria’s existence is nothing but
an article of faith. This masquerading and spiritualising statehood in
Nigeria flows from its fundamental disabilities which engender serious
existential threats and challenges to its continued corporate existence.

34
This challenge, in different ways, continues to undermine the Nigerian
state monopoly of violence at all levels by non-state actors as
evidenced in the Boko Haram insurgency, banditry, etc.

The driver’s seat of the Nigerian project is manned by foreign capital

with hegemonic control as the ruling class. Since those who control the
source of the revenue of a state control the state, foreign capital as
represented by the multinational oil companies that operate the Joint
Ventures in charge of oil exploration, western financial capital and the
multilateral financial institutions that borrow Nigerian money control the
country. The domestic administrative mechanisms and governance
system are in the hands of varying and competing factions of the
domestic petty bourgeoisies and comprador bourgeoisies who are
further splintered into military and bureaucratic factions. As Odukoya
(2020b, 598) succinctly notes “The hegemonic crisis of the Nigerian
state is complicated by the non-hegemonic control of the domestic
ruling classes over the Nigerian economy. A relationship of cooperation,
collaboration and contestation exists among these people based on the
size of the cake, the balance of forces and the pressure from below.

With the underdevelopment of domestic productive forces and the weak

material bases of the domestic classes, the Nigerian domestic
governing classes are contented with playing second fiddle and
subsidiary role to foreign capital in their economy, utilizing the state as
both a means of production and a tool, as well as a site of power
struggle (Odukoya, 2011a). A partnership in which the domestic
dominant classes serve as enforcers of accumulation by providing the
political and economic conditions favourable for accumulation, and their
foreign counterparts supply the capital and technology indispensable
for accumulation (Odukoya, 2011a).

It is because of this beneficial partnership that signals maximum

benefits without direct responsibilities that predispose foreign capital to
cooperation and collaboration with the Nigerian decadent dominant
classes rather than conflict. It does not make business sense to be
antagonistic to the holder of the political machinery of the state whose

35
indispensable intervention guarantees good returns on investments for
foreign capital. In this regard, Odukoya (2020b, 599) argues that “The
Nigerian development paradigm is as dictated by external forces with
an agendum that negates domestic development. Regrettably, the
imperative of survival makes collaboration by the dominant classes with
the very forces undermining the development of Nigeria inevitable”. This
unholy and ruinous alliance with foreign capital institutionalises the
unending flow of primitive capital accumulation and the nation’s
underdevelopment complications.

At independence, the political leadership had no choice but to embrace

the capitalist ideology though it lacked the rudimentary capital on which
to hinge the development of the country. Like the colonial state, the
neocolonial state is an instrument for primitive capital accumulation. At
independence, it was to the peasants that the state turned to for the
capital to power national development through the establishment of
marketing boards. This engendered taxation without representation,
which resulted in peasant resistance as evident in the Agbekoya
uprising in the western region. Peasant-based accumulation through
cash crop production and exports reinforced the integration of Nigeria
into the international capitalist system which started under colonialism.
Given the regionalisation of politics and the regional nature of
accumulation, which flows from the revenue from the regional
commodity exports; groundnut, cocoa and palm oil from the north, west,
and east, respectively, the Nigerian state became greatly compromised
in the struggle for accumulation.

These are not in any way a surprise as there is a link between colonial
capitalism and the Nigerian state formation. As previously argued,
colonial capitalism in Nigeria was arbitral, predatory, and rooted in
primitive capital accumulation. Sadly, the independence decolonisation
struggle made no effort at changing this. There was a carry forward of
these pathologies into the post-colonial period, and this has
unfortunately persisted till date. This resonates with Robinson's (2001)
assertion that state forms are products of historical nature of capitalist
relations.

36
There is a sense in which accumulation is continuous and circular: this
explains the deepening crisis of primitive capital accumulation in
Nigeria. This sheds light on why recovered looted funds have to be re-
looted, even those with anti-corruption agencies have been alleged to
have been either sold or converted by officers of the anti-corruption
watchdogs. We have had stolen funds kept in septic tanks and billions
alleged to have been swallowed by snakes! These sorts of grand
corruption aggravate the underdevelopment crisis as the country is
immersed in unproductive accumulation. The state intervention in this
regard is lacking as a result of compromised autonomy. Since
accumulation is possible without productivity, the need for the
development of the nation’s productive forces is unwarranted.
Consequently, the advancement of technology and infrastructure to
promote production are absent.

There is more concern about individualised as against collective

accumulation. Lacking a national elite consensus struggles for
accumulative advantage defines the relationship between the domestic
dominant classes, such that there exists no trust but heightened
fractionalisation. This compromises their class hegemony. Practically,
as a result, there is no hegemonic class to champion national
development. The domestic dominant classes are subservient to
foreign class who are the actual owners of the means of production in
the country. This dependency on, and alliance of the domestic class,
with foreign capital denies it of utility as catalyst of development in the
country. With the quasi-federalism and its orientation for “dependent
feeding bottle federalism”, there is the ever-present struggle to capture
and privatise the state with serious implications for democratic deficit
and development. There is a semblance of effort and appearance to be
concerned about resolving this crisis.

The Nigerian state is a manager of accumulation of the interests of

foreign capital and the domestic petty and comprador classes. This
state managerial function finds expression in three important respects:
efforts at resolving the crisis and contradictions of dependent and
peripheral capitalism in the country; attempt at stabilisation of class rule

37
through coercion and symbolic welfare provisions; and regulative and
extractive functions (Osaghae, 2005).

This perfunctory effort has not achieved anything. The fact that the
capital in Nigeria is predominantly foreign is unhelpful for national
development. Thus, the emphasis on attraction of FDI as against
engendering national capital is ill-informed. This is because capital
globally is expansionistic. The expansion of capital follows an
exploitative logic rooted in the maximisation of profit. The location of
capital is determined strategically with a purposeful agenda to
accumulate further capital as the situation is not helped by the crisis,
capacity deficiency and incompetence of the Nigerian domestic
dominant classes. Capital has neither nor would ever go abroad as a
Good Samaritan. Even at that, the benefits that result from such
exploitative expansion are redirected to its source aggravating the
problem of the externalisation of capital in the recipient countries in what
can be described as capital hemorrhage. In this respect, Yaqub (2009)
is on point when he notes that “In point of fact, capital goes to any place
to seek, first and foremost, its own expansion and not the expansion of
any social formation, per se”.

While accumulation is the transformation of wealth freed from

consumption into further capital through the multiplication of capital into
new capital based on expanded production, in Nigeria, wealth from
majorly unproductive activities are diverted to consumption thus short-
circuiting the possibility of capital accumulation. In Nigeria, very minimal
surplus value which is also based on foreign capital and technology is
created. This sadly is channeled towards consumption as the logic of
the rentier economy and state capitalism negates production for class
survival.

The result is the stagnation and underdevelopment of the forces of

production which deepens the crisis of underdevelopment. While
ordinarily under capitalism, the struggle for accumulation is in the
economic sphere, in Nigeria, accumulation struggle is in the political
realm and is largely political. This is a rather odd and crude form of

38
primitive capitalist competition for which Adams Smith will be ashamed.
In this respect, state power is compromised as it is deployed as a
mechanism for primitive capital accumulation, thus aggravating and
deepening the crisis and contradiction of decadent capitalism. Unlike
states in advanced capitalist societies where state power is used to
mitigate these crises and contradictions, the Nigerian state power
deepens the crisis.

Madam Vice Chancellor, the capture of state power in Nigeria

engenders further erosion of state autonomy, maladministration, and
mass alienation, authoritarianism even under democratic pretenses,
choiceless democracy, mass disempowerment and poverty. It also
promotes political, economic and social crises as it widens the
fragmentation between foreign capital and the domestic dominant class
on the one hand, between the domestic dominant classes on the other
hand, and by the sideline, between the domestic dominant classes and
the oppressed and exploited classes as well as sections and groups
within the country.

The victors in these struggles have an advantage over others; however

temporary their dominance, they seize state power and use it to expand
their control over primitive capital accumulation. They leverage state
power to marginalise rival factions within the ruling class as well as the
subaltern classes. The difficulty in resolving the crisis and contradictions
of capitalist accumulation remains a core problem of the Nigerian state.
The dependency of the domestic class and the economy on foreign
capital leaves no chance for accumulation outside the context of
transnational capital and its suffocating market fundamentalism. This is
because, as Sha (2018, 29 cited in Odukoya, 2022a, 7) argues, “…free
market capitalism is always pregnant with crises and the severity of the
crises vary from nations depending on their degree of integration into
the capitalist system”.

The result is a non-egalitarian skewedness of prosperity in favour of the

successful faction. The prosperity of this faction and the other factions
is proportionally related to the impoverishment of the masses,

39
infrastructural decay, underdevelopment of productive forces,
unemployment, underemployment, malnutrition, inflation, illiteracy,
diseases, unemployment and underdevelopment. This situation has led
to the subversion of economic planning and development due to
political attrition occasioned by the struggle for power and wealth
without productivity. This resonates with Marx’s general law of capitalist
development captured by Balu, (1977) when he opines that the
increased wealth of the parasitic capitalist class is inversely related to
the increased unemployment and insecurity of the working class
responsible for the surplus appropriation by the capitalist.

Unlike under colonialism, while the state is majorly exploited by foreign

capital, rather than free the state from the exploitation of foreign capital,
decolonisation has ensured domestic collaboration with it through the
embeddedness of the two in the same circuit of accumulation. The
implication of this, as Robinson (2001, 175) alludes with respect to
neoliberalism, has been that “The disciplinary power of global capitalism
shifts actual policy-making power within national states to the global
capitalist, which is represented by local social forces tied to the global
economy”. This results from the dissolution of the territorial divide
between the global and national by neoliberal globalisation (Robinson,
2001, 186). This failure to insulate the state from political manipulation
in the promotion of accumulation denies it of its power and responsibility
to resolve the crisis and contradictions of capitalism as well as to
ameliorate the condition of the people.

The lack of control over technology as exemplified by technological

dependency reflects greatly on the crisis of the state and economy in
Nigeria. To this end, it is sometimes amusing when Nigeria is said to be
privatising. What is there to be privatised when capital and technology
are foreign? How is it possible to privatise what belongs to another when
it is not a case of nationalisation? Foreign capital always holds tight to
the control of technology even when there is the illusion of technological
transfer as part of the deal in import-substitution industrialisation. Hence
Cardoso (1972, 91) submits that “the control over technology is an
important mechanism of ensuring the return of capital to the developed

40
countries in order to complete the circle of capitalist reproduction."
Through technological domination, foreign capital maintains their
hegemony in the global circuit of capital accumulation.

Another dimension to the crisis of the state and economy in the country
is that only minimal value-added process is ongoing. Most of the so-
called industries' value-added coefficients are insignificant to be
impactful. All efforts to refocus and promote entrepreneurial orientation
by neoliberalism in Nigeria have not borne much fruits. The major
entrepreneurial preoccupations remain commercial middlemanship
rather than technological and capital goods production. This has
transformed the country into a dumping ground for products and
services from Western nations and China; mostly “tobunko products."
As Turner (1977, 16 cited in Panter-Brick, 1978) further argues, “much
of the entrepreneurialship efforts are wasted in courting politicians and
those in control of the state rather than genuine entrepreneur
engagement given the centrality of the state to commercial profit”. The
consequence is the contraction of accumulation. What this points to is
that there has been an informal privatisation of the Nigerian state
through state capture, state capitalism, corruption and other forms of
primitive capital accumulation only waiting for the stamp of formal
privatisation to take place.

Expectedly, the all-important autonomy indispensable for the state to

promote development has been compromised. The Nigerian state has
become very weak in the face of foreign capital and highly
accommodative of the excessive and mal-administration of the petty
and comprador bourgeoisie class. This is contrary to hostilities the state
visits on the Nigerian people at every available opportunity. As Williams
argues (1980, 23), “The state proved incapable of regulating factional
competition for money and opportunities for profit for indigenous
bourgeoisie and their clients”.

The Nigerian people left with the shortened end of the rod, vanquished
dreams, dashed hope, exploited and alienated, have become
unmmobilisable for development. Their daily experiences with an

41
unfeeling and brutally extractive state have fostered a mindset focused
on self-preservation and reliance on primordial networks while viewing
formal state structures with deep suspicion. This has become
complicated with various non-state actors from the area boys, yahoo-
yahoo ritualists, terrorists, herdsmen, bandits, of which the policemen,
customs officers, EFFC, the now disbanded SARS, are qualified
members, etc., have successfully taken over the state monopoly of
violence, leaving the people unprotected and vulnerable.

Truth be told, Nigeria has become a vast ungovernable space defined

by arbitrariness, impunity and lawlessness, so much that it is fast
becoming stupid to be lawful. It lacks both procedural and output
legitimacy thanks to flawed elections and shamelessly stolen mandates
as well as corruption-prone non-performing governments at all levels.
State power is seen as an imposition and unbeneficial to the Nigerian
people. As a consequence, Nigerians not only detest the state,
Nigerians envision a life of bliss in their respective magisterial ethnic
ghettos, which they seek to bring about through self-determination. The
result of this is self-help and attempts at subversion of the state and its
replacement by ethnic illusionary paradises. Suffering capacity deficit,
the Nigerian state has become malleable to insecurity. This has become
compounded by the existence of 6.1 million small arms and light
weapons illegally held by citizens and foreigners in the country,
according to the Institute of Security Studies 2021. This contrasts with
a paltry 586 arms with state security organs (Odukoya and Adedokun,
forthcoming).

The Global Terrorism Index (2020, cited in Odukoya and Adedokun,

forthcoming) also claims that seventy-two percent of terror-induced
death globally happened in Nigeria, squaring up the country’s reputation
as number three in the list of the most terrorised nations on earth (GTI,
2016 cited in Odukoya and Adedokun, forthcoming). The resulting
problems of governability and ungovernable spaces, exemplified by
“government that does no governance,” insecurity, Boko Haram,
terrorism, kidnapping, and banditry tell the stories. Nigeria is fast
becoming a Hobbesian state, with Nigerians living in daily existential

42
fear as peace increasingly eludes several parts of the country,
particularly the Northeast, Northwest, North-central, and Southeast.
Odukoya and Adedokun (forthcoming) note that, “On the Global Peace
Index (2023) Nigeria occupied the 146 position out of 163 countries – a
grim indicator of its inability to maintain law and order”. Any surprise that
thousands of Nigerians have fled the country in the name of japa not
planning to japada. These are Nigerians of all age groups who
constitute the all-important human capital and who have been trained
at enormous cost at public expense for the nation’s development. The
Nigerian state in this way has become a monumental liability to
Nigerians, representing a betrayal of hope.

A primary role and way to assess the state in a capitalist economy is

through its capacity to engender capital accumulation and defend
private property. Since Nigeria is primarily an oil political economy, the
easiest way of assessing Nigeria's state is to find out the capital
accumulation from oil exploration in the country. This is germane given
the fact that capital deficit is a major hindrance to development on the
continent such that the opportunity of petro-dollar should be a blessing.
As Odukoya (2006b, 250) submits, “Oil occupies an important place and
plays a pivotal role in the Nigerian political economy”. The oil political
economy has brought more curse than blessing so much that it is safe
to refer to it as a bane. But that is as far as it goes. Our indiscipline and
misuse of the proceeds from oil coupled with the “akotileta” and “aapa”;
prodigious leadership are the main issues.

Norway’s oil is a blessing because of the country’s developmental

intentionality. Norway invested all its oil proceeds in foreign banks.
Ninety-seven percent of earned interests from these investments are
committed to a second level of investment. Norway is now a proud
owner of a whopping 1 Trillion Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) coupled
with $213billion from reinvested profits (Meredith, 2024). Furthermore,
while the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) operates a
loss making an opaque system oiling a cesspool of corruption, the
Saudi Arabian National Oil Company (Aramco) is making a
phenomenon profit. In the last five years from 2018-2022, except for the

43
COVID-19-induced fall in its income, Aramco’s net income was between
$111.1 billion in 2018 and $161.1 billion in 2022. The net income for
2022 was an increase of 46.5 per cent, which was $110.0 billion made
in 2021. Similarly, $19.5 billion was declared as profit for the 4th quarter
of 2022, representing a 4.0 per cent increase on the 3rd quarter profit
(Aramco, 2023). Leveraging on its diversification, strong operational
performance, innovation and strategic investments, Aramco has
become the biggest company in the world, earning for itself the epithet,
of “the oil colossus” (Aramco, 2024).

It is instructive to note that while Nigerian oil is still under the control of
international multinational oil companies, with whom it operates a joint
venture, in 1980, the Saudi Arabian state controlled 100 per cent of its
oil having bought off the American Standard Oil Company, which
discovered oil in the country in 1939. In 2016, Saudi Arabia embarked
on a programmatic diversification away from what the Crown Prince
described as “oil addiction” (Aramco, 2024). Aramco has proactively
embarked on a transition to a lower-carbon future, not wanting to be
caught napping in the face of a global shift toward affordable, reliable,
and sustainable energy. With about ninety years in the oil business,
Aramco continues to calibrate its energy mix (Aramco, 2022).

What makes these two oil ventures a remarkable success is capital

accumulation from their revenues as against Nigeria’s primitive capital
accumulation and consumerism. Recall the fight by state governments
under President Olusegun Obasanjo against the Federal Government's
creation of a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) from excess crude oil
revenue and their eventual success in depletion of the fund. The
difference between Norway and Saudi Arabia on the one hand and
Nigeria on the other hand, is that the latter boasts non-visionary, looting
elites while the former boasts visionary and development-conscious
elites.

As a state that has come to stand for pains, emptiness, oppression,

exploitation, injustice and inequalities; the support and loyalty of the

44
citizens have become a scarce commodity for the Nigerian state. Hence
Williams’ (1980, 70) submission that:

The greatest problem confronting the Nigerian state which makes the
Nigerian crisis unresolvable is the lack of citizen loyalty and withdrawal
from the state. “State power which is seen consistently to favour
particular interests but also the expense of others not only forfeits the
support of the excluded interests but also undermines the legitimacy of
its own to authority. The state comes only to depend only on force and
on those who control the instruments of coercion.

Contrary to Williams (1980), there is a wealth of literature that has

explained away this debilitating condition as a consequence of weak
institutions by Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2001). Yes,
institution matters only to a reasonable extent. State institutions are
social creations within the class context and with a class agenda.
Institutions are therefore not immune from the power relations of the
state that produced them.

The power relations and interests of the state are embodied, embedded
in and hidden within state institutions. As Robinson (2001, 162) notes,
“States are power relations embodied in particular sets of political
institutions” These institutions do not just happen neither are they
divine, but a product of history. In the specific case of Africa and Nigeria,
they are products of colonial historiography. To this end, the argument
that simply anchors the African and Nigerian problematic on weak
institutions largely misses the point. Thus, an allusion to a positive
nexus between the quality of institutional governance and development
largely fails to grasp the real essence of political institutions.

Calling attention to the difference between institutional quality of settler

and non-settler colonialism, Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2001)
have demonstrated that institutional qualities are not a function of
countries' proximity or otherwise to the equator, nor the use of the
English language. On the contrary, institutional governance is informed
by national political economy, which is largely influenced by the
historical context of colonialism.
45
Governance Crisis
Odukoya (2016, 161) submits that “Governance is central to human
social organisation. Without institutionalised administration of people
through the instrumentality of law [state and government], the inevitable
chaotic order will endanger life and property.” The state and the
government are mutually reinforcing. Just like the state is the mirror for
the understanding of the temperament and pathology of the ruling class,
the government provides an opportunity for gauging the heartbeats of
the state. A possible formula in this regard is ruling class=the
state=government. The ruling class and the state find expression
through government. The government therefore bears the imprimatur of
both the ruling class and the state. The ruling class and the state it
engenders can only produce a government in their own very image. To
this end, a roguish and predatory ruling class, a dependent and
inorganic state cannot but result in governance crisis as reflected in
bureaucratic ineptitude, security dilemma, corruption and democratic
deficits, etc.

At the heart of the governance crisis in Nigeria is the bureaucracy. Gone

are the days when the Nigerian bureaucracy attracted first-class brains
comparable with the best to be found anywhere in the world. Those
were the days of Simeon Adebo, Philips Asiodu, Ademola Alakija,
Adebayo Adedeji, Ladipo Adamolekun, Ayida, Jerome Udoji, etc. The
destruction of the Nigerian public service should be placed squarely at
the doorsteps of the military that relied on the bureaucrats for their
perceived professionalism, specialisation, meritocracy, neutrality and
impartiality ethos that fostered the belief in the similarity of both state
institutions.

The bureaucrats became pseudo-politicians with vested interest,

political agendas, and roles as middlemen, contractors, and power
brokers. They exploited their petty bourgeois bureaucratic positions to
engage in primitive capital accumulation, particularly within the
framework of military developmentalism and state capitalism of the
time. In terms of recruitments into the Nigerian public service, it is sad
to note that the British colonialists were much more forthright and went

46
for the best hands. Between 1908 and 1913, those recruited into the
Nigerian public service were from Oxford and Cambridge Universities,
a tradition that continued till 1925.

The public service immersion trainings for these earlier recruits were
undertaken by Oxford and Cambridge Universities. In today’s Nigeria,
civil service recruitments and promotions have come to do less with
competence but nepotism, bribery, and other parochial considerations.
This problem started with the Nigerianisation policy towards
independence, with appointees into the federal public service as
regional representatives. This was further compounded by the
introduction of the quota system and the Federal Character Principle in
the 1979 Constitution of Nigeria, which has been reinforced and
reinstated in the current 1999 Constitution.

The increased power of the top echelon of Nigeria’s public bureaucracy

as a result of military government's reliance on them for policy
formulation and implementation transformed the bureaucrats into
lootocrats. With the return to civil rule on 29th May 1999, these
bureaucrats have continued to serve a looting elite under the guise of
democracy, effectively sustaining a lootocracy. A more recent example
is Ahmed Idris, the suspended Accountant General of the Federation,
who is facing prosecution by the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC) for alleged diversion of N109 billions of public
funds to a private purse.

Next in line is the legendary lawlessness of Nigeria’s law enforcement

and security agencies. The police have become highly compromised by
corruption and are also involved in criminal enterprises they are
supposed to prevent. Their penchant for extortion and abuse of the
rights of any decent-looking young persons under the guise of tracking
Yahoo boys was behind the #Endsars protest that rocked the country.
Cases abound of policemen renting their guns to armed robbers, just
as some of them participate in kidnapping. Bribery has become the
second name of the Nigerian police as they ashamedly collect bribes
from motorists and okada riders on the roads. The Nigerian police

47
operatives have become so audacious that they now move around with
POS machines for collection of bribes, and, sometimes, even follow
their victims to the nearest ATM stand to make withdrawals for them at
gunpoint. It is also not uncommon to see two policemen fighting or killing
one another over N20 naira bribe disputes.

The Nigerian military is not any different. The army alliance with forces
threatening the continued existence of the state like the Boko Haram,
terrorists, and bandits are a-washed in the newspapers. Just recently,
President Tinubu’s security adviser, Mr. Nuhu Ribadu, claimed that the
military were involved in the business of selling arms to terrorists,
insurgents, and bandits. Funds meant for arms and ammunition as well
as for the payment of soldiers fighting terrorists and bandits have been
stolen by the military high hierarchy and politico-bureaucratic echelon.
The result of this corruption and fund looting is that the Nigerian military
literarily fights the criminal insurgents who boast highly sophisticated
and modern weaponry with bare hands. This explains why several of
our soldiers are endangered. More unfortunate ones have suffered
avoidable deaths while the lucky ones have managed to escape a
similar fate by taking to their heels at the approach of the insurgents.

Grand corruption now wears the garb of royalty and exceptionalism.

Corruption has become fashionable and the corrupt untouchable. When
it becomes unaffordable for public image, a show is made of it in the
public domain, with the accused charged to courts, only to be granted
bail on personal recognizance. Sooner than later, the case ends with a
plea bargain. An accused who stole several billions is asked to refund
a few million naira as a cost for his freedom to spend the rest of the
humongous stolen loot as a free man. The James Ibori’s case is one
too many cases of this.

