By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Today's back-page column in the Saturday Tribune may not appeal to a mass audience, but it's important nonetheless. It tackles a group of ignorant, regressive rubes known as "Gambari Progressive Society" who have zero knowledge about how the university works but who are lyrical in their ignorance. The column also exposes the real etymology of the term "Gambari." Enjoy:
I recently became aware of a press statement by an Ilorin
group that calls itself “Gambari Progressive Society.” The press statement attempted
to justify the discriminatory and widely condemned appointment of Professor Muhammed
Mustapha Akanbi as Vice Chancellor of Kwara State University by maligning Professor
Sakah Saidu Mahmud who came first in the interview for the job and who was
acting VC after the expiration of the tenure of the past VC.
In smearing Professor Mahmud, the association revealed egregious
ignorance, particularly of the American university system after which KWASU is
modelled. Let me educate them—and hopefully educate others who swim in the same
ocean of ignorance as they do.
1. The association said it took Professor Mahmud 10 years to
complete his Ph.D. and that it took Professor Akanbi two years to complete his.
It then implied that the length of time it takes to complete doctoral studies
has a bearing on competence. Here’s why they got it wrong.
Akanbi has a UK PhD; Mahmud has a US PhD. The UK has no
coursework for doctoral studies. It’s just research. In the US, doctoral coursework
alone takes between two and three years. At the end of doctoral coursework,
students take a comprehensive exam, typically in their third year. Some people
take up to a year to prepare for the exam after coursework.
After students pass the comprehensive exams, they take
another year to write up their proposal and defend it, after which they start
work on their dissertations. For most humanities and social science courses, getting
a PhD takes between five and seven years.
But Mahmud’s case was different. His doctoral dissertation
was an ambitious comparison of post-independence Nigeria and early Meiji Japan,
which required him to live in Japan, learn the Japanese language, and acquire
sufficient proficiency in the language to be able to read and make sense of
primary sources in it. That lengthened his studies.
He should be praised, not ridiculed, for his admirably
challenging but ultimately rewarding scholarly adventure. How many people can
learn a completely different language as adults and conduct research in it?
2. The association said Mahmud was elevated from Lecturer I
to Professor. This is flat-out false. He left Transylvania University as an
Associate Professor, which is equivalent to a Reader in the British system. The
American university system has no rank called “Lecturer I.”
He was overdue for the rank of full professor at
Transylvania University, but he didn’t apply for it, which is common in the US
and Canada. Being full professor (equivalent to professor in the British
system) is no big deal. It doesn’t increase your pay by much, doesn’t change
your title (unlike in the British system where being addressed as “Professor” confers
titular privilege), and requires a lot of mind-numbing paperwork.
Many accomplished, tenured academics don’t apply for full
professorship. For instance, when Professor Donna Strickland of the University
of Waterloo won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, people were surprised that
she wasn’t a full professor. She was an Associate Professor. In an October 7, 2018 interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education,
she said she had "never applied" for a full professorship even though
she was qualified for it because "it doesn't carry necessarily a pay
raise… I never filled out the paperwork… I do what I want to do and that wasn't
worth doing."
3. The association belittled Mahmud for not having graduated
a PhD student and suggested that scholars who don’t supervise PhD students
can’t be professors. First, Mahmud supervised two PhD students to completion at
KWASU. Second, Transylvania University, where he spent most of his professional
life in the US, is a liberal arts institution that is focused on undergraduate
education.
In the US, different universities have different missions.
Universities that are called “liberal arts colleges” emphasize undergraduate
education. They may have a few master’s degree programs, but they hardly have
any PhD programs. There are comparatively few doctorate-granting institutions
in the US.
To suggest that scholars can’t be full professors until they
have mentored PhD students is to betray ignorance of how the university system
works.
At Transylvania University, which was established in 1780
and has the distinction of being the oldest university in the state of Kentucky
and the 16th oldest in the US, academics are judged mostly by the
quality of their teaching. While research is important, it isn’t the main
criterion for promotion. In 2003, Mahmud was voted Transylvania University’s
“Outstanding Faculty of the Year” based mostly on the excellence of his
teaching—and, of course, the quality of his research and service. (“Faculty” is
the generic term for a university teacher in US academe).
4. The association inflated Akanbi’s publication count to 90
and undercounted Mahmud’s. It then went ahead to imply that, based on their
publication records, Akanbi is more qualified than Mahmud to be KWASU VC. But Akanbi’s
Google Scholar profile page shows that he has 14 published articles, seven of which
are co-authored, and most of which were published in local journals with lax or
zero standards. Mahmud’s two single-authored books alone—not to talk of his
other journal articles and book chapters— eclipse Akanbi’s entire publication
record. But that’s even irrelevant.
5. The main issue is still that Akanbi came third in the judgement
of the (Ilorin-dominated) committee set up to fill the position of KWASU VC. He
scored a measly 63.2 % against Mahmud’s 86.4%. Professor Mohammed Gana Yisa
scored 74%. But, somehow, in the “wisdom” of the Kwara State governor, the
third became the first.
6. How can a regressive association that defends injustice
and champions the perpetration of unfair advantages to undeserving people because
of where they come from call itself “progressive”? The association must not
know what “progressive” really means. KWASU is owned and funded by the whole of
Kwara State, but the school’s VC, registrar, pro-chancellor, and visitor are
all from Ilorin. How can an association that calls itself “progressive” defend
that?
7. The association said Mahmud’s invidious exclusion was
justified because he would be 72 years old when his five-year term would
expire. But the job ad for the position didn’t identify age as a disqualifying
criterion. In any case, the previous VC, who is from Ilorin, served two terms
of 10 years, even though vice chancellors are by law allowed one nonrenewable
term. If it didn’t matter that the law was circumvented in the past, why would
an additional two years into Mahmud’s term after his official retirement age
matter? It’s unjust to shift the goalpost after the goal has been scored.
8. Finally, the association’s divisive rhetoric that
suggests that “Kwara south” and “Kwara north” are uniting to oppose Ilorin
ignores the fact that Ilorin is peopled by a mixture of ethnic groups from both
regions of the state. Contemporary Ilorin people are the product of the fusion
of Yoruba, Fulani, Baatonu, Nupe, Hausa, etc. people. No one from any part of
Kwara can hate Ilorin people without hating him or herself because Ilorin
people embody the state’s diversity. In any case, the association suggested
that the previous VC, who is from Ilorin, wanted Mahmud to succeed him. What
does that tell them?
The fact that Yoruba people in Kwara south and non-Yoruba people
in Kwara north (which includes the Baatonu, the Nupe, and the Bokobaru people)
are united in opposing the appointment of Akanbi as KWASU’s VC, which is
unexampled in the history of the state, says something.
Interestingly, the word “Gambari” is a Baatonu word, which
originally occurs in the language as Gambaru. It literally means “language of
someplace.” “Gam” means someplace and “barum” means language in the Baatonu
language, which Yoruba people call Bariba. Gambaru initially referred to any
ethnic group that the Baatonu people didn’t know, but it later came to be
associated with the Hausa. (Gambarum is the language and Gambaru is the people,
the plural form of which is Gambarusu).
Oyo people, who are the southern neighbors of the Baatonu, borrowed
Gambaru and changed it to Gambari, which is the adjectival form of Gambaru in
the Baatonu language. It’s supremely ironic that people who call themselves “Gambari”
are antagonizing a Baatonu man whose only “offense” is that he dared to be indignant
at being cheated out of what was rightly his.
