MAZI EJIMOFOR OPARA
Before he began delivering his paper on “Intellectualism and the Development of Society” yesterday at the 6th Biennial Conference of the Association of Nsukka Professors (ANP), Soludo started on a pedestal that elevated the crux of his thesis.
“I know your Vice Chancellor, Prof. Ortuanya. He is a thoroughbred professional and an astute academic. His appointment as Vice Chancellor is deserving. I do not want to join those who diminish this deserved appointment by linking it to his being an Nsukka man. That beat, for me, is one of the modern-day causes of the downward trend we now observe in our universities. In an earlier piece I referred to it as the ‘villagisation of the Nigerian Universities’. It is a system that kills merit and enthrones mediocrity.”
That was when I knew Soludo was set for a cracker. The sheer audacity to deflate what had become a source of pride for a group that invited you to such a conversation meant that nothing else would be spared.
Indeed, Soludo, like Jesus in the temple, wielded the big stick on his colleagues yesterday. At some point, he described it as “scandalous” that a citadel of knowledge and learning like the well-respected University of Nigeria, Nsukka, had not initiated a debate or steered conversations around the plausibility and viability of the secessionist agenda of the Biafran struggle for the Southeast’s political economy.
What followed next was a declaration of Soludo’s socio-political ideological stand — a stand he has maintained for many decades. He thundered without ambiguity: “Of course I am a pan-Nigerian, a neo-Zikist, and believe that Ndi Igbo can actualize their full potential within the larger framework of the Nigerian state.”
While a saying attributes the ability to remain steady to the Northern Star, I think Soludo’s consistency and unwavering ideological clarity makes him another steady star on the Eastern galaxy.
Soludo carefully escaped the ditch most intellectuals fall into in the course of espousing their intellectual superiority by calling for credible dissent. People should be able to differ without coercion and violence, and only a rigorous scholarly and intellectual analysis of the subject can guarantee that. The absence of this, in Soludo’s estimation, created a void now occupied by propagandists and conspiracy theorists.
One deducible epigram from Soludo’s opening statement is this: “Intellectuals can be Academics, but certainly not all Academics become Intellectuals.” To know the difference, you must either listen to or read Soludo’s paper.
What happened yesterday was Soludo going back to the temple of knowledge with strong whips to clear out merchants from the house of “his father” — a righteous anger aimed at setting the foundation for rebuilding the intellectual powerhouse of Alaigbo!