People complain and attempt to confront corruption in Nigeria without

making efforts to understand its logic. First, corruption is an intricate
part of capitalism. As Williams (1980, 56) opines, “Corruption is an
integral part of parasitical capitalism. It cannot be abolished by moral
persuasion or administrative regulation”. Corruption cannot but be

48
endemic in a political edifice of decadent, peripheral and unproductive
capitalism such as Nigeria’s. Corruption disrupts market exchange
relations in a fundamental way leaving economic relations and wealth
regulated by personal rules rather than market exchange. As Odukoya
(2013, 89) argue, “Corruption not only transfers development resources
from the state to individuals, the public [people] are turned into welfare
hostages of the powerful who have cornered state resources through
budgetary capture”. Second, the subservience of the Nigerian domestic
classes that control the political power to a foreign class which controls
economic power, leaves the domestic classes no choice but to leverage
on their political resources for economic advantage through the
appropriation of state resources.

Also, the existence of impunity which makes for escape from sanction
for corruption makes corruption highly fashionable. Corruption in
Nigeria has acquired an official toga. There is a general accommodation
of corruption in Nigeria. It is a dignified citizen of the Federal Republic
with distinction as the Grand Commander of the Federal Republic
(GCFR). Corruption is presidential and gubernatorial with all legislative,
monarchical, and ecumenical powers rolled into one. Many Nigerians
have found that challenging it is genocidal while seeking
accommodation with it is wisdom and patriotism. It could not be
otherwise given that the officials steal our commonwealth as a mark of
status prerogative. Only an “irresponsible” and “unwise” official will
ridicule and undermine his or her office by not stealing from our common
patrimony. As Falola (2021, 20) contends, “Arguably, corruption has
been established and embraced both as a ritual and a norm, and
discourses have been drawn away from eliminating corruption but are
rather subjected to the degree of corruption; …”.

Furthermore, competitive ethnicity instituted in the context of

colonialism and enamored by distributive federalism favours and
promotes corruption as tool of strategic advantage. The different ethnic
communities compete for exclusive or dominant control of public
resources to the exclusion of other ethnic groups. Odukoya (2011a,
146) notes in this context that “The crisis and contradictions of

49
dependent capitalism find manifestation in the crisis of state-building in
Nigeria. This feeds into relations between and within classes, groups
and their divergent interests”.

Nigerian politics, beyond its orientation for personal benefits, wears

flamboyant ethnic costumes. This has serious implications for the
development of class consciousness among the poor who are exploited
by merely tugs at the ethnic card as they would rather fight for ethnic
justice (justice with tribal marks) than social justice. Thus, people steal
from public purse for selves and on behalf of their ethnic groups who
often rise in their defence whenever the law of the land is about to be
activated. Against this background, in Nigerian officials stealing are
given a toga of officialdom as it is generally presumed that nothing is
wrong for an official to steal from the public purse. Stealing from the
public coffers has become a norm and official preoccupation in Nigeria
as such.

Institutional deficits find expression in every aspect of Nigeria.

Institutions are seen not as the physical existence of governmental
institutions but as norms, rules and basic rules of conduct that
systematise the affairs of a state and define the do’s and don’ts thereof
are obvious by their stack absence in Nigeria. Not that there are no
rules, norms, or regulations to order affairs within the state that will
amount to lack of institutions, but these rules, norms and regulations
are observed in their violations, making Nigeria, to borrow the apt
expression of Samuel Huntington (1968), “an institutionaless society”
with “government that does not govern”. While the very nature of military
rule and its abeyance in governance promote normlessness and
institutional infelicity, the institutional deficit in Nigeria in a supposedly
constitutional governance is beyond reproach and simply scandalous.

The raison d’etre of the African and Nigerian states is domination, not
democracy. For Momoh (2005, 9), "the preoccupation is not democracy
but with power”. The liberal democratic project in Nigeria is much like
the inorganic state system superimposed with disregard to cultural
relativity. For instance, there is no known African power construct that

50
valorizes opposition which is the desideratum of liberal democracy.
Second, colonial imperialism in Nigeria was crafted deliberately to
divide and make Nigerians irrevocable enemies and see themselves as
different people making the all-important elite consensus that guides
electoral politics impossible as groups and fractions fear the
consequences of not having political power. Third, the continued control
of the means of production by imperialist forces coupled with
demographic advantage that was accorded to a fraction of the domestic
class during the colonial era which was carried over to independence in
the struggle for political power sabotages every pretension to
democracy. Fourth, the colonial socialisation of the nationalist leaders
was to the effect that power is everything, especially when it is exercised
in a most arbitrary manner except for turning a man into transgender.
The politics of violent warfare and the sabotage of popular mandates
are derived from this colonial tutelage.

Fifth, liberal democracy is rooted in abstraction of participation,

individual freedom, rule of law, constitutionalism, equity and justice
which are frontally negated by the capitalist ideological underpinning of
democracy. Capitalism as an unjust economic system rooted in market
inequality and exploitation, individualism, profit and the survival of the
fittest cannot serve as a basis of a political architecture that valorises
democracy. Contemporary market order informed by neoliberalism has
further monetised democracy, giving rise to superficial participation
under which the people are only instruments for legitimisation of the rule
of their oppressors. The Nigerian people have been prized out of
contestations for political power, leaving space for the moneybags who
have enriched themselves largely through stolen public funds. In
Nigeria, the people are no longer even allowed the luxury and pretenses
of political participation as voters get chased away from voting with
amulets, cutlasses and bullets when it becomes impossible to buy their
votes. The result is democracy without democrats and with the absence
of the people. This confirms the position of Odukoya and Ishola (2024b,
191) that “Nigeria’s liberal democratic trajectory is intricately linked with
its problematic political economy condition. This is reflected in the
relationship between the state and society as well as within and

51
between social classes with particular regard to the accumulation and
distribution of resources”. In this respect, Nigerian politics exhibits high
level of impunity, moral bankruptcy, judicial tendencies for procedural
technicalities rather than justice, thus enthroning “a paradox of due
process … and typically frustrating due process itself” (Jinadu, 2021,
32).

Momoh (2005, 9) succinctly captures this thus:

…, the characteristics of Nigerian politics can be defined as follows:

personalization of political rule, professionalization of corruption,
institutionalization of rigging, consolidation of militarism,
democratization of violence, hegemonization of domination,
subordination of democratic and social forces, ruination of the
peasantry, emasculation of opposition forces, compradorisation of
development, and veneration of political crooks. Additionally, there
is de-industrialization and de-democratization. To be sure,
professionalization of corruption has resulted in the epidemiology of
stealing. These is a posturing (sic) by a so-called emergent
economic class pursuing a superficial economic reform, within a
deceptive statist accountability framework, and driven by a tokenist
approach to the youth and women question.

The imperialist west has developed a monumental economy of

elections in the name of election observation from which they profit and
use to accord international legitimacy to their petty bourgeois
collaborators and friends in Africa regardless of elections meeting the
barest minimum test of electoral validity. This could not be otherwise as
Williams (1980, 47) succinctly argues, “The ethics of business
penetrated politics, the ethics of politics penetrated business; the ethics
of gangster penetrated both (Williams, 1980, 47}. The Nigerian political
economy in particular is excessively skewed towards politics due to the
neglect of the economy. In this wise, the all-important task of production
is sacrificed at the altar of politics.

As a consequence, with no productive accumulation available, attention

has been turned to primitive capital accumulation, with private

52
accumulation granted primacy over collective accumulation (Odukoya,
2011a). The state being the instrument of accumulation became a site
for the struggle over accumulation and serves as an instrument of
accumulation. This leads to state capture and the loss of the autonomy
of the state as well as structural violence against the people. Nigerian
politics is nurtured on violence while Nigerian politicians who are power-
mongers rather than democrats are hooked on violence. This is at
variance with the culture of peace, tolerance, social trust, dialogue,
consensus and interpersonal cooperation that define democracy. For
this reason, the governance crisis in Nigeria cannot be resolved by
constitutional amendment without a fundamental deconstruction and
reconstruction of the Nigerian state (Odukoya, 2023b). The lesson from
history is that the state is not easily reformed. Instead, it requires
deconstruction and reconstruction, alongside the economic foundation
that underpins it.

53
Figure 2: Total Cost of Governance at the Federal Level and
Development

The result is that the Nigerian people are so battered that they are in
doubt of their democratic agency. Liberal democracy has not and will
not develop Africa or Nigeria. It will impoverish them. This is because of
the intricate link of liberal democracy with imperialist agenda of capital
accumulation. As I stated before, it cannot be over-stressed that capital
under all conditions is primarily interested in self-expansion not the
development of any place. If this happens, it is an unaffordable outcome
and an unintended consequence or concession resulting from
resistance and struggles by the people. Yaqub (2009, 370), captures
this most eloquently thus: “therefore, any positive spin-off for any
particular society should be seen as largely incidental and a tribute to
the resolve of the people of such societies to take, as it were, the bull
by the horn”. This ability to resist the onslaught of capital has been
particularly lacking in Nigeria since the return to civil governance in
1999, aside just some random feeble episodic attempts. What is
required in Africa as argued by Osaghae (2005,15 cited in Onuoha,
2018, 79) “…is the liberationalist approach to democracy which
discerns the peculiarities of the continent’s democratic challenges, and
seeks to instrumentalize democracy and democratization for public
good and broader emancipation and empowerment”. In line with the
foregoing, I have proposed an Afrocentric system “demoluwabi” as a
panacea for democratic and governance crisis in Africa.

Madam Vice Chancellor, “demoluwabi” starting point is that the

governance architecture founded on the individualistic economic
philosophy of capitalism—particularly its contemporary neoliberal
variant, which is devoid of ethical consideration and is amoral—has
undeniably failed. This system, which prioritises profit over people, has
led to nothing but illiberal democracies that, in the most insidious way,
perpetuate the disempowerment and mass misery of the African
people. In this regard, Odukoya (2006a, 253) opines that “The
undemocratic nature of the state and government and its institutions
made corruption, nepotism, and mismanagement of state resources to

54
thrive”. Truth be told, there is nothing representative about the highly
illiberal democracy practised in Nigeria. It is safer to talk of civil rule and
even that should be with qualification, given the overtly militarist
pathology as seen in elections, governance and state-society relations.
The recent struggle for power in River State is a good example. The so-
called representatives of the people are picked by parties and
processes that are anything but representative. Political parties and
processes that are far from the expression of the popular will, but
products of highly bureaucratised machines that are hell-bent on
exerting power on behalf of the dominant coalition and winning
privileges for those whose interests they represent. In this wise,
democracy is emptied of all its positive values and transformed to a
democracy of disempowerment, oppression, and surrender by the
majority to the minority. As Momoh (2005, 20) argues in this context:

We cannot consolidate democracy if these institutions, structures,

social forces and sites are not nuanced and internalized in
democratic culture Democracy is something that is nurtured and
internalized, democracy is not merely about formation of political
parties, establishment of parliament and accepting the principle of
separation of powers. Democracy is a culture and a product of
practice rooted in some core values. Values that with or without law,
are held to be sacrosanct and inviolable. But that culture cannot grow
where politicians have contempt for the people, or where they view
the people are (sic) merely objects to be used.

Hence, the urgent need for a governance system rooted in ethical

foundation and moral model for the advancement of the collective good
of Africans.

To this end, I advance what I call “demoluwabi”, that is, the government
of “omoluwabi”, for “omoluwabi” and by “omoluwabi” as panacea to the
African democratic deficit. It is rooted in the omoluwabi personage of
the Yoruba (good character) and oriented towards collective prosperity
ethos (“Kajola ka jo lowo lo wo; agbajo owo la fin so aya”) as against
the individualism of capitalism. It valorizes and accords primacy to
honour (“o wa owo lo o pade iyin lo na”) in contradiction to profit and

55
materialism (“owo fun ni ko to eniya; ki mi ni o fi ole se laye ti mo wa”)
of the present order. In totality, it entails a total ethical deconstruction
and reconstruction (“iwa rere o san ju wura ati fadaka lo”) in a country-
wide radical reorientation of all aspects of living. As a philosophy of
political practice, It elevates the people, embodying the belief that
“eniyan laso ni”, the people are my shield, my cover, and my protector.
As Odukoya, Ebijuwa and Adedeji (forthcoming) submit:

The above philosophical aphorisms speak to the currency of

courage, togetherness, temperance, prudence, fairness, equity,
transparency, accountability as the moral anchor of governance
and inter-personal relations at the micro and macro levels of socio-
political lives. This is a remarkable departure from liberal
democracy with its abstractness which lacks ethical and moral
basis. Thus, the omoluwabi personage as citizens and state
functionaries in the context of demoluwabi will be a culturally-
nuanced, nurtured and socialized beyond mere certification and
ability to corner votes by all-means possible as required by
contemporary liberal market democracy all-over Africa.

Debt Crisis: Funding Elite Opulence Lifestyle and Insatiable Greed

There is nothing inherently bad about debt. The problem with debt is in
the use to which it is put and its management. Like individuals, all
nations, at one time or the other, have cause to borrow to fund
expenditure for which they do not have immediate resource.
Government’s business entails continuous spending. In fact,
government business is impossible without spending. This explains why
government is the greatest spender in any economy. Government does
not always have all the monies it needs to spend. Neither is it always
politically expedient for government to impose more taxes in order to
get more spending power nor is it always flexible for government to
reduce its expenditure, which means reduced social provisioning
without provoking negative political consequences, especially when
elections are close by.

Borrowing is therefore a handy solution to the government capital deficit

problem, which helps avoid immediate negative political backlash.

56
However, debt is best as a stop-gap measure rather than a permanent
solution to the government given that debt comes with its implications.
Foreign debt causes capital flight, prevents new investments, destroys
existing industries through inflation and increased taxations on
industries and consumers, arrests growth, stunts development,
engenders unemployment and poverty. Krugman (1988) is correct
when he opines in his Debt Laffer Curve Theory that beyond an optimal
debt level, increased borrowing will result in default on debt repayment
as debt overhang will result. Thus, debt repayment is impossible when
debt becomes unsustainable and compromises a nation’s future
development by inhibiting growth and investment. This resonates with
Myers's (1977) Debt Overhang Theory which contends that when a debt
becomes too big, it blocks new investment and, makes repayment
impossible.

For Coccia (2017, cited in Yusuf and Mohd, 2021), “The resources used
to service massive public debt represent resources drain that should
have been available to invest in critical sectors that sustain growth. The
cost of servicing huge public debts could take a greater part of
government scarce revenue leading to distortions and lower levels of
growth in developing countries.” Similarly, “As Akos and Istan (2019
cited in Yusuf and Mohd 2021) note, “In the context of poor countries,
servicing of high public debts depletes the revenue of the indebted
country to such an extent that the ability to return to growth paths is dim,
even if the country implement strong reform programmes”. Nigeria’s
thirty-eight years of neoliberal reforms, which commenced with the
Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) under General Ibrahim
Babangida, are eloquent testimony to this unfortunate fact.

A capital deficit country like Nigeria needs capital infusion to promote

development. As Yusuf and Mohd (2021), note “When government
revenues fall short of its expenditure, governments borrow. Public debt
is a critical tool for governments to fund public spending, particularly
when it is difficult to raise taxes and reduce public expenditure”.
Nigeria’s public debt profile, both foreign and domestic, has ballooned
in the last few years, with serious effects on the economic health of the

57
nation. However, it has been argued in some quarters that Nigeria is
still under-borrowed. The government seems to have taken this to heart
with the free-wheeler and lassie-faire borrowing mentality. In fact, the
debt the Tinubu’s administration has taken in the last 20 months is more
than its predecessors took in eight years.

Is Nigeria truly under-borrowed? Should Nigeria still go borrowing? The

debt-to-GDP ratio is one way of determining the adequacy and
sustainability of a nation’s debt and a guide to determine whether to
borrow more or to apply the brake on national borrowing. While
Nigeria's debt–to–GDP ratio, which is put at 22 per cent, looks pretty
good on the surface when compared to a global standard, this is
deceptive and dangerous. It has been argued convincingly that the debt
service-to-revenue ratio rather than debt-to-GDP ratio is the best
measure of debt sustainability, especially given Nigeria’s unimpressive
6.1 per cent tax-GDP ratio. As Yusuf and Mohd (2021) argue, “For
Nigeria, a better indicator of debt sustainability is the debt service–to–
revenue ratio, a metric that reveals whether the government is
generating enough revenues to pay down its debts as they mature. The
challenge has always been the debt service-to-revenue ratio in Nigeria
has in recent years risen to worrying levels…”

Revenue is not only falling in Nigeria due to several factors, but the cost
of governance has been increasing embarrassingly as the figures below
shows. As argued by Coccia (2017, cited in Yusuf and Mohd, 2021),
“The resources used to service massive public debt represent
resources drain that should have been available to invest in critical
sectors that sustain growth.

The cost of servicing huge public debts could take a greater part of
government scarce revenue leading to distortions and lower levels of
growth in developing countries.” Similarly, Akos and Istan (2019 cited
in Yusuf and Mohd 2021) note that, “in the context of poor countries,
servicing of high public debts depletes the revenue of the indebted
country to such an extent that the ability to return to growth paths is dim,
even if the country implement strong reform programmes”. Thus

58
Krugman (1988) argues that unsustainable debt compromises a
nation’s future development by inhibiting growth and investment.

A number of reasons lie behind debt unsustainability. Debt used to fund

consumption as against infrastructure like in Nigeria can only compound
the development problems it is meant to solve. For debt to be
sustainable and align with a country’s development vision, it must be
put into projects, capital infrastructure projects that have the capacity to
repay the debt.

Table 2: Nigeria’s External Debt Profile and Debt Servicing since

1999
YEAR EXTERNAL DEBT (millions) DEBT SERVICING (millions)
1999 $28,039.21 $1,724
2000 $28,273.68 $1,716
2001 $28,347.00 $2,128
2002 $30,991.87 $1,168
2003 $32,916.81 $1,809
2004 $35,944.66 $1,754
2005 $20,477.97 N/A
2006 $3,544.49 $6,727
2007 $3,654.21 N/A
2008 $3,720.36 $460
2009 $3,947.30 $428
2010 $4,534.19 $354
2011 $5,666.58 $351
2012 $6,527.07 $293
2013 $8,821.90 $297
2014 $9,711.45 $346
2015 $10,718.43 $331
2016 $11,406.28 $353
2017 $18,913.44 $464
2018 $25,274.37 $1,472
2019 $27,676.14 $1,333
2020 $33,348.08 $1,556
2021 $38,391.32 $2,109
59
 2022 $41,694.91 $2,405
2023 $42,495.16 $3,503
Source: (Debt Management Office, 2024, [Link]

Nigeria has a rather long history of using debt to fund government

projects. Nigeria’s contemporary debt crisis is rooted in the country’s
colonial historiography in two respects. Before the formal creation of
Nigeria, the British incurred debt for railway construction. Orugbani
(1991, 61, cited in Odukoya and Ishola 2024b) notes that “by 1896,
$255,000 for the construction of the railway bridges connecting Lagos
Island and Ebute Metta was a loan secured from the British
government”. Nigeria’s creation was funded by debt through the three
million pounds 1914 Amalgamation loan by the British government
which was guaranteed against revenues from Customs (Nworji, 2013,
cited in Odukoya and Awomoyi, 2024). Less than 10 years after the
Amalgamation loan in 1923, another ten million pounds debt for
development projects was obtained through stock. Colonialism, the
economic structure of dependency and the underdevelopment on its
heels today make economic conditions unviable. The consequence is
the resort to mounting debts to fund governance and growth as well as
the 1949/1950 British budget. As shown in Table 3 below, incurring debt
was an inelegant colonial legacy of the British colonial authority to its
Nigerian successor. Nigeria inherited an unpaid portion of the colonial
loans after independence on 1st October, 1960. At independence in
1960, Nigeria’s colonial debt stock was £17 million (BudgIT, 2019, 7). It
needs to be underscored that the colonial loans were procured to fund
infrastructure considered important for the appropriation and
expropriation of Nigeria’s resources for the development of Great
Britain.

60
Table 3: Nigeria’s Public Debt 1923 – 1955
Fiscal Amount Interest Debt Purpose
Yr. Rate Organization
1923/24 £5.7million 2.5%per International Modern
annum Bank for infrastructure
(payable in reconstruction
20 years) and
Development
(IBRD)
1935/36 £4.188 UK capital Expansion Bauchi-
million market Maiduguri railway &
(Repaid Apapa Harbour
1955)
1946/47 £300 million Internal loan UK Colonial
£4.188 Development and
million Welfare Plan (CDW)

1947/48 £1.250
million
1949/50 £3 million 2.5%per UK
annum Expenditu
re Budget
1951/52 £6.8 million UK
Total £21,238,000
Debt
Source: Report of the Accountant - General of the Federation with Financial statement
for the Year Ended; 1955, Lagos: Federal Ministry of Finance

The above debt tradition continues at independence. From the $13.1

million Paris Club loan at 3.5% procured in 1964 by the Tafawa Balewa-
led government, Nigeria’s debt profile has grown by leaps and bounds
to become unsustainable and suffocating particularly with the
introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) and the
official embrace of neoliberalism by the conditions that were attached
to the $452 million loans from the World Bank and $830 million bailout
(Tailroth, 1987). When the Balewa government loan fell due two
decades ago in 1984, Nigeria defaulted on the repayment of both the
principal and the accrued interest. With SAP, Nigeria's debts ballooned
with the devaluation of the Naira from $16 billion to $23 billion in 1993
(DMO, 2024). The nation’s capacity to repay its debt keeps getting

61
weakened given the combined negative effects of neoliberal reform
policies, which reduce industrial productivity and the ability to embark
on capital projects that would earn revenue for the repayment of the
debts.

Madam Vice Chancellor, the dollarisation of the African economy has

serious implications for our debt profile, which is increasing
geometrically with the assault of the Dollar on African weak currencies
(Odukoya, 2023). While the devaluation of the Naira continues to
aggravate Nigeria’s debt burden, the unconscionable cost of
governance continues to worsen it. The geometrical increase in
recurrent expenditure as against capital expenditure has produced
consistently fiscal and budget deficits. The extravagant expenditure of
state officials has known no bound and is incongruent with the
economic condition of the country and the poverty level of Nigerians,
who are mostly living below the poverty line. The gluttonous and
profligate consumption lifestyles of government officials have been
funded by recourse to more debts.

Madam Vice Chancellor, the flattering foreign exchange occasioned by

the massive importation of refined petroleum products, which has
enabled the payment of inflated subsidy claims on overpriced fuel, has
significantly weakened the nation's economy. This is further
compounded by low crude export due to militancy in the Niger Delta
region, oil theft, increased security expenditure arising due to general
national insecurity, high cost of energy, reduced productivity across all
economic sectors, and the transformation of the country to
ungovernable space, all which have weakened the nation’s currency
and propelled the procurement of more foreign debts. It is instructive to
note that the nation’s dependency on oil has not only increased its
import dependency, it has also fueled further debts. For both lenders
and Nigeria, oil resources are the issue. This produces a condition best
described as capital hemorrhage as more domestic resources in terms
of oil and agricultural exports are required for more imports to which the
nation and its ruinous elites have become addicted. The more imports
the more debts and the more resources needed for debt repayment and

62
little or no resources available for national development. Debt
repayment thus assumes primacy over development. It just seems to
be the right and only thing to do.

This sure amounts to a genocidal economic arrangement, where loans

were acquired when the dollar exchange rate was low but must now be
repaid with stronger dollars. Meanwhile, repayment relies on the sale of
products that generate minimal foreign exchange in the international
market. Since earned foreign exchange on primary commodities and
extractive products from Africa are unstable and often inadequate, it
becomes a categorical imperative to source more foreign loans to pay
these debts. With this, resources are not available for social
provisioning and capital projects for infrastructure, resulting in increased
poverty, diseases, deaths, conflicts, instability, de-industrialisation,
backwardness and underdevelopment. Sadly, the Nigerian political
class has shown the least concern or sensitivity in the face of this
humongous national debt. Instead, they prioritise personal comfort
above the nation’s economic health. As a result of the logic of this
genocidal order, the country is further entrapped in dependency and
underdevelopment as it becomes impossible to escape the imperialist
trap, given the need for the sale of more and more agricultural products
and mineral resources to liquidate the debt in this endlessly vicious
cycle. Nigeria has witnessed and suffered the ill effects of foreign debt’s
cancerous implications for development.

