As intimated last Friday, this discourse is ending today – but it is not going to have a conclusion to give it closure if the penner the gleaner, glimpser, glister and stirrer is entrusted with the liberty to say so. I say so and freely admit with the very best of intentions that Niyi Osundare our subject and his subject of our universities will always compel us to go into ecstasies ad infinitum.

So I cannot but be seriously dissatisfied with my good self for wanting to put an end to the truth relating to his thinking about our universities today.Anyone who is associated with the truth movement in our country – if such a movement exists – or any person who is a friend of truth will not criticise my turn of mind here. I am ready to speak, speak and shout, shout and shout as ever I can or as ever as The Galactic Federation would allow me, and go into ecstasies afterwards.

Niyi Osundare’s interview in PrimeStar, the online newspaper already referred to, revealed him as a personage and an artist in pursuit of truth to speak as he did in that interview.

He, as an elite artist who has a very high sense of a remarkable personage of letters, in pursuit of fearless truth, spoke with great ability, as I interpreted him, of a figure under the influence of the methodical spirit of The Galactic Federation. I am withholding what I interpreted to be super important aspects of his thinking about our universities today.

The current ASUU’s warning strike gives a candidly special expression to what the stirrer is concealing until the time is ripe for it to be de-concealed or un-concealed. Be it known that the conflict between ASUU and this government will not be fruitfully or permanently resolved yet – if ever it will be permanently resolved in the foreseeable time to our satisfaction and joy. When I eventually obey the divine inspiration to write “Die, ASUU, die to save our universities” Niyi Osundare’s thinking about our universities today will re-emerge. This will be, I announce it again, after December 2, 2025 when Professor Patrick Igbinovia, barring the unforeseen, will be delivering his valedictory lecture at the University of Benin.

As the glister and stirrer is dwelling on scholar-poet and poet-scholar Niyi Osundare now, he vigorously, creatively and constructively tries to liken him to the German poet, philosopher and phenomenologist Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) on the subject of truth. According to Heidegger, “Truth happens only by establishing itself in the conflict and sphere opened up by truth itself.”

The idea of the truth relating to our universities Niyi Osundare has left in us in what I understand and call his created interview in the afore-mentioned PrimeStar, has the strength in words that give special expression of courage to those who are determined to give our universities a significant criterion of truth that revives and re-establishes them along the line and path of universal scholarship and intellectualism.

Will truth be allowed to establish itself in the conflict between and among our universities’ implacable enemies? Will the intractable enemies within and outside our universities today have the strength to grasp and accept, with courageous courage, to teach themselves truths of the kind of deep import Niyi Osundare has given vent to in “The Universe in the University” and in his PrimeStar interview? And will our current political state allow the act of truth to triumph in our universities today?

Everyone knows how determined the government is to keep on impoverishing our universities and limiting them to ventureless ventures that will not benefit them in the long run as charming institutions that should compete favourably with others elsewhere outside our continent.

As the stirrer, gleaner, glimpser and glister has since pointed out, our scholars, researchers and professors have their shortcomings, but they, in the main, do not operate in a sphere that is hideously hideous – or, better, that is as hideously hideous as the sphere of the political class.

The spirit the political elite exhibit is not right for the edification of our universities. The Galactic Federation, however, as the glister and gleaner and glimpser and stirrer has said repeatedly, the “Shining Ones” shall enter the intellectual sphere of our universities in the endeavour to propagate the best, the very best, that shall and should be taught and thought of in the sphere of learning in the world. Niyi Osundare’s thinking about our universities today exhibits an intimate and lively consciousness of this truth – which his sense of creative activities, like fresh learning, sustains.

Yet I must, for now, disappoint myself and all of us and state that to get anywhere near the envisaged standard, members of our universities’ collective community must be prepared to be “bound to a joint action and working to a common result” under the intellectual and spiritual guidance of The Galactic Federation.

Like a bad arithmetician or a poor mathematician I am sounding – or I must be sounding – tautological, and cannot well give my readers, our readers, the algebraic or metaphorical wherewithal to drive home the point being made. Whether or not you are being carried along, the proper code or outfit our university people need is their thorough knowledge of what their community means to them intellectually, spiritually and mystically.

The stirrer will be more than glad to hear Niyi Osundare’s utterance on this – as this discourse ends today without a conclusion. His further expression of his thinking about our universities today will stand this columnist in good stead in the nearest time.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.