How not to appoint Vice-Chancellors: Onokerhoraye’s final alphabet

Professor Andrew Godwin Onokerhoraye was the fifth Vice Chancellor of the University of Benin, the academically opulent university domiciled in the magnificent Kingdom of Benin in the political and geographical zone of South-South of Nigeria.

The products at all levels of this university located in Benin City, the deep capital of the Kingdom of fascination, wonders, splendour and greatness – whose richness we estimate as something significant in the pattern of the Kingdom’s glorious history – call the university, their university, Unibest.

This label is an essential part of the university’s history – since its establishment in the early nineteen seventies as the last of Nigeria’s first generation universities (University of Ibadan, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, University of Ife, Ile-Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), and University of Lagos.)

Professor Onokerhoraye who succeeded the fourth Vice Chancellor Professor Grace Alele-Williams in 1992 is by training a geographer and a woman of vast or exact scholarship who as the Vice Chancellor of the University of Benin and thereafter, as it appears to me, had walked in hell and had been rapt to heaven almost at the same time.

My main reading and interpretation of him in this wise derives from his account of himself as contained in what I am calling in this short essay his alphabet, his final alphabet, that is, the capital letter Z of his unliterary testament of his last book which he calls The Riches of His Grace (his autobiography as he affirms, but which I am not hesitating to call a memoir), Andrew Godwin Onokerhoraye’s pictorial memoir partly on account of the 106 photographs that adorn it.

What was his motive or intention that inspired him to design his “autobiography” in this manner? Glaringly, the text is controlled by his scholarship rather than by his memory whose presence is not visible in plentiful places of the authorial design of self-idolisation.

Onokerhoraye’s primary purpose, going by his title, was without doubt to pen, to do, to write, a testimony in his peculiar narratology, stylistics and prosody to God for the “Riches of His Grace”. But the book runs counter to his claim, and is not a work or manual of religious devotion. It is bereft of the art of religious or autobiographical devotion one truly, sincerely, genuinely and authentically can draw religious lessons or teachings from – except, of course, one may want to read and accept it as an example of God’s will even with and without the single mindedness of the author’s faith or purpose.

Clearly, it should be noted, the author’s assertions, prejudices, conjectures, narcissism, seeming frenzies, maybe seen to be artless with reference to the man’s reference to his own idea or image of himself. Yet, there is no doubt that even though he is not a man of letters, his book is well-balanced and well-marshalled, and he tries to make it highly original in his own peculiar way which, however, the Jacques Derrida, the Michel Foucault or the Friedrich Nietzsche or the St. Augustine average or typical scholar may not, will not, applaud.

Now let us go to what I wish to call my organic conception of this essay, which among other considerations, inspired it. As a top university administrator who cleverly meandeared or navigated his way through the harsh and hard terrain of Nigerian university intrigues and politics to become the fifth Vice Chancellor of the University of Benin, everyone or anyone who wishes to be a Vice Chancellor or the Vice Chancellor of his desired university should and endeavour to read The Riches of His Grace.

Similarly, all those who are involved or want to be involved in the appointments of Vice Chancellors in our universities, or better stated, in how not to appoint Vice Chancellors in our universities should make it their top point of duty to read every now and then Professor Andrew Godwin Onokerhoraye’s historical account in his pictorial memoir. They will find the author’s historical chapters beginning from chapters 9 to 12 particularly intriguing. The presidency, the central ministry of education, each governor of our respective states, each university’s governing council, each university’s senate as well as congregation, and of course Academic Staff Union of Universities at the national and respective levels of each university’s branches, our Academies, and National Universities Commission members should and must read Onokerhoraye’s book. The non-academic unions and sundry persons and readers will find the book rewarding. The hindrances and problems and difficulties with the seemingly simplest and clearest of details which are merely only apparently so provide or detail more hidden questions than answers.

As I am writing this, how not to appoint a Vice Chancellor for NnamdiAzikiwe University, Awka in Anambra State is proving to be a peculiarly specific and unique knot in that university named after our first civilian president. Trouble nor dey blow whistle. This is Warri Sapele-Benin lingo. But now trouble dey blow whistle for Awka. For now, I won’t say more than this with respect to Awka.

Now let me exercise my right of discretion to quote haphazardly from Onokerhoraye’s book a pertinent passage in the form of a letter ASUU Uniben wrote to the Chairman of the Governing Council of Uniben when the Council was faced with the truth and difficulty of how to appoint or of not how to appoint a Vice Chancellor to succeed Professor Grace Alele-Williams in 1992:“The University Teachers’ Association commends the activation of the process of appointing a new Vice Chancellor to replace the incumbent Professor Grace Alele-Williams, with elections completed in the Congregation and the Senate to the Search Team.

We are aware too that members of the Joint Council Senate Selection Board shall be elected from the Council and the Senate this week. We urge the Council to ensure that in-as-much as the rules are observed, and implemented as agreed, all effort should be made to choose a Vice Chancellor from among the eminent Resident Professors of the University of Benin. This university is endowed with over sixty highly competent, eligible, and qualified Professors who are conversant with the problems, aspirations and welfare needs of our community; considering our immediate past experiences, we want an insider” (196).

At the time and date (October 5, 1992) of this letter ASUU was already banned, thus the Union was non-existent as ASUU hence it re-named itself as UTA (University Teachers’ Association), the new name that it used to write and make its position known to the Chairman of the Governing Council of Uniben. The crux of the matter in the letter is seen in the last sentence which roared with its toxicity of othering, of the outsider who is the other because he/she is not an “insider.” This is the bane of our universities despite our diversities.

If a VC-aspirant does not belong to this or that camp or alliance in control of things and matters relating to the appointment of a Vice Chancellor he/she becomes a “hostile outsider” or if he/she belongs to a camp or an alliance inside or outside in control of the affairs, he/she can become a hostile insider-outsider once his/her camp and allies lose out. He/she will become the vilified other once any objection or disagreement from his/her end and friends’ alliens’ and members of his/her ethnic group is raised truthfully or forcefully. Hell! No place can be worse than it (hell) when it comes to how not to appoint Vice Chancellors in our universities.

Professor Andrew Onokerhoraye may not be a man of letters (in my deft and strict meaning of the term) but his book, despite my queries of several portions of it, ought to or should or could help us to dismantle the traps, snares and shenanigans of how not to appoint Vice Chancellors in our universities. Consider what I have uttered here as a mere tip of the iceberg until you read the former Vice Chancellor’s marvellous testament/alphabet.

Afejuku can be reached via: 08055213059.