Madam Vice Chancellor, until African nations individually and

collectively embrace self-reliant development by pooling their resources
together and urgently de-dollarised their economies, ongoing
lamentation would never bring about their redemption. African countries
need to trade more with themselves using local currencies as well as
leveraging on their indigenous economic knowledge for their
development. A good example in this regard is the mobilisation of cattle
funds for the execution of the University of Botswana project. To realise
the dream of having the University of Botswana, every family in
Botswana contributed cattle heads, whose sale proceeds were used to
build the university. African leaders must also desist from living a life of

63
sardonic opulence when their citizens live in alarming squalors. As a
people we must value ourselves and what we have. This means that
we must reflect and objectivise our reality by consuming what we
produce and stop the consumption of products that are imported and
continue to deplete our resources and our essence.

Energy Crisis
Energy mix is highly diverse in terms of sources and types even though
discussion about energy ultimately dovetails to electricity. This is
understandable given that electricity is a clean, efficient and a flexible
source of energy for all human productive and recreational activities.
Writing on the Nigerian power sector, Odukoya (2012b, 55) contends
that “The power sector crisis in Nigeria has seriously affected the
domestic capitalist development and negatively impacted on the welfare
of Nigerians, such that the popular refrain is fix power, all other things
would fall in place”. This is because as noted by Akintunde (2024, 1),
“Electricity supply contributes to socioeconomic and technological
development. It also serves as catalyst for environmental sustainability.
Additionally, it is fundamental to production processes in the area of
agriculture, commerce, manufacturing, industry and mining. Short,
medium and long-term economic growths largely rely on availability of
electricity from sources that are affordable, accessible, and
environmentally friendly” (Akintunde, 2024).

Energy stands at the core of any developmental enterprise. Human

civilisation, as current knowledge discloses, took off with the discovery
of fire during the Stone Age. For humanity, energy is indispensable for
life as it is important for the provision of heating, cooking, and
illumination for individuals and to fire machines for industrial
productions. As noted Wirth (cited in Akintunde, 2024, 1), “Energy is
essential for development, and sustainable energy is essential for
sustainable development”. The contributions of energy to the GDP of
nations have been acknowledged. All advanced nations are energy-rich
and sufficient. While underdeveloped nations such as Nigeria
experience energy poverty exemplified by their energy consumption.

64
Table 4: Top 10 Biggest Energy-Consuming Countries - Total
(billion kWh 2020)*
Country Total 2022 (EJ)
China 159.39
United States 95.91
India 36.44
Russia 28.89
Japan 17.84
Canada 14.14
Brazil 13.41
South Korea 12.71
Germany 12.3
Iran 12.16
Source: [Link]
country

Table 5: Top 10 Biggest Energy-Consuming Countries - Oil (million

barrels per day 2019)
Country Oil 2022 (TB/D)
United States 20280
China 14370
India 5288
Saudi Arabia 3876
Russia 3580
Japan 3354
Brazil 3158
South Korea 2874
Canada 2352
Germany 2150
Source: [Link]
country

Countries like Nigeria that are economically backward are not on Table
4 and Table 5. The tables show the correlation between energy
consumption and economic advancement. The countries on Table 4
and Table 5 are indisputably leaders in industrialisation. For Akintunde
(2024, 1), “Energy is pivotal in individual survival, germane for general
65
well-being of society, and an indispensable tool towards the realisation
of the 2030 global Agenda for Sustainable Development, to wit
improving health and education, reducing inequality and poverty,
enhancing economic growth and human conditions among others”. The
centrality of abundant energy as the catalyst for quality life,
development, and national prosperity is therefore axiomatic. Hence,
there is a certain amount of energy consumption requirement for
individuals. Peirera, et al (2010 cited in Akintunde 2024) categorised
individual energy requirements into fundamental and basic needs. The
fundamental energy need is defined in terms of “human health and well-
being, while the basic energy needs are linked to the minimum that are
required to satisfy a minimum standard of life, considering the social,
climate, geographic, economic, and socio-cultural characteristics of
each community or territory under evaluation” (Peirera, et al, 2010 cited
in Akintunde, 2024).

Energy is derived from different sources, which could be either

traditional or modern, depending on the technological complexity
involved. Traditional energy is characterised by non-complexity in terms
of its technological demand. This can be sourced from firewood,
charcoal, crop residue, sawdust, and animal waste. On the other hand,
modern energy, which requires higher and more complex technology,
includes petrol, kerosene, gas, electricity, solar, etc. A nation’s energy
profiles as constituted by these energy sources are referred to as the
energy mix.

66
 Natural Hydro, 1%
gas, 12%

Traditional
Oil, 13% solid
biomass
and waste,
74%

Figure 3: Primary Energy Mix of Nigeria

Source: Occhiali, G. and G. Falchetta, 2018 cited in Akintunde, 2024

From Figure 3, we see the composition of Nigeria energy mix. From the
figure, it can be seen that 74 per cent of Nigeria’s energy mix is from
traditional sources, which are also referred to as renewable energy. The
balance of 23 per cent, which falls into the modern non-renewable
energy category, is distributed between oil, gas, and hydro in the ratios
of 13 per cent, 12 per cent and 1 per cent, respectively. Figure 3, though
depicts the primary energy mix in Nigeria, and also calls attention to
energy poverty in Nigeria. The oil and natural gas energy sources from
which the country majorly depends for its energy remain inefficient,
while the abundant non-renewable sources remain largely untapped.
Consequently, there is the problem of access, sufficiency, and
affordability of energy to and for Nigerians.

Madam Vice Chancellor, that Nigeria is an energy-poor nation is beyond

doubt. Energy poverty exists when an individual household lacks
access to energy, suffers energy inadequacy, or cannot afford the cost
of energy for their daily requirements. Pereira et al., (2010, cited in
Akintunde 2024, 4) sees “energy poverty as a situation in which there
is a lack of sufficient, reliable and clean energy supply to satisfy
fundamental and basic needs”. However, considering the efficiency and
environmental implications between traditional and modern sources of
energy, energy poverty is evaluated in terms of non-access to modern
67
energy. Flowing from the foregoing, Nigerians suffer from debilitating
energy poverty as they lack sufficient, reliable and clean energy as well
as their inability to afford the over-bloated cost of energy they need.
According to the report of the Senate Committee on Frequent Grid
Collapse and related issues (2024, 16):

Nigeria ranks as the world’s top Country with insufficient access to

electricity. According to the report by the International Energy
Agency (IEA), the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA),
the United Nations (UN) and the World Health Organisation (WHO),
the countries with the highest number of people without access to
electricity as of 2022 were Nigeria (86 million), the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (76 million), and Ethiopia (55 million).

The electricity sector in Nigeria has struggled to fulfil the needs of its
citizens, with at least 92 million individuals (current estimate) lacking
access to electricity. For those connected to the grid, issues such as
grid collapses, inefficiencies, and market obstacles frequently result in
inadequate supply. Additional challenges include inconsistent
implementation of tariff policies and significant losses within the
distribution network.

Nigeria's energy generation capacity is a mere 4000 MW for its 200

million people, which is miles below the estimated requirement of
17,520 MW. As a result of this ugly reality, 92 million Nigerians, majority
of who are in rural areas, lack access to electricity. The 92 million
Nigerians of those lacking access to electricity who live in rural areas
may be without electricity for a long time because the economic costs
of power infrastructure do not favour their connection to the national grid
(Senate Committee on Frequent Grid Collapse, 2024). In the same vein,
Akintunde (2024, 23) notes that “Grid expansion costs are typically high
in rural areas because the electricity loads to be served tend to be small
and widely dispersed”.

68
 46% (92 million) Nigerians
54% (108 million) Nigerians
Lack Access to Electricity
Have Partial/Full Access
 73 million in Rural Areas
 17 million in Urban Areas

Figure 4: Energy Access

Source: Report of the Senate Committee on Frequent Collapse of the National Grid
and Other Issues, 2024

Figure 4 depicts the percentage of Nigerians who have electricity either

fully or partially on the one hand and those who lack access in whatever
form on the other hand. While 54 per cent, which is approximately 108
million Nigerians, falls into the first category of those connected to the
national grid, the rest of the 92 million Nigerians, who constitute 46 per
cent of the country’s population, of which 73 million and 17 million,
respectively, are in rural and urban sectors have no access to electricity
supply.

69
There exists serious structural constrains in the Nigerian power sector
that make energy crisis and poverty inevitable.

Figure 5: Infrastructure limitation

Source: Report of the Senate Committee on Frequent Collapse of the National Grid
and Other Issues, 2024

From Figure 5, it can be seen that Nigeria's electricity installed capacity

of 12,200 MW contrasts sharply with about 30,000 MW which is
deemed adequate to meet the energy needs of its over 200 million
citizens and its economic profile. This is further compounded, as
indicated in Figure 5 above, by a transmission capacity which is just a
miserable 6000 MW, barely 50 per cent of installed generation capacity.
As a result, any aspiration to achieve the full installed capacity of 12,200
MW would be futile, as the surplus power would go to waste due to
inadequate transmission infrastructure. This is in sharp contrast with
51,000 MW available to about 52 million persons having access to
electricity in South Africa (Nduka, 2021, cited in Akintunde, 2024). This
means that energy adequacy has been an issue for the Nigerian state.
Even this ridiculous transmission capacity of 6000 MW has not been
achieved as the nation’s generation has historically stayed around a
paltry 4000 MW. To further worsen the situation, the private sector
Distribution Companies’ (DISCOs) capacity for distribution is a
scandalous 3,500 MW, just a little over 50 per cent of the transmission
capacity of 6000 MW.

70
The new electricity hike which has been justified on the grounds of
government's inability to continue payment of energy electricity subsidy
has intensified the challenges faced by many Nigerians. With a low
national minimum wage, rising inflation, and millions lacking access to
adequate energy, a significant portion of the population is experiencing
"energy misery." They spend not less than 10 per cent of their net
income on energy consumption, making most Nigerians energy poor
going by Boardman (1991 and Robic, et al., 2012 cited in Akintunde,
2024, 4). Nigerians in rural areas are still hooked on traditional energy
with all its dysfunctional implications on agricultural productivity,
desertification, economic viability, health and general well-being,
security of life and property and poverty.

100
80
60
40
20
0

Energy poor Energy Non-poor Povert index

Figure 6: Percentage of Households that are Energy Poor across

Zones in Nigeria

Source: Ashagidigbi, W., B. Adenike, B.A. Ogunniyi, and A.O. Omotayo (2020 cited in
Akintunde, 2024)

Figure 6 shows the percentage of households that are energy poor

across the six geo-political zones of Nigeria. This spatial distribution of
energy poverty is negatively skewed against the three regions of the
north known for higher poverty headcounts. When Figure 6 is analysed
against the poverty geography of Nigeria, there is a sense in which a
relationship exists between energy insecurity and poverty. While the
Northeast followed by the Northwest is known as the epicentres of
71
poverty in Nigeria having the highest poverty headcounts, the North
generally is poorer relative to the southern part of Nigeria. Thus, as we
have in the case of advanced nations and underdeveloped nations of
the global South Fig. 1 and 2, there is a strong relationship between
energy security and economic growth and prosperity.

Table 6: Average Poverty Headcount Rate by Geographical Zone

Geo-Political Zone Average Poverty Headcount Rate
(%)
North Central 42.70
North East 71.86
North West 64.84
South East 42.44
South South 21.28
South West 12.12
Source: Nigerian Living Standard Survey by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (cited in
Adeyeye, P. 2020), “Nigeria’s Poverty Crisis and the Nigerian Living Standard Survey ”

Figure 7: Nigeria's Energy Poverty: Insights and Implications for Smart

Policies and Framework towards a Smart Nigeria Electricity Network

Source: Monyei, C.G., A. O. Adewumi, M. O. Obolo, B. Sajou (2017 cited in Akintunde,

2024)

72
Figure 7 further shows the energy crisis of Nigeria as the urban sector
energy mix exists at two extremes of modern and traditional sources.
The number of urban Nigerians relying on firewood, kerosene, and
sawdust after over six decades of independence and enormous
resources committed to the energy sector is embarrassingly alarming.
It is sad that Nigeria constitutes 11.9 per cent of the world population
who lack adequate access to electricity. This has resulted in the loss of
some US$22 billion for the country (IEA, IRENA, UNSD, World Bank
and WHO, 2021 cited in Akintunde, 2024, 16). In terms of its members,
economic loss as a consequence of energy crisis, the Manufacturing
Association of Nigeria (MAN) claimed that its members expended N281
billion on alternative power supply in 2023, with the hike in electricity bill
and placing them on Band A and B in order to enjoy 20 hours of power
supply which has been in the breach despite being charged N225/kWh
excluding VAT, an over 300 per cent increase as against the previous
N66/kWh. Ultimately, the already over-burdened Nigerians denied
adequate electricity in their homes pay for this increased cost of
electricity as manufacturers pass the costs to them through increased
prices.

Madam Vice Chancellor, the nation’s universities are equally energy

poor without adequate access and are unable to afford the new cost of
electricity from April 2024. The Ahmadu Bello University, (ABU) Zaria
(was in total darkness for weeks), Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU),
Ile-Ife, the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan and University of
Lagos, Akoka, (UNILAG), have been taken off the national grid for
inability to pay the humongous and suffocating electricity bills they have
to pay for being in Band A. Before the introduction of the new energy
pricing regime, the University of Ibadan's monthly bills oscillated
between N80 million and N100 million. But with the placement in Band
A, it is now between N185 million and 200 million. In order to cope, the
University of Ibadan prioritises payment of electricity bills by paying
between 70 – 80 per cent of its monthly bill to avoid disconnection.

The University of Lagos' monthly electricity bill has jumped from about
N153 million in May 2024 to around N383 million since becoming a

73
citizen of Band A. Like the University of Ibadan, the payment of
electricity bill is a top priority for the University of Lagos. Given the
outrageous electricity bill when juxtaposed with its revenue, the
University of Lagos now struggles to pay between N190m and N200
million monthly with its monthly bill jumping from about N153million in
May 2024 to around N381 million in December 2024. This is in addition
to the 25 per cent by federal public universities to government purse,
which is classifies as internally generated revenue. The truth however
is that the bulk of these incomes are for services, such as identity cards,
examinations, laboratory, medical, etc. This government hurts the
tertiary education system as it undermines the financial stability of these
universities.

Table 7: Monthly Electricity Bill of the University of Lagos from January

to December 2024
Month Monthly Bill Monthly Paid Outstanding
January 142,847,017.30 142,847,017.30
February 166,578,365.60 166,578,365.60
March 161,557,005.20 161,557,005.20
April 175,347,433.99 175,347,433.99
May 153,439,120.46 153,439,120.46
June 295,950,120.46 190,000,000.00 105,950,921.95
July 210,842, 793.93 180,000,000.00 30,842,793.93
August 472,427,318.50 180,000,000.00 292,427,318.50
September 378,839,897.50 200,000,000.00 178,839,897.50
October 335,224,511.50 200,000,000:00 135,224,511.50
November 288,050,139.50 200,000,000.00 88,050,139.50
December 381,046,142.00 200,000,000.00 181,046,142.00
TOTAL 3,162,150,667.43 2,149,768,942.55 1,012,381,724.88
Source:Odukoya, A.O. 2024

Table 7 is a classic case of energy poverty. With the cost of electricity

going as high as N472,427,318.50 in the month of August, 2024 and
the University of Lagos only able to pay N200 million, power supply has
to be rationed on campus. As a Dean, I have had to bring my personal
generator to power our Faculty boardrooms so that our group marking
initiative could continue unhindered. Is this how our universities would

74
carry out cutting-edge research and make them globally competitive in
today’s knowledge economy? It is instructive to know that the total
electricity bill of the University of Lagos of N3,162,150,667.43 is over
50 per cent of the N5 billion used by Covenant University to build a
state-of-the-art multidisciplinary research laboratory in 2019. According
to the report “It has 24 laboratories, 12 conference halls, and 24 seminar
rooms, 97 offices and four panoramic elevators. It has houses Hebron
startup lab”. This simply illustrates what the public universities in the
country can alternatively use the scarce resources they spent on
electricity to do. It can be seen how the government is inadvertently
"killing" public universities in the country. The so-called energy subsidy
the government claimed it was paying to unidentifiable persons before
the introduction of the Band pricing regime should alternatively be used
for the settlement of the electricity bills of public universities.

The energy misery of Nigerians is inexcusable against the background

of Nigeria being an oil and gas-rich nation with admirable diversity for
renewable energy potentials. Nigeria has concentrated excessively on
oil and gas as its primary energy source. The hydrothermal power
stations in the country are gas-fired. The inefficiency that characterised
the Nigerian petroleum sector reflects in inadequate, and sometimes,
no supply of gas to power these power plants. Coal, another source of
energy, is similarly abundant in Nigeria but is only in use by the rural
dwellers and urban poor. Jack, Ogbanga, and Odubo, 2018; Amoo,
2018; Ohimain, 2014, cited in Akintunde, 2024) note that “the country’s
coal reserves are estimated at 2.8 billion tonnes in the 17 identified coal
fields with proven reserves of about 639 million tonnes.” Coal is
however unsustainable. Nigeria is similarly not in short supply of
potential renewable energy such as the sun for solar energy, strong
wind for wind energy, rivers for hydro energy, biological mass and
coastal corridors to generate wave and tidal energy (Akintunde, 2024).

75
Table 8: Renewable Energy Potentials in Nigeria
Energy Sources Capacity
Large Hydropower 14,750 MW
Small Hydropower 774 MW
Biomass (Wood, Animal 710.1333 MJ
Waste, Crop residue)
Solar Radiation 3.5kW/m2/day – 7.0kW/m2/day
Wind Average at 10m height 2.0 m/s – 4.0 m/s annually
Source: Akintunde (2024, p.8) Compilation from Jack, Ogbanga, and Odubo, 2018

While it is no rocket science that investment in the diverse renewable

energy detailed above by the Nigerian government would transform the
country into an energy-abundant nation, the government has not given
this the necessary consideration it deserves. As shown in Figure 8,
Nigeria’s primary energy mix is tilted in favour of renewable energy,
which constitutes 74 per cent, as against 13, 12 and 1 per cent,
respectively, for oil, natural gas, and hydro.

Table 9: Distribution of Nigerian Households according to Source of

Cooking Fuel Used
Energy source Frequency Percentage
Collected Firewood 2154 53.2
Purchased Firewood 773 19.09
Coal 62 1.53
Grass 20 0.49
Kerosene 845 20.87
Electricity 26 0.64
Generator 9 0.22
Gas 133 3.19
Others 27 0.67

Source: Ashagidigbi, W., B. Adenike, B.A. Ogunniyi, and A.O. Omotayo (2020 cited in
Akintunde, 2024)

76
Table 9 paints a sad picture of Nigeria’s energy crisis with less than 1
per cent of households using electricity for cooking. Also, despite the
abundance of natural gas and gas flaring going on in the country daily,
only 3.19% of households use gas for cooking. Kerosene, which is
largely imported; and hence, a source of foreign exchange drain,
constitutes the source of energy for cooking by 20.83% of households.
Firewood; collected and purchased topped the list of energy sources for
household cooking with 72.29%. The implications of this scenario for
national development and environmental sustainability are severe.

A number of reasons have been adduced for the frequent collapse of

the nation’s power grid. Among the reasons canvassed at the Senate
Committee on Power’s sittings are: infrastructural challenges based on
commercial rather than technical reasons, load rejection by DISCOs,
regulatory gaps, poor funding, lack of automation and delayed response
by the grid, weak finances of the DISCOs, inability of the government
to continue payment of subsidy and debts owed operators, and dollar
effects/devaluation.

Madam Vice Chancellor, according to the Honourable Minister, Chief

Adebayo Adelabu, as at the last estimate, 1.3 trillion naira is being owed
the GENCOs while the legacy debts of the gas supply companies now
stood at $1.3 billion. He submitted that the government would need to
set aside 10% of its annual budget to be able to continue with the
subsidy regime in the power sector which is not realistic considering
other competing demands for government’s limited resources. The so-
called electricity regime in the power sector is opaque as it is not clear
those enjoying the electricity subsidy. What is undeniable is that the
endemic collapse of the national grid is rooted in insatiable elite greed.
How does one explain the case of a company that took $200 million of
public funds meant for the acquisition of 3,000,000 in 2003 and instead
converted the money into Naira at the rate of 160 /USD to make N32
billion which was kept in a bank fixed deposit for 21 years (Adelabu,
2024 at the sitting of the Senate Committee on Power on Frequent
Collapse of the National Grid). The present value of the money was,

77
according to the minister, a whopping N225 billion as at the time of the
Committee sitting in October, 2024.

Despite the colossal investment by the Nigerian government in the

procurement of meters, which is supposed to be the business of the
DISCOs, a great percentage of those using electricity remain
unmetered. As reported in the Senate Committee on Power (2024, 19)
by the chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulation Commission
(NERC), “currently about 47% out of the 12, 121, 051 grid-connected
customers are metered leaving a metering gap of about 53% (6.3
million) of unmetered customers. This figure is exclusive of meters that
may need to be replaced and the upcoming customer enumeration that
is ongoing”. This is despite the sum of N55,424,975,546.97 given to the
DISCOs for the procurement and installation of 962,832 meters.
Metering has become an all-important issue requiring presidential
attention with a Presidential Metering Initiative (PMI) overseen by the
Minister of Power who chairs the Presidential Metering Council (PMC).
At the Senate Committee on Power on the Frequent Power Grid
Collapse (2024, 24), the CBN submitted that “All the 11 DISCOs
benefitted from this intervention with each accessing about
N5,475,975,000 (Five Billion, Four Hundred and Seventy-Five
Thousand, Nine Hundred and Seventy-Five Thousand Naira) only. As
at today, N6.3 billion has been repaid leaving an outstanding balance
of N49,037,671,551.31” (Report of the Senate Committee on Power on
Frequent Collapse of Power Grid Report, 2024)”

Despite government funding for meter acquisition, Nigerians pay

scandalously high costs to get meters in order to escape the equally
astronomically high estimated bills for energy not consumed by those
without meters. According to Engr. Sanusi Garba, the Chairman of the
Electricity Consumer Protection Advocacy Center (ECPAC),
“Consumers have been made to fund the acquisition of electricity assets
such as meters and transformers without any refund in terms of energy
credits. This is happening even when the government continues to
intervene in meter acquisition and yearly allowance is made in the tariff
by NERC for OPEX and CAPEX thus calling to question the justification

78
for such considerations” (Report of the Senate Committee on Power on
Frequent Collapse of Power Grid Report, 2024, 27).

In 2024 alone, the Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu submits

before the Senate Committee on Power that “Nigeria’s power grid
experienced approximately five or six collapses – two total and four
partial” (Report of the Senate Committee on Power on the Frequent
Collapse of Power Grid Report, 2024)”. He put the cause of the frequent
collapse of the grid on the age of the power grid, which he submitted as
fifty years.

For Dr. Joy Ogali, the Executive Secretary of the Association of Power
Generation Companies (APGC) at the same Senate Committee on
Power, “Nigeria has experienced 162 power grid collapses from 2013
to date. The grid collapses reflect a complex interplay of inadequate
generation capacity, transmission bottlenecks, regulatory challenges,
and infrastructural decay (Report of the Senate Committee on Power
on the Frequent Collapse of Power Grid, 2024)”

Figure 8: Grid Collapse

Source: Senate Committee on Frequent Grid Collapse (2024)

Though it is not uncommon to hear complaints of underfunding and

aged infrastructure cited as the reasons for this unwholesome
development, the reality is that the resources allocated to the nation’s

79
power sector tell a different story. This is especially evident during the
administration of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, which spanned from May
29, 1999, to May 29, 2007. Let's advert our minds to the fact that, apart
from yearly budgetary allocation, N16 billion was committed to providing
adequate electricity for the nation. This trend of pumping funds into the
power sector from both domestic and external sources has continued
till date yet the nation’s power sector continues to remain in comatose,
giving the people darkness in place of light they earnestly desire.

