JGN Onyekpe
At the 36th Convocation of the Federal University of Technology, Akure, FUTA, Onde State, Saturday, November 15, 2025, President Bola Tinubu urged Nigerian academia to proffer solutions to societal problems.
Needless to emphasise, the primary role of academia, universally, is to provide solutions to the problems of nation-building and development. However, how much can academia do when the president of the country is perceived to be a major problem or part of the problem of the state and society?
President Bola Tinubu is a Machiavellian politician. He does not have the courage to combat Islamic fundamentalism, banditry, insurgency, brazen looting of the commonwealth, etc, etc. He is totally blind to the pervasive poverty and grinding penury of the mass of the people. He is implementing with absolute doctrinaire commitment all economic and social policies and programmes dictated to him by Western imperialism and its juggernauts, ideologues, and troubadours. He is hostile to the development of higher education. He is championing the concentration and consolidation of wealth in the hands of a tiny, microscopic minority of accursed members of the cliquedom in the Nigerian state and society.
President Bola Tinubu knows the problem of Nigeria. All that Nigeria needs is:
Let President Bola Tinubu and his men purge themselves of their defining traits all of which are absolutely inimical to the transformation and progress of the country, become new creatures, and then, patriotically embark on building a new Nigeria. Only then would academia have a stake in Nigeria.
As the President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, Professor Chris Piwuna, recently stated while addressing a Senate Committee, the Bola Tinubu-led federal government should “try us” by doing the right things concerning the public university system and see what academia would rapidly accomplish for the nation.
*Professor JGN Onyekpe, FHSN.
Department of History and Strategic Studies,
University of Lagos, Akoka.
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