Jonathan’s Greek gift
June 3, 2012 by Tunde Fagbenle

viewpoint illustration
| credits: Neearo
We are in sad times, indeed.

It is so difficult to understand what may have been going through the mind of President Goodluck Jonathan, or his handlers, when he decided to change the name of the University of Lagos to Moshood Abiola University, Lagos, as his way of finally “honouring” the late martyr of democracy, MKO Abiola.

Apparently, it was nothing but a mischievous game. Jonathan did not mean well.

A Greek gift is defined as “a gift given with the intention of tricking and causing harm to the recipient.” The recipient of Jonathan’s “Greek gift” is not the Abiola family alone, it is pro-democracy activists and clamourers for official national recognition of Abiola’s electoral victory to be president of Nigeria 19 years ago, for which he paid the ultimate sacrifice in defending; it is us Nigerians as a whole.

Of all federal icons and monuments that could safely and appropriately be named after MKO, why a university and why the University of Lagos?

Citadels of learning are not places to be treated flippantly, and certainly not one that has been in existence for 50 years, building its name and reputation and engaging the global academic community with its brand. But flippantly and discourteously, Jonathan has treated the University of Lagos on this matter.

Only in Nigeria do these things happen, where naming and renaming universities by names of certain personalities is the vogue. None typified it more than one Audu when he was governor of Kogi State and went naming everything in sight, including the state university, after himself!

Only people to whom the sanctity of universities mean nothing would treat an institution like the University of Lagos with the flippancy Jonathan has exhibited. I quickly went to make a recheck on Jonathan’s background. Indeed, he is a product of a university, the University of Port Harcourt. Clearly, the name of that institution couldn’t have meant anything to President Jonathan. Yet, he did as much as got a PhD from there. For all he cares, it could be renamed James Ibori or Diepreye Alamieyeseigha University. What’s in a name!

Jonathan chose his moment. On the front burner of national discourse and concern is the grievous issue of monumental corruption in the oil sector, particularly the trillion naira phantom subsidy that has ended in private pockets; and the trillion naira pension scam, et- cetera. The Abiola-dummy (for dummy it is) has tricked us into forgetting all that for the moment. Jonathan has given us, and the university students, something to grapple with while the whole corruption issue dies down, just like the Halliburton scandal before it.

The trick is also for the dummy recognition to calm the clamour for something more significant and appropriate, and curry the favour of the section of the country that has been most vociferous in the campaign as a way of shoring up Jonathan’s badly eroded standing and re-electability.

The harm renaming University of Lagos at this juncture would do to the psyche of the institution’s public and government purse is completely lost on, or irrelevant to our Jonathan and his men. The game of 2015 has begun and they are ready to throw anything into it to win. But what a daft hand to play this is.

The President and his men couldn’t have bargained for the uproar and unanimous rejection of the “gift” that greeted the announcement. But maybe they did, they just could care less. That explains the disdain with which Labaran Maku, his Minister of Information, dismissed the call to rescind the supposed renaming. “Nothing anybody says would make us change our minds,” he was reported to have said — or words to that effect. It is a murderous statement: murder to democracy, murder to whatever is left of our collective values.

So many people have risen and spoken to condemn the Greek Gift, not the least Prof. Wole Soyinka. As he and all said, MKO Abiola deserves all the honour the country can bestow on him for surrendering his life for the cause of democracy. And were it not for the dubiety of Jonathan’s intent, we should be thanking him for at least belling the cat and doing more than his predecessor who was too consumed by his own obsession to stand above all that, for all of his eight years as president he could not, in Soyinka’s words, “even bear to utter the name of a man who made his own incumbency possible.”

The surfeit of possibilities make us know that Jonathan and his men were not in want of what (more appropriate) to name after MKO. But you never can tell; so we should here mention but a few crying ones:

There is the Eagle Square in Abuja, where our national day and democracy celebrations take place. There is the National Stadium Abuja, a monument to the unsurpassed contribution of MKO to sports in Africa. There is the National Assembly Complex in Abuja, the “bastion” of our “democratic values!” Ha ha.

And, why not, even the Presidential Villa is there waiting under some Aso Rock.

Jonathan and his men must not get away with this nonsense.

Again, to quote Wole Soyinka: “Legalists have claimed that there is a legal flaw to the entire process. The university, solidly backed by other tertiary institutions nationwide, should immediately proceed to the courts of law and demand a ‘stay of execution.’

Let us hope our judiciary would come to the rescue — for our sakes!

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