Table 10: Investment in Nigerian Power Sector: 2018-2024

Year Source Purpose Amount
2018 The To enhance Nigeria's $404 million
International transmission network
Development capacity
Association
(IDA)
2019 World Bank To develop mini-grids $550 million
and solar home systems
2020 World Bank Financial sustainability $750 million loan
and enhancing
accountability in the
power sector
2020 Government A stimulus plan for the $5.9 billion (₦2.3
Stimulus Plan economy trillion)
2020 African Already working with $200 million for
Development Nigeria on a $410 million Rural Electrification
Bank transmission project) Agency (REA)
2020 World Bank Additional Power Sector $750 million
Recovery Operation
(PSRO) loan [
2020 Government Kashimbila Multipurpose $120 million
Dam to construction and
generate 40 MW of
electricity
2020 Presidential Contract with Siemens $3.8 billion
Power Initiative AG for a three-phased
electrification project
aimed at increasing

80
 Nigeria’s power capacity
to 25,000 MW
2021 Siemens Deal Under the Presidential €62.9 million and
Funding: Power Initiative aimed at $1.9 million for
modernizing and phase 1
expanding the national
grid
2023 World Bank Further support the $449 IBDR million
PSRO, focusing on and $301 million
improving electricity IDA credit
supply reliability and
enhancing transparency
in the power sector
2024 Budget Federal Ministry of of
Allocation Power ₦411,154,418,400
billion
2024 Budget National Rural ₦197, 481,125,216
Allocation Electrification Agency billion
2024 Budget Nigerian Electricity ₦635, 514,994
Allocation Management Agency billion
2024 Budget Nigerian Electricity ₦1,542,741,842
Allocation Liability Management billion
Limited
2024 Budget Transmission Company ₦114,023,052,176
Allocation of Nigeria billion
2024 Budget Nigerian Transmission ₦82,035,655,118
Allocation Expansion Project
(NTEP) Phase 1
2024 Budget Nigerian Transmission ₦82,035,655,118
Allocation Expansion Project
(NTEP) Phase 1
Others World Bank Nigeria Electrification $350 million
supported by Project (NEP) focusing $200 million (ADB)
ADB on mini-grid and off-grid
solutions for un-
electrified areas

Source: Odukoya, A. O. (2025) Compiled from the Report of the Senate Committee
on Frequent Collapse of the National Grid and other issues.

81
Between 2015 and 2020, over ₦1.3 trillion was allocated to the
electricity sector. It also reported that “₦141 billion was allocated
specifically to TCN during this period”. The report also noted that the
former Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo, reported a total investment of
₦900 billion, broken down into ₦700 billion and ₦200 billion at different
stages (Report of the Senate Committee on Power on the Frequent
Collapse of the Power Grid, 2024). Furthermore, since the
commencement of the Presidential Initiative on Power (PP) under
President Mohammadu Buhari in July 2019, the government has made
remarkable financial commitment with support from international
organisations to the nation’s power sector as shown in Table 10 above.
From Table 10, money is not the main problem of the Nigerian power
sector. The above expenditure, no matter how inadequate it may
appear when compared with the capital requirement of the nation’s
power sector, has not produced any meaningful result commensurate
with the capital injection. A number of factors combine to make the
efforts and resources committed to transforming the Nigerian power
sector to fail. Prominent of which, as canvassed before the Senate
Committee on Power meeting with stakeholders on the frequent
collapse of the national grid, are: vandalisation, energy theft,
transmission problems, poor infrastructure, funding, political
interference, and regulatory inadequacy. But above all is the issue of
pervasive corruption in Nigeria, which is the culprit for the major bulk of
the energy problem.

82
Figure 9: Corrupt practices and distortions in Nigeria’s electricity sector
Source: Corrupt practices and distortions in Nigeria’s electricity sector. Source: Roy
et al. 2023: 6. (Cited in: Resimic, 2023, 8)

Figure 9 is a graphical illustration of the systemic manifestation of

corruption in the Nigerian electricity sector. It shows how distortion
operates in the system, the structure of the operational loop of the grid,
as well as reasons for corruption in the system.

According to the NGO, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability

Project (SERAP), since 1999, corruption has consumed over 11 trillion
in the Nigerian power sector (Resimic, 2023). As part of the corruption
in Nigeria’s power sector, Odukoya (2011a) finds that generator sellers
bribe electricity distribution companies not to supply power to high-
powered consuming locations like Apapa and Ikeja in Lagos State so
as to sustain and increase the demand for generators. In 2015, the
Chicago Times (cited by Kola, 2015) similarly reported the “bribery of
electricity workers by some diesel generator and fuel suppliers to
organise household and business blackouts in order to boost sales”. In

83
2017, the budgetary allocation for the purchase of twelve operation
vehicles to the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) was used to
buy only three operational vehicles, diverting the rest of the money for
the purchase of luxurious vehicles for the executives of the power sector
(Adelabu, 2020, cited in Resimic, 2023, 11). The question that begs an
answer at this juncture is: how will corruption not kill Nigeria and
Nigerians if we don’t kill it?

Knowledge Crisis
Madam Vice Chancellor, the age-old aphorism, “knowledge is power”,
remains as valid as ever. But it comes with an unanswered question:
What kind of knowledge? This is important because the wrong
knowledge is worse than no knowledge. For knowledge to serve its
heuristic purpose and empower the people, it must be appropriate in
content and context. In this respect, it serves no purpose to have
knowledge that has no bearing on the needs of a people; fails to
empower them; and makes them perpetually subservient to others.
Thus, for knowledge to be power, it must engender mastery. That was
what African indigenous knowledge, which formed the basis of great
African kingdoms and civilisations that we earlier made mention of, did.
A major dimension of imperialist assault was the destruction of Africa’s
knowledge foundation by a deliberate promotion of self-doubt,
destruction of the continent’s intellectual and cultural artifacts,
imposition of Western intellectual hegemony, homogenisation of
knowledge as Westernisation in the context of globalisation, specifying
the acceptable pedagogy and epistemology, as well as a what type of
education that they deem is good and appropriate for Africa. This
resonates with the imperialist devaluation of knowledge in Africa
(Odukoya, 2024a).

Education rooted in ineffectual knowledge has turned out to serve no

meaningful developmental purpose beyond keeping Africa glued to the
age-old international division of labour of producing primary products as
against capital products reserved exclusively for the West. This has
technically produced modernised slaves as against people who are
masters of their own destinies. Sadly, the blame for the poor

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educational outcomes often falls on the victims of these imperialist-
designed African education systems. This has become even more
complicated in Nigeria with the pathological hatred of the Nigerian
governing class for knowledge, particularly in the years following
independence and even more so with the rise of the military-
bureaucratic alliance. How else do you explain the fact that a professor
who earned 3000 pounds per annum next to the Chief Justice of the
Federation who earned 3600 pounds per annum in 1960 now earns N5,
400,000 as against the latter's N64, 000,000 per annum (Yakubu,
2024). Other Justices of the Supreme Court that were earning lesser
than a Professor now N60,000,000 per annum. This naturally raises
many unanswered posers. What has changed? Has the work of a
Professor become less important or dispensable? Has Nigeria suddenly
become a land of justice as a consequence of the jumbo pay of these
justices? Are our Lords’ hallowed chambers not been swallowed by
corruption? Do those in power have hidden motives for favouring the
judiciary, ensuring that ‘milord’ turns a blind eye to their governance and
administrative infelicities? What sin have lecturers committed? Tell me,
I am confused. I cannot understand this unjustifiable injustice. To drive
home how ridiculous and objectionable the pay of Nigerian University
lecturers charged with the onerous responsibility of production the
twenty-first-century human capital for national development the annum
salary of a student union leader in the United Kingdom with shock you
to the sad reality. The president of East London University student’s
union annual salary is 21,233 pounds ([Link]). At today’s
exchange rate that is over N42,000, 000 only!

Despite these jumbo paychecks of the Judges, former spokesman to

President Muhammadu Buhari proclaimed unchallenged that “Nigerian
Judges are the most corrupt in the World, Statistics ahow” (Youtube).
In the same view, Fasan (2024) writing for the Bussinessday notes that
“According to a recent survey conducted and published by the National
Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in collaboration with the United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Nigeria’s public officials received
N721 billion in cash bribes in 2023, and judges topped the list of the
recipients”. For most Nigerian, the blindfold on the face of lady justice

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(justitia) have seen fallen off thus tearing apart her impartiality and
fairness. Justice now knows the colour of naira and is very much in love
with the US dollar. One is tempted to ask if the jumbo pay for the judges
and other incentives awarded them supposedly to shield them from
corruption is not a barefaced bribery and corruption of our Lords in the
temple of justice?

The civil servants who entered the public service as graduates were
once far below the average Assistant Lecturer in pay. However, they
now claim, with unwarranted arrogance, the authority to determine what
a Professor should earn. This is apart from the monumental corruption
they orchestrate. Let me quickly say that a major reason for the failure
of the fight against corruption in Nigeria is the fact that not much is been
done about corruption in our civil service. We have junior civil servants
rich enough to pay the salaries of several professors per annum with
choice houses in exclusive areas across the world yet they walk around
with impunity. It is for no reason that education has come to be seen as
a scam in Nigeria.

Madam Vice Chancellor, as part of the logic of blaming the victims, our
great and patriotic Union, the Academic Staff Union of Universities
(ASUU), has been blamed consistently and wrongly for the crisis in the
Nigerian public university system on the account of strikes forced on it
by the successive governments who have shamefully refused to fund
our public universities. The failure to fund public university education
led to the “Alli Must Go” crisis that consumed the Nigerian universities
in the late 1970s. In 1996, the World Bank declared, at a meeting with
African Vice Chancellors in Harare, Zimbabwe, that Africa is better off
without universities. Also, in a policy document in 2000, the World Bank
reiterated its 1996 position that Africa has no need for university
education. Interpreting this would suggest that the World Bank believes
that Africa needs no thinkers and innovators since the West is already
doing that on its behalf and it can simply pay and be served al a carte.
This is in tandem with the international division of labour and curiously
fits perfectly with the orientation of the Nigerian governing class who
were already uncomfortable with the radicalisation of the students and

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the trade unions with serious revolutionary pressures unleashed on the
decadent capitalist social formation.

A class like the Nigerian surrogate dominant class, which tolerates no

opposition and shows only a superficial commitment to democracy, is
bound to have disdain for education, especially university education. In
this regard, university lecturers are seen as doubly guilty; by their
training, they are nonconformists and natural challengers of the status
quo; second, by their vocation, they are training a new generation of
“we no go gree” after their own image. These were the people behind
the #ENDSARS and #NOTOHUNGER protests that recently rocked the
country. At different times dating back to the military era in a shameful
appropriation of the state and deliberate intimidation of the academics,
Nigerian successive governments have made their intention to pay the
piper known, so as to dictate the tune to which our public universities
must dance notwithstanding that that is both inappropriate and sorely
shameful. Permit me to say that contrary to this arrogance, both
lecturers and the officials of state; the military, politicians, and
bureaucrats are all employees of the Nigerian people, and as such
cannot supplant the people by mere privilege of being in control of state
power.

We should therefore see the government's responses to ASUU’s

patriotic struggle to save the Nigerian public university education as a
deliberate state strategy by the ruling class hegemon to impose and
promote socio-political control and domination. Without any
equivocation, the Nigerian ruling elite suffers from hegemonic instability
and status confusion, driven by the impact of education and ASUU's
militancy in defending public university education.

With all sense of modesty, but for the ASUU, our public universities,
which despite the best of efforts are still sadly glorified secondary
schools, would have long gone the way of our public secondary and
primary schools, which have become relics of the past abandoned for
miscreants, snakes, and cockroaches. As Odukoya (2019, 100) notes,
“Similarly, ASUU saw through the economic reform programme of

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Babangida. The Union rose against state robbery disguised as
privatization”. It is undeniable that what has kept our public universities
going is ASUU’s struggle, particularly against the background of parents
who see university certificates as “the beginning and end” of university
education and would even throw parties if their wards were awarded
certificates at the university gates on their first day. Yet they are never
concerned about government funding of universities and the content of
what they offer their children.

Madam Vice Chancellor, this is also not helped by the present crops of
students lacking in critical consciousness, devoid of the understanding
of the purpose of university education, and, regrettably, fraternising with
their oppressors for a pot of portage. Gone are the glorious days of the
Nigerian students’ movement that fought for Nigerian independence,
confronted the military against the commercialisation of education in the
famous “Ali Must Go’ protest under Segun Okeowo; the various protests
against military authoritarianism and the destruction of the nation’s
economy through neoliberalism in coalition with the Nigerian Labour
Congress (NLC) and ASUU by students leaders like Lanre Arogundade,
Segun Mayegun, Omoyele Sowore amongst others. SAP and neoliberal
reforms deserve a medal of ignominy for the transformation of NAN, a
one-time ideologically conscious, militant and pro-masses organisation,
into a reactionary and opportunistic body, uncritical of governments in
power despite their known anti-people orientation.

An important gain of ASUU struggle is the TETFUND. This was

suggested by the Union during the 1992 struggle as an intervention fund
when the government confessed that it had no idea of where to get
funds to meet the demand of funding of our public universities.
Nevertheless, the lofty ideas of the Fund have since been perverted.
This started with the conspiracy that saw the ASUU removed from the
Board of the Fund for its alleged obduracy against corruption and
misdirection of the funds of TETFUND in violation of its Act. With ASUU
out of the way, TETFUND has ceased to be an interventionist fund to a
permanent funding agency of public universities and the political
fantasies of the government. New universities that are daily

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mushrooming as constituent projects, sometimes named after non-
achieving politicians or sited in their villages, are funded with money
from TETFUND. This tendency is in contradictions with the magisterial
submission on the serious business, processes, and planning involved
in the establishment of a university as adduced by Osundare (2005,
12) as follows:

Universities do not just happen. They are institutions far too

important, too monumental, to drop into the national space without
notice! Which is why both in the past and present, their raison d,etre
is sometimes subjected to debate, their planning comes with
rigorous calculation, their potentials become objects of speculation,
their essence is constantly theorized. The University, very much like
its own intellectual preoccupations, is an open text.

With the TETFUND, establishing universities in Nigeria by our political

class requires no contemplation, demands no debate, and is devoid of
the simplest calculation and planning, just as their potentials are not
worthy objects of attention.

Even the ill-conceived Student Loan is partially funded through the

TETFUND. This is one legislation that must not be allowed to succeed.
It is a struggle that should not as usual be left for ASUU to fight. If
TETFUND, a product of the principled struggle of the ASUU, is allowed
to be consumed by the elite's conspiracy and the World Bank's
manipulations, we might as well consider that as the end of public
university education in Nigeria. But for the ASUU and the TETFUND
initiative we won’t have anything we can still refer to as public university
in Nigeria. Several states that are unable to fund one university, have
gone ahead to establish as many as four, all depending on the
TETFUND. The over-bureaucratisation of the Fund has entrenched
corruption through “contratocracy”. The Special Intervention window
especially, continues to wreak havoc on the viability of the Fund. The
over-centralisation of contracts in Abuja sometimes without the
beneficiary universities’ knowledge has been counter-productive. The
continued award of consultancies, training, and contracts that can be
handled by the universities at cheaper cost and better quality with the
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added benefits of developing our universities’ teaching and practice is
a disservice to the nation. All these reduce the funds available to
develop existing universities and make them globally competitive.

Madam Vice Chancellor, another important concern is the World Bank’s

directed transformation of our universities from the citadel innovation,
technological breakthrough, and knowledge production into pure water
and bread factories in the name of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).
A confounding paradox is that the same government that wants
universities to be self-sustaining refuses to fund the capacity
development of our public universities. Instead, it prefers to contract to
their cronies’ jobs that the universities have the best expertise to carry
out. In the name of IGR, honourary doctorate degrees are being
awarded merely for a pot of porridge to corrupt politicians, bureaucrats,
and people of dubious financial resources desperate to buy credibility.
The struggle for IGR overstresses decaying infrastructures and
lecturers, just as it reduces the productivity of public universities. Our
public university lecture rooms during lectures look more like mini-
stadia, with students standing, sitting on the floor, or hanging outside
the windows. Many struggle to hear or pay attention to the barely
audible, frustrated, and demotivated lecturer, who delivers the lecture
merely out of obligation. This is the tragedy of the business model of
university education donated to us by the World Bank. The implication
of this for the health of lecturers comes out clearly at the quarterly ASUU
NEC with branches announcing the death of an average of 20 to 30
colleagues since the last time the NEC was held.

The decadence and acclaimed low standards of our universities should

be hung on the Nigerian government's uncritical embrace of the gospel
of IGR in our universities which has led to the marketisation and
commercialisation of courses now institutionalised in the guise of
entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurship thrust in our universities is
highly mistaken and misleading. Everywhere, innovation and
production precede entrepreneurship. The way it is now, our
entrepreneurial abilities are woven around the creations and
productions from the West, which reinforce our dependency and

90
underdevelopment. The IPPIS cesspool of monumental corruption
which has eroded the autonomy of Nigeria’s public universities is
another unfortunate and unnecessary tragedy from the World Bank.

Against the foregoing, Nigeria’s public university education has become

mundane, moribund, and backward. To this end, Momoh (2016, 3)
submits powerfully that “Suffering the crisis of relevance and unable to
respond to the challenge of the times and huge technological and
cultural deficits, it is unable to empower the people and bring about
rapid technological development in ways in which education especially
research has led to the rapid development of China, Japan, South
Korea, and Singapore”.

The importance of higher education in general and university education,

in particular, cannot be over-emphasised, given its coefficient with
national economic development. Education is an important enhancer of
human capital development. It is also a key to national prosperity.
Berger, (2013 cited in Momoh, 2016) is on point when he notes as
follows:

Higher education also corresponds with improved health, lower

rates of mortality, and lower crime rate, which benefits society in
and, of themselves, as well as through lower public spending and
increased human capital. Furthermore, the benefits of an educated
population transfer through generation. Additionally, the purpose of
higher education is more than just produce a quality labour force
and accelerate economic growth. It is also to teach values of
pursing knowledge and truth, to enhance cultural understanding
and civic responsibilities, to strengthen social responsibility, and
move broadly to create a stronger democratic society.

Apart from the resources exploitation and appropriation from Africa,

investment and importance accorded to university education is a major
contributor to the development of Western capitalist societies.
Knowledge-deficient countries are structurally disadvantaged given
their lack of competitiveness in the contemporary global political
economy. Any wonder therefore that during World War I, there was an

91
unwritten pact between the United Kingdom and Germany that for no
reason should both intellectual and cultural citadels, particularly the
Oxford and Cambridge Universities in Britain and the University of
Heidelberg in Baden-Wurthemberg, be attacked. This suggests that
despite Hitler’s legendary psychopathic tendencies, the value of
knowledge production was not lost on him. To this extent, it is sad to
note that Hitler was much better than Nigeria’s ruinous class who the
closure of all the public universities in the country for a record eight
months (Jesus wept!).

Therefore, the World Bank's recommendation that higher education is

not a public good and should be privatised in Africa disclosed a troubling
but sinister motive. This approach seeks to restrict access to higher
education, making it available only to those who can afford to pay. As
Barr (2004,) noted, “Higher education matters. No longer only a
consumption good enjoyed by an elite, it is an important element in
national economic performance”. This runs contrary to the position of
known intellectual contractors leading the domestic marketing arm of
the World Bank in Nigeria who declared that the net benefit of higher
education is primarily to the individuals and their families. This is
dangerous and counter-intuitive for a continent desperate for
development. Recently, even the World Bank (n.d) in a major policy
somersault had declared that:

Tertiary education benefits not just the individual, but society as a

whole. Graduates of tertiary education are more environmentally
conscious, have healthier habits, and have a higher level of civic
participation. Also, increased tax revenues from higher earnings,
healthier children, and reduced family size all build stronger nations.
In short, tertiary education institutions prepare individuals not only by
providing them with adequate and relevant job skills, but also by
preparing them to be active members of their communities and
societies.

The World Bank has also added that the return on higher education in
sub-Saharan Africa is as much as 21 per cent. Only very few
investments in Nigeria yield as much as this. Therefore, loans to fund

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university education as an investment in future prosperity are far better
and wiser than loans deployed for bloated governance, parasitic
bureaucracy, and elite conspicuous consumption.

With the student loan, the Nigerian ruling elite have demonstrated again
its failure to learn from history and its desperation for primitive
accumulation by all means possible. Apart from the resounding failure
of the student loan in Nigeria’s recent history, the live experience of the
United States of America (USA) is there for all to see. Students’ loan
mortgages affect the future of students from poor households to debt
repayment and unenviable lives. These students end up living a life of
frustration, servitude, poverty, penury and pains.

The primary beneficiaries of this inaugural students' loans scheme are

the bureaucratic elite and politicians who administer, mismanage, and
steal the funds on the one hand and the business elite whose private
universities would ultimately become integrated into the loan scheme in
order to boast patronage for their presently unviable and
undersubscribed universities. There is an ongoing spirited attempt to
open up both the TETFUND and the student loan for private
universities. If this is allowed, while these educational vendors or
‘eduprenuers’ are smiling to the banks, the Nigerian youth will be faced
with a compromised future of humongous debt.

Madam Vice Chancellor, from the USA experience, it takes an average

of forty years to complete the repayment of a student loan. There is a
sense in which student loans, given their long term debt and the burden
it poses to young people, is inherently unwise economically. The
repayment burden even in viable credit economies reduces
consumption, savings, investible funds, ability to start new businesses,
start a home, and procure mortgage. As the Caribbean Policy Research
Institute, (2022) argues “This spills over to the economy when there are
fewer jobs available, lower demand for home construction, less
investment activity, and so on”. It has been noted that in the USA,
student loans have gone past ruining the lives of students to that of the
American economy itself (Frizell, 2018).

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There is an urgent need to refocus the nation’s macro-efficiency in
terms of education by recalibrating the quantity of resources available
to education. On the other hand, micro-efficiency in education also
deserves attention according to university education priority as well as
promoting a funding mix of teaching and research based on nationally
identified needs with the need for equity taken into consideration. This
is important given the abysmal percentage of the equally scandalously
tokenist funding of public universities in Nigeria that goes to funding
research. Recurrent expenditure takes the lion's share with the real
academic and research contents of the universities serviced.

While various education funding models exist such as the bureaucratic,

private/market and mixed, funding of public education is not a matter of
right or wrong. It is a political decision that should be informed by the
developmental needs of a country and its programmatic future informed
by the vision and mission in terms of where it wants to be and the speed
it wants to arrive at the destination.

The ASUU-FGN negotiation qualifies for a Guinness Book of Record

award as the longest university negotiation on funding in history with
virtually no achievement. That said, are the government and the duo of
the World Bank and the IMF with their neoliberal policy thrust on public
universities the only source of the crisis of the Nigerian public university
system of the country? To answer in the affirmative will be the height of
intellectual dishonesty. Nigerian academics and university
administrators are also a major part of the country’s knowledge crisis.
That we are complicit in different ways as academics and administrators
in our public universities is not in doubt in terms of our actions and
inactions.

As Osundare (2015, 22) notes:

In our attitude to our campus, the work we do there, our expected

relationship to the outside world, our apprehension of ourselves as
teachers and scholars, we seem to have totally forgotten the Ideal of
the University (mind the upper case “U”), and the universe that is the
historical and legitimate locus. Let us face it, distinguished
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 colleagues, we now live on campus like conquered people:
conquered, that is, by decay and decadence, by warpped values and
chronic anomies in the outside Nigeria society. Far from being trail-
blazers, we are expected to be, we have become blaze-trailers.

First, especially starting from the imposition of the structural adjustment

programmes in the mid-1980s and the military onslaught that sent
seasoned and committed academics from the system while those lucky
to escape the mass sack migrated abroad, many people who had no
business in the academia populated and polluted the universities,
polluting it with strange culture of the market place. This went hand-in-
hand with the politicisation of recruitment in our universities. With this,
we had the tribe of academic contractors and wheel-dealers swam our
public universities. They lacked the passion to teach and the vigour to
do research. Driven by material gains, marks, and degrees are now
auctioned to the highest bidders.

Second, is the creeping in of indigenisation and localisation which totally

emptied what remained as universal in our public universities,
particularly with the sickening mediocrity that came with them. In this
wise, though established and funded from public purses, local
communities where universities are located have these universities as
personal trophies. Not even people from the contiguous communities
are deemed qualified beneficiaries.

Consequently, the universal content of these universities is evacuated

and replaced with particularistic and parochial orientations. As a result,
only “sons of the soil”, that is, indigenes are good enough as lecturers,
Heads of Departments, Registrars, Bursars, University Librarians, and
Vice Chancellors. University affairs are no longer discussed and settled
at the Departmental meetings and Appointment and Promotions
Committees (A P and C), Faculty Board of Studies/Examiners and AP
& C), and the University Senate but at clubs, palaces, and government
offices. The godfathers are now more important than the Vice
Chancellors and Councils in decisions affecting our universities. It has
become impossible to select a new Vice Chancellor in our public
universities without crisis. Like election time in the country, which is a
95
period of warfare and nigh-anarchy, the selection of Vice Chancellors is
a time of Low-Intensity Warfare with violence, blackmail, character
assassination, mudslinging, charms, amulets, and all-manners of
political chicanery on display.

