It was the year 2000. Prof Fabian Osuji, who had just been appointed pro-chancellor and chairman of the Governing Council of University of Nigeria, Nsukka, came visiting the university, I think, on a familiarisation or reconciliation tour. The university had been embroiled in a deep-seated crisis that dated back to the days of Prof Umaru D. Gomwalk as sole administrator, or possibly beyond. In fact, the lecturers had just downed tools and some students were already packing their bags and going home.
Then came Prof Osuji, accompanied by the vice-chancellor, Prof Ginigeme Francis Mbanefo, and other top-ranking members of the university authority. We were all fully packed inside Theatre A in the George Marion Johnson Building that houses the School of General Studies to listen to him.
Then something dramatic happened. I don’t know whether it was something Prof Osuji said or it was premeditated. But just after his address, as the pro-chancellor and his entourage were leaving the hall, people suddenly began to scamper about. The next thing we heard was that a group of ‘raggamufin’ students had got hold of Prof Mbanefoh and had whisked him away to the university stadium. Good breeding and respect for this great scholar would not allow me to narrate the ordeal that we were told he had to face in the hands of the unruly students. It took the effort of the university security to get the vice-chancellor out and of harm’s way. And we paid dearly for it, as well as for the demonstration that followed – both in time loss and in cash (reparation fee).
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That’s just to give a glimpse of the kind of UNN that Prof Ginigeme Mbanefoh inherited from Prof Gomwalk in 1997. Under Gomwalk, that prestigious institution of higher learning founded by Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and established by an Act of Parliament of May 18, 1955 was embroiled in a crisis of immense proportions that never really went away until perhaps the coming of Prof Osita Chinedu Nebo in 2004.
The immediate cause of the crisis seemed to be the removal of Prof Oleka Kelechi Udeala as vice-chancellor and the appointment of Prof U. D. Gomwalk as sole administrator of the university in 1995 by the Sani Abacha military junta. Oleka, a professor of pharmacy, came to be known as the “unwilling” vice-chancellor for reasons I’m yet to ascertain. The true circumstances under which he was removed are also still unclear.
Many of the university’s academics and students saw Gomwalk as a spoiler, the parabolic tare among the wheat planted by the enemy, the Abacha dictatorship, to destroy the institution that was the pride of Nigeria. He was seen as an instrument for “the destruction of the structures and psyche of the university community”.
To illustrate this point, a 1997 Op-ed by Andy Nweze entitled “Gomwalk and the UNN Crisis” stated that “all the segments of the university have known no peace since the arrival of the sole administrator”.
“The first victims of Gomwalk’s entrance into the university campus were the students who in one fell swoop lost the electronic engineering laboratory and the art theater. Although some lecturers, most of whom were the avowed supporters of the former vice-chancellor, Prof Oleka Udeala, were arrested and charged for those incidents, some analysts believe that from observation of Gomwalk and his behaviour in the university which sometimes border on paranoia, it is not beyond him to set the buildings ablaze just to find justification for roping in his assumed enemies,” Nweze wrote.
Nweze alleged that after the ill-fated nationwide Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike of 1996 which crippled academic activities in Nigerian universities and led to the loss of a whole session, Gomwalk, while other universities were reopening, insisted that he was not yet ready to reopen the university. Even during the strike, he allegedly took it upon himself to break the strike by all means. His actions led to “a mini-war which totally destroyed the morale of the staff and students of the university” and threw the entire university community into pandemonium.
Gomwalk increased students’ school fees without Federal Government approval, ejected students from their hostels at night, while the security outfit he set up to “curtail his enemies” constantly harassed students, especially in the female hostels where “many of the female students were beaten up and raped by the security men”, he alleged.
The harassment of students in the male hostels and the students’ attempt to resist it led to the shooting of a student, following which the students unleashed mayhem. They were eventually made to pay huge reparation fees for the damage done during the demonstration.
It was under these circumstances that Ginigeme Mbanefoh came to UNN, first as acting vice-chancellor 1997-1999, and then as elected vice-chancellor 1999-2004.
Some have said that during his years as UNN vice-chancellor Prof Mbanefo lived out his name – “Ginigeme” literally translates as “What will happen?” but it can also be “Nothing will happen” – acting in defiance of everyone else. But my interpretation of the situation, no longer as an undergraduate student of UNN for the most part of his tenure but now as critical analyst with a better understanding, is that Mbanefoh had many demons to fight, and he had to stay strong, even defiant, to make headway.
First, Mbanefoh, a native of Eziowelle in Idemili North Local Government of Anambra State, came in at a time the “son of the soil” agitation by Enugu people was gathering momentum. The people of Enugu State felt left in the lurch and badly wanted one of their own to become the vice-chancellor of UNN, a university planted in their backyard by their own grandson Nnamdi. Peace returned, I think, with the appointment of Nebo, a son of the soil, in 2004.
Second, he was seen as an outsider. He was neither an alumnus of UNN nor ever taught there. He gathered his academic laurels from University of Ibadan and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA, and spent his teaching career at the University of Ibadan, where he rose to the rank of professor in 1991. So, forces from within the university academia who felt they were due to become vice-chancellor fought tooth and nail to destabilise his administration.
And lastly, there was the mess left behind by Gomwalk to clean up.
So it was that UNN witnessed what may perhaps be its most unstable academic calendar in history during Mbanefoh’s tenure as vice-chancellor. We all ended up topping an extra year on our regular years of study.
All said, my dispassionate appraisal of his years at UNN is that Mbanefoh stayed strong, fought a good fight, did his best, but the forces against him were probably stronger.
Prof Ginigeme F. Mbanefoh, a seasoned economist, a Rockefeller Foundation scholar, a veteran of the Biafran War, the Ebubedike of Eziowelle, bowed out of this physical plane of existence on February 8, 2017. He will be buried on May 5, 2017 in his hometown. He will be sorely missed.
