Jadesola Akande: Her passions, her dreams

The late Profesor Jadesola Akande’s credentials were no doubt intimidating. She was until her death a respected legal consultant, who served creditably well in many capacities, but would mostly be remembered for her passionate struggle to uplift women’s rights and sound educational system in Nigeria. In celebrating this amazon even in death, Dolapo Ekanade compiles excerpts of Akande’s passionate views on national issues.

Current education crisis:
“The educational sector is one of the many problems of the country; the corruption of the systems. A redress of the present situation will begin when the whole system is examined and it is ensured that there are qualified teachers and the relevant equipment for teaching all school subjects. Education is what it is in Nigeria today, basically because we did not plan for the explosion of school age children. Secondly, some aspects of school curricula are obsolete, and, therefore, we often are not teaching students what might be relevant to their lives. Thirdly, the training of teachers is not being done properly. It is true that not very many people want to teach these days because of low incomes; but by training and investing in their continued self-improvement, we should be able to manage the ones we have. Teachers sometimes do not even understand what they are meant to teach, or may not even be qualified to teach the subjects that they do teach. There is, sadly, a dearth of good teachers. Therefore, it is difficult to sustain qualified and good teachers in the system...”

Workable solution to the crisis:
“Anywhere in the world, if you create a good environment, people will excel. But our country continues to provide insufficient funding for nearly everything that is necessary. So it’s a vicious circle. We began to notice a decline when successive Nigerian governments no longer felt that education was important, and therefore gave it the least attention. And I say this with all seriousness. With the military governments in power it was not considered all that important to have education. Many in the government itself were in fact young and did not value education, because they viewed their more senior colleagues as poor, and preferred to become millionaires...”

Challenges as the First Vice Chancellor of LASU:
“In all my five years as the vice chancellor of LASU, I received a total of N5 million from government, which is supposed to have covered overheads, salaries and other things. Everything that was to be done was handled directly by the military, and you can see the level of development of LASU! You could go for an appointment and have to sit in a government office for the entire day...there have been so many wrongs arising from bad management; we all now know that the same people who complain about student violence might actually be fueling that violence to avoid attention being paid to their own non performance. There is no water, no light, no accommodation, and so on and so forth. The environment is not conducive for studies. There are no books in the library, so the students are idle, and there is nothing to occupy them. Some students really want to study, but all these things I’ve mentioned are immensely discouraging...”

Plight of Nigerian women:
“As it is, it appears that the world is just coming to the realisation that women are as important to any nation as the men. They have the same rights as the menfolk and should not be discriminated against in any form. Generally, the nation has been very unfair to our women, hence the saying that we are in a man’s world. In this country, it is particularly bad, because we are operating a patriarchal system which sees the man as the all, as the head of the woman, and therefore the woman must automatically be subordinate. That is where the woman’s problem began. And you can see this attitude in the activities of political parties.

Political parties are controlled by god fathers; until the godmothers get there, the godfathers will continue to dominate the political terrain. And unless these men want a particular woman; their girlfriends or their wives in some positions, it continues to be a game dominated by men. Another issue is the fact that politics in Nigeria is dominated by money; men tend to be the ones with much of the money. For instance, where the woman is given a N200, 000 contract, and she makes a N10, 000 profit, at the end of the day, she cannot afford to spend that N10, 000 on politicking, because she has the family to look after. Unless a level playing ground is provided, violence and political violence are removed, and the powers of the godfather diffused, women will play secondary roles in politics...”

Standard of legal education:
“We have quality legal training in Nigeria, but like other aspects, it has been corrupted too. The lawyers we are turning out now are half-baked, badly focused, badly behaved, badly robed; the ethics they are not prepared to learn. Law, in particular, has and is dependant on ethics. Lawyers nowadays no longer learn, because the love for quick returns has taken over. The shortcut to make money has resulted in lawyers no longer dignified in practising their profession. However, this is happening not only with the law profession, but all professions. When I was young, it was dignifying to be called a lawyer. Now lawyers go up and down the streets, doing charge and bail, carrying files about and making up stories...”

Nigeria’s leadership problems
“We haven’t missed it; what we have missed is leadership in Nigeria. I say this, because the leaders we’ve had in this country have been products of the colonial system. The colonial system did not train our people for leadership positions; rather, they were trained to be next in command to someone British in the position of authority who then hands down instructions. Someone else would take a decision, and then ask his Nigerian subordinate to implement it. So when the colonial masters left governance to these people who were used to taking orders, they were still waiting for people to give them guidelines. There was no one, of course, to give them the guidelines, because they were the leaders on whose desk the buck stopped. And before anyone could realise this, the country faced a coup...”

State Murders:
“I think it’s very sad and very scary. People will be scared away from taking part in politics, because no one is prepared to die for anyone or for any cause any longer. And if these killings do not stop, we shall not have any confidence in the political process. It is not as if other countries do not experience political killings, but in our own situation it seems as if the killings occur mainly in one particular party. So the members of that party should first examine themselves before they begin to consider what they will contribute to nation building. If they cannot control their own internal conflicts, how then are they going to administer the entire country? For that reason, I think more commitment is needed to finding those who are involved in political killings. Otherwise, every vote cast for that party is a vote for murderers...”

Courtesy: The Achebe Foundation Interviews