It is instructive to note that the Congress of Nigerian University

Academics (CONUA), the still-born surrogate baby of Dr. Chris Ngige,
President Muhammadu Buhari’s Minister of Labour, was procured in
similar circumstances. Similarly, there exist several bad academics that
have compromised standards for pecuniary material benefits in cash
and kind. These are some of the sad realities of our public universities.
In the face of corruption, the Ivory in our ivory tower has lost its
reverence and fascination, proving no better than the ordinary mortal
on the streets and even worse off in certain cases. Cases abound in the
public space of members of the ASUU being victimized for daring to
expose these infamies. The sack of the leadership of our Union at the
Lagos State University (LASU) seven years ago whose reinstatement
was directed by the University’s Governing Council but is yet to be
implemented after four years is a case in point. Their offence was daring
to expose the diversion of staff pension funds to the purchase of
luxurious cars for the Vice Chancellor and the Pro-Chancellor and a
backyard award of Professorship to the Vice Chancellor at a time he
was not a staff of the institution.

At the University of Ilorin, the ASUU established an incontestable case

of nepotism and corruption against two different Vice Chancellors; one
abused his position by employing and granting his wife an undeserved
promotion; while the other within four months of employing his son
made him a beneficiary of humongous TETFUND scholarship at the
expense of more qualified and older academics in the system who were
denied their well-deserved opportunity. There was also the Federal
University of Agriculture, Umudike's fiasco, which ended in the
disgraceful exit of the then Vice Chancellor. In the name of politics, we
have a Vice Chancellor, as we witnessed at the Federal University of
Technology, Owerri, who, against the University Act, presided and
continued to defend the unconscionable donation of a Professorship to

96
a seating Minister. We have individually and collectively through our
actions and inactions thrown to the dustbin the reason (Emmanuel
Kant); Knowledge (Cardinal Newmann); and Culture (Wilhelm von
Humboldt) that underscore the universe in our public universities.

Madam Vice Chancellor, this calls to mind an engagement of our

beloved friend of blessed memory, Professor Kolawole Anuoluwapo
Olu-Owolabi, with a leading Nigerian eduprenuer when he was on
sabbatical in the latter’s university. To the proprietor’s garrulous boast
of having built the university as the best in Nigeria, Professor Olu-
Owolabi measured response was that “universities are not about
structures, but about culture”. This is at the heart of the crisis. As Olu-
Owolabi loudly proclaimed at his inaugural lecture, “My people perish
for lack of philosophy”, we have lost the philosophical basis of the
university and trampled on its culture of excellence. Many of us are in
the university, but not of the university. The university is about system
and order, but we have quickly acclimatised to a hedonist order which
is an orderless order. We are as much the problem that confronts the
Nigerian public university system and the exit of the universe in our
universities as the confluence of the ruling bureaucratic elite and the
duo of the World Bank and the IMF.

While the ASUU has tried and is still trying, there is still much for the
Union to do if it has to be of continuous relevance to the public university
system in the country. While it is often unknown to the public that there
are academics in our public universities that do not belong to the Union
and most complaints in the public domain against academics never get
reported to the Union who is unsparing to discipline any erring
members, as a union, we cannot continue to play the ostrich. More
innovative ways of railing in erring members must be developed. For a
start, the problems we sought to solve with the Port Harcourt
Declaration which forbids the destructive electoral politics and
commends the emergence of leaders of the Union in an organic manner
from below rearing their heads again as a consequence of over-
bureaucratisation and political comrades.

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As ASUU leaders, we must be the best at our primary responsibilities
and in all we do in line with the principles of our Union and in the extant
tradition of Comrades Biodun Jeyifo, Mamud Tukur, Mohammodu Jiga,
Oladipo Fashina (Jingo), Asisi Asobie, Sule Kano, Nasir Fagge, Biodun
Ogunyemi, Toye Olorode, Victor Osodeke and a host of others. With
the fast declining tribe of these great ASUU leaders particularly at the
branch levels (this is where we have most of the problems), it is time
the ASUU considers the establishment of a leadership and ideological
school for training and grooming its next generation of leaders.

Madam Vice Chancellor, three of the six important concerns and

suggestions I made elsewhere are relevant at this point, Odukoya,
(2022b):

The first is that,

given the pervasive and negative “bread and butter” orientation

particularly among new members of the union and the unfortunate
call by these members that the union should pay less attention on
the conditions of the universities and focus more on the welfare of
members, there is an urgent need to foster understanding of the link
between revitalization of the universities and members’ welfare.
Education of members on the dangers of careerism to the neglect of
concerns of the large university systems has become urgent and a
categorical imperative.

Second,

With today’s advancement in Information Communication

Technology (ICT), communication is at the speed of light ensuring
instantaneousness and spontaneity. There is a serious deficit for
ASUU here giving government undue advantage during struggles.
No logic can explain nor justify the continued absence of ASUU on
any social media. This has left a vacuum that has sadly been filled
by a number of charlatans and internet fraudsters to the
embarrassment of ASUU. On Twitter alone, there are fifty-eight
parody ASUU accounts misinforming and misrepresenting the union.
ASUU must urgently embrace the social media reality for better
communication with the public. While the social media like every
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 other thing has its flipside, as intellectuals, members of ASUU are
trained to find solutions to problems rather than avoid problems.

Third,

ASUU should continue to focus on building a fighting organization

as it is the only hope of the common man in Nigeria. This is a
responsibility it took on itself from inception. The union has grown
by its past history and antecedents in this regard such that it has
become the union’s historical liabilities to champion the welfare
concerns of Nigerians and development of the country which it must
continue to fulfill and never betray.

Let me add a fresh concern for this lecture which has to do with the
need to find solutions to the large numbers of financially paying
members who are never involved in the affairs of the union except
during struggles. This set of members amounts to opportunistic by-
standers who though derive maximum benefits from the struggles of the
Union are never ready to contribute and participate in the affairs of the
Union. This robs negatively on the quality of leadership of the Union at
the branch level. Not schooled in the principles of the Union, this set of
people are responsible for the negative problems in our universities,
whose activities and actions are often generalised and cited by the
public as representing those of the ASUU. This is particularly true of the
infractions of some academics during election duties. It is important to
use this platform to state that after the 2015 general elections
conducted by ASUU’s past President, Professor Attahiru Jega as
Chairman of the election management agency, INEC, the ASUU, based
on its field observations, pulled out of participation as a body in all
elections.

Madam Vice Chancellor, another area that ASUU has unfairly received
bashing has to do with the accreditation of universities by supposedly
ASUU members. People will not understand why after universities have
been given full accreditation by the National Universities Commission
(NUC) following a clean bill returned by academics engaged to conduct
the exercise, the ASUU will still claim that these universities are
underfunded, lack equipment and suffer from decay infrastructure, etc.
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The truth is that the NUC recruits academics for the exercise as
individuals without recourse to ASUU except between 2016 and 2017
when the NUC approached the ASUU as a group to send a list of
academics for accreditation exercise across the country. This was an
eye-opener.

As the Chairman of the ASUU University of Lagos branch, I can confirm

that those sent from my branch returned six hundred and eighty
thousand naira (N680, 000:00) given to them either directly or indirectly
during the exercise. This was not unique to my branch; similar actions
were taken by comrades and branches across the country. ASUU’s
national leadership collected all this money together and returned it to
the NUC with a note and names of the universities involved. You know
what, that was the last thing we heard of the money and more curiously
that was the last time the ASUU was invited for the accreditation
exercise as a group. So it is important to always draw a line between
academics as individuals and their membership in the ASUU.

As a frontline ASUU comrade, I am not too proud that in our principled

fight in defence of the autonomy of our public universities, we have
turned blind eyes and ignored the infractions of the Joint Matriculation
Examinations Board (JAMB), particularly Professor Is-haq Oloyede. We
are practically allowing him and the Board to get away with blue-murder
in their intrusive foray into the university space and the exploitation of
hapless admission seekers through unending spurious charges for
uploading, downloading, checking of results, and other detestable
things. The JAMB was not created and should not operate as a
revenue-generation arm of the government.

The money made by the JAMB is the rightful revenue of the various
universities to which the candidates applied. Any wonder therefore the
Board proposed to spend N1.1 billion for staff feeding in its 2025
budget. According to its spokesman, Fabian Benjamin, this is “to
minimize their exposure to the public during working hours and avoid
the danger that eating in the offices posed to ICT” (Vital New 2025).
What a ridiculous excuse. JAMB has become a big behemoth whose

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utility has since expired. It is time we staged the requiem mass for it.
Universities should be allowed to admit their students without the
meddlesomeness of a middleman institution whose only boast is not in
creating more access for students desperate for admission into higher
institutions and with ease but being the admission body with the largest
online presence in Africa. Can someone please tell the JAMB it can
claim its trophy, which is of no value anyways as the world has moved
past centralised admission regime?

Madam Vice Chancellor, the private sector, which is totally reliant on

the products of the Nigerian public university system, has no moral right
to complain about the output of this system it has totally neglected and
failed to support through endowments, research grants, and patronage
in terms of its Research and Development (R &D) even at the best of
times of these public universities. The Nigerian private sector spends
more money on non-value-added programme like Big Brother Naija
than they spend on all the Nigerian public universities put together.

What the ASUU did with both NUPEMCO and UTAS are testimonies of
the Union’s untapped potential. The annual ASUU PhD grants to
members pursuing their PhDs as well as the annual indigent
scholarships are highly commendable. The time has come for the Union
to up its gate (game). It is not too much for ASUU to step in and fill the
yawning gap of funding cutting-edge development research in core
areas of national needs, which both the government and the private
sector have refused to undertake. I dare say our Union is well positioned
to establish its own ASUU University as a model of how a development-
oriented University should be run. Finally, with the gathering cloud of
economic backwardness and increased pauperisation of Nigerians,
ASUU’s social advocacy, which for some time due to its struggles for
the soul of the Nigerian public universities, has taken the backseat must
be reactivated in defence of the ordinary Nigerians. This also
commends the strengthening of working-class solidarity beyond mere
affiliation with the NLC.

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The global university rankings whose primary agenda of which is to
sustain the global intellectual hegemony of the West, marketisation, and
commercialisation of higher education have turned universities to
something akin to football leagues like the English Premier League
Premiership and Serie A tables in an academic rat race. The ranking
process is heavily skewed against African universities. It is like ranking
Manchester City and Inter Milan in the same league with Remo Stars
and Lobi Stars. As they it affect African universities in general and
Nigerian universities in particular, these rankings are diversionary, time
wasting, and irrelevant to the core values and developmental concerns
of their immediate societies or environments who are in urgent need of
their expertise.

While these rankings place an emphasis on research over and above

other core areas of universities, given that these research projects must
be published in so-called Western-based High-Impacts and Scopus
Indexed Journals, research projects relevant to local needs and
problems are crowded out as academics are engaged in the race of
high citations. These journals, which are overly commercialised, drain
scholars from Africa and other countries of the global South of their
scarce resources in the name of publication fees as well as appropriate
their intellectual property rights through copyrights ownership in most
cases.

A statement on the global university ranking by the Independent Expert

Group (IEP) convened by the United Nations University’s International
Institute for Global Health submitted that these rankings are:
conceptually invalid; based on flawed and insufficiently transparent data
and methods; biased toward research, STEM subjects and English-
speaking scholars and universities; accentuating global, regional and
national inequalities; undermining the development of higher education
as a sector; pressuring universities to adapt to frequent and short-term
ranking cycles; producing reputational anxiety that negatively affects
university behaviour; extractive and exploitative; and because rankers
have a conflict of interest.

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Factors that constitute the success of universities are too nuanced to
be parochially generalised as is been done by the commercial ranking
agencies. [Link] (nd) correctly argues that “These rankings are at
odds with the pursuit of ‘recognition and appreciation’ universities do
not only want to judge their employees on publications in scientific
journals (which carry a lot of weight in the rankings) but also on
education, leadership, team science or science communication for
example”. The ultimate beneficiaries’ of the university, the students, and
their experiences are totally sidelined from the ranking equation.

It was in realisation of these that the University of Utrecht, Netherlands,

pulled out of the ranking circuit which it deemed to promote crass
competition against partnership and scientific knowledge sharing. It also
argues that it is pretentious to claim to capture the entire spectrum and
quality of the diversities of courses and disciplines in a ranking as well
as the unnecessary waste of quality time by universities in assembling
the required information for the rankings.

Madam Vice Chancellor, the truth is that our universities do not require
the validation of these university ranking business organisations to be
relevant. Before the military and neoliberal destruction of our
universities, when no ranking agency existed, the global community
valued and held in high esteem our great universities like the UI, Unilag,
OAU, ABU, and UNN. The quality of their work provided self-validation
recognised by the global community. What has changed? Why must we
continue to be subjected to external validity? We know the problems
with our universities. It remains what the ASUU has been hammering
on since the late 1980s, funding, funding, and funding. African
government should as a matter of urgency take up the responsibilities
of adequate funding of education in general and university education in
particular for the development of the continent.

University administrators on the continent should recognise and call

these global university rankings by their real name and agenda: mere
marketing tools and instruments of continued Western intellectual
hegemony. It is therefore imperative for African universities to explore

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other alternatives such as More than Ranking, African Quality Rating
Mechanism (AQRM), and U-Multirank. More than Ranking promotes
responsible assessment based on broader and more inclusive
parameters for measuring the success of universities. The AQRM,
which was developed by the Association of African Universities at the
instance of the Commission of the African Union, allows African tertiary
institutions through the use of a standardided and objective self-
assessment tool, to rate themselves based on the African Standards
and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in Higher Education. Finally, the
EU Commission funded U-Multirank rates universities across five areas
of performance namely: forty per cent for teaching and learning; thirty
per cent for research; ten per cent for international orientation; ten per
cent for knowledge transfer; and the final ten per cent for regional
engagements.

These parameters are further broken down to thirty-one indications in

order to showcase the relative strengths and weaknesses of individual
institutions. It is interesting to know that this is non-commercial. Worthy
of consideration is the San Francisco Declaration on Research
Assessment (DORA) which advanced reasons why journal citations and
impact factors are counter-productive as the basis for academic
assessment and argued for the need “to assess research on its own
merits rather than on the journal where it is published; and to explore
new indicators of significance and impact” (UNU-IIGH, nd).

Madam Vice Chancellor, African University has a primary role in

changing the underdevelopment trends of the continent. Odukoya
(2011b) calls on African universities to retool their methodological and
epistemological deficiencies to be better positioned to drive a
developmental-oriented human capital for the continent. To this end,
Odukoya (2011b, 344) submits that “Re-engineering African university
as a citadel of emancipation, culture, and developmental knowledge
must be in terms of transformation of its philosophical orientation, as
well as changes in the prevailing conditions of intellectual and material
impoverishment which has reduced African ivory towers to institutional
extension of the rots in the society”. This will remain a pipe dream as

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long as the very lecturers who are to incubate the African Renaissance
are wrestled down by poverty and deemed worthless. The old saying
that a teacher's reward is in heaven is misleading and out of place.
Teachers labour, live, and work here on earth. They deserve to be
rewarded handsomely while still alive. Nations that value their future
reward teachers bountifully here not hereafter.

Food crisis
Madam Vice Chancellor, the Bible has rightly proclaimed that man
cannot live by bread alone. In the same token, man cannot live without
bread. Food is a basic human need and life is impossible without food
to supply the required nutrients, energies, and sustenance needed to
carry out his or her daily activities. Food security entails that man has
the right amount and quality of food required at the right time,
combination, and quantity. According to (Leshoele, 2019, 13) “There is
an old adage in Sesetho that says ‘mpa ha e kolotoe’ which means that
hunger cannot be postponed for when there is food, or simply put,
hunger cannot be negotiated with”. It is in the same vein that Nigerians
say, “A hungry man is an angry man”. One cannot take sabbaticals from
eating. Man must eat to survive. This underscores the importance of
food security.

Food security was defined in the 1996 Rome Declaration as, at the
individual, household, national, regional and global levels, exists when
all people, at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient,
safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food
preferences for an active and healthy life. There is a supply and demand
component of food security that focuses on the availability, access, and
utilisation without which the three over-arching contexts being
balanced, food insecurity is sets in. It is possible that food is available
but access to it is denied because of price hike that is beyond the reach
of the ordinary citizen. However, food availability and accessibility do
not necessarily translate to nutritional benefits.

Food availability concerns are on food production, the amount of food

produced, and net food trade which is the difference between food

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imports and food exports. Access to food is a function of the resource
profile of the household. Whether or not all the households and
individuals in a society have adequate income, labour, and knowledge
to purchase or access the right quantity of food in quality and nutritional
balance for the household, determines food security. The cost of food,
as well as government palliatives, are other factors that impact on
people’s access to food in a society. Socioeconomic and biological
conditions are at the heart of the issue of food utilisation. Food utilisation
deals with individuals getting the maximum benefits from the food they
have access to. Important in this context are nutritional knowledge, food
preparation, health situation, and care for vulnerable groups. Factors
such as social, cultural, economic, environmental and education impact
on food utilisation.

UNICEF (2023) contends that as at January 2023, 25 million Nigerians

are at high risk of food insecurity. Given the hyper-inflation occasioned
by the withdrawal of the petroleum subsidy, this figure is most likely to
have tripled. Viewed critically, within the parameters of food security
articulated above, Nigeria is presently confronted with a dire food
security crisis based on the three major parameters of availability,
access and utilisation. Food availability, being the supply and
production side of food security, rests on land, inputs, productivity,
climate, and other related factors. The global food and energy crises in
the last few decades have led to a new scramble for Africa, with the
continent’s land and strategic resources at the core of this new
accumulation by dispossession. As noted by Odukoya and Akinwole
(2021, 227), “Though Africa is a continent whose material existence is
tied to land and agricultural production, African people are becoming
increasingly deprived of this indispensable and invaluable asset for their
survival”. Countries like China, Japan, Germany, and a host of
European countries have grabbed several millions of hectares of
African farmland with the help of the African state managers.

Madam Vice Chancellor, the Land Use Act in Nigeria has been largely
misused to deprive farmers of their agricultural lands. For Odukoya and
Akinwole (2021, 239), “On the issue of land and its disposal, the

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Nigerian state is a Leviathan with almost absolutist power. The Land
Use Act gives the state the power to circumvent individual [and
communal] rights to land not owned by the state in the guise of
overriding public interest. Similarly, the Nigerian state and its
bureaucratic and political functionaries have used this option for
privileged foreign interests in the name of economic development”. The
Land Use Act 1978 has been used to legalise illegal acquisitions of land
belonging to peasant farmers for foreign interests. In these land
transactions, the land owners are often sidetracked by the state taking
over communal lands and allocating the same to foreign interests under
highly opaque contracts in total exclusion of the traditional land owners.
Some notable cases of these sad practices that abound in Nigeria are
the new Nigerian farmers from Zimbabwe and the Shonga Community,
in Kwara State, the Upper Benue River Basin Development Authority
(UBRBDA) and Dominon Farms. Added to this list are lands similarly
taken over by the state for urban renewal projects. These are also land-
scale communal lands acquired for agricultural purposes which are
allocated to the petty and comprador bourgeois classes and political
elites and are subsequently converted for housing projects. All over
Nigeria, particularly close to the urban area, there are on-going craze
for estates displacing smallholder farmers. For instance, between less
than 70 km. Moniya-Isheri Road, near Ibadan in Oyo state, as at the
last count, there are over 50 signboards advertising estate lands for sale
in a place that is the food basket of Oyo state. Sadly, nothing is
happening beyond these elegant and colourful signboards yet the
farmers can no longer access the lands for farming.

The military started this trend of agricultural accumulation. The military

top brass, top politicians, and bureaucrats who have made money
leveraging on their position often resort to agriculture. The attraction has
always been the availability of large arable land, cheap labour, and
further opportunities to exploit government investment in agriculture for
personal benefits. Their lack of entrepreneurial and business skills and
the low skills required to start an agricultural business are motivations
for investing in agriculture. General Olusegun Obasanjo as Head of
State started his mechanised agricultural business under the cover of

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"Operation Feed the Nation"(OFN) much better known with the benefit
of insight as "Obasanjo Fooled Nigeria" (OFN) when he later changed
the name of his Temperance Farms to Obasanjo Farms Nigeria (OFN).
His deputy, Major General Musa Yar’Adua, and several other military
top brasses of the time, as well as top bureaucrats became big-time
commercial farmers.

Madam Vice Chancellor, this violates the rights to a standard of living

adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family and
freedom from hunger which are basic human rights recognised by
Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Often, the
smallholders’ farmers became labourers on their lands working for their
foreign agribusinesses. This has resulted in the displacement of
smallholder peasant farmers from their agricultural lands. Apart from
the concentration of cash crops and the exports of agricultural products
abroad, the biodiversity of Nigeria’s fauna is being destroyed.

The agricultural mechanisation that is involved in the production by

these foreign agribusinesses has worsened the problem of rural
unemployment and rural-urban migration in Nigeria. Added to this, is
the lack of access and high cost of farming inputs, unaffordability of high
yield seeds as a result of the devaluation of the domestic currency
coupled with knowledge-gap as well as archaic agricultural technology.
Worthy of a mention is the role of corruption and politics in the diversion
of agricultural budgetary allocations to private pockets and to benefit
cronies with nothing to do with agriculture.

The total amount of food produced locally has gone down drastically
due to insecurity, herder-farmer clashes, and land grabbing that was
previously mentioned. Above all, farming is no longer attractive as the
cost of farm labour has gone up with the youth migration to the urban
areas and even outside the countries in what is arguably voluntary
poverty. There is growing domestic competition in Nigeria over the
consumption of locally produced agricultural products that are also
exported abroad. For instance, around Sagamu, there is a huge
processing of cassava for export by Chinese companies. This cassava,

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previously available for local consumption in Ogun, Oyo and Ondo
States, is now diverted for the production of industrial starch exported
to China. This constitutes a negative commercialisation and shifts from
subsistence to an industrial market which is equally sucking in the
smallholder farmers in the value chain. Nigeria, due to a combination of
factors, has become a net importer of the food consumed by Nigerians.
It is so bad that foods like palm oil, garri, rice, etc. are now imported into
the country from abroad.

Beyond the pressure and wastage of the scarce foreign exchange, it

poses serious security challenges for the country. In the words of
Thomas Sankara (2007) “He who feeds you controls you”. Various
governments’ efforts at agricultural commercialisation have failed to be
productively enhancing due to being mostly focused on mechanisation
and cash crop production without efforts at making agriculture attractive
and profitable business for farmers. It is time we return the small
peasant farmers who feed our forefathers yesteryears to their farms to
feed the nation. This will entail the abrogation of the present Land Use
Act which has been used to exploit and deny peasants and communities
of their communal land in favour of foreign capital interest. The
abandoned farm settlements across the country that served as the
bedrock of agricultural capital accumulation during the First Republic
should be rehabilitated immediately. If Nigeria must develop, Nigerians
must feed themselves and not continue to be dependent on foods that
have all it takes to produce for local consumption and exports.

Western epistemic domination has also not helped Africa's drive for
food security. As Odukoya (2024a, 33) submits, “Globalization has
removed the power of choice from Africa, including what to think and
how to think." These powers are now firmly in the control of the market,
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Added to
this, is the transformation of Africa through trade liberalisation aspect of
globalisation into a dumping ground of all-manners of products that can
be produced locally, including food. By disabusing African agricultural
practices in the area of crop rotation, cultivation, pests control, land
tenure and climate knowledge and practices that have endured for

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centuries, and insisting on Western practices have majorly been
counter-productive (Odukoya, 2024a). The World Bank is central to the
western epistemological imperialism in Agriculture. However, the World
Bank, despite all pretensions to the contrary, is not God. It is an
instrument of global capitalism. Thus, its prescriptions are not value-
free neither are those prescriptions infallible. With all its acclaimed
experts, there had been instances where even Nigerian peasant
farmers have proven to be more knowledgeable than the World Bank.

Professor Ephraim Olabode Olusegun Lucas delivering his inaugural

lecture titled “Too Much Food for Thought, But Very Little for the Table”
at the University of Ibadan on Thursday, 13 December 2007, narrated
his experience at the Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR)
on how traditional farmers of the Eastern Central State in 1975
demystified the World Bank by sticking to their traditional ways of
planting oil palm with food crops as against the planting of oil palm with
leguminous cover crops recommended by the World Bank's experts.
According to Aya and Lucas (1976, cited in Lucas, 2007, 17), “We found
that, in terms of restoring soil fertility, conservation of moisture, weed
control and soil protection from erosion and increased yield of oil palm,
the plantation of leguminous cover crops in the interline of oil palms was
not better than using the interline to plant food crops at the initial stages
of the growth of the oil palm.

Madam Vice Chancellor, the remarkable failure of the World Bank and
IMF development recipes all over Africa highlights the crisis, poverty,
and destructive effects that neoliberal policies have had on states and
societies across the continent. These failures serve as a stark reminder
of the limitations and risks associated with these recommendations. For
real, there was expert fetishism and a danger of “Delusions of popular
paradigm” (Toyo, 2001) that cannot be wished away, especially in
Africa.

Access to food as stated earlier is primarily a function of resources

exemplified by income, labour, and knowledge. This deals with the
individuals’ disposable income for the purchase of available food, labour

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to produce additional food to supplement what is brought or cannot be
purchased from the market, and finally, knowledge to get the most
benefits from the food purchased or produced. Globally, since the
Russia – Ukraine war started in 2022, cost of food has hit the ceiling,
especially for import-dependent nations like Nigeria. For Nigeria, this is
double jeopardy due to the twin assaults of naira devaluation and
withdrawal of petroleum subsidy as earlier mentioned. The effects of
the war have been biting across the globe due to the fact that a sizeable
proportion of global energy and wheat comes from these two warring
nations.

The miserable national minimum wage grudgingly fixed at N70, 000:00

naira cannot buy a bag of rice, which now costs over a hundred
thousand naira. Garri, beans, and bread, hitherto stable foods, have
become the foods of few fortunate Nigerians. Food inflation is well over
30 percent. The social safety net, which would ideally serve as palliative
for the poor, is either non-existent or highly compromised by corruption.
More often than not, food palliatives do not get to those they are meant
for as they disappear in transit. It is the card-carrying members of the
parties in power that get the palliatives. In other cases, palliatives meant
to relieve the pains and hunger of the people are locked up in
warehouses of top politicians or find their ways back to the market to be
sold to the same poor and hungry Nigerians at an even higher rate.

With regards to utilisation, the socio-economic and environmental

context is unfavourable to the people getting maximum benefits from
the food even when it is available and they have access to it. Because
of the inflation-driven prohibitive prices of foodstuffs, majority of
Nigerians cannot afford balanced diet. What is now important is to stuff
their stomach with anything that is available. The prices of basic
sources of protein like meat, fish and eggs are beyond the reach of most
Nigerians. With a bag of rice hovering around N100,000:00, far above
the N70,000:00 threshold of minimum wage, most state governments
are unwilling to pay and many Nigerians pushed into unemployment as
a result of the harsh neoliberal policy of the government. Nigerians now
have to do with eating “available” as against food that they know is

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required and will nourish their bodies. Consequently, low income and
inflation engender low food intakes and lower food quality. In 1983, the
grandmother of my friend, Mr. Kolawole Adedeji, bought him a brand
new Toyota Datsun (shaalanke) for one thousand five hundred only.
Today, with the price of 900 gm. of bread at N2200, bread is more
expensive than the price of a car in 1983! Reflecting recently with my
financial advisor, we observed some trends and circles in the naira-
dollar affliction. In 2006, N2,000,000:00 will buy you roughly
$22,000:00. If you put that money in an interest-bearing compounding
account at 5%, it would have more than doubled to $45,000:00 of
N74,250,000:00 today over twenty years. If you get 2.5% over the
period, you will have more than $33,000:00 or N45,000,000:00. Earlier
twenty years i.e. 1985 -2005, from parity, naira became N95:$1. For
2014-2024 cycle, in ten years one naira in 2014 gives the equivalent
value of one naira in value. Naira today is less than 6 kobo of 1985 naira
(discussion with Olu Odugbemi, my financial advisor, 2025). Who says
Nigeria has not happened to all of us? Nigeria, we failed thee.

Madam Vice Chancellor, the problem of food insecurity in Africa is likely

to continue in the foreseeable future due to heightened global food
insecurity if something is not urgently done to arrest this trend. To this
end, the issue of land grabbing, high cost of farm inputs and agricultural
technology, transportation, inflation, unworkable foreign imposed
agricultural practices, non-attractiveness of agriculture, and exports of
foodstuffs which are inadequate for local consumption have to be
addressed. The role of education can also not be over-emphasised.
Tons of research have confirmed that education engenders higher
labour productivity in agriculture as is in other economic activities. We
more product more, export more and stop the reckless borrowing that
has become the trademark of government at different levels.

General Crisis
Simply put, Nigeria is experiencing a general crisis which is exemplified
by the erosion of value. The pristine African values of brotherhood, love,
collectivity, honour, hard work, truth, selflessness, among others, have
given way to that of individualism, materialism, profit, selfishness, etc.

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We have lost our Africanness and with it our humanity. At the root of
this general crisis are capitalism and religion. We have said much about
capitalism in its various manifestations as colonialism, neocolonialism,
neoliberalism, globalisation, and imperialism. As such, we have done
justice to it and need not be derailed by it here.

Madam Vice Chancellor, religion, from time immemorial, has been a

veritable instrument of the state and the opium of the masses as Karl
Marx correctly noted. Religion keeps man captive and shifts his or her
concern from the corporeal to the non-corporeal realm from where he
or she should await material rewards. To deal with the existential crisis
of development in the corporeal world, recourse to the divine is
encouraged through fasting and prayers. With the economic crisis on
the continent, religion has become a booming industry. The
Pentecostalism dimension in particular has prioritised prosperity over
salvation. The churches and similar religious assemblies are filled to the
brim. The result is that several industries that were forced to close down
due to the unfavourable economic conditions have been taken over by
churches.

A country where operating churches and mosques are more profitable

than production is doomed. In these religious assemblies, we have
created cathedral to nurture underdevelopment. Is prayer the model for
development in the US, China, UK, Germany, Japan, Israel, and Saudi
Arabia? In these developed nations, religious centres are turning into
warehouses while in Nigeria warehouses are converted to religious and
event centres. Those who were hitherto employed and making their
living from the factories that were turned into places of worship are now
unemployed. To find or regain their employment, they return to their
former places of employment (now transformed into places of worship)
in search of miracles to be employed or re-employed. Religious
gullibility has gone full circle to an unimaginable level, such that people
submit their phones to the altar for prayers with the hope of a miracle
alert. While we grow up with the admonition of work and prayer no
thanks to over-religiosity that promotes religion without understanding
and zombie mentality, we simply pray and don’t work. God is able to

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provide for us from His abundance! The ignorance of an ignorant is
poison that will kill the ignorant slowly but steady.
Another dimension is the instrumentalisation of religion as well as
ethnicity in the struggle for power. In Nigeria, religion and ethnicity are
transactional mechanism for power (Falola 2021, 21). Politics has
become deeply intertwined with religion, just as religion has become
entangled with politics. The lines between the two, as well as ethnicity,
have become so blurred that both politics and religion have lost their
meaning and value.

Odukoya (2024a, 21-22) warns that:

It is important to raise a caveat on the temptation to mistake

religiosity for spirituality. Spirituality is however meaningless if not
rooted in the ecology and part and parcel of the culture of the people.
This explains why Africans generally and Nigerians particularly
despite their overt religiosity remain highly bankrupt but their
religious leaders; better entrepreneurs, who have perfected feeding
on the gullibility of their followers desperate in reach of spirituality
and miracles, continue to luxuriate in annoying opulence.

Madam Vice Chancellor, it is no coincidence that the religions that hold

Africans captive and disoriented are foreign religions. Africans are in
desperate search of what is not missing. What Africans are searching
desperately for is in their pockets. It is lack of spirituality that has turned
Nigeria, in particular, upside down and made it a country of confounding
paradoxes where we have:

Democracy without democrats

Politics without principles
Governance without order
Government without compassion
Religion devoid of spirituality
Pastors and Imams without godliness
Banks without money
Business without industry
Economy without productivity

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Judiciary without justice
Hospitals without medications
Hotels without hospitality
Universities devoid of universe
Lecturers without knowledge
Libraries without books
Teaching without commitments
Bureaucracy without professionalism
Leadership without vision
Power without conscience
Military without courage
Armies without guns
Power without conscience
Refineries without petroleum
Marriages without love
Relationship without integrity
Nation without national consciousness
Citizens without rights
Money without value
Police without civility
Motion without movement
All in all, tea without sugar.

Madam Vice Chancellor, the earlier Africans know the truth and
reconnect to their traditional spirituality and become free, the better it
will be for them to leverage their spirituality for development and
technological breakthrough. It is time for Africans to pause, reflect, and
ask themselves some critical questions. For one, why, despite the fact
that in Europe and America churches are empty and are being
converted into warehouses, they are still prospering more than in Africa
where warehouses and industries are being converted to religious
assemblies? How come religion has become more profitable than
manufacturing? How do we explain the fact that despite our ceaseless
prayers and night vigils, our unenviable past of post-colonial order is
now being celebrated as a glorious era? How come corruption and
criminalities, not just in government but even in the churches and

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mosques, are on the increase? The only one and simple answer to
these questions is that we worship foreign gods and we are largely
spiritually bankrupt. Africa can achieve a lot with its indigenous
spirituality as was the case in the ancient days.

Winding Down: Armageddon?

Madam Vice Chancellor, are we at the end of history? Have we lost our
geographical compass as a people? Is Armageddon here with us?
Better still, is Armageddon inevitable? Have we become powerless and
devoid of developmental agency? The answer to these posers is a
matter of understanding, perspectives, methodology and even
ideological orientations. Thus, it is, in a sense, a mute debate that we
would rather not expend academic currency. However, whatever our
persuasion, the honest conclusion for Africans and Nigerians is that we
are sitting on a bomb already detonated, with the time of explosion
ticking fast away. Africa and Nigeria are faced with a limited existential
choice: either we courageously seize the initiative, creatively and boldly
defuse the bomb by all means possible or perish. The other option that
is dangerous is hoping against hope based on the promises by the
neoliberal prophets of developmental illusions that in their proposed
reforms is Africa’s salvation and development.

Madam Vice Chancellor, as a people and as scholars, retreat or

surrender is not a known word in our collective lexicon. Neither is
lamentations and self-pity any helpful. We must resolutely stream
ahead and confront all obstacles while being unapologetic for our
actions no matter how unconventional and whose ox is gored. We must
take our destiny into our own hands. What started in 1960 and is still
being perpetuated at all levels of the state and governance in different
appearances and forms are contrived strategies for managing
neocolonialism in Nigeria. Such efforts are fantastically doomed to fail.
Capitalism cannot but produce uneven and combined development
(Leon Trotsky). This aggravates the crisis and contradictions of
capitalism which finds expression in the perennial over production and
under consumption, leading to imperialist rivalry between the advanced
capitalist power in their struggle for brutal and ruinous accumulation

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among the countries in the global South. The military-industrial
complexity behind the arms race and the promotion of crisis of all sorts
in Africa was a creation of this imperialist accumulation drive.

What I have done in my scholarly endeavour is to deploy the theory and

methodologies of political economy to the service of Africa in general
and Nigeria in particular. I have sought to unravel and unveil why Africa
is crippled and burdened. I have demonstrated over and over again that
the crippled nature of the continent is not inherent but a product of
history, power, structural conditioning, and capitalist accumulation.
Thus, our continent (Africa) and nation (Nigeria) with knocked-kneels
have fundamental foundational problems. As the Bible says, “When the
foundation is faulty what can the righteous do”? As Africans and
Nigerians, our focus must be at the roots of any meaningful solution that
underscore the resilience of history and the fact that structure matters.

Politico-economic and social contradictions have limits to which they

are amenable to compromised solutions as have been the case in
Nigeria. While scorning socialism has become a defensive pastime and
even elevated to an academic pastime, the more serious fact of the
unmitigated disaster which capitalism has become on the continent is
cleverly ignored. That capitalism is a total failure in Africa in general and
Nigeria, in particular, is no longer a matter of debate as it stares us in
the face. But that capitalism cannot succeed in Nigeria within the
framework of neo-imperialism is a realisation that has not dawned on
many, but the few who know are still in denial. This is because the
country’s state-capital mode of accumulation is predatory and highly
unproductive as well as externally controlled and programmed not to
benefit the people or develop the country. It is pertinent to make the
following points:
1. With failure of almost four decades of reforms, we must be wary of
the imperialism that surreptitiously makes us unconscious slaves
to false foreign paradigms.

2. The oil enclave economy contributes to the class stratification of

Nigerian society as well as its unproductive rentier capitalism. Oil

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 has become a dangerous trap, enabling the country to live a false
and unsustainable existence, destroying the present while
jeopardizing the future. The situation has worsened to the point
where debt-for-crude agreements have been replaced with
pledges of future oil production, effectively mortgaging the nation’s
future. As such, there is an urgent need to wean Nigeria off its
dependence on oil.

3. While it is a fact that the oil has brought more problems than
blessings, so much that it is safe to refer to it as a curse, the truth
is more nuanced. Our elites’ financial prolificacy and
unconscionable grand corruption as well as the misuse of the
proceeds are the main issues. Examples abound of nations where
their oil has been a blessing and not a curse. Norway’s oil is a
blessing because of the country’s developmental intentionality.
Norway invested all its oil proceeds in foreign banks. Ninety-seven
per cent of interests from the investments are committed to a
second level of investment. Norway is now a proud owner of a
whopping 1 Trillion Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) coupled with
$213 Billion from reinvested profits (Meredith, 2024). Remember
the fight by state governors under President Olusegun Obasanjo
against creating a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) from the excess
crude oil revenue and their eventual success in the depletion of
the fund. The difference between Norway and Nigeria is that, for
the latter, we have non-visionary looting and cursed elites and
leaders. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are two other
countries that have made oil a blessing.

4. The neoliberal political economy energises the market and

emasculates the state thus promoting the massification of poverty.
The truth is that no reform can change this only a state directed
people-centered development that is anti-imperialist can bring
about development in Africa.

5. A major problem of development in Africa and Nigeria is the

existence of capitalists without capital and the erroneous believe

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 that we can rely on the benevolence of our oppressors
masquerading as development partners for development rather
than our collective strength and unity.

6. In Nigeria, deliberate policies that will promote inter and intra-

cooperation between the different Nigerian nationalities and put an
end to an unproductive federalist political economy are a
categorical imperative. There is a need for equal opportunities for
Nigerians that will make it impossible for ethnic entrepreneurs and
imperialist forces that thrive on promoting divisions between
Nigerians to continue having their ways. This is the basis on which
shared prosperity based on mutual respect, equity, fairness, and
understanding among Nigerians can be built. This requires a shift
from the over-politicisation of life and misuse of power to
depoliticisation of everyday life and the use of power for collective
good.

7. Nigeria cannot develop as a nation where anything goes. The

average Nigerians have lost their agency on the altar of ethnic
irredentism and religious bigotry such that we have become
conscienceless to powerful elements within and outside of
government circles. Similarly, the country’s independence has
been compromised on the altar of humongous national debts. As
Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (1963) counselled, “To no person no matter
how rich should we mortgage our conscience. To no nation, no
matter how powerful should we mortgage our independence”.

8. The trajectory of my teaching and research activities has been

towards addressing the challenges of development and human
conditions in Africa and Nigeria. My commitment to this task is
rooted first, in Walter Rodney’s 'to the effect that’ and second, in
Wole Soyinka's ‘timeless exhortation’, that:

There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only

one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the
soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that

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 world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great
void, whose world will give us shelter?

As an African scholar, I am unyieldingly optimistic about Africa's, nay

Nigeria's, potential to take its rightful place in the community of
developed and civilised nations. This, however, is only possible when
we reconfigure power relations to favour the interests of Africans and
Nigerians rather than being an appendage to the imperial powers and
their successors in title.

To this end, let me disappoint those who think that nothing good can
come out of the land of the rising sun; it is not yet Armageddon and
Armageddon is not inevitable.

Conclusion
Madam Vice Chancellor, I may have sounded like the prophet Amos of
the Bible with my message that delivered what might be construed as a
proclamation of armageddon or doom. I wish there had been a more
soothing and patronizing way to call our attention to the pressing
realities we face. However, even the Bible I alluded to balances or
places Amos' stark warnings side-by-side with the hopeful
proclamations of prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, who
inspired their people with their messages of assurance and renewal. In
the same spirit, while Amos was sent to awaken the Israelites to the
harsh truths they had avoided and turned their eyes from tackling head-
on, God, in what I consider to be His deep fascination with dualism, also
sent other prophets to rekindle the people's hope and encourage
progress. It seems to me that God here gave His divine seal to the
wisdom of our ancestors, which, on the one hand, says, "One does not
throw away the baby with the bathwater," and on the other hand, says,
"We beat a child with one hand and draw them close with the other."
The ancient wisdom codified in these two proverbs reminds us that
correction must be accompanied by encouragement and hope.

Madam Vice Chancellor, at the same time, I have come with a message
of hope for Nigeria and Africa as a whole. My love for both goes beyond
their geographical and historical ties. An unbreakable bond unites
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Nigeria and Africa: they are lands of immense, boundless, and
untapped potential—resources that defy even the most sophisticated
explorations, one that even the resource-foraging Western imperialists
can attest to. We have mourned and lamented how these vast
potentials have been stifled, stolen, and squandered—victimized first
by colonialism and now by its successor, neocolonialism, which thrives
under the oppressive grip of an unyielding capitalist order.

Ma, beyond groaning and weeping, I think the time has come for us to
join our collective voice with that of the famous African literary giant
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o in one orchestra, shouting in the loudest voice:
"Weep not, child." The time has come for this child—our Africa and
Nigeria—to wipe away the tears, rise from the ashes of despair, and
reclaim the destiny that has been held hostage by both foreign
imperialist forces and Indigenous imperialists masquerading in our
different government houses and high places. It is time to shed the
black mourning robe of defeat, recover our agency, and restore the
splendour that was once ours to cherish and to call our own. Time has
come for this weeping child to realise that although a lot has been taken
from his barn by those he calls his people and meddlesome imperialist
strangers alike, he still has an advantage of age and human and natural
resources.

Madam Vice Chancellor, the focus of our question at this stage is no

longer on what was lost. Still, on how we can regain our individual and
collective agency in this imperialistic global order, we have, in one of
the most mind-boggling paradoxes, been forcefully joined and excluded
from its benefits. The question now is how do we restore our lost
individual and collective agency stolen from us by our strange
bedfellows who have systematically ensured that our economy does no
more than export only raw materials to sustain their economy and, in
return, keep us perpetually bound to them through crumbs of aids and
loans here and there? “All days are for the thieves,” declared a Yoruba
proverb, “one day is for the owner.” Our one day should be here soon.
Madam Vice Chancellor, this weeping child must rise and rewrite this
narrative on his terms and conditions. Let's recall that our story has

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been shaped by the triad of power, politics, and accumulation, which
are all in the exclusive monopoly of the imperialist West. This triad has
dictated our challenges and continues to perpetuate our
underdevelopment. Power, the foundation of politics, has too often been
wielded as an instrument of suppression rather than liberation by
external forces and internal actors. The West has entrenched a
hegemonic order, consolidating control through imperialistic and
capitalist structures, while African states remain constrained. As such,
this weeping child must rise and spell the course of his story on his
terms and conditions. There is no better way to do this than a bold
reimagining of our developmental trajectory through the renegotiation
of inherited or instead imposed systems, especially the suffocating
capitalist system, and the redefining of development on its terms.

This requires moving away from dependency-driven capitalist models

and toward an African-centric paradigm that values self-reliance,
cultural heritage, and local innovation. Industrialisation and value
addition to raw materials are critical to breaking the cycle of exploitation.
Africa can reduce its reliance on external markets by processing its
resources within the continent and creating regional supply chains. The
African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) even offers us an
unprecedented opportunity to foster intra-African trade, create jobs, and
build a sustainable economic future rooted in African unity. The
intellectual and cultural dimensions of this transformation are equally
vital. Western intellectual hegemony has long misrepresented Africa's
history and capabilities, perpetuating a narrative of inferiority. The
deliberate exclusion of African history from educational curricula in
some African countries, including Nigeria, has done nothing more than
reinforce this disempowerment. To overcome this, scholarship must
transcend academic discourse and embrace activism, challenging
Western epistemologies and fostering homegrown research. We may
have gotten political independence, but the mental and economic
colonisation of the continent is still very much entrenched. As such,
intellectual cum mental decolonisation will empower Africans to reclaim
their narratives, celebrate their heritage, and chart their path to
progress.

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Madam Vice Chancellor, narrowing the message down to Nigeria, we
have pointed out that Nigeria is the most populous African nation. But
that's not the only boast of the country: it also exemplifies the challenges
of state-building in post-colonial Africa. We have noted that Nigeria is
torn by a litany of crises: governance crises, energy crises, debt crises,
knowledge crises, etc. These crises, which find expression in
corruption, inefficiency, nepotism, and dominance of foreign capital,
suggest a state captured by expansionist forces. Foreign corporations
control the means of production, while a domestic petty bourgeoisie
serves as intermediaries in an exploitative system that prioritizes
individual accumulation over collective progress. This dynamic has
undermined national identity and weakened the state's autonomy and
legitimacy. As such, we must embark on reform and a total
deconstruction and reconstruction of our state and economic structures.
Governance reforms must prioritise meritocracy over tribal and
parochial interests, ensuring that appointments and policies serve the
collective good. We must further strengthen our public institutions, law
enforcement, and security agencies to ensure their effectiveness and
restore public trust and legitimacy in them. As noted earlier, foreign
direct investment is a tool of entrenched capitalist order. As such, the
emphasis on attracting foreign direct investment must be rebalanced
with efforts to nurture national capital and local industries.

Madam Vice Chancellor, permit me to restate my position that the

current brand of democracy we practise is nothing more than a tool to
maintain the status quo. It has not worked other than to consolidate the
interests of our petty domestic bourgeoisie. As such, we must
renegotiate it on our terms. Permit me to restate my proposed solution
to our ailing democracy. I advance what I call “demoluwabi”, the
government of “omoluwabi”, for “omoluwabi” and by “omoluwabi” as a
panacea to the African democratic deficit. It is rooted in the “omoluwabi”
personage of the Yoruba (good character) and oriented towards
collective prosperity ethos (“Kajola ka jo lowo lo wo; agbajo owo la fin
so aya”) as against the individualism of capitalism. It valorizes and
accords primacy to honour (o wa owo lo o pade iyin lo na) in
contradiction to profit and materialism (“owo fun ni ko to eniyan; ki mi ni

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o fi ole se laye ti mo wa”) of the present order. In totality, it entails a total
ethical deconstruction and reconstruction (“iwa rere o san ju wura ati
fadaka lo”) in a country-wide radical reorientation of all aspects of living.
As a philosophy of political practice, it elevates the people, embodying
the belief that “eniyan laso ni”, the people are my shield, my cover, and
my protector.

Nigeria has abundant natural resources and a productive population.

Notwithstanding its numerous deficiencies, the nation is on the brink of
grandeur, driven by its youthful demographic, expanding technical
sector, and unwavering ethical beliefs ready to lead it to triumph. With
the skilful utilisation of these capabilities and proficient leadership,
Nigeria would realise its potential as a formidable nation. With about
60% of its population under the age of 25, Nigeria is indisputably one of
the youngest nations globally. This represents not merely a numeral but
a dynamic force of energy, creativity, and innovation. Young Nigerians
are making global waves from technology and entertainment to
agriculture and education. The music, arts, and movie industry, driven
by the teeming youthful talents, has launched Nigeria onto the global
stage to showcase the cultural richness of its youth.

At the same time, its sports industry continues to be another area for
pride, seeing athletes consistently vie in global competitive grounds
records broken in the different sporting activities; Nigeria's youthful
energy is a hopeful and inspiring phenomenon. Moreover, young
Nigerians spearhead robust initiatives for societal development.
Through activism and demand for better governance, such as
#EndSARS, young Nigerians have demonstrated their ability to
organise, mobilise, and advocate for improved governance and
accountability. With appropriate leadership, this vitality can transform
the social landscape of Nigerian society. Initiatives in mentorship,
education, and youth entrepreneurship will assist this generation in
steering Nigeria toward a prosperous future.

The above variables cannot stand alone to progress; Nigeria needs

leaders who would put the welfare of the people above personal

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benefits. But all is not gloomy; there is a ray of hope with a set of
imaginative leaders guided by ideals of transparency, accountability,
and service. These are committed to tackling some core issues, notably
corruption, underdevelopment, and unemployment. However, the most
significant opportunity for effective leadership lies in positively using
Nigeria's diversity: with over 250 ethnic groups, it is a mosaic of cultures
and traditions that can be used as a unifying and developmental force
for the country. The kind of leaders who promote inclusivity and equity
can thus bridge divisions and build a sense of national pride.

In addition, economic sustainability plans and investments in renewable

energy show that policies can be far-sighted. Merit-based governance
with education, healthcare, and employment policies will provide the
bedrock for sustainable development. Good leadership will inspire
confidence in the citizens and attract foreign investments, further
fuelling growth. The Nigerian IT sector, known as "Silicon Savannah,"
is increasingly positioning itself as a leading centre for innovation and
entrepreneurship. Nigerian enterprises like Flutterwave, Paystack, and
Andela are receiving global acclaim, attracting significant investments
and establishing Nigeria as a frontrunner in technology advancements.
Companies like that will go a long way in showing how to leverage
technology to solve local issues and scale the solutions globally. Hubs
of technology in cities like Lagos, Abuja, and Kaduna have created a
community where developers, engineers, and entrepreneurs
collaborate. In agriculture, some tech innovations changing lives and
transforming the economy include digital platforms connecting farmers
to markets, while fintech has been the key driver of financial inclusion.
Building this will depend on investments in digital infrastructure,
financial access, and a government and private-sector-friendly
legislative environment. Bringing internet service into rural areas will
help to reduce the digital gap and increase the guaranteed digital
economic engagement among Nigerians. Integrating agriculture,
education, and healthcare technology quickens development and
enhances living standards.

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Deep-seated in cultural and religious traditions are moral values at the
core of what constitutes Nigeria as an entity. Such values—respect for
elders, communal support, and resilience—are the beacons that should
lead in dictating societal conduct. Revitalizing such values, particularly
among the youth, will enhance the nation's morality. The family,
educational institutions, and religious organisations are essential in
inculcating values such as honesty, hard work, and compassion.
Nationwide campaigns of integrity, which also condemn corruption, will
go a long way in changing attitudes and promoting good behaviour.
Also, using the power of storytelling, a rich part of Nigerian culture that
teaches about morality and patriotism, will be passed down to future
generations.

Nigerians' resilience and hospitality shine through in how people

interact daily with communities coming together in celebration or
support for each other through difficult times. Such moments create a
bonding and shared commitment, even to goals beyond life, in the face
of adversity. Greatness for Nigeria is a collective effort. It requires
synergy among the youthful population, visionary leadership,
technological advancement, and revival of moral values. Each of these
foundations complements the others to form a robust base for
environmental expansion.

Imagine a Nigeria in which youthful entrepreneurs propel economic

growth, governments show concern for the welfare of every citizen,
technology closes healthcare and educational gaps, and moral
standards direct every behaviour. This is not a dream of a faraway
future but a realistic vision achievable through concerted efforts and
unshaken commitment. Not because of its resources or size but rather
because of its people—resilient, innovative, and ready to rise—bright is
the future of Nigeria. By embracing its young vitality, backing excellent
leadership, harnessing technical innovations, and upholding moral
values, Nigeria will become a shining example of optimism and a model
of progress for the rest of the globe.

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We must tackle our energy, debt, and knowledge crises. If there is one
stubborn enemy that rears its ugly head in all these crises, it is
corruption. We should be printing obituary posters for this unrelenting
enemy before it buries us. Madam Vice Chancellor, the child who once
wept, is now standing tall. It is a child with energy, vision, and hope—
determined to take its place among the world's nations. This is not just
a dream, as I am standing before you, but an attainable reality.

The Vice Chancellor, with wisdom, courage, and unity, we will build a
future where Africa and Nigeria are no longer defined by their struggles
but celebrated for their triumphs. Let us be the generation that turns
potential into prosperity, despair into determination, and hope into
lasting change. However, this raises important concerns often ignored,
that is agency and ideology.

Working class agency

There is a sense in which we cannot divorce the developmental
problematic of the continent and Nigeria from the failure of leadership
and ideological poverty. Thus, the need for leadership cannot be over-
emphasised. However, the missing pieces in our leadership questions
are: Which kind of leadership? Leadership by whom?’ Within what
framework or ideology will it function or operate? It should be clear by
now that it cannot be a leadership from the same petty and comprador
bourgeoisie class who have formed an unholy alliance with the
imperialist forces that have kept Africa and Nigeria in its present state
of backwardness and underdevelopment. It must be a leadership that
can engender a radical break from the status quo and institute
productive accumulation and function within a collectivist development
oriented political economy.

This calls for a radical divorce from the unrepresentative leadership that
we are now used to, a leadership from the mountain top which needs to
be replaced with a leadership from below. To this end, an agency of the
common people and progressive elements among the educated
professional elite willing to commit class suicide by embracing the
movement for popular development is non-negotiable. It is normal for

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beneficiaries of a rotten system to strive to preserve it. The status quo
cannot be upturned by those whose interest the system serves.

Madam Vice Chancellor, only those oppressed and disadvantaged by

a system will ever rise to change the system. Thus, only the Nigerian
masses, peasants, workers and patriotic intellectuals ready to commit
class suicide can save the country. The Nigerian elite of all hues and
colours are central to the problem. The Nigerian elite are too greedy,
self-centered, and beholden to their imperialist mentors. Their slavish
mentality prevents them from prioritising national development. They
benefit from the current crisis and have no incentive to change the
status quo. The people can therefore not depend on the benevolence
of their oppressors for their empowerment and development. As a
result, there is an urgent need to develop a consciousness of the reality
that what we have in Nigeria is simply the rich against the poor; the
oppressors against the oppressed.

Consequently, rather than crying for ethnic justice (justice with tribal
marks) exemplified by such regional movements as the Indigenous
People of Biafra (IPOB), Arewa People’s Congress and Oodua
Liberation Movement, the struggle should be for social justice. This
cannot be done without the right consciousness. As George Owen
declared in his book 1984, “They will never be free until they are
conscious, they will never be conscious until they as free”. However,
with the choking fog of ethno-religious parochialism, this will not be an
easy task. This is where the labor movement—distinct from mere trade
unions—and radical intellectuals must play a critical role. Unfortunately,
the Nigerian left has been hampered by sectarianism and an excessive
focus on ideological purity, preventing it from uniting its diverse factions
into a potent revolutionary vanguard. The Nigerian left must undergo
depoliticization and the ghethorisation in order to be on one
revolutionary platform.

Madam Vice Chancellor, Odukoya (2018, 247), submits that “the

agency of the people in the struggle for democracy and development
must be activated. This entails the people’s realisation that democracy

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and development nexus is a class project…" This, however, is not
automatic as these people have been shaped and constructed by the
dynamics of the social realities they face and the hegemonic
epistemology that underpins them. It informs their understanding,
explanation and what they can do about it. Momoh and Odukoya (2018)
note that social movements have continued to be characterised by the
nature of society at both the national and international levels. Hence,
the people left in their atomized formations as we have presently will be
beclouded by ethno-religious and similar parochial consciousness that
will rob them of their collective agency. Thus, the people to whom
reference is made are workers and labourers of different persuasions
with working class consciousness.

The working class here goes beyond white or blue collar workers but all
that labours and not dependent on leveraging on parasitic relationship
with the state to make their living. They include the peasants, traders
and the masses in the informal economy, factory workers, women,
youths, professionals and academics. These groups of people combine
to form the labour movement with working class agencies as against
the trade union movement made up primarily of labour, which has
remained as a trade union strictly with bread and butter concerns. The
ideology of economism, that is, wage increase and exclusively workers'
welfare focus robs trade unions and their organisations such as the
Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC)
of their agency. As experience in Nigeria shows, trade unions—
composed largely of civil servants and other public sector workers—are
often part of the problem rather than the solution. As an employer of
labour and a regulator of worker-capital relations, the state operates
with duplicity and bias against the working class.

To effectively protect state and private capital accumulation, labour

leadership is compromised and captured either through bribery,
cooptation or blackmail. This is often easy with a labour leadership
whose aspirations, ambitions and lifestyles are to replicate the
economic vampires that suck life from the Nigerian people. With
embourgeois labour centres under the control of supposed comrades

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(come and raid) who have given in to ideological somersault and
operate trade unions in the legalistic framework as a strict platform for
workers' welfare, the people are effectively captured and
organisationally impotent.

The working class platform in question is that of a trade union that

operates within the political economy framework. Such trade unions see
themselves as part of the working people irrespective of the types and
nature of their work with whom their destinies are inseparably and
organically connected. This entails a transformation from trade unions
to labour movement, with working class consciousness and ready to
unleash working class agency. It also demands being free of all
tendencies of labour aristocracy and embourgeoisment. This power and
agency of the working class flow from its productive power and the class
consciousness that develops in the process of social production as well
as response to the collective exploitation of capital.

The labour movement must organise itself to take over power. In the
power equation, participation is different from control. Hence, the
politics of entrism and joiners that we have witnessed in the case of
Nigeria can only emasculate the people and ensure the continuation of
their exploitation and oppression. Alliance with the party or yielding the
labour political platform to members from the oppressive class no
matter how well-intentioned or sugar-coated his oratory may be is
doomed to fail. The struggle of the working class cannot be outsourced.
Madam Vice Chancellor, no form of development is possible through
the agency of a parasitic and predatory state lacking autonomy and
complicit in unproductive accumulation. There is therefore an urgent
need for a political class oriented towards productive accumulation. This
cannot be the class to whom the state is presently kept hostage. They
must be replaced. This task is that of the peasants, workers, labourers,
traders, women, youths and others who constitute the oppressed and
exploited class that presently bear the burden of the mismanagement
and brutal exploitation of the Nigerian state and its resources.

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This flows from the fact that development is a class project.
Furthermore, as we have argued, no development can happen without
accumulation. However, the process of accumulation for development
is redistributive in nature and because it is class oriented, it moves in
an uneven way and is unequal in its impacts. This is why Humphries
and Wallace (1980, 179) opine that “Accumulation organises production
for the extraction of surplus value but proceeds unevenly; capitalist
investment shift, accelerating industrial development in one area but
retard it in another”. This is evident in the “hazardous and relatively
unrewarding” (Szeftel, 2000, 301) nature of market accumulation in the
context of an underdeveloped social formation. The point is not lost on
Roxborough (1979, 58) in his declaration that “The net effect of foreign
investment is to create an outflow of capital from the periphery to the
metropolis”. For this reason, the authentic producer class, the working
class, is the only class in our situation that can engender capital
accumulation for development.

Transforming trade unions into a labour movement as argued above

requires a different political economy framework, which is a departure
from the one that promotes unproductive accumulation and forges an
unholy alliance with transnational capital and imperialism. Only
appropriate knowledge in the service of a people can engender
revolutionary transformation and empower the people. In the context of
the African and Nigerian condition, kings and their courts must, at the
minimum, be highly knowledgeable and political economists with
revolutionary developmental commitment against hegemony and status
quo scholars whose vocation is ministering to the epistemology and
pedagogy of oppression and promoting obscurantism as social
sciences. I dare say, that my people, therefore, perish for lack of
developmental oriented political economy.

The optimism with the sort of political economy advanced here is well
captured by Tajudeen Abdul-Rareem (2007 cited in Biney and Olukoshi,
2010) thus, “There is always something to be done. It can be changed.
No matter how bad the situation, it can be made better”. To this end,
Armageddon can be banished with the knowledge and methodological

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tools of Marxist political economy. The first basis flowing from this
political economy is that imperialism is the problem, hence the solution
to Africa’s development crisis cannot be found within its orbit whatever
name called, either regionalism or developmental state paradigm,
without confronting the imperialist root of the problem.

Similarly for Nigeria, the solution does not lie in regionalism, separatism
(Oodua Republic, Biafra Republic, Arewa Republic, etc.), rotational
presidency, zoning, parliamentary system, etc. All these are mere
circumlocutions and amount to leaving leprosy to focus on ringworm.
There are much deeper problems which are embedded in the
substructure (economy) and the superstructure (state), making the
African nay, the Nigerian crisis, a crisis of the state and economy. Any
solution to the African and Nigerian developmental crisis that sidelines
capitalism and imperialism will not achieve the desired purpose.

The need for a counter-hegemonic ideology becomes imperative. That

socialism is a counter-hegemonic ideology is obvious. First, it is the
closest to the African communal social organisation before the contact
with Europe. Like African communalism, it embodies collective
prosperity and does not place profit ahead of people. Second, whatever
the imperfection of socialism, like any other system, we can no longer
continue to romanticise capitalism with its monumental failure on the
continent and elsewhere. The history of capitalism outside of Europe
and America since the end of World War II is a pointer to this. The result
has been more violence, conflicts, wars, diseases, poverty and
underdevelopment destructive of the non-European and non-American
social formations in contrast to the prosperity and affluence unparalleled
in their history.

In this way, capital has been highly duplicitous promoting uneven and
unbalanced development between the global North and the global
South. In Nigeria, while scorning socialism has become a pastime,
despite its failure across the world, capitalism is taken as a divine
condition we can't break away from. This is a monumental fallacy. That
capitalism has failed woefully, reduced human value and beyond

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redemption is no longer a matter for debate. And that as a consequence
of the crisis and contradictions of capitalist development in Nigeria, the
possibility of domestic capitalist development is foreclosed due to the
state-capitalist mode of production which is predatory and unproductive
(Odukoya, 2011a) makes is replacement by socialism a categorical
imperative.

Third, the potential of socialism is well illustrated by the history of

Russia, China, Cuba and even India. It is on record that it was through
socialism that the Soviet Union became a super power within two
decades and played a leading role in the victory of the allied forces
during World War II in terms of military, strategic, material, and human
resources. I am yet to see any other system that has achieved such feat
of lifting a country from extreme backwardness to a super power
position within such a relatively short time.

Madam Vice Chancellor, while it is easy to claim that the remarkable

industrialisation and prosperity of China are due to the opening up of its
economy and embracing the market, the truth is that the foundation lies
in its communist ideology, which even though now tempered by the
market, still looms large in the orientation of China. With socialism,
Cubans have free education at all levels and free universal healthcare,
making the country one of the most literate and with the highest life
expectancy rates globally. With the provision of essential social services
such as free housing and rent pegged at a maximum of 10 per cent of
family income, social equity has been promoted in socialist Cuba. The
growing industrialisation in spite of the over six decades of American
embargo has enhanced the country’s self-reliance. This will explain, for
instance, why Cuba’s unemployment rate has been decreasing since
2017 when it was 1.7 per cent. The figure has been decreasing as
follows: 2018 1.70%; 2019, 1.20%; 2020, 1.4%; 2021, 1.37%, 2022,
1.25% and 2023, 1.16% (Focus Economics, 2024) Cuba has achieved
a remarkable feat unmatched by the United States of America (Cuba
Unemployment % of active population, aop). It suffices to note that
socialism is not the same as communism.

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Madam Vice Chancellor, with socialism the private sector still exists like
in the case of Cuba. What is germane is that the means of production
are publicly owned, making the economy one that works for the people
as a whole as against the minority that owns capital. Let us make it
abundantly clear that what failed in the defunct USSR was not socialism
but state capitalism. This failure was predicted well ahead by Leon
Trotsky's (1937) work “Revolution Betrayed” wherein he condemned
the ascendancy of anti-socialist, nationalist and imperialist orientations
as well as bureaucratic centralisation and oppression, privileges and
anti-democratic tendencies that were alien to socialism.

I am not merely advocating socialism. My advocacy is a socialism

embedded in Pan-Africanism. This is the kind of socialism capable of
liberating us from the afflictions of decadent capitalism, which Professor
Adele Jinadu aptly describes as diabolic politics. These are politics
devoid of character—marked by rascality, lack of accountability, and the
destructive influence of what Ogunsanwo (1986) calls “our friend, their
friend." Socialism with Pan-African flavour is to strengthen all in all
respects. We are weak as individual countries but stronger as collective.
The way Africa and Nigeria are presently constituted, divided and
fragmented; they are too vulnerable to be viable. For Africa, we missed
it at the formation of OAU as well as the AU. A United States of Africa
is what is required for development and to take our pride of place in the
global political economy. For Nigeria, it is time we do away with pseudo-
statehood like we were at independence and become a nation working
for its people and their development rather than a neocolonial state
existing and ministering to the exploitative and oppressive needs of
imperialist forces.

Otherwise, Africa and Nigeria will only be at the global political economy
table as the meal for European, American and Asian powers. Africa and
Nigeria in their present state and condition can never be prosperous as
they would never be strong enough to accumulate capital for
development. All the strategic resources in high demand globally have
made the continent forever endangered. Africans must rise and bond
together in the spirit of Pan-Africanism. The need to develop a very

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strong African military power has become more urgent than yesterday.
Attacks from outside by forces of Western and Sino-imperialisms are
not a distant possibility. At the risk of being labelled a prophet of doom,
if the present trends of debt overhang, land grabbing and second
scramble for Africa are not checked, recolonisation of the continent is a
possibility. As a starting point, Africa must start feeding itself by
producing what it consumes, rather than consuming what it does not
produce. Next is the need to pull together resources across the
continent. It is sad that we cannot feed ourselves and lack the capital to
fuel our development such that in most African states, the state of
nature is no longer a historical narrative but a lived reality.

At the heart of this inaugural lecture and the challenge for Africa and
Nigeria is the primacy of power. As May (1972, cited in Korda, 1975,
13) notes “Power cannot, strictly speaking, be given to another, for then
the recipient still owes it to the giver. It must in some sense be assumed,
taken, asserted. It can be held against opposition, it is not power and
will never be experienced as real on the part of the recipient”. The right
people must have power over Africa and Nigeria which is to be deployed
for collective development. Power in Africa and Nigeria held by
imperialist forces and their domestic collaborators has been wielded
and used as a weapon of impoverishment and subjugation of the
people. As Korda (1975, 15) opines, “The use of power as a weapon of
aggression makes monsters of us” given that power is used as an end
in itself rather than as a means to an end. For Korda (1975, 15), “Power
must be the servant, not the master”.

Madam Vice Chancellor, to achieve social purposes and check the

dangerous but consistent march of Armageddon in Africa and Nigeria,
it is a categorical imperative that power must be used purposefully,
programmatically and for collective good. This resonates with Olsen's
(1970, 180) position that, “...., under most circumstances, societal goals
and decisions not supported by at least some degree of some kind of
power will not be implemented”. That Africa and Nigeria’s development
must be anchored in socialist Pan-Africanism as an exemplification of
the power of the people to collectively empower and develop

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themselves and combat forces of imperialism responsible for their
contemporary exploitation, oppression and backwardness cannot be
over-emphasised. It must be Africa for Africa.

The song of Bode Sowande (1979) in Farewell to Babylon captures this

spirit:
Teacher mi mogbooyinbo kan, (my teacher I heard a new English)
Ta lo le tunmo re (who can interpret it)
Teacher wa, lo le tunmo re (Only our teacher can interpret it)
Ideologically (Ideologically)
Elo so fun ara ye, (Announce it to the world)
Socialism (Socialism)
Elo so fun ara ye, (Announce it to the world)
Socialism (Socialism)
Kadara Africa, eniyan dudu lo le ye (African destiny, can only be
understood by Africans).

Africa shall be free. Nigeria will be great.

This is my story and my historical scholarly burden. This is my inaugural
lecture. I appreciate your indulgence.

Appreciation
This token of appreciation is offered because I am actually richer than I
look. In fact, I am wealthier than the monthly paycheck from my
employer who cannot take me home. Before you start wondering how I
made it, I have been made wealthy and fabulously rich by the
combination of creation, providence, nurture, association, knowledge,
affection and love that have been mine at no cost. As my people would
say, “eniyan laso mi”. Individually and collectively, these valued
combinations have built for me castles that give me cosmic blessings,
uncommon comfort, joy, happiness, fulfillment and peace profound.
These castles which have been my privilege to inhabit are in some
cases, a divine creation and in other cases consequence of man’s
benevolence that I hereby offer my salutation. My tokens of appreciation
therefore go to the uncaused cause and the causative cause expressed
in human forms that reside in these castles. I humbly invite you to join

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me in my homage as l visit these majestic castles to offer my gratitude,
for I can never fully repay the benefits that I have received.

Castle of Creation
Here is my foundation and where my creation was perfected by He that
is the first cause and the prima architect that exemplifies mathematical
perfection. At no cost and without my asking, He made me a full option
automated for action and mastery over the circumstances of life. To Him
alone, I owe my life. The spark and drive that illuminate, propel and
inform my life journey are free gifts from my father before my father.
Olodumare, I am but a pencil in your hand my divine creator. I thank
you for all you have been doing for me since in my world or state of
forms to the present.

Castle of Nurture
Though a product of nature, it was through nurture that my journey
began. From a helpless infant in the cradle, I gradually grew, and life
started to take on meaning for me. To my late parents, Mr. Ebunoluwa
Erastus Omotayo Odukoya and Mrs. Bolanle Olufunmilayo Odukoya
who gave me their all for me to be a man, God will continue to bless
your memories. Though I paid neither of you premium, you were my
Custodian Insurance, ordained by God. I bear testimony that you
delivered on your mandate. For the care, love, guardian, inspiration,
push, support, devotion, shelter and instilling the value of omoluwabi in
me, I cannot thank you enough. How I wished both of you were here to
see the product of your nurture. Mama mi, Ayoka, omo Onanubi, omo
Ojowo okine Ijebu-Igbo, you deserve special mention, for all that you
did. Though a woman, you were “okunrin metta”. You were there for
me and my junior ones till the last. You were our cook, teacher, provider,
comforter, doctor, counselor, prayer warrior, supporter and rock. Thank
you my mother ‘abiyamo tooto’. I must also in the extant tradition of the
Yoruba, thank the ‘igba oju to nwo omo’ that joined in my nurturing from
infancy. First in this regard, I remember my mother’s brother, Uncle
Onatunde Onanubi (now 85 years) and my caregiver, Aunty Bimpe,
God bless you and all that is yours. My beloved late uncle Gbadebo
Dina of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, was always dotting over me

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during my sojourn within that axis. Your words of wisdom remain useful
to me as ever. Before we became victims of westernisation, children
were public properties, subject to corrections and discipline by known,
totally unknown and unrelated elders (The iya ile ookan). God bless you
all for taking time to mould me for the world.

Castle of Knowledge
That knowledge is light is axiomatic; you only need to see the
cluelessness and miserableness of an ignorant person to realise the
value of knowledge. A man without knowledge is no better than a beast.
My mummy who also doubled as a teacher was actually my first
teacher. I cannot forget the serious beatings I received from her for my
inability to read Yoruba texts. It was however at All Saints School, 21,
Montgomery Road, Yaba, Lagos, (my mum was a teacher there) that I
started my former education. I had Mrs. Sangowanwa as my
Headmistress. To all my teachers from All Saints to Ilusin Grammar
School, Ijebu-Waterside, Ogun state and Ogun State Polytechnic (now
Moshood Abiola, Polytechnic), Abeokuta, where I did my Advance Level
and finally to the great University of Lagos, for my [Link], MSc. and PhD.
in Political Science, as a lecturer now, I can understand the thankless
job you all did for our sake. To my University of Lagos lecturers,
Professors Liasu Adele Jinadu (father and mentor extraordinary), Alaba
Cornelius Ogunsanwo (father and mentor extraordinary), Olatunde
Makanju (friend and mentor),Femi Badejo (friend and mentor), Tunde
Babawale (friend and mentor), Browne Onuoha, Solomon Akinboye,
and Derin Ologbenla (Prince of the house of Oodua) I thank you for all
you did. I also have the good fortune to have benefited from the
mentorship, friendship, and partnership of some great academics and
quintessential scholars outside of the University of Lagos, some of
whom are Professors Toyin Falola (Ojogbon agba of the universe and
super-ordinadry mentor) Amadu Sesay (mentor), late Ayo Dunmoye,
late Nuhu Yaqub (double Vice Chancellor), Warisu Alli, Eghosa
Osaghae, Director General, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs,
Abubakar Momoh (late friend, brother, mentor and comrade), Sat
Obiyan, Williams Fawole, Cryil Obi, Tayo Bello, Ebijuwa, (Dean Arts
and Social Sciences, LAUTECH), etc. For Professor Remi Anifowose

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and my other teachers that have transited to higher glory, continue to
rest in perfect peace. To my esteemed teachers, mentors and academic
associates thank you for giving me the key to understanding the world
and its complexities. Have been immensely enriched through the cross-
fertilisation of ideas by thousands of students, the majority of whom “the
fear of Dr. Laja is the beginning of wisdom” for my strict adherence for
discipline, integrity and academic excellence. I must mention a few of
these students, who have, by their academic achievements, made this
job worthwhile: Drs. Ayokunnu Adedokun, Lanrewaju Emupene, Yinka
Olasoko, Zainab Olaitan, Shijuan Wang (Chinese) as well as Mr. Kunle
Onikoyi, Mr. Ebenezer Ishola and Mr. Olarenwaju Hamed. In the group
are Major Cyprian Nwankwo, Mrs Jumoke Awomoyi, Hon. Victor Ikeji,
Mrs. Vera Amechi, Mrs. Judith Etiaka-Anene and Mrs. Phoebe Awange.
My course mates, the great Homopoliticus 1984/87 set of University of
Lagos under the leadership of Dr. Samuel Eyitayo Popoola (Popson),
have been a strong pillar of support since I was appointed as the Head
of our Department in 2019 and my election as the Dean in 2023. Worthy
of mention are Mr. Abiodun Ilaka-Yousuf, Pastor Femi Ogbontiba, Dr.
Sola Magbadelo, Dr. Tope Philips, Hon. (Dr.) Imo, J., Rt. Hon. Akeem
Jamiu, former Deputy Speaker, Ekiti State House of Assembly; Dr.
Olalekan Oketokun, Mr. Aderemi Olaniyan, Barr. Clement Ugbekile, Mr.
Biodun Ilaka-Yousuf, Mrs. Omolara Oreoluwa Adesewa, Mr. Tayo Aina,
Mr. Olabitan Ayodele, Mallam Yahaya Ibrahim, Pastor. Olukunle
Olakunle, Barr. Bola Shofolawe, Mr. Bashiru Gbadamosi, Mr. Bode
Adams, Dr. Segun Oke, Mr. Felix Otasoiwe, to mention but a few. The
tradition of robust debate, critical engagement and cross-fertilisation of
ideas we started during our undergraduate days as this University
continues on our platform day-in-day-out. I am blessed to have you all
in my castle of knowledge.

Castle of Culture
In this castle, my personality was formed. I attained distinct personality
that made me what I am and gained a critical understanding of the world
as well as my place in it. Combined with the offerings at the castle of
knowledge, my epistemological foundation received traction in this
castle. Here I partook in collective wisdom, drank deep from it, and also

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made my modest contribution to it. The reach of this relational castle of
intellect is both local and transnational. To everyone across the globe
who has contributed in one way or another to my personal growth and
academic development, I extend my profound gratitude for bringing out
the best in me. During my one-year fellowship at the Department of
Political Science, York University, Toronto, Canada, Profs. Pablo
Idahosa, Ananya Muhkerjee Reed, Kayode Idemudia, and David
MacNally are part and parcel of my castle of culture. How can I forget
Alhaji and Alhaja Rasaq Bodunrin (Rosco) and his family who sheltered
me at no cost for the one year I was on a PhD research fellowship at
York University, Canada. Also in Canada, I had Tunji, Jasper Ayelazuno
(Ghanian), Jude Odinkonigbo, Arogundade (omo Babangida among
others. In South Africa, I have Profs. Adekeye Adebajo, University of
Pretoria; and Kolade Arogundade, Cape Town University; while in
Britain, there is the good-natured and ever-friendly Dr. Israel Agboola.
Prof. Samuel Oloruntoba, formerly of the Department of Political
Science, University of Lagos, now of Carleton University, Ottawa,
Canada, is another great colleague. There are many others, both briefly
and deeply encountered, whose contributions I cherish. Even in
disagreements, every experience has been developmental, and for this,
I remain grateful.

The Castle of Association

It is in this castle that I find my self-expression with quality friendship
and camaraderie. In this castle, I have no fear because I am with my
friends so I dare to be myself. Here, I have laughed without inhibitions
and cried without shame. This is my largest castle with several
wonderful souls too numerous to mention all. I will mention just a few
as a point of contact to several others. Even within this castle, there are
castles. First is the Castle of Roots where the likes of Abraham Keji
Otenaike, Cosmas Adekoya, Kunle Osidibo, Samuel Osiyemi, Idowu
Osinowo, Chief (Hon.) Babatunde Oduyoye, Hon. (Dr.) Kazeem
Adeshile Adedeji, Biyi Banjoko, Mayor Cyprian Nwankwo, Ogbonaya
Iroanya, Cosmas Adekoya, Sunday Akinsanya, Biyi Banjoko, Kamoru
Lasisi, Kola Adedeji, Kayode Odukoya, Venerable Archdeacon
Oluwambe Toriola, Mike Ajiboye, Lekan Adeyemo, Femi Osikoya,

140
Egbon Taiye Olaniyi, Dr. Onyekachi Ogbonaya Iroanya, Evelyn
Nwankwo, Biodun Elujoba, Tope James Bewarang have been my
pillars of support and cheerleaders at high and low times. I have had
wonderful times and have been greatly enriched by your friendship.
Onward together!

Second is the castle of nexus where my intellection and social context

find meaning and unhindered expression. This is the great Oju Odo
Family domiciled in the University of Ibadan Staff Club. Here we have
as the head, my brother from another mother, the Pro-Chancellor and
Chairman of Council, LAUTECH, Ogbomosho, Professor Ayodeji
Oluwadare Omole; Professor, Olusegun Ajiboye, immediate past
Registrar/CEO, Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN);
Professor Idowu Olayinka, Immediate Vice Chancellor, the University of
Ibadan; Professor Kayode Adebowale, Vice Chancellor of the University
of Ibadan; Professor Peter Olapegba, Deputy Vice Chancellor, the
University of Ibadan. Others are Professors Biodun Onilude, Olujide,
Ayodele, Juwon Arotiba, Mojeed Akinsola, Dele Dahunsi, Ade Adejumo,
Wande Aribisala, Dahud Sangodoyin, Commissioner of Works and
Transport, Oyo State; Olumide Olajide, Drs. Bolaji Ojo-Oba, Kazeem
Adedeji, Bisi Ojebola, Seun Garuba, Tayo Ajibade, Taiwo Lasisi,
(Rector, Polytechnic, Ibadan; Femi Ayoola, Chief. Babatunde Tijani
(Double T.), Mr. Olaitan Odukoya, Engr. Suleiman, Dare, Engr.
Ademola Olagunju, Engr. Sulayman, etc. I thank you for advancing the
value of friendship, trust, loyalty, support and conviviality. To Olu Oni
Ola, Deputy Librarian, University of Ibadan, thanks a million for the initial
editorial work of this lecture. Not the least is our wonderful, amiable and
supportive caterer, Alhaja Adijah of National Archive, the University of
Ibadan, you are the reason we are always shining, laughing and strong.
You are never tired of our request to cook one delicacy or the other
often at impossible deadlines. You always deliver. God will continue to
prosper your undertakings.

The Epistemological Castle

The Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, and
the University of Lagos are undoubtedly the centre of my universe

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professionally. It is these affiliations that anchor my scholarly global
currency which I do and can never take for granted. To the great
University of Lagos, the Faculty and Department I doff my hat for the
world-class training you gave me as a political scientist and as icing on
the cake, the opportunity you afford me to be a Dean of the Faculty,
thus able to give back to my Alma mater. I thank the University of Lagos
in general and the Department of Political Science in particular for the
academic freedom that I continue to enjoy, scholarly cross-fertilisation
of ideas and unhindered reign of intellectual curiosity as a student and
a faculty member. Several people have contributed in making the
University of Lagos the centre of my universe to all my salute.

I appreciate my friend, sister and Acting HOD, Dr. Mariam Quadri, all
professors in the department as well as other colleagues in the Faculty
too many to list here. Suffice it to mention Drs. M. Fadakinte, Emma
Onah, Olanrewaju Awosika, Tola Odubajo, G.S. M. Okeke, Samuel
Ugoh (my office landlord when I was newly employed), Dele Ashiru,
Fredinard Ottoh, Isiaka Adams, Bamidele Olajide, Mr. Ebenezer Ishola,
Olanrewaju Hamed, Mrs. Ronke Majekodunmi and Mrs. Vera Amachie
all of the Political Science department it has been wonderful working
with you. The non-academic members of the department both past and
present are also appreciated for their contributions. At the Faculty, I
wish to extend my profound gratitude to all past Deans, Professors and
other members of the faculty. Let me briefly recognise Profs. Isaac
Nwaogugwu (ogam), Femi Saibu, Oludiran Akinleye, Risikat Oladoyin
Dauda (Director DLI), Alabi Soneye, Oluwakemi Lawanson, Magaret
Loto, Adepoju Tejumaye, Chinwe Nwanna, Franca Attoh, Grace
Omobolanle Amaike, Lekan Oyefara, Shakirudeen Odunuga as well as
Drs. Alex Igundunasse (my first Sub-dean), Waziri Adisa, Jean
Balouga, Peter Omu Elias, Samuel Popoola (my class Governor),
Anthonia Odeleye, Martins Oke, Godwin Ekpo, Wakil Asekun,
Olatokunbo Okiki (the incoming University Librarian), Atiri Sylvester,
Vide Adedayo, Elizabeth Fola Ajayi, David Akeju, and others I cannot
name because of space for their support. I thank you all for making the
faculty a place to be proud of. Across the university I have benefitted
from the love and affection of so many people I cannot remember all.

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Permit me to mention Profs. Rahmon Adisa Bello, Toyin Ogundipe, the
11th and 12th Vice Chancellors of the University of Lagos, respectively.
I also want to thank Abiola Sanni, SAN, Dean Faculty of Law, James O.
Akanmu, Musa Obalola, Gbenga Akingbehin, Ademola Omojola,
Tejumade, Fatai Badru, Alani, Abraham Osinubi, Edamisan Olusoji
Temiye, Mopelola Olusakin, Ngozi Osarenren, Obasoro-John, Nicolas
Iruhue, Niyi Osuntoki, Rita Oladele. I am also grateful to Drs. Asikia-Ige,
Gbenga Ehinmiowo, etc. Among the non-academics, I wish to
appreciate Drs. Ekwuaba and Charles, Mr. Rotimi Sodimu, former
Registrar; Dr. Taiwo Ipaye, former Registrar; Barr. Oladejo Azeez,
former Registrar; Mr. Afolabi Yusuf, Mrs. Yetunde Ibidapo Shittu, Engr.
Sulaimon, former Chairman of NAAT for all that they do and their
assistance at various times. At the Senate and Ceremonies Committee,
Mr. Oluseyi Olalekan Sanya, Mr. Dada Taiwo and Adebisi Opeyemi
have been wonderful. Individually and collectively you all make Unilag
unbeatable. For me, it is Unilag and the others.

The Castle of Solidarity

Here is my point of convergence and organisation for social
transformation. Here, I stand shoulder to shoulder with ideological soul
mates who refuse to merely lament but instead choose to organise.
These are people with whom I am confidently at the barricades
mounting a people’s parliament on the street. It is my united front where
theories are deconstructed and reconstructed for struggles for justice,
freedom, equity and advancement even at the risk of state brutalisation,
oppression, and imprisonment. To this end, I salute the resilience and
uncommon courage of Baba Hassan Sunmonu, former NLC President
and Secretary General of Organisation of African Trade Union, Cdes.
Dipo Fashina aka Jingo/baba surutu, Abiodun Aremu (Aremson), Lanre
Arogundagbe (LA), Owei Lakemfa, Deji Omole, Segun Ajiboye, Adeola
Soetan, Remi Ihejirika, Joe Ajero (NLC, president), Hassan Soweto,
Oluwagbenga Ajala (Waterforce), Kunle Wiseman, Joe-Dagar Tolar,
Kazeem Akinrinde, Rasheedat Akinrinde, Olawale Ismael, Malachy
Ugwummadu, Sheriff, Juwon Peluola Adewale, Chude Achike,
Ibunkunoluwa Omole, Toba Odumosu, Gideon Adeyemi, Joe-Okei
Odumakin, Sessi Agnes Funmi, Cde. Profs. Nkem Onyepke, Mustafa

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Liman, Usman Ladan, Usman Musttaka, Dele Seteolu, etc. To my
comrades in ASUU, particularly those who served with me as
Chairperson of the University of Lagos branch, and the seven
Chairpersons of branches within the Lagos Zone during my tenure as
Zonal Coordinator, I extend my unwavering solidarity. To all Zonal
Coordinators, either serving or retired, with whom I served as well as
past and present leadership of our Union, particularly Comrade
Presidents Nasir Fagge, Biodun Ogunyemi and Victor Osodeke under
whom I have the privilege to serve in different capacities, I thank you for
the opportunity for service as well as your trust and confidence in my
ability. Comrades Chris Piwuna, Stanley Ogoun Dennis Aribodor,
Austen Sado, Abdulkadir Mohammed, Alex Akanmu, etc. your
comradeship is reassuring. To Comrade Jingo (baba Surutu) thank you
for being our inspiration. The story of ASUU will not be complete without
a significant portion devoted to you. The struggle continues.

Castle of Leadership and Service

I have had leadership roles entrusted on me under the guardianship of
quintessential managers of men and resources who were and are not
just role models but committed mentors. There were those whose role
was supportive and without whom my success story would have been
impossible. My appreciation goes to Mrs. Funmi Lawal, Mr. Osasuwa
Agbontiaen and Mr. Olaleye Kuforiji who handled the ASUU-Unilag
secretariat when I was the Chairman. To all the staff of the Dean’s office
starting from the secretary and personal assistant, Mrs. Sarah Awoleye,
to the Faculty Officer, Mr. Temidayo Akeju and the ever-dependable,
supportive, resourceful and hardworking Mr. Kamorodeen Olalekan
Onagbeso you are simply the best. Now that you have retired from the
service of the university, you are greatly missed. May you live long to
enjoy the fruits of your labour. I am standing on the shoulders of giants
who were Deans before me such that my task as a Dean is bearable as
a result of the solid foundation they left in the Faculty. I salute Profs.
Olufunmilayo Bammeke (immediate past Dean), Iyiola Oni, Omololu
Soyombo and Olatunde Makanju among others. To all the Heads of
Departments with whom I have worked in the last nineteen months;
Profs. Oludiran Akinleye, Chinwe Nwanna, Michael Kunnuji, Adepoju

144
Tejumaye, Mayowa Fasona, Oloruntoba Sunday, Drs Gabriel
Akinbode, Omolara Quadri, Samuel Adejoh, I thank you for your
cooperation and support. There are a number of salient workers that
are working assiduously for the progress of the faculty with me, some
of them are, Prof. Yetunde Zaid, Bola Amaike, Drs, Idongesit Eshiet,
Titilayo Egunjobi, Nike Alabi, Stella Nduka, Ayodele Shittu, Amidu
Ayeni, Ifeoma Theresa Amobi, etc. Dr. Waziri Adisa has been a highly
resourceful and hardworking Sub-Dean. I have benefitted from the
insights, perspectives, advice, criticisms and commendations at
different times. These have been very helpful in improving what I do.
We have made giant strides as a Faculty and even received an award
for quality service and leadership, this was a reward for collaborative
and cooperative work. Above all, I am profoundly grateful to all
members of the faculty for joining hands with me to make our faculty
great again. We have moved from the rear to become the trailblazer in
the University. We have just started.

Last but not the least in this great castle is the University Management
with whom I have worked and still working. I have the pleasure of
working as ASUU Chairman under the amiable, cooperative and labour-
friendly Professor Rahmon Adisa Bello. As Vice Chancellor, he made
my task as ASUU chairman easy. Despite the fact that I led the first
protest of academic staff on campus under his watch rather than take it
personal, it served as tonic for great reforms such as the cancellation of
the ‘notional promotion’, giving HODs official cars one per faculty of
yearly basis, review of the senior staff condition of service after 21 one
years, making annual leave and research leave working days, etc.
Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe under whom I served as acting Head
of my department I am forever grateful. To Professors Babajide Alo,
Duro Oni and Oluwole Familoni, Deputy Vice Chancellors at various
times your contributions cannot be underrated. To Heads and great
people in the Examinations office, security units, Works and Services,
Medical Central, the Dean of Students Affairs, Prof. Musa Obalola,
Former Dean of Students Affairs and now the Chief Executive of
JUPEB, Prof. Ademola Adeleke (Baba Aluta) and others with whom I
interface at different levels, I express my heartfelt appreciation.

145
Now to the incumbent Vice Chancellor, Professor Folashade Ogunsola,
working with you has been wonderful and inspirational. I cannot thank
you enough for accepting me despite the initial fears about the coming
of a former ASUU chairman known for activism as a Dean. I am glad
the fears have changed to confidence given the high level assignments
and committees I have been assigned. I am particularly grateful that you
provided me an opportunity to demonstrate that what ASUU stands for
is due process and the best for our public Universities. From the Vice
Chancellor, Prof. Tolulope Ogunsola, to the three other DVCs, Profs.
Ayo Atsenuwa, Lucian Obinna Chukwu and Bola Oboh, the Acting
Registrar, Mrs. M. A. Makinde, the Bursar, Mrs Adekunle, my own sister
and University Librarian, Professor Yetunde Zaid, the Director of Quality
Assurance, Prof. Femi Saibu and the Director of Academic Planning,
Prof. Olusoji Ilori. Thank you for your support, transformational
leadership and managerial excellence. To my sister, the new Registrar,
Mrs. Victoria Abosede Wickliffe, immediate past Acting Director of
Academic Affairs it has been great working with you. I wish you
landmark success as the Registrar of our great University. I have
enjoyed a terrific working relationship with you all individually and
collectively. Be assured that I do not take it for granted. I thank you all
for the confidence and supports for the Faculty of Social Sciences.
Together we shall take our beloved Unilag to the promised land.
Working with the present University Administration, it has become
clearer that the only rent we owe God for the space we occupy on earth
is service. I am grateful for the unique opportunity to serve, create, lift
and join in building a future-ready University of Lagos.

Castle of Belongingness
This is my inner circle where I have my personal persons. It is my safe
ghetto and my safe haven, where I found acceptance, empathy, and
understanding. Here is the abode of my frontline ‘confidante’, support
pillars, rock, counsellors and dependable allies. I have my confidants
and partners. Deji Omole, Kazeem Adedeji, Cosmas Adekoya, Keji
Otenaike, Segun Ajiboye and Isaac Nwaogwugwu. I thank you for
watching my back. With you, I can go to war with my eyes closed and
my hands tied.

146
Castle of Loyalty
This castle is made up of friends, supporters and admirers who go
overboard to see that my programmes and activities succeed. They are
those who have been there at my beck and call to assist me in several
ways. They worked as if their lives depend on it or they are been
remunerated. Yet it has been simply a labour of love. They were there
at my 60th birthday last year and at the book presentation in honour of
our mentor, Professor L. Adele Jinadu and made successes of the
programmes. They are the sweat merchants, innovators and creative
brains behind this inaugural lecture. From the permanent chairman and
coordinator; Prof. Oludiran Akinleye, to Professors Yetunde Zaid, Isaac
Nwaogwugwu, Kunnuji and Drs. Olatokunbo Okiki, Omolara Quadri,
Amidu Ayeni, Ayodele Shittu, Seye Ajuwon, S. I. Ojo, Nike Alabi, Stella
Nduka, Fola Ajayi, Gbenusola Akinwale, Onyekachi Ironanya, Mr.
Ebenezer Ishola, Mr. Richard Okocha, Mrs. Vera Amaichi, Miss. Bibire
Badmus, Mr. Allan David, Mrs. Sarah Awoleye, Mr. Lekan Onagbesan,
among many others. God will reward your labour of love.

Castle of Kinship
Nothing happens by chance. Our lives together have proven this
beyond doubt. We have been co-travellers by the same parents, same
father and marital associations. I thank you individually and collectively
for being part of my life, accepting me the way I am and your
contribution to my growth in all ramifications. To my step-brother, Segun
Odukoya, we have proven that blood is thicker than water and that what
connects us is deeper than what separates us. To your wonderful wife,
the iya alaje of the universe, the unparalleled philanthropist, Mrs.
Abiodun Odukoya, God will continue to bless and enrich you a million-
fold. To my junior siblings by the same mother, Olaitan Odukoya, my
investment and financial teacher (along with our friend and brother, Olu
Odugbemi), thank you for the early financial tutorials. I am profoundly
appreciative of the knowledge for despite being a poorly remunerated
lecturer; though not wealthy, I will not retire to financial poverty. To
Laitan’s wife, my “aburo pataki”, Dr. Kemi Odukoya, my salute. Mr.
Abayomi Odukoya, Mrs. Bukonla Odumosu, Mr. Oloruntoba Odukoya
and Ms. Tope Odukoya, I am grateful for your love and cooperation in

147
keeping the family going without rancor. To my in-laws, Mr. and Mrs.
Olaleye Fadipe, Mr. and Mrs. Wale Hassan, Pastor and Mrs. Abayomi
Ogunfidodo, Mr. and Mrs. Oluwaseyi Ogunfidodo, Mr. Taiye
Ogunfidodo and Mr. and Mrs. Idowu Ogunfidodo, you are simply
wonderful. To Imisioluwa Bolarinwa, who took away my beloved
princess Oluwatobiloba (proudly Ijebu) in October 2023 God bless your
house and continue to provide for both of you. To the grandma, Mrs.
Victoria Ogunfidodo (our own theoretician) one cannot hope for a better
mother-in-law. Thank you for being there for all of us.

The Royal Castle

This is the castle of my Lords spiritual and temporal. Here in regale
excellence is our baba Prof. Francis Ogunye and His Royal Highness
Alaiyeluwa Oba Abdulrasheed Abayomi Banjo, PhD, the Olokine of
Ojowo, Ijebu-Igbo who graciously at my 60th birthday lecture on 9th May,
2024 conferred on me the Fimojoye of Ojowo, Ijebu-Igbo. This is coming
only a few months after he gave me an award of excellence for my
contributions to education in the country. Baba Ogunye and my beloved
Kabiyesi God bless you mightily.

The Castle of Affection

My sanctuary of ever-flowing love, strength, comfort, shelter, defence,
support, anchor and warmth. It is my safe haven, where I find refreshing
and rejuvenation with my beautiful Oluwatobiloba Adedoyin and
Ayomide Ifedayo Odukoya, who are always at my service
unconditionally. Thank you for the several days of absence and bearing
with my nomadic academic and aluta tendencies. Let me appreciate
you for remaining true to the family orientation and exhibiting your
omoluwabi DNA. I am so proud of you.

Generational Castle
This is the castle of unlimited joy and of generational continuity. On 28 th
January, 2025, my Princess, Oluwatobiloba Bolarinwa gave us a
beautiful princess to perpetuate the family who the Ojogbon agba of the
universe, Toyin Falola named in the context of this inaugural lecture as

148
“imodola” and “imodele”. Princess, you will fulfil your destiny of
greatness. Welcome to our world of joy and laugher.

Madam Vice Chancellor and distinguished guests, as I stand before you

today, I am humbled by the realisation that I am a product of these
magnificent castles, each one a testament to the power of human
connection, love, and solidarity. I thank you all for helping me build this
grand edifice, this castle of life, which I will continue to inhabit, nurture,
and cherish for years to come. Yet, there is one castle that towers above
all others. To that castle, I now turn.

Castle of Big Deal

And finally, I come to the Castle of Love, where my wife has been my
soul mate, my partner, and my best friend. Your love has been the
sunshine that brightens my day, the calm in every storm, and the safe
harbour where I can always find peace. I cherish our bond, our laughter,
and our adventures together. Olunike Ayeyemi, the princess of the
source, you are my precious gem, soul mate extraordinary, my hearts
greatest treasure, my sweetheart of significance. Truth be told, you are
my BIG DEAL and “apata nla”.